#I think this trend will take about a decade or so to really examine things so maybe by 2040 things will be clearer

[lifeblender]

Just in case anyone has missed the trend of science news showing that the gut microbiome is really important, here's some articles

It's involved in cancer prevention:

It's involved in Alzheimer's:

It's involved in allergic reactions:

It's involved in absorption of dietary fats (for instance leading to weight gain, as opposed to say, genetics or exercise):

I'm pretty sure this trend will continue and that we'll find that a lot of things we thought were genetic or random are heavily influenced by gut flora

I'm excited about this

I think a lot of human conditions, whether diseases or not, will become less mysterious

[carolrain]

Let's talk about the "guys named 'Ben'" thing.

My theory is that it is simply a result of Ben being a popular name, and a newly-popular name for babies in the 1980s. I think that odds are good that if you asked writers about the Bens in their lives, they would say they know (and like) a lot of Bens roughly their own ages. (I have a brother named Ben myself.) In its favor, (I think) it's a friendly-sounding, easy-to-spell, easy-to-pronounce, can-be-pictured-on-a-wide-range-of-guys name.

I am not even sure that writers are thinking that hard about choosing the name. I find myself, a little older than the first wave of Bens, putting an Amy in basically everything I write, just accidentally, because Amys were everywhere when I was growing up. I had so many friends named Amy that when I think "friend for the main character," I think, "Okay, Amy it is." Perhaps there are writers who are doing the same thing with Bens.

Data and speculation after the jump:

For the U.S., you can examine baby name popularity on the Social Security website. It's frustrating, though, because their tools used to work better! I can't get it to show things it used to, but I'll show you what it let me look at today.

For our purposes, I'm going to just use "Benjamin" from here on out, since it's the most common long-form Ben name. Someone else can take on the Bennetts and Benedicts and just-Bens.

You can look at each year individually, but for simplicity's sake, I'm just going to show you the whole decade. Here's what Americans actually named their children in the 1980s. I screenshot a bit of their list:

Here's what the site says about this data: For each rank and sex, the table shows the name and the number of occurrences of that name. The 200 most popular names were taken from a universe that includes 19,241,335 male births and 18,457,513 female births.

If you go to the site yourself and search for one particular year, it will show you percentages so you don't have to do the math yourself. I don't know why it won't do this for the whole decade.

Anyway, you can see trends in boy names do not change as fast as trends in girl names. Girl names always become "dated" more quickly. You can also see that a much higher number/percentage of boys have to share names with classmates. I'm just talking off the top of my head here (someone feel free to do a bunch of analysis!), but I think, looking at the list, that you don't hit anything I think of as "1980s boys" until out of the top ten. The top ten names (including Daniel and David) could be names for men of any age. So if you want a name that gives a hint about a man's age, you need to choose one lower on the list.

Which brings us to how the name Benjamin has changed in popularity over time. This is something the SSA site claims to be able to show you, but it only gives me error messages now. There also used to be a wonderful site called Baby Name Wizard which would line-graph a name (or a beginning of a name) out for you, but alas, it has sold out to something called (rolling eyes emoji) Mom Dot Com. But Mom.com gives us a tiny little graph at the bottom of the page about Benjamin:

I put my cursor on 1983 so you can see how the popularity of Benjamin shot up right before then (that first peak after that wide valley is 1977).

Okay, so that is the United States. It looks to me like Canada is trying to be really good at providing their raw name data, but I had a lot of trouble, as a not-expert, not-wanting-to-spend-my-whole-day-on-this person, getting it to download correctly or be wrangled into a form I understand. But here are some links if you want to look into it:

Ontario Top Baby Names (male) claims to have 1917-2019 all in one set, but when I downloaded it I couldn't make it make sense for me, someone who doesn't really know what she is doing. But you should try yourself.

Alberta's Top Baby Names page just took me in a circle? They say there's data there, but where? Again, it's probably obvious and I missed it.

But I had success at Most Popular Baby Names in British Columbia. Here's Benjamin:

The peak I highlighted is 1987. Just eyeing it, I (again, not an expert) think it looks like the name grew in popularity in B.C. about the same time as it did in the U.S., although it's jumpier throughout the 1980s.

I didn't look at other provinces or territories or English-speaking countries because I'm not that committed, but I'd love it if someone else wanted to.

Anyway, my theory is that Ben is a popular name within fanon simply because:

It's a good name (don't you think? I think so).

Most writers know more than one Ben. Probably quite a few have dated a Ben or two. It's a name they know and have affection for.

It just feels like the name of someone the right age. It's not a new-baby name or the name of anyone's father.

It's easy to spell, type, and pronounce.

It's also different from other names in our fic. Does anyone else have a B name? Easy to tell at a glance we are talking about an OC.

Because it's relatively popular, writers have met many Bens and don't automatically associate it with a stereotype or particular group. (I didn't research this, though! Maybe it is more tied to race or social class or something else than I'm guessing.) This means it's a name we can use for whoever we want.

I know this is all speculation and a bunch of it is subjective. I would be thrilled if someone wanted to argue with me or bring in better or contradictory evidence. It's all just theory I wanted to throw out into the ether and see if anyone else wanted to talk about it.

Also, if you named an OC Ben, can you tell us why?

Lovely witches,

I’m curious which author and fic was the catalyst for the storyline/backstory about Sebastian and his taking pictures of a drugged out, naked David? Has any other fictional part taken off like that one?

BTW, I like it.

Hello catnap!

Thank you for the lovely image with your ask!

Sebastien and the photos is such a part of the fandom that there is often confusion that it's actually fanon and not canon.

However, there is this deleted scene from the show that could be interpreted as source material for the idea.

We believe that Lettered was the first to introduce the idea to fanfic. (If anyone else knows differently, please let us know!)

There are lots of other examples of widely accepted fanon elements (including guys named "Ben") and we've started keeping a list of them.

Some popular ones:

- David makes Patrick watch rom-coms - Patrick makes David watch sportsball - Patrick grows out his curls at David's encouragement - David needs his clothes folded before sex - David is a talented artist - Patrick keeps spreadsheets - Patrick has his MBA - David's rings are always cool to the touch - Patrick wakes early - There's a place in Elmdale with the best pizza - D & P go on dates to an Italian restaurant in Elmdale - Marcy teaches David to cook/bake - Marcy texts with David

Tell us in the comments/reblogs, what are your fanon faves?

[girlyholic]

Is Overlap Possible Between Menhera and Jirai?

Jirai and mental health is a topic I feel is worth addressing, as I’ve noticed a specific trend both in my inbox and in general replies on this subject. I often see the sentiment that pushing against the term Jirai is hurting those with mental illness more than helping, as there are some people with mental illness who find solace in the term and wish to reclaim it.

Regarding that, people can look at the facts of what Jirai is and make their own decisions. I am just here to provide a bit more clarity on what it is so newcomers can enjoy the actual fashion that got overshadowed by the harmful meme blowing up.

But this raises a point that’s worth examining, since some people feel so strongly about it. Is Jirai, which is heavily tied to the Japanese anti-recovery community, something that can ever be considered comparable to Menhera, which is about mental health awareness?

Putting a TW here before the readmore for a brief discussion of self harming behaviors.

To start, I’ll explain what Menhera is and how it relates to this conversation. The term Menhera first came about on 2channel in 2000, coined by the users of its mental health board as a nickname for themself. People on this board would not only exchange about mental health, but also share all kinds of vent art. Menhera art became an own genre, exhibitions dedicated to it began to be made, and Menhera turned into an own subculture. The thing that’s important to note is that before Menhera was born, there were no neutral terms for the mentally ill in Japanese, they were all exclusively derogatory.

This neutral meaning lasted for over a decade, until the term was discovered by outsiders in the early days of the social media boom. “Menhera Kei”, meaning Menhera-type, became the name of a stereotype used to label women as crazy. Examples of the stereotype include women who can’t accept failure, or who seek attention from others, since they have no self-esteem. A great deal of emphasis was put on women of this “type” having unfixable personality flaws, because in Japan, mental health issues are generally considered to be personal failings that cause trouble for others, and not legitimate health issues.

On paper, that sounds a lot like Jirai, doesn’t it? Both are words that have stereotypes about mentally-ill women associated with them.

There is one key difference: Jirai's background is the total opposite of Menhera. Menhera as a term was made by the mental health community for the mental health community, and you don’t seek out a mental health board to get worse. It may have a secondary meaning as an ableist stereotype, but that came about from people taking a term mentally-ill people came up with to use amongst themselves and twisting it.

Meanwhile, there never has been a positive association with Jirai, and it’s not uncommon for Japanese netizens to use it in a self-deprecating manner. Looking at accounts of self-proclaimed landmines quickly shows that there is no intent to reclaim the term, meaning to turn it into something positive, but instead it is used as a way to find affirmation in self-destructive and self-harming behaviors. When it isn’t graphic photos of self-harm, it’s often things that are more subtle, such as posting about passing out drunk sleeping on the streets or how they don’t deserve to eat at best, or sharing screenshots of questionable LINE messages with captions about how cute it is that they’re gaslighting their partner at worst. It is almost always not a rejection of the harmful traits of the stereotype, but an embrace of them.

And I really need to clarify that I don’t think people who post that sort of content are bad people. That’s the reason why I never link to any of these accounts. These are people who are deeply embroiled in a culture and aesthetic that is harming them further, and I sincerely hope that one day they can break out of it. I struggle with mental illness myself and can understand that side of it completely.

Seeking mental well-being, which is what Menhera refers to, is not comparable to Jirai, which has been heavily associated with the anti-recovery community. This is why this whole discourse feels a bit strange, as Menhera is right there and encompasses what people boasting about reclaiming Jirai are usually looking for. There isn’t really a need to reclaim Jirai in the west anyways as nobody is affected by its derogatory meaning the way people in Japan are to begin with.

[gatheringbones]

[“Having been out of the baby-catching game for some decades, I was caught off guard by a phrase Stanger-Ross used when we spoke: “obstetrical trauma.”

“That has become a term,” she said. “Unfortunately, a lot of women feel that their birthing experience was one of trauma, which, of course, is going to have impacts on the parent-child relationship. If the birth was traumatizing, then how does that translate when now you have a newborn in your arms?”

Right on cue, I was given a textbook illustration of this alarming trend via a conversation I had the day I finished this chapter. I was being interviewed over video conference by a New York journalist reporting on the COVID-19 pandemic, which at the time was engulfing her city.

At one point, Courtney, as I’ll call her, proudly showed off her three-month-old cherub. When she learned what I was working on, she poured out the awful story of her recent experience at Mount Sinai Hospital at the hands of one of New York’s most prominent and well-regarded obstetricians. It is as clear a tale of normalized obstetrical trauma as can be imagined.

Thirty-seven years old and healthy, Courtney was expecting an uneventful delivery. At thirty weeks the physician phoned her to announce, as if by decree, that, given her age, labor would be induced at thirty-nine weeks. This, the doctor said, was “the office protocol here” for anyone older than thirty-five. “She had known my age from the beginning, since I walked into her office last May,” Courtney said. “I was so shocked that I hung up the phone—I barely said a word. I had to have half a glass of wine. I was so upset, I didn’t sleep all that night.”

It went downhill from there. Courtney recalled with pain “the sudden disappearance of flexibility and the imposition of a tyrannical dictate. It was not the kind of care I expected. I’m not used to being bullied by doctors or talked down to. The tone became so toxic . . . and then she also kept saying, ‘The baby is huuuge. He’s going to be huuuge.’ I said to her, ‘Wait, I heard that growth scans are notoriously bad at predicting weight.’ She responded, ‘Not at Sinai. He’s going to be nine pounds at least.’” (The baby’s actual birth weight: less than eight pounds.)

Courtney considered looking for a new physician, but this late in pregnancy and still in awe of the specialist’s credentials, she stayed put. “By week thirty-eight, she was saying, every week, ‘This is really not looking good for vaginal, it’s really not. I don’t know what to tell you.’ I just kept saying, ‘I really don’t want a C-section.’ And this was our dynamic week after week. I was in a terrible state of mind for the last three or four weeks of the pregnancy: sobbing, nervous breakdown . . . At the appointed time, we show up at Mount Sinai, and it’s a horrible scene. We’re in this waiting room for three hours, a million different things going on, and I kept saying to my partner, ‘Why the fuck am I here? We are totally within our rights to go back to Brooklyn and go into labor naturally.’”

Feeling disempowered, having her intuition invalidated at this most vulnerable time of her life, being intimidated by a highly extolled medical specialist, and having been raised in a culture where “expert” authority trumps one’s own, Courtney lacked the wherewithal to assert herself. She finally acceded to the induction and, after fifteen hours of fruitless labor, the inevitable surgery. “I was so weak. I’d been throwing up. Everything about this was like the biggest nightmare. I said, ‘Fuck it—let’s just do the C-section. Like, what choice do I have at this point?’ So we roll into the OR, and I’m throwing up on the table, and I’m a basket case, sobbing. Scared out of my mind, shaking. They start the surgery; it takes forever. She then says to me, ‘Oh, I didn’t realize your abdominal muscles were this strong.’ They were, because I’ve done Pilates for twenty years. I’m thinking, ‘Why didn’t you realize it? You’ve been examining me regularly for nine months and anticipating this surgery for weeks.’ And the following morning she said to me—can you even make this up?—���I’m going to call the Mount Sinai scanning department and complain about how inaccurate your growth scans were!’ All that week in the hospital I would just lie awake at night, sobbing at how violated I was.”

I asked Courtney whether she had thought of working with a midwife. “I’m not that left-wing,” she said. “I’m not that far-out. I completely bought into the system.”]

gabor maté, from the myth of normal: trauma, illness, and healing in a toxic culture, 2022

[fandom-space-princess]

ooohhh would you mind sharing the reasons you don't like booktok? i have some reasons of my own but im really interested in the opinion who actually has to deal with the consequences of it all more directly. only if you want of course!

Oh goodness, grab your beach towel anon. Usually you'd have to go to the sea for this much salt.

(Prefacing this with the fact that this is just my opinion, not meant to be emblematic of like... booksellers as a whole, or my employer, or anything. It's also anecdata; nothing here is backed up by anything more than personal observation. I'm just a guy with a keyboard and an attitude. This also isn't meant to be a dig at anybody's taste in books/stories. I'm a supernatural blog, I have no legs to stand on in that regard.)

The things I most dislike about booktok, in no particular order:

1). The tendency toward quick consumption of stories without deeper or more lasting investment is an issue I have with a lot of media (see: Netflix dropping an entire series of something that everyone has watched, and then moved on from, in a week), but I think the problems inherent to that model of engagement become acute when the media in question is books. Novels are long-form storytelling by design; you're meant to sit with them for a while. Books in a series can take years, even decades, between publication. It's hard to convince people to engage with stories on that kind of timescale when we're constantly having our attention spans whittled away under a neverending barrage of buy-the-next-thing consumerism.

2). Tiktok is not only a principal motivator for this kind of behavior, it literally could not exist without it. Booktok doesn't encourage people to sit with books for a long time. It encourages you to *constantly* be consuming something new, *constantly* be pushing your friends to do the same, *constantly* be gaming the algorithm if you want to have any kind of significant presence. The environment does not encourage deep-dives; it leaves no time for contemplation. If you're participating in the culture as designed, you move through books very quickly.

From a business perspective (i.e. the capitalistic one), this is great. From the perspective of an indie bookseller, this is a pain in the ass on so many levels. Have you ever worked a retail Christmas rush? Where something you'd normally sell maybe three of in a year is suddenly The Hot Item, and the public demands you have 9000 of them in stock overnight?

It's unpleasant, is what I'm saying.

2b). The other thing this encourages? Stories that do not challenge people. Again, this is not to slander anyone's personal tastes. But ask yourself: what plays well to the greatest audience? What is most likely to draw customers, gain views, boost engagement? It isn't nuance. It isn't subtlety, isn't grappling with complex morality. All of those are things which I personally find intensely valuable about the experience of reading, and which I find pretty uniformly lacking in booktok's thing-of-the-week. This has an interesting overlap with the resurgence of censorship and purity culture that I think is worth examining, and maybe I'll rant about that some other time. As it stands, I find the trend toward Marvel-ification of fiction (simpler! louder! less nuance! more buzzwords!) to be obnoxious.

3). Speaking of buzzwords, the trend toward marketing new fiction using only a half-assed combination of tropes and comps drives me up a wall. I can't tell you how many ARCs I've seen in the last few months with bare-bones summaries and blurbs to the effect of "for fans of enemies-to-lovers and Game of Thrones, an endearing story of found family and the power of love!" Ok?? Fine in moderation, I guess, but even if I liked all of those things, what is in this book? Did the publisher not bother... asking the writer? Did they not leave them time to write a proper summary? Did they just not care, and hope replace a genuine marketing strategy with SEO?

Idk, maybe there's a benefit to this I can't see. Drives me absolutely bonkers, though.

4). The tags for my original post mentioned Colleen Hoover, who is the target of my ire at the moment because I've been pulling books for her fans all week, per point (2). No offense intended to Ms. Hoover, who I know nothing about but I'm sure is a perfectly normal author looking to get paid for her work, or even to her books, which are not my kind of thing but clearly are somebody's. FULL offense to Hachette for those books, though. They are everything I hate in paperback form: boring, ugly cover after boring, ugly cover. Really REALLY cheaply printed; about 1 in 3 arrive with some kind of damage, because they're so badly made that they don't hold up to even light jarring during shipping. The binding is... sad. Like. Even very bad books deserve better than this. But does the publisher care? Are they motivated to craft a higher quality product? Like hell they are! Because every booktok-er will buy them anyway. They're not interested in a product that will last; they're not looking for an object to cherish for life, a book to pick up and read over and over and over and over again until the spine cracks and the pages start falling out. That'll happen to these goddamn things by the second reread, but how many of them will get that reread is debatable, because by then I'll be selling that crowd The Next New Big Thing.

Anyway. I'll stop there. Thank you, anon, for your ask, and giving me a chance to vent a little bit. Wishing you a hot tea and a good, well-crafted story to liven up your day <3

[bigskydreaming]

I honestly can’t tell if this is a purely petty want or its a rare non-petty want and I’ve simply lost the ability to distinguish between the two.....

But man would I kill for some fics from Jason or Tim’s POV post Forever Evil, while still believing Dick’s dead, where they like, think about all the things they’d held against Dick in the years before that while he’d kept trying to reach out to them, and just....regret all the time wasted, y’know? Like....there are SO MANY stories that spare no detail in showcasing how guilty Dick felt for Jason’s death and wishing he’d been around more often in hindsight......but what, Tim never thought about how often Dick tried to apologize or explain his reasoning with the Robin mantle or get him to keep in touch during the early Red Robin era and thinks....was it worth it? Keeping him at a distance as long as he had? Etc, etc.

I mean, if we can have decades worth of fic burdening Dick with more of a guilt complex about Jason’s death than we even typically see from Bruce, like, feeling guilty about how he handled the Garzonas case and giving Jason reason to doubt his place in the manor and as Robin and go seeking more family elsewhere......then surely brothers regretting the time they wasted fighting with a now deceased sibling is a pretty reasonable area of exploration, y’know?

And honestly, that’s a huge part of what made Jason and Tim’s reactions so hard to stomach when Dick came back. There was so much focus and emphasis given to their feelings of betrayal BECAUSE of how much time and emotion was spent grieving for him, now seemingly for nothing.....

But problem was....

WE NEVER REALLY SAW ANY OF THAT!

Like where was it? It was very much a case of tell and not show. We barely ever got any MENTION of Dick’s death from the others during that in between time, it was more just awkward references and pained silences, but that’s not.....the same thing, y’know? We never really got any actual EXPLORATION of how they actually FELT about Dick being gone, other than a vague ‘oh we’re sad now’.....like I mean....when Bruce was lost in time, we actually SAW the grief play out in different ways amongst the different characters. With Dick’s though, we basically were just TOLD upon his return that they’d been SO heartbroken that now all they could feel was betrayed and angry when they looked at him, but where was all that heartbreak? Shouldn’t there have been some actual....displays of it then, if its gonna be strong enough to justify punching your returned from the dead brother and then pretty much declaring him persona non grata for the next year?

Course, as an extension of all that, I also can’t help but feel that if there HAD been more of an examination on the impact Dick’s loss had on the others, what it brought up for them, what it made them think about and reprioritize and regret or wish they could have done differently or had another chance to do differently....whether in canon or just in terms of fic trends.....

Then I do honestly think that actual FOCUS there on those kinds of things would have paved the way for the others still to have been more....gracious about Dick’s return, or like....made it easier for them to have more nuanced perspectives there. Because if you’ve ACTUALLY just spent the past year or so regretting having wasted so much time being angry at the brother you now miss so much, with this actually being reflected in various narratives.....then suddenly it becomes a lot easier and more obvious upon discovering he’s alive, to like....not literally repeat the same thing all over again and just go back to being mad at him rather than taking advantage of this second chance at having him back in your lives.

And I mean, if the problem all along was people not wanting to acknowledge Bruce’s specific role and actions in getting Dick to go undercover at Spyral, which I mean, I actually do get......there’s still no real need to throw Dick under the bus to give the others someone to blame there, if like.....you just make their priority not needing to BLAME someone at all, but just being fucking GLAD to have him back, the very thing most of them probably wished for multiple times over the prior year.

But that particular prioritization - joy that he’s alive, period, versus resentment for time ‘wasted’ grieving - basically first requires a reversal in what focus is given most priority. To get THAT outcome, you basically need Dick’s ABSENCE and his loss from their lives over the past year, how this affects them, how they feel about THAT, to be given the actual focus....rather than what we actually got, which was the focus just on their feelings of hurt and betrayal UPON Dick’s return.

(With this of course also stemming from and playing into my biggest issues with Forever Evil and Grayson, which is that everyone else was cast as being more victimized by the storylines that Dick was literally the ACTUAL victim of, buuuuuuut I’ve ranted on that many a time before so I mean. Whatever).

But yeah, just.....there’s a real dearth of actual REACTIONS to Dick’s death and reflections on his LOSS and what that means to the others, during that year he’s gone (with honestly the same being true of the entire year he spent as Ric Grayson, like I mean it was literally just the same thing, redux.....everyone was so busy resenting Ric for not being Dick, there was barely ever any focus actually given to the fact that this was because they MISSED Dick.....and since Ric still was Dick, after all, this basically just meant that for all that time, the focus was just on everyone being mad at him....for them....missing him. I just. Ugh. DC. Why are you such a fucking mess on repeat with Dick’s storylines I mean no but seriously WHY. GET SOME NEW MATERIAL).

Anyway. So that’s what I was thinking about while reading the umpteenth million fic where Dick waxes on, all penitent like, for not being around more before Jason died......umm okay then, so what if fic where Jason and Tim spend a paragraph or two thinking ‘oh man, wish I wasn’t always just such an asshole to my now dead brother every time he wanted to just hang out for literally no other reason than because he was my brother and he loved me’ hmmmm?

[sammysdewysensitiveeyes]

"Explorers raided tombs and paraded the remains of ancient monarchs and dynasties to their homes. Mummies were unwrapped at social affairs and examined—and it was such a popular pastime that tourism companies in Egypt sent such delights to European countries to satisfy their morbid curiosities and struggled to fuel the growing trend."

“So you see,” Sebastian continued, “There is a historical precedent for this sort of thing. I’m hardly the first businessman to notice the wasted resources just rotting away underground. Or stuffed into an urn, depending on customs and family sentiment.”

“There’s historical precedent for a lot of fucked up shit, Shaw. That doesn’t make it okay!” Pyro stared, aghast, at the website. “Does the Council know you’re doing this? They can’t possibly approve!”

“Are you going to run and tattle on me?” Sebastian sneered. “That doesn’t seem like you, Allerdyce, but you have become more of a conformist rule-follower in Krakoa, it seems. At any rate, some of the Council are aware of my side business. They have elected not to bring it to a vote in meetings, so presumably I am breaking no law of the island.”

“But….it’s wrong. It’s bloody grotesque is what it is!” Pyro exclaimed.

“Is it better or worse than burning people to death during a bank robbery, or as part of some half-baked political protest?”

“Oh, give me a fucking break, Shaw!” Pyro snapped. “I know I’ve done some bad things – “

“Some bad things. What an adorable generalization, ducking out of all serious responsibility – “

“I know I’ve killed people, okay?” Not quite as many as some X-Men wanted to pretend, though. He mostly went for guards, police officers and soldiers, who, as far as Pyro was concerned, had it fucking coming. He hadn’t wanted to kill people to rob a bank, and there was never a need to if the civilians were smart enough to stay well back.

“But killing people doesn’t mean I can’t draw any moral lines, ever,” Pyro continued. “And I’m drawin’ a line right here. This is not okay.”

“Why not? Who does it hurt, really?”

“Well, surely the people whose bodies are getting rented out to sickos! No one would want that.” Pyro wasn’t sure he could articulate the sick churning in the pit of his stomach. It was something that went beyond logic, just a deep sense of disgust that seemed to well up from the center of his being. He was an open-minded fellow, he was willing to play fast and loose with a few morals, but surely some things were just….wrong. Right?

“What they don’t know won’t hurt them,” Sebastian said, waving a hand dismissively. “And apparently X-Factor is running some very interesting experiments with discarded mutant corpses over in their appropriately named “Boneyard.” And I’m quite confident that Sinister is probably churning out clones in his little lab, no matter how he might deny it. So whats the harm in my business?”

“Just because other people are doing it doesn’t make it okay! It’s like a….desecration, isn’t it?” Perhaps there was some of his Gran’s staunch Catholicism lurking under the surface, despite Pyro’s current status as…well, not an atheist, exactly, more like an agnostic who didn’t want to think about things too hard. He had to admit, a childhood of Mass and Confession and Hail Marys really got under your skin, no matter how long ago you walked away from the church.

“All this fuss over discarded meat,” Sebastian shrugged. “That’s all it really is when you remove religion and sentiment from the equation. Really, Allerdyce, I’m surprised at your squeamishness.”

“Are you really okay with it, then?” Pyro asked. “Letting some human fuck a mutant corpse? That’s what they’re doing it, isn’t it?”

“Not necessarily. I believe that’s the most common activity, but a few people want to cook and eat choice pieces.”

“Oh, that’s perfectly all right, then.” Pyro’s words were so heavy with sarcasm, they practically thudded onto the floor.

“Understand, Allerdyce, I find all this personally distasteful. I am disgusted by the idea of necrophilia, and even cannabalsim. But I see no reason to deny others, if there is money to be made. The ‘sickos’ will pay top dollar for discrete fulfillment of their taboo desires.”

“But do you really want to be putting mutant corpses in human hands? Haven’t they got scientists trying to study us or clone us or whatever? Put our DNA in Sentinels to make super-weapons?”

Sebastian laughed heartily. “Really, I didn’t think you were so naïve. Mutants have been in the public eye for several decades. The various governments of the world have been capturing mutant test subjects for a very long time. There are hundreds of mutants buried in graveyards and millions in the heavy layer of ash that still covers Genosha. If some enterprising human scientist wants mutant DNA, it would be very, very easy to lay hands on it. In fact, your own corpse is probably preserved in a government lab somewhere. In other words, there’s no point in closing the barn door at this point. The horses are long gone.”

Pyro couldn’t resist a full-body shudder at the thought. He knew, deep down, that his body was probably stuck in a metal drawer somewhere, or cut into chunks sitting in labelled glass jars. The US government had probably been interested in him as a Legacy Virus victim, back before the cure. It shouldn’t matter, but somehow, it did.

“And the bodies are only available for a limited amount of time, at any rate,” Sebastian continued. “Aside from the obvious natural impermanence of a corpse, I’ve had Sinister inject the bodies with a kind of “kill switch.” After five days, the corpse will dissolve, leaving no trace behind. The humans are only paying to rent, after all.”

“But wait…..” Pyro ventured. “What gives you the right to sell other people’s bodies? Shouldn’t they be the ones to profit off that?”

“What gives people the right to collect discarded trash?” Sebastian said, spreading his arms wide. “Would you begrudge the little old lady collecting aluminum cans for a few pennies from a recycling center? Or the struggling student who takes a sofa from the side of the road? That’s all these corpses are. Trash. Their previous owners have shiny new bodies – bodies gifted to them by Krakoa and the Five, by the way – and left no instructions as to disposal. I don’t use bodies from people who requested to be cremated, or some kind of ritual burial. Just bodies have have been carelessly tossed aside, by people who clearly don’t care.”

“Oh, well I’m sure you’ll be happy to explain that to everyone else, then,” Pyro said. “I’m sure they’ll all be totally understanding.” He realized a moment later, with a nervous twinge, that threatening to tell on the unscrupulous businessman while you were sitting alone in his massive castle and no one else knew where you were was a very stupid thing to do. Fuck. He should have at least claimed to have evidence left with a trusted friend or something, but he’d only just stumbled across this, while exploring the so-called “dark web.” Maybe he could bluff his way out of this.

“I told you, some Council members are already well aware,” Sebastian said, sitting back and regarding Pyro across steepled fingers. “I don’t think you’d find those in authority quite as willing to turn on me as you imagine, Allerdyce. In fact, it’s entirely possible that any attempt to inform the public will lead to a hasty mind-wipe for you.”

“I’ve got proof. I left it all on a flash drive with……” Freddy? Dominic? Mystique? “….a friend,” he finished, not wanting to actually put anyone else in the crosshairs. Hell, Mystique might even know about this. He’d like to think better of her, but she always had schemes within schemes going. He wondered which telepath on the Council might be in on this. Was Sinister a telepath? That arrogant piece of shit Exodus? He seemed too high-minded to approve, but that mission in the Savage Land had shown Pyro that Exodus did not give a single fuck about mutants that he considered weak or “unworthy.” Frost? Even Xavier? Pyro had never trusted that creepy bastard. Something about him had always seemed too good to be true.

Sebastian laughed again. “Oh, you think I’m going to kill you? That’s cute. Allerdyce, you are not in some ridiculous detective story. I am a practical man, and despite your bleating about morals, I know you are, too. I am willing to make you an offer. It’s an easy job. All you have to do is ‘keep mum,’ as they say.” Sebastian wrote a number down on a piece of paper, and slid it across the table.

It was, in fact, a very nice number. Enough to make some of Pyro’s disgust quickly fall away.

“After all, why shouldn’t you enjoy the same kind of luxury experienced by Krakoa’s elite? You serve aboard the Marauder, and you’re obviously on the lowest rung of the crew. None of the power and privilege weilded by the X-Men, none of the wealth bestowed by birth on Christian Frost, my own son, and the Von Struckers. And you do significantly more work than for the Hellfire Trading Company than those spoiled idiots. Why not take a little something for yourself?”

Pyro’s mind whirled. Of course, taking the money now would mean he was “in it,” so to speak. And if the secret got out, he’d probably be implicated along with Shaw, at least in the eys of his fellow mutants. Which would hurt a bit, after all his heroics with the Marauders. He was starting to feel, at least a little bit, like a good guy.

But on the other hand, if Sebastian was telling the truth, and some of the Council already knew, trying to tattle would just get him in the shit. It was all well and good to have movies about heroic whistle-blowers, but in the real world, they got slandered, ruined, and sometimes murdered. No one would stand up for a relative nobody like Pyro, especially if Frost and Mystique already knew. At best he’d just get mind-wiped.

It would be safer to just walk away and keep his mouth shut. And if he was going to walk away anyhow, why not pick up a paycheck for it?

They were just corpses, right? What a resurrected mutant didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.

And it didn’t seem to actually be breaking any Krakoan laws.

And it was a lot of money.

And Pyro really did like money.

It wasn’t like he was a proper journo anymore, was he? No need for integrity.

Pyro pushed the paper back across the table.

“You’ll need to add a zero to that number before I’ll even consider it,” he said. “And this is just for silence, understand? I’m not gonna be your employee, don’t start expecting me to fetch and carry.”

Sebastian grinned, making a mark on the paper, and held it his hand to shake.

“I knew you’d see sense. It’s a pleasure doing business with you, Allerdyce.”

OOC: I was going to make that sillier, but the more I thought about it…..Sebastian probably would bribe Pyro to shut up, and Pyro would probably just take the money. He’s trying to be “good,” but not that good. Also, no offense intended to Exodus. After the story in the Quicksilver min-series, when Pyro is working with Acolytes on a mission for a supposed Legacy Virus cure (which doesn’t exist), Pyro probably holds a serious grudge against him.

[qqueenofhades]

Do you think there will be another civil war in America? I’m afraid. Im trying to read about the first civil war to understand it more. What happened on both sides. What was the cost. What Americans can learn from then to help us now. But it’s so hard. There are so many screaming voices. Would love to know your thoughts as a historian and as an American.

Well, nonnie, I don’t know if this will be comforting to you or not, but in my view, the war has been going on for years -- decades, even -- and just because it doesn’t take the traditional form of two uniformed armies on a battlefield doesn’t mean that it’s any less a war, and any less deadly. Americans live in the most deeply and violently militarized of any supposedly first-world country on the entire planet, and the recent protests have, if nothing else, made the actors in our present civil war explicitly visible. On the one side, cops in military-grade hardware. On the other, largely unarmed protestors and civilians. This intersects with a toxic political climate and runaway gun violence problem, which adds up to a staggering annual death toll comparable to any war. While this may seem to come from the Department of Duh, let’s drop some knowledge:

There have been 21,191 gun-related deaths in the U.S. already in 2020 (including 279 mass shootings).

There were 434 mass shootings in the U.S. in 2019, equal to approximately 1.19 mass shootings a day, killing 2,160 people.

Approximately 36,000 Americans are killed by guns every year (an average of 100 a day.)

In 2017, 39,773 Americans were killed by or killed themselves with guns, a trend which is on the rise.

U.S. police have killed 598 people already in 2020, and in all of 2019, there were only 27 days when they did not kill anyone. (I recommend clicking on that link, since Mapping Police Violence is one of the few free nonprofit databases dedicated to tracking the issue -- the animated map is also worth a look because it’s horrifying.)

U.S. police also kill civilians at grossly high rates compared to peer nations -- an average of 1,000 a year and 33.5 deaths per 10 million citizens. The next closest is Canada at 9.8 deaths per 10 million.

And just like everyone’s been protesting about, police violence and officer-related shootings affect people of color at grotesquely higher percentages relative to their overall presence in the U.S. population.

In comparison, 89 law enforcement officers died in 2019. Over half of these (48) died in accidents. Only 41 law enforcement officers, in a nation of 330 million people, died as a result of violence/felonious acts.

Just to recap, 100 Americans die from gun violence a day.

In other words, it’s a lot more dangerous to be an average citizen in America than it is to be a law enforcement officer in America.

By... a very wide margin.

The University of Chicago Law School recently completed a three-year-long study (2015--2018) and concluded that not one of the police departments in the 20 largest American cities meet basic human rights standards/the rules of international warfare in the Geneva Convention.

So while the 21st-century political structures of America make it highly unlikely that we’d ever have a Union and Confederacy fighting each other on the battlefield a la the first Civil War, the people of this country have already been under attack for decades from a private army that, I repeat, does not meet basic conventions for international warfare used against our enemies. The events of 2020 have also, if nothing else, proved that the extreme-right gun-nut rhetoric about “rising up to defeat a tyrannical government,” which they have cited forever as the reason why they need all their weapons, is exactly as much bullshit as we all thought it was. (Spoiler alert: they don’t mean the tyrannical government as long as it’s Trump’s, and they want license, such as the two white men who killed Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia, to kill people of color at any point and without punishment.) They’ll put on their AK-47s and picket courthouse steps in the middle of a pandemic to whine about not being able to get haircuts and being forced (like communists, evidently) to wear masks to protect the health of other people. They’ll also run their cars into protestors and point guns at them for variety. But when the president tear-gasses peaceful protestors for a photo-op at a church, the kind of thing that should really piss them off for all their talk about religious freedom? Crickets.

That’s because at heart, these people are cowards, and all their talk of “defending America” are based on wildly militarized fantasies that, like most fantasies, they’re never going to carry out. This is not in the least to downplay the threat from organized white terrorism groups -- in fact, white terrorism is currently the biggest and most ignored threat in America. (I recommend reading that document, from a former white skinhead testifying in front of the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security last September, in full.) They are the militants who are very deliberately preparing for a “race war” and who embody Nazi and white supremacist ideology, and if there was a new Civil War, it would be divided by ideological, rather than geographical (North vs. South) lines. That is exactly what these people want, and they would be more than happy to have. That’s also why we keep having these fake reports of “Antifa terrorists,” which result in heavily armed white supremacists rushing to counter a threat that doesn’t actually exist. There are plenty of reasons to be scared of that. But we’ve also seen that, again: they are cowards. They’re never going to openly present themselves because they can’t take it when their identities are exposed to the public and they suffer some miniscule amount of consequences for their actions. That is because these identities are often based on what is known as white rage. Any impetus toward being forced to examine white privilege, or acknowledge racial discrimination, literally sends them off the deep end. So if they’re ever actually put in the position of risking something, they... don’t. That doesn’t make them any less toxic and dangerous, but it does mean that all the hateful rhetoric and promises of uprising on the internet are far from the actual truth of their collective behavior.

(You can and should also read White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide by Carol Anderson, which examines this topic in more detail, and Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America by Kathleen Belew, which examines how this movement began as an organized force in the 1970s and expanded to its current incarnation today.)

In short: punching Nazis works, fuck the police, and abolish white supremacy. This has been your TED talk with Salty Internet Auntie Hilary for the evening.

[quakerjoe]

Is America really ready to reclaim democracy?

I’m going to share a fact with you — and you’re not going to like it.

America’s problems can be reduced to the following. White Americans want America to be a failed state — and that is its fundamental, deep, and long standing problem. That is how America ended up here — more than half a century of white hostility to any kind of social progress whatsoever — which resulted in social collapse, and culminated in Trumpism. White people made America a failed state.

But are white people ready to own this problem, of their own extremism? Is that long-term social position really about to change this election, finally, after more than half a century? Are white Americans ready to become a modern, functioning society? The answer, right about now, is a kind of hysterical “yes!” We all — all of us sane and thoughtful people anyways — want Biden to win, and put an end to the long nightmare of the Trump years. But — despite what the polls might say — how realistic is that?

“Kill Umair! Get him!!!” Maybe you’re foaming at the mouth, ready to dispute my simple fact. So take a hard look at the chart above. What does it say?

I have some bad news, and then I have some worse news. Don’t worry, you’ll thank me later. The first piece of bad news is this. Here’s a fact that most people underestimate. America is still about 80% white. 80%. Given the record-breaking turnout, this election is going to be more about America’s white majority than about minorities, probably, at least if every group turns out in record numbers roughly equally. Minorities have much less power than many imagine, precisely because they are still seriously in the…minority. This election is about white America, and if it really wants to live in a democracy — or if it’s happier living in a fascist society.

You might think that sounds over the top, so here’s the worse news. The chart above says this. It says that white Americans, as a group, have never, as a group, voted for a Democratic President. Never in modern history. In fact, the chart above in fact understates the problem. This trend goes back to JFK and perhaps before. Are you beginning to see the problem here? Why I say “America’s problem is that white people want it to be a failed state?”

Let me make it clearer. White Americans can be relied on, in the majority, as a group, to “vote Republican.” I put it in quotes because it’s worth examining what that anodyne statement really means. Liberal, sane, thoughtful White Americans often overestimate how many of them there are, how widespread their cause is. The result is that when I say “Americans are…” meaning of course the majority, which is still white, I get a wave of protest. Americans aren’t dumb! Americans aren’t dumb! They’re not violent, stupid racists! They want to live in a modern society! Are they, do they — at least the white majority? Let’s take a brief and hard look at reality.

Here are some things white Americans have been for, as a group, in their majority. Segregation. Endless war. Inequality. Billionaires. Capital. Guns and religion as primary social values. That is what the voting pattern above means. Conversely, here are some thing white Americans have been against, as a group, in their majority. Desegregation. Civil rights. Womens’ rights. Their own healthcare, retirement, and childcare. Public goods of any kind whatsoever. That is what the “voting pattern” above means in the real world. Need I go on? America’s problem is that white Americans as a social group, its majority social group, want America to be a failed state. They don’t want to live in a modern, civilised democracy, and never have.

White America is America’s problem. A big, white, ignorant problem. The problem of the white American voter — that white Americans don’t want to admit — goes back more than half a century at this point. If the answer is “Make America Great Again!” then the question is: “well, who brought it this point of self-destruction?” and the answer is….white Americans. They’re the ones responsible for the self-destruction of the society they still rule as a massive majority. Nobody else is responsible for their poverty, despair, and humiliation but them. That is what the chart above makes crystal clear.

Who voted, over and over again, to have worse lives? No healthcare, retirement, affordable education, childcare — no public goods of any kind whatsoever? White Americans did. What the? The question baffles the world. Why would anyone choose a worse life? The answer is that white Americans would not accept a society of true equals. “I won’t pay for those dirty, filthy peoples’ educations, healthcare, retirements! Why, their grandparents were my grandpappy’s slaves!” White Americans chose to retain power, supremacy, superiority, even in a failing society. They chose staying on top of decline and ruin, rather than prospering as equals.

Let me make that even clearer, by putting it in a global perspective. This is the part you’re really not going to like.

White Americans are the rich world’s most hostile, ignorant, violent, cruel, and selfish social group — by a very long way. “Voting conservative” after all doesn’t mean nearly the same thing in Europe or Canada. There, even conservative parties agree on the basics — people should have healthcare, education, retirement, that the only point of the public purse isn’t endless war and death machines. Conservatism in America is off the charts, and so “voting” that way carries a very different meaning. It means that White Americans are the rich world’s most regressive, ignorant, and self-destructive political bloc — by such a long way that they might as well not be in the rich world at all.

I don’t mean any of that as an insult, by the way. I mean it objectively, literally, factually. You’d think that by now White Americans would have figured out that voting against their own standards of living ever rising just because it meant black and brown people would have public goods too was…imbecilic. Especially watching Europe and Canada rise and prosper. They’ve had more than half a century to figure that out. But they still haven’t. What else do you call the inability to learn from the world and history but…ignorance?

Do you know what the word imbecile means? Someone who can’t look after themselves. But that’s what has happened: white people are the ones who wrecked their very own lives, futures, and society — beginning the moment, decades back, that minorities finally gained a few rights, in a giant, stupid, endless, escalating temper tantrum, that culminated in Trumpism.

I know this sounds insulting. But to speak factually and empirically about levels of self-destruction this immense requires us to reach beyond the lines of everyday discourse. Let me try again, then.

White Americans really are different. From their peers — or at least the people they believe are their peers. But the truth that their political choices over decades reveals is this. White Americans have almost nothing in common with White Europeans or Canadians — who back the expansive social contracts of social democracies reliably. White Americans reliably reject such choices, which is how they made their society collapse. instead, they have more in common with the ethnic-religious-fundamentalist majorities of nations like Iran, or the authoritarian-nationalist majorities of nations like Russia. They are regressive, sectarian, fundamentalist, unable to change, trapped by their own ideologies.

That is how and why America collapsed. Black People didn’t make it so. Brown People didn’t. Native Americans didn’t. America is still about 80% white, and white Americans make a certain choice reliably and consistently and predictably as a group — they vote “conservative,” but conservative in America doesn’t mean what it does in the rest of the rich world — it means something much more like Iran or Russia. Bang.

White Americans impoverished themselves, through decades of such folly. Voting against their very own basic public goods. Which meant they had to pay monopolists eye-watering prices for those very things which could and should have been socially provided — healthcare, higher education, retirement, and so on. Today, the average American dies in $62,000 of debt. Do you know what that predicted, a few years ago? A fascist implosion. When majorities grow impoverished, they turn even more regressive, violent, ignorant, and brutal. America’s white majority was already all those things — and then they became even more so.

A demagogue came along, Trump, who blamed white America’s problems on everyone but white Americans. Mexican babies. Black mothers. Latino immigrants. Syrian refugees. Gay minority couples. Everyone but white Americans was responsible for the plight of white Americans. But how could they be? America was and is still 80% white. Nobody was ever responsible for white America’s stunning plunge into poverty, humiliation, and despair — but white America.

But nobody wants to blame themselves, do they? It’s only human to project one’s failings onto others. So white America took Trump’s bait. And it was easier, too, to sell that line of nonsense, that racism, that prejudice, that bigotry, to a white majority that was already those things, and always had been. It was a self-reinforcing process, which was inevitable once America’s white middle and working class began to implode. Fascism was coming to America.

And it did.

Those of us who warned of it were called alarmists and hysterics and so on, when we warned of camps, genocide, bans, raids, purges. As all those things came to pass, and, sick to our stomachs, we survivors tried to warn all over again, we were mocked, shamed, and condemned. By white Americans. Even the good ones. We were told we were underestimating the power of white America to do the right thing.

But we understood something that white American never has about itself. White America has never done the right thing. Ever. At least not in modern history. White America, again, the chart shows us, has been for segregation and war and brutality — and against desegregation, women’s rights, civil rights, and so on. White America, as a group, as a majority, has never, ever voted for anything even slightly towards greater equality, justice, freedom, for all. It has only ever voted to preserve, maintain, and expand its own power. Ever.

White Americans — the good and reasonable ones — overestimate their social group so badly that they probably imagine a majority of white people voted for Obama. Wrong. Even Obama couldn’t win a majority of whites. The only candidate who came close was Bill Clinton — and even he failed. White Americans, again, never voted any way but fanatically “conservative”, which, in global terms, means more like majorities in Iran or Russia than Canada or Europe — regressive, ignorant, brutal, hostile, selfish, and supremacist, not modern, gentle, fair, wise, sophisticated, thoughtful, peaceful, tolerant.

White America’s escalating temper tantrum — its pattern of regressive voting — finally escalated in Trumpism. That is how all of America ended up here. Ruled by white America’s fascists and fanatics, too. Which even the sane and thoughtful white Americans despair at. But will they finally understand themselves? Can they look in the mirror once and for all?

We survivors and scholars have seen all this before — the phenomenon of the deceptive majority. By “deceptive majority,” I mean the idea that good and reasonable white Americans have about themselves. That as a majority, they are good and reasonable, and so goodness and sanity and reason will prevail in the end. They have not in America precisely because white Americans badly overestimate just how sane and reasonable their group in society is. How can they be, when they think guns matter more than healthcare and human rights?

I’m sorry if that sounds harsh. But again, I am only speaking to you factually, empirically, objectively. White Americans have voted over again and again for their guns and their Bibles — but they have never, ever voted as group to have healthcare or retirement for all or any single aspect of a functioning modern society whatsoever. Not to this day.

White America seemed to prefer supremacism and theocracy and authoritarian-fascism over modernity, as a social group. And that is how America ended up being a failed state. That, my friend, is the ugly and difficult fact.

That is the problem of the white American voter. And it spells real trouble.

Because when we say things like “Biden will win in a landslide!” what we are really saying is: white American as a group will, for the first time in modern history, not vote Republican. That they will, as a group, vote for something other than regressivism of the most extreme kind on offer. That the massive tide and force of history will suddenly turn on its head. That a decades long trend will simply reverse itself en masse, like never before.

We are asking for something greater than we may know — for history to deliver us a genuine transformation in long-standing political and social attitudes amongst a majority that has never, ever felt the way we wish them to. Who have never, ever been on the side of modernity or greater democracy or more civilization.

We are hoping for change of the deepest kind. Are we overconfident, then?

I’m not saying that a Biden landslide is impossible. But I am willing, at this stage, to call it unlikely. I don’t think white America is suddenly going to reverse decades of history. I think history has a terrible momentum and inertia, which doesn’t turn itself around so easily. I think social attitudes and political preferences don’t simply magically upend themselves overnight. I don’t think white America as a majority is going to back Biden. (If it does, it will be thanks to young people, though.)

Where does that leave us? Not in a very good place. The problem of the white American voter is very, very real. More real than white Americans know — which is precisely why their pundits and intellectuals never discuss it: they are giving their own social group’s regressivism and imbecility a free pass. But it’s the elephant in the room, just how different white Americans really are, as a group, in the majority, how regressive, cruel, hostile, ignorant, and backwards. That’s not an opinion — it’s a sad, terrible, frightening fact.

It’s possible that minorities will deliver the election for Biden. That’s if turnout for them is much, much higher than for whites. We don’t know, really, if that’s the case. I’d say while the chances are slim, they are very real.

More likely, though, is the following scenario. White America votes the way it always has as a group, as a majority — to screw everyone else over, as hard as possible, even if it itself pays a price. That will lead to three possible outcomes. One, an outright Trump victory. Two, a undecided election, which the Supreme Court will obviously hand to Trump. Or three, the most likely, in my estimation, months of chaos, as America tries to figure out what to do next, about the mess its in, and the GOP makes every grab for raw power.

And the protests of the good and thoughtful white Americans don’t help: “not all of us!” Sure, Chet, not all of you. But enough of you have been like this for most of modern history. Embittered, hostile, cruel, backwards.

Is that about to change? I don’t know, my friends. I doubt it, but I hope so. So why do I tell you this? Because we minorities are what we have always been: barely tolerated interlopers and hated intruders in the Promised Land. You, my white American friend, are the only one with the power to change any of it.

Umair October 2020

[raptured-night]

Hello, I have two questions this time. Why do you think we can’t really compare Death Eaters to Nazis? Why can’t we really compare purism with racism? Oh and do you think Death Eaters are more like nowadays’ terrorists or not?

So, it's no secret that I have drawn attention to the issue of Death Eaters being treated as literal stand-ins for Nazis or blood purism as a literal example of racism. Importantly, there is a difference between acknowledging the ways that Death Eaters or blood purity might work as semi-functional allegories for the Nazis and their ideology, white supremacy, racism, etc., and treating fictional representations of invented prejudices as if they were comparable or on par with non-fictional Nazi ideology, white supremacy, or systemic racism.

An article for Medium makes this point very well:

Silent resisters and ‘I don’t really care about politics’ people deserve our contempt. But what makes those who filter life through fiction and historical revisionism worse is that they are performing a soggy simulacrum of political engagement.

As a woman of colour watching, all I can do here is amplify the call to step away from your bookshelf. Let go of The Ring. My humanity exists independently of whether I am good or bad, and regardless of where the invented-fictional-not-real Sorting Hat puts me.

Realise that people are in danger right now, with real world actions needed in response, and not just because you want to live out your dreams of being Katniss Everdeen.

The problem with discussing Harry Potter’s fictional examples of prejudice as if they were literal or completely comparable with real-life prejudices is that it does lead to an oversimplification of the reality of prejudice (whether white supremacy, racism, homophobia, transphobia --looking at you Jo-- or otherwise) and the very real people who experience these prejudices every day. The fantasy of being Harry Potter up against Umbridge or Voldemort in a YA series where the line between the good and bad guys is almost clearly denoted by the narrator is a far cry from the reality of what activism is or what living under oppression is like for many marginalized people. 

I would argue that this is also a leading reason why the “social justice” (yes, in many cases I believe that deserves to be enclosed in dubious quotations) discourse in Harry Potter fandom trends more towards performative than it does sincere (one need only look at the defense posts for Rowling in response to real marginalized groups criticizing her for things ranging from her offensive representation of Asian people, Indigenous and Native peoples, or her failures in representing the lgbtq+ community particularly in light of her coming out as an open TERF and they can get an idea of how those “I’m an intersectional feminist/social justice ally and that’s why I read HP!” fans quickly shift gears to throw the bulk of their allyship behind Rowling instead) because when you spend all of your time debating fictional prejudices it’s much easier to detach oneself from the reality of non-fictional prejudice and its impact on real people.

Fiction has no stakes. There is a beginning, middle, and end. In Rowling’s fictional world, Harry Potter ends with Harry and “the side of light” the victor over her allegorical representation of evil and he gets his happily-ever-after in a world we are led to believe is at peace and made a better place. In the real world, decades after the fall of Hitler, there are still Nazis and white supremacists who believe in the glory of an Aryan/pure-white race and are responsible for acts of violence towards marginalized groups; even after the fall of the Confederacy in the U.S. we are still debating the removal of monuments erected in their honor (and the honor of former slave owners and colonialists like Christopher Columbus) while the nation continues mass protests over the systemic police brutality Black people and other people of color have long faced (not to mention the fact the KKK are still allowed to gather while the FBI conspired to destroy the Black Panther Party and discredit them as a dangerous extremist organization).

As a professor in literature, I’ve often argued that fiction can be a reflection of reality and vice versa. Indeed, it can be a subversive tool for social change and resistance (e.g. Harlem Renaissance) or be abused for the purposes of propaganda and misrepresentation (e.g. Jim Crow era racism in cartoons). So, I am not underscoring the influencing power of fiction but I do believe it is important that when attempting to apply fictional representations to real-world issues we do so with a certain awareness of the limitations of fiction. As I have already observed, there is an absence of real-world stakes for fiction. Fictional stories operate under a narrative structure that clearly delineates the course they will take, which is not the case for real life. In addition, the author’s own limitations can greatly affect the way their fiction may reflect certain non-fictional issues. Notably, a close reading of Harry Potter does reveal the way Rowling’s own transphobic prejudices influenced her writing, not least in the character of Rita Skeeter (but arguably even in her failed allegory for werewolves, which are supposed to reflect HIV prejudices, but she essentially presented us with two examples of werewolves that are either openly predatory towards children or accidentally predatory because they canonically can’t control themselves when their bodies undergo “transformations” that make them more dangerous and no surprise her most predatory example, Fenrir Greyback, seems to have embraced his transformation entirely versus Lupin who could be said to suffer more from body dysmorphia/shame). 

Ultimately, fiction is often a reflection of our non-fictional reality but it is not always an exact reflection. It can be a simplification of a more complex reality; a funhouse mirror that distorts that reality entirely, or the mirror might be a bit cracked or smudged and only reflecting a partial image. Because fiction does have its limits (as do authors of fiction), writers have certain story-telling conventions on hand through which they can examine certain aspects of reality through a more vague fictional lens, such as metaphor, symbolism, and allegory. Thus, the Death Eaters can function on an allegorical level without being problematic where they cannot when we treat them as literal comparisons to Nazis or white supremacist groups (particularly when we show a greater capacity for empathy and outrage over Rowling’s fictional prejudice, to the extent we’ll willingly censor fictional slurs like Mudblood, than we do real-world examples of racism and racial microaggressions). As an allegory, Voldemort and his Death Eaters can stand in for quite a few examples of extremism and prejudice that provoke readers to reflect more on the issue of how prejudice is developed and how extremist hate-groups and organizations may be able to rise and gain traction. Likewise, blood prejudice looked at as a fictional allegory goes a lot further than when we treat it as a literal comparison to racism, wherein it becomes a lot more problematic. 

I’ve discussed this before at length, along with others, and I will share some of those posts to give a better idea of some of the issues that arise when we try to argue that Voldemort was a literal comparison to Hitler, the Death Eaters were literal comparisons to Nazi, or that blood purity is a literal comparison to racism.

On the issue of blood prejudice as racism and Death Eaters as Nazis, per @idealistic-realism00.

On the issue of blood prejudice as racism, my own thoughts.

On the issue of Death Eaters and literal Nazi comparisons, per @deathdaydungeon and myself. 

Finally, as I have already argued, the extent to which fiction can function as a reflection of non-fictional realities can be limited by the author’s own perceptions. In the above links, you will note that I and others have critiqued Rowling’s portrayal of prejudice quite thoroughly and identified many of the flaws inherent in her representations of what prejudice looks like in a real-world context. The very binary (i.e. good/bad, right/wrong, dark/light) way that she presents prejudice and the fact that her villains are always clearly delineated and more broadly rejected by the larger society undermines any idea of a realistic representation of prejudice as systemic (we could make a case for an effort being made but as her narrative fails to ever properly address prejudice as systemic in any sort of conclusive way when taken along with her epilogue one can argue her representation of systemic prejudice and its impact fell far short of the mark, intended or otherwise). In addition to that, the two most notable protagonists that are part of her marginalized class (i.e. Muggle-born) are two comfortably middle-class girls, one of whom is clearly meant to be white (i.e. Lily) and the other who is most widely associated with the white actress (Emma Watson) who played her for over a decade before Rowling even hinted to the possibility Hermione could also be read as Black due to the casting of Noma Dumezweni for Cursed Child.

Overall, Rowling is clearly heavily influenced by second-wave feminist thought (although I would personally characterize her as anti-feminist having read her recent “essay,” and I use the term loosely as it was primarily a polemic of TERF propaganda, defending her transphobia, and reexamined the Harry Potter series and her gender dichotomy in light of her thoughts on “womanhood”) and as far as we are willing to call her a feminist, she is a white feminist. As a result, the representation of prejudice in Harry Potter is a distorted reflection of reality through the lens of a white feminist whose own understanding of prejudice is limited. Others, such as @somuchanxietysolittletime and @ankkaneito have done well to point out inconsistencies with Rowling’s intended allegories and the way the Harry Potter series overall can be read as a colonialist fantasy. So, for all of these reasons, I don’t think we should attempt to make literal comparisons between Rowling’s fictional examples of prejudice to non-fictional prejudice or hate groups. The Death Eaters and Voldemort are better examined as more of a catch-all allegory for prejudice when taken to it’s most extreme. Aicha Marhfour makes an important point in her article when she observes:

Trump isn’t himself, or even Hitler. He is Lord Voldemort. He is Darth Vader, or Dolores Umbridge — a role sometimes shared by Betsy DeVos or Tomi Lahren, depending on who you’re talking to. Obama is Dumbledore, and Bernie Sanders is Dobby the goddamn house elf. Republicans are Slytherins, Democrats are Gryffindors.

The cost of making these literal comparisons between Voldemort or the Death Eaters to other forms of extremism, perceived evil, or hate is that we impose a fictional concept over a non-fictional reality and unintentionally strip the individual or individuals perpetrating real acts of prejudice or oppression of some of their accountability. I can appreciate how such associations may help some people cope and for the readers of the intended age category of Harry Potter (i.e. YA readers) it might even be a decent primer to understanding real-world issues. However, there comes a point where we must resist the impulse to draw these comparisons and go deeper. Let Voldemort and the Death Eaters exist as allegories but I think it is important we all listen to what many fans of color, Jewish fans, lgbtq+ fans, etc. are saying and stop trying to fit a square peg into a round hole by treating these fictional characters and their fictional prejudices as if they were just as real, just as impactful, and just as deserving of our empathy and outrage as the very real people who are living daily with very real prejudices --because they’re not equal and they shouldn’t be. 

[grits-galraisedinthesouth]

"Why I fear Harry’s had too much therapy"

Dr. Max Pemberton explains characteristics of those who’ve had too much therapy

NHS psychiatrist says Harry should turn difficulties into something positive  

By DR MAX PEMBERTON FOR THE DAILY MAIL

PUBLISHED: 22:06, 16 May 2021 | UPDATED: 22:06, 16 May 2021

At the launch of his Apple TV+ mental health series last week, Prince Harry spoke about how the ‘majority of us carry some form of unresolved trauma, loss or grief’. Well, yes, we do. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, though. In fact, it can actually be a force for good. The failures, struggles and difficulties we experience are what make us learn to stand on our own two feet and be stable, secure adults. It is part of learning how to deal with frustration, anxiety and uncertainty. This seems to have passed him by.

Far from being the poster-child for the benefits of therapy, I’m afraid Harry is actually becoming quite the opposite. He is starting to embody the characteristics of those who’ve had too much therapy — self-centred, self-obsessed, aggrieved and resentful. He says he’s talking about his troubles ‘to help other people’. This rings rather hollow.

It would be far more helpful if Harry showed through his actions how he has turned his difficulties into something positive, rather than simply sounding spoilt and angry. He has also failed to understand that the modern obsession with getting everything off your chest, airing every grievance, isn’t helpful at all.

Sometimes a stiff upper lip is precisely what’s needed. Sometimes talking about something endlessly isn’t the answer. Talking can only make so much difference. There are times when you need to accept the past and move on. No amount of chat is going to change what has happened.

The best advice doesn’t always come from Freud or Jung. I often think a good mantra to live your life by is the song from Disney’s Frozen: Let It Go. After all, isn’t that all that psychotherapy is, really? It’s simply helping us to let go of something in the past and move on. And there does come a point where people do have to let stuff go.

At what point, for example, do you stop looking back and start looking forward? At what point do you stop blaming your parents for all the mistakes you’ve made in your life?

Now that’s not to say I’m not a great fan of psychotherapy. I’ve had psychotherapy myself and I’ve trained in it. But I also think there can be too much navel-gazing.

I’m not saying bottling things up is the answer. That can cause a multitude of problems as things fester. But, equally, there comes a point when you have to leave wounds alone. Constantly reopening and examining them only makes them take longer to heal and more likely to scar. If anything, I think people have become more self-obsessed and narcissistic. I think about my nan and the awful hardships and traumas she had to endure.

Not only did you never hear her complain, I didn’t know half the stuff she had gone through. She didn’t speak about it because she knew she couldn’t change what had happened. Instead, she got on with living. Isn’t that a good way to live your life?

If Harry really wants to help people, rather than following the trend for oversharing — which has done little to help the mental wellness of large swathes of the La La Land elite — he would do far better to look closer to home and ask himself who are the modern royals we most admire?

Who, over the past few decades, come across as the most psychologically robust? It’s certainly not his much- loved mother Princess Diana, who, despite hours upon hours of psychotherapy, was still dogged by problems.

No, the royals people look up to are the Queen and Princess Anne, both of whom are paragons of emotional restraint. I’ve no doubt both have their own issues, as everyone does, but they just get on with things, don’t they? They don’t wallow in self-pity or spend all day self-analysing. They let it go.

MODERATED Daily Mail Comments:

"Sometimes a stiff upper lip is precisely what’s needed." In other words Meghan:

[adamgeorgiou]

Arthur, My Cousin and Me

I don’t know how to detangle Arthur from myself enough to write dispassionately or accurately. Instead, what follows is something like half him, half me. It’s more journal entry than elegy. To a general audience, that might make this less interesting than it otherwise could be, but it’s what I’ve got. Remember this if and when you get to the end. 

Anyway…

I feel like I knew Arthur. Then I heard what others had to say and saw what others had to feel. Following his death, I still feel like I know him. In certain ways better than most or all. But there’s a part of me that’s often strained to believe that I was in more of his inner circle than I actually was, and his death exposed the truth of my position.

It’s a practical observation, not a dramatic one. I’m not saying he had a dominating and hidden alter ego or that he pitied me. It’s simpler: his death revealed my confidence in our bond as an illusion innocuously leftover from being kids together, from back when we actually spent serious time together. I want him back now like I’ve continuously wanted back what we lost long ago, but now it’s double-permanent and legible. Before it was remediable and blissfully hidden — embarrassing in hindsight, like most nostalgia. 

But he also had that same nostalgia and held onto it, too, which makes me feel better. That mutual thread to our shared past was strong for both of us. It gave us a lot to lean on, but we leaned on it a little too heavily. Without that crutch, our adult lives were mostly opaque to one another, but also we were getting close again, involving each other again. Building anew. The left hook following the right. It’s a shame we weren’t closer than we were, when he died. It’s a shame our getting closer was cut short. 

I guess it makes sense, generally: as adults, we’re all doing niche things, and niches are small and excluding, so everything else trends towards becomes small talk. (And that’s fine and right, because focus is necessary for growth. Just try and stay loyal, which Arthur did and my cousins do.)

Maybe it wasn’t so much that I was uniquely outside of Arthur’s confidence, but more that we had both (or all) grown a bit into our own isolation. In any case, I mourn the loss and its new finality.

So that’s him and I as adults, apart. Who was he, though? What can I tell you?

Well, I’ll briefly start with me, for context. Who I am is still him, the result of his influence, for sure. Of growing with, then adjacent to him, then apart, then converging again (more on the converging, later). If you distilled me down and got rid of all the litter and trivia, the rare and potent stuff remaining would be similar to what I knew of Arthur. We had the same essence, as I saw it. So I can show you that reflection, and you can tell me if it’s accurate (See: first paragraph’s disclaimer). (Also, note my calling out our similarity is carefully placed right before I go on to flatter him best I can — tactics, baby — but don’t read my ego into this. What follows is all my cousin.)

Arthur and confidence. Old saying: the pro fails more often than the amateur tries.

The subtleties of his personality were sophisticated and complicated. He could spar at an exceptional level from an early age. But he started out lazy and overthrowing a lot of his punches, gassing out quickly. 

As a kid, he was autistically independent, preoccupied and hyper focused, but without any of the social hangups. He could talk to anyone and impressed everyone. He was adored, and rightfully so, but he also marched to the beat of his own nunchucks, exclusively. You couldn’t bullshit him, and you couldn’t placate him unless he was genuinely fascinated with what you offered. This is how kids should be, insatiably curious and wild. It was my favorite era of his, and where we spent the most time together. I was such an asshole to him, and he still always hung out with me. And we followed each other into a lot of similar interests.

Then he got his first hit of testosterone, and followed a phase where he literally held a fist up in every photo taken of him. Ha. Puberty’s a bitch. That didn’t last long. Reality checked and he stabilized. The important thing is that he knew he wasn’t going to watch, he was going to play. I loved him here, jealously and from a further distance. I couldn’t hang.

Then maturity: The firm handshake, the direct eye contact, the bright teeth, the smiling cheeks. Approachable, but not daffy. If anything his charisma was a prank and shrewd tactic; a car salesman during the first act, a playful subversion before the intellect and wit made their debut; or, worse for you, they didn’t. You’d start talking to Arthur and think you were walking in on a frat-boy breakfast table, then he’d go on to tell you why your problem was really because of what Robert Moses did back in ‘56, or he’d ask if you thought the The States were in a similar stage of decadence as Rome before its fall.

To him, your reason was more important than your choice, which is an axiom of all good conversation, one that most people are afraid to admit because doing so requires the ability to tread water. It’s easier to talk about the weather or watch sports. But Arthur wasn’t afraid of going deeper, and he had the tact to know when it was the right thing to do.

He was a man of appetite. A true traveling gourmand. He could scoff at you from within a seersucker, but he never compared oysters. If a menu offered Seattle’s or Rhode Island’s, he’d reply, “keep ‘em coming” and demand littlenecks or (and) crawfish to follow. He was less interested in varieties of wine, more in varieties of tomato and whether you had a good coarse salt.

He was spoiled rotten — as we all were, and mostly by the same sources — but he lacked pretension, except for that deliberately wielded for ironic effect. Underneath all his developed and developing taste was a lot of comical stoicism — laughing at gross injustice and absurdity, but also doing something about it, literally. His principles were conjured up from experience with the trappings of pleasure, with readings of history, with a variety of surprisingly worldly stories. I always wondered where and how he got it all. The guy had seen things, but not that many things. How was he always so versed? I don’t know, but if you’ve ever watched him eat a box of clementines straight up, wide-eyed in a wrinkled rugby shirt, then you would also know he was more pensive than pleasure seeking.

Entertainment was a defense, one he was growing out of as he realized it interfered with his goals and their requirements. A defense against what? I don’t know for sure, but I suspect the typical. On one hand, a lack of patience and a petulant refusal to be bored. On the other, the existential and solipsistic. A defense against the subconscious shame and pain of cynicism. Was love real? Was wealth worth anything? Was the world bogus? Was anyone authentic? Ethical? Himself? Others?

Look, I’m not saying he was overwhelmed with this gooey crap. He was a thinker, not a navel gazer. I don’t know if he even said any of this stuff out loud, but anyone with a brain is going to ask some questions about the life they’re living and the society they’re in, and most of us don’t like the first obvious answers we come up with. Then we do something about not liking those answers. We put fingers in our ears some of the time, we do what’s easy some of the time, and we do what’s difficult some of the time. And also, anyone with any talent is going to find themselves bored among the average, and falling short of their own standards. These were Arthur’s struggles, I think. At least, they’re kind of my struggles, and Arthur seemed to harmonize with me when we’d commiserate. Or maybe we were both pompous assholes, wannabe aristocrats from the suburbs. Or maybe that was just me. Ha.

To some, it might seem appropriate to haunt him here in this postscript, as if to justify his death as the terminal approach of a depression into cessation. Let me be clear: this was totally not the case, from my vantage. Instead, the above attitudes are more like the required cost-of-entry to a great show. If the unexamined life isn’t worth living, it does not mean the examined one is easy to live. The alternative is Judge Judy and a monogrammed armchair. Not for Arthur. Caulfield eventually quits his bitching, but he has to eat a lot of shit first. Siddhartha finally leaves the brothel, but he had to walk in that door in order to walk out of it later. Hard times are the prerequisite to epiphany. Painful and confusing; but hopeful, not despairing. 

And you could tell Arthur was among this company because the personas he employed became increasingly sophisticated, useful, attractive, and comfortable. From the brawling, pack-leading, indulgent, jokester/show-off into the relaxed, independent, luxurious, conversationalist who wasn’t as afraid to let his guard down, who was increasingly responsible. He was cultivated. He had a tamed self-consciousness (as we all aspire). It was impressive to watch him pull his own strings, to compare that with your own attempts and be humbled.

And thus, as I see it, the irony, hard to swallow, is that Arthur was finding answers to life’s hard questions in fistfuls. Love was possible. Work was worth it. Viktor Frankl was right. And he was learning patience and conviction, already better at their practice than most (e.g. me). As Dan put it, he was just taking off. He jumped and then a hand reached up from the almost escaped gravity and cut him by the heel.

A complete, but simple tragedy.

Complete, because the good guy lost. 

Simple, because Arthur’s life was not some melodramatic airport novel. His death was a lightning strike, a deus ex machina in reverse. A two sentence accident, not an assassination. Not much more to be read from it. Mortality is hard, right? (See: Genesis).

And for all my elaboration, I don’t even think Arthur was all that noxiously introspective or exceptionally self destructive either. The guy knew how to love and be loved. How to let his hair down, appropriately. How to shift gears and drive forward. How to resist temptation. How to find and be good company. How to stare at a fish tank. How to sit and read. How to eat fruit in the sun. He was typically bright, with a lot of flair and personality. I know he was grateful.

Or I’m wrong. Maybe I’m inventing a story to make sense of something more concealed or of pure chaos. I don’t know. I don’t think so.

In any case, it’s a tragedy. And regardless of what is true, I’m still glad I got to hear his story and be part of some of it. He was and remains a good influence to me, a fellow bright eyed boy attempting to sustain himself in the body of a straight-backed man. He’ll live on for a long, long time. And I keep talking to him.

That’s some of what I knew of him. And given this is my catharsis, forgive me further, but more about me:

Sadness, gratitude, and disappointment. 

I’m sad. Still? Yes. Always? Probably not. The inevitability of death hits a certain emotional bedrock after enough love is lost. I’m probably not there yet, still more distance to fall, but things are tapering off, in the aggregate. Maybe I’m just cold. 

Sadness is the least interesting. I am separated from someone I love, and that sucks. We all have people we’ve loved, and we are all damned to lose them. But yes, I get those black bile clutches to the chest as I’m reminded that Arthur (et al.) is gone. And I wanna hold your hand, if you’re feeling it too.

It’s a curse that requires gratitude. Time keeps on slipping, and the portion of time that one spends with good people is shorter still. I’m thankful for Arthur’s good company. From childhood to peerdom. This is what I’ll try and focus on. It’s the mantra I’ll repeat. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Then there’s the sulking disappointment. My head slowly shaking, my eyes unfocused contemplating the loss of the unpredictable conversations, the refreshingly interesting trivia, the uniqueness, the independence, the honed never impersonated taste, the great breadth of knowledge, the artful ball busting, the avoidance of cliches, the shared recommendations, the belly laughs. Obnoxious mutual indulgence — food and talk — during Thanksgiving at Stacy’s table, the shared past at Everit Ave, the just started planning. The feeling of a just missed answer to the question of how to get it back, continuously nagging.

More on that: I’m dealing with a huge mess of unanswerable questions and impotence. There’s so much broken by his leaving, least of all in me, and I can’t fix any of it. No way to organize it. I can’t even help others fix it. Acknowledging the impossibility of the situation seems better than ignoring it, so I will (…acknowledge that death breaks the world and makes inconsistent a lot taken as granted). Arthur’s death is an oily surreal void in the middle of the road. A portal to nowhere. And sure, life will go on. We will preserve. Time heals all wounds. That’s all true. But any schmuck can offer a platitude. I want to be responsible for what he’s left behind, in precise detail. I want to pick up the slack, fill in the blank. But what was his remains his, locked up behind whatever door his soul is now shut. It’s maddening.

I went so far as to tell Olivia that I was her brother, too, and that I would be there for her. Idiot. I love her, she knows I love her, I know she loves me. Yada, yada. I need no pity for my vomiting on the rug. My point is: I can’t be Arthur. I can’t even be close to Arthur. Adam — while still pretty good — isn’t a substitute for Arthur. I apologized for being so naive and sloppy, but the moment taught me what I was trying to say above: that I am ignorant of so much of Arthur’s life, and in ways that can’t be remedied by interviewing his friends or reading his book or wearing his shoes, sort of speak. A lot of it isn’t just unknown, it’s unknowable.

This requires more thought. Surely something can be done. Entropy can’t be rewound, but duct tape can keep a plane in the air. So here’s something I’m going to try: I’m going to be more vulnerable. I’m going to expose myself the way a brother or a son might, and see what happens. It won’t transform me into a replacement, and I’ll probably make a clown of myself. But it’s worth a shot. To build different connections, instead of replicas. I can already see that the cousins have been hammered stronger by this. Now it’s time to be deliberate, and keep that train going, if possible. And yea, I’ll do the practical stuff. You can’t call Barb, enough. And I’ll call Liv, too, but with finesse, without overdoing it. And the rest of our family, as well, because we all lost something. For some a spleen; for others, more vital organs.

Moving on.

It’s further maddening to have Arthur’s death aligned and intertwined with so much of my pleasure. I’m a week into marriage. I’m ecstatic and overwhelmed by the potential of my future. I’m also newly terrified of losing a child not yet even conceived. That’s a fun one. Probably a lot more neurosis to come. But, yea… it’s a violent set of waves to endure and ride. It’s exhilarating and crushing, and guiltily I’ll admit, more of the former. I’m pronoid.

The guilt compounds as I realize that I’m only comparing the conflict between my pleasure and pain, when the actual accounting includes my pleasure, my pain, and all the pain of all the others he left behind, those we both loved. What about Alexandra? Barb? Liv? Dan? A dominating, trailing factor; ego-hidden and selfishly deprioritized. What would Jesus do? Not have a wedding during shiva, although I appreciate all the encouragement and insistence from the also mourning invitees.

Back to Arthur and I having grown apart and then, more recently, back together:

There exists a line separating most relationships. On one side of the line you have people who have a reasonably complete model of you in their head. (See: Theory of Mind.) On the other side of the line are people who have a functional model; they know what they need to know to get the job done, but they don’t know, perhaps have never seen, the whole thing. For ex., a spouse vs a colleague (most of the time). 

The line is called intimacy, and relationships on both sides of the line can be valuable, but the intimate ones have more potential in both directions, fat tails; the intimate ones can yield fortunes and bankruptcies. Acquaintances are tepid.  

I described it above, how Arthur’s and my relationship moved from the intimate to the distant. I’ll skip further detailing that transition, and just get to the thing that hurts now: we were getting markedly closer, again. I could see the trajectory of our friendship and would bet on our returning to intimacy and confidence.

If the isolation of vocation and growth drives most bourgeois adults apart and into impersonal silos, then eventual mastery and plateau allows room for a focus on humanity, again. And humanity is universal and objective. People can stand on it, together, and get to know each other (again). That’s where I felt Arthur and I were.

I felt like Arthur and I had taken two separate tracks at a fork 15 years ago, and just recently those two roads started to merge back into the same path. We had stories to tell each other, of our time in the wild. It was the basis for a new bond, perhaps stronger than the old one.

Unsolicited phone calls. Talks of marriage, health, wealth. Suggestions of books and podcasts that were actually followed through with, instead of disappearing into the void like most cocktail party prescriptions. We’d follow back. Not rushing each other past awkward silence. Being patiently invested in one another. Showing up. Talking about vulnerable topics, like fears and aspirations for careers, and relationships, and family. And then, right during the peak of this rekindling, this jubilee, he died. And I doubt that I was the only one whose newfound growth and compatibility were cut short. You’re not alone.

So I hurt for the spent love, yes, like that of most grief. But I hurt more for the lost potential. I had so many fresh dreams that included him. It’s disappointing and sad.

To be clear, I’m disappointed in what’s lost, not disappointment in him. I blame him for nothing, even if maybe I should or others do. But any of his mistakes could have easily been mine, and so I sympathize. I’m not angry. Ambition implies risk. Vice is vice is inevitable. Growth means growth from something. Different contexts, need not apply.

Anyway, what else? The thing I linger on now is a weird faith. I have little faith or rather I have difficulty finding faith. I scrutinize faith until it’s demoralized. And yet, the discontinuity introduced by Arthur’s absence gives me faith, illogically but compellingly. I don’t strive for it, it’s simply there, point blank. I can’t explain it, but I can describe it.

Arthur is gone forever, and Arthur is part of my future. Both irrevocably true, yet incompatible. What to do about it? Apparently, not much. My mind absolutely and happily refuses to budge. The feeling that Arthur is part of my future supersedes the knowledge that he’s not. Knowing he’s gone does nothing to my belief that my future includes him. So it continues to. Sue me, I can’t help it.

See you in the funnies, Arthur. (More trivia: I never called him Artie or Art or Archo. He was always Arthur to me.)

Lastly, some good, more recent memories (skipping some that have already been shared):

The last thing I spoke to Arthur about was extensive advice, over the phone, on how to structure a prenup. “Don’t put anything about kids in there, because the courts won’t accept that you understood what you were agreeing to, prior to actually having the kids.” Smart. “Everyone should get one! The courts encourage it! Helps ungunk the works.” Ha. Kelly and I never got a prenup, but the candid advice on such a touchy subject makes me laugh.

Eating a whole pig at a communal table, biergarten style, at Saxon and Parole, in New York. Arthur talking the whole table’s ear off about everything, and then after discussing eating brains, we asked the chef to bring the pig’s over, and he did. Afterwards, walking to our trains, jolly, drunk.

Visiting Arthur in Scotland. Going out to some Uni warehouse party, and me getting lost with some bird. I didn’t have a working European phone, and so when I got home at dawn, seeing him and his big bravado looking like a worried mother goose made me laugh and proud, like a big brother again. Him cooking the two of us mussels and linguine with three whole heads of garlic. Delicious. Steak in Edinburgh, and him showing me the castles like he was himself a duke, personal friends of Hume and Smith.

I wished we went on more walks together.

Us planning on going to Joe Beef, in Montreal, with Alexandra and Kelly.

Him calling me to tell me Anthony Bourdain had died, and subsequently talking about it. “If he can’t make it, who can?” There’s that cynicism again. But it was a candid moment. And we ended that talk, more or less, believing we could make it, even if Bourdain couldn’t.

Discussing whether we were fated to end up like our parents. 

Him shooting the .38 up in Gilboa.

Legos, spanky, ice box bedroom, V8-turbo toilet, the pool, the trampoline, the screen porch and its green furniture, endless chicken rolls followed by cold pizza, karate in the basement (no shoes on the mats), rolling on the carpet (i.e. roll mosh), forts, the Barbie game on the gateway computer in Izzy’s room, Snood, army men in the mud ripping up sod by the square foot unit, jealousy listening to Timberlake camp stories, the suburban with 100 blankets in the third row and Don McLean on the radio, toxic farts, the Pokemon store, the Pokemon cards I’d steal from him after going to the Pokemon store, a million cups of Lipton at Barb’s table, Rage Against the Machine in Dan’s car, lanyards, fishing in the Hewlett Bay, Harry Potter, him never sleeping over my house and getting rides home at 2am after attempting to (me pissed), hiding in that lone pine tree in the front yard, making window art out glitter glue, salamanders, watching him attempt to ride a bike in the driveway.

A menial history, but ours. Anyway…

Arthur, you were great. It’s not for me to say that you’re now resting in peace, because I think you were pretty zen while you were alive, in your own pastel-colored kimono kind of way. So instead, I hope you’re as satisfied there as you were interested here. I’ll see you soon, and until then, I’ll try and hold the line for you. Love ya’.

[msclaritea]

“Is America really ready to reclaim democracy?

I’m going to share a fact with you — and you’re not going to like it.

America’s problems can be reduced to the following. White Americans want America to be a failed state — and that is its fundamental, deep, and long standing problem. That is how America ended up here — more than half a century of white hostility to any kind of social progress whatsoever — which resulted in social collapse, and culminated in Trumpism. White people made America a failed state.

But are white people ready to own this problem, of their own extremism? Is that long-term social position really about to change this election, finally, after more than half a century? Are white Americans ready to become a modern, functioning society? The answer, right about now, is a kind of hysterical “yes!” We all — all of us sane and thoughtful people anyways — want Biden to win, and put an end to the long nightmare of the Trump years. But — despite what the polls might say — how realistic is that?

“Kill Umair! Get him!!!” Maybe you’re foaming at the mouth, ready to dispute my simple fact. So take a hard look at the chart above. What does it say?

I have some bad news, and then I have some worse news. Don’t worry, you’ll thank me later. The first piece of bad news is this. Here’s a fact that most people underestimate. America is still about 80% white. 80%. Given the record-breaking turnout, this election is going to be more about America’s white majority than about minorities, probably, at least if every group turns out in record numbers roughly equally. Minorities have much less power than many imagine, precisely because they are still seriously in the…minority. This election is about white America, and if it really wants to live in a democracy — or if it’s happier living in a fascist society.

You might think that sounds over the top, so here’s the worse news. The chart above says this. It says that white Americans, as a group, have never, as a group, voted for a Democratic President. Never in modern history. In fact, the chart above in fact understates the problem. This trend goes back to JFK and perhaps before. Are you beginning to see the problem here? Why I say “America’s problem is that white people want it to be a failed state?”

Let me make it clearer. White Americans can be relied on, in the majority, as a group, to “vote Republican.” I put it in quotes because it’s worth examining what that anodyne statement really means. Liberal, sane, thoughtful White Americans often overestimate how many of them there are, how widespread their cause is. The result is that when I say “Americans are…” meaning of course the majority, which is still white, I get a wave of protest. Americans aren’t dumb! Americans aren’t dumb! They’re not violent, stupid racists! They want to live in a modern society! Are they, do they — at least the white majority? Let’s take a brief and hard look at reality.

Here are some things white Americans have been for, as a group, in their majority. Segregation. Endless war. Inequality. Billionaires. Capital. Guns and religion as primary social values. That is what the voting pattern above means. Conversely, here are some thing white Americans have been against, as a group, in their majority. Desegregation. Civil rights. Womens’ rights. Their own healthcare, retirement, and childcare. Public goods of any kind whatsoever. That is what the “voting pattern” above means in the real world. Need I go on? America’s problem is that white Americans as a social group, its majority social group, want America to be a failed state.

 They don’t want to live in a modern, civilised democracy, and never have.

White America is America’s problem. A big, white, ignorant problem. The problem of the white American voter — that white Americans don’t want to admit — goes back more than half a century at this point. If the answer is “Make America Great Again!” then the question is: “well, who brought it this point of self-destruction?” and the answer is….white Americans. They’re the ones responsible for the self-destruction of the society they still rule as a massive majority. Nobody else is responsible for their poverty, despair, and humiliation but them. That is what the chart above makes crystal clear.

Who voted, over and over again, to have worse lives? No healthcare, retirement, affordable education, childcare — no public goods of any kind whatsoever? White Americans did. What the? The question baffles the world. Why would anyone choose a worse life? The answer is that white Americans would not accept a society of true equals. “I won’t pay for those dirty, filthy peoples’ educations, healthcare, retirements! Why, their grandparents were my grandpappy’s slaves!” White Americans chose to retain power, supremacy, superiority, even in a failing society. 

They chose staying on top of decline and ruin, rather than prospering as equals.

Let me make that even clearer, by putting it in a global perspective. This is the part you’re really not going to like.

White Americans are the rich world’s most hostile, ignorant, violent, cruel, and selfish social group — by a very long way. “Voting conservative” after all doesn’t mean nearly the same thing in Europe or Canada. There, even conservative parties agree on the basics — people should have healthcare, education, retirement, that the only point of the public purse isn’t endless war and death machines. Conservatism in America is off the charts, and so “voting” that way carries a very different meaning. It means that White Americans are the rich world’s most regressive, ignorant, and self-destructive political bloc — by such a long way that they might as well not be in the rich world at all.

I don’t mean any of that as an insult, by the way. I mean it objectively, literally, factually. You’d think that by now White Americans would have figured out that voting against their own standards of living ever rising just because it meant black and brown people would have public goods too was…imbecilic. Especially watching Europe and Canada rise and prosper. They’ve had more than half a century to figure that out. But they still haven’t. What else do you call the inability to learn from the world and history but…ignorance?

Do you know what the word imbecile means? Someone who can’t look after themselves. But that’s what has happened: white people are the ones who wrecked their very own lives, futures, and society — beginning the moment, decades back, that minorities finally gained a few rights, in a giant, stupid, endless, escalating temper tantrum, that culminated in Trumpism.

I know this sounds insulting. But to speak factually and empirically about levels of self-destruction this immense requires us to reach beyond the lines of everyday discourse. Let me try again, then.

White Americans really are different. From their peers — or at least the people they believe are their peers. But the truth that their political choices over decades reveals is this. White Americans have almost nothing in common with White Europeans or Canadians — who back the expansive social contracts of social democracies reliably. White Americans reliably reject such choices, which is how they made their society collapse. instead, they have more in common with the ethnic-religious-fundamentalist majorities of nations like Iran, or the authoritarian-nationalist majorities of nations like Russia. They are regressive, sectarian, fundamentalist, unable to change, trapped by their own ideologies.

That is how and why America collapsed. Black People didn’t make it so. Brown People didn’t. Native Americans didn’t. America is still about 80% white, and white Americans make a certain choice reliably and consistently and predictably as a group — they vote “conservative,” but conservative in America doesn’t mean what it does in the rest of the rich world — it means something much more like Iran or Russia. Bang.

White Americans impoverished themselves, through decades of such folly. Voting against their very own basic public goods. Which meant they had to pay monopolists eye-watering prices for those very things which could and should have been socially provided — healthcare, higher education, retirement, and so on. Today, the average American dies in $62,000 of debt. Do you know what that predicted, a few years ago? A fascist implosion. When majorities grow impoverished, they turn even more regressive, violent, ignorant, and brutal. America’s white majority was already all those things — and then they became even more so.

A demagogue came along, Trump, who blamed white America’s problems on everyone but white Americans. Mexican babies. Black mothers. Latino immigrants. Syrian refugees. Gay minority couples. Everyone but white Americans was responsible for the plight of white Americans. But how could they be? America was and is still 80% white. Nobody was ever responsible for white America’s stunning plunge into poverty, humiliation, and despair — but white America.

But nobody wants to blame themselves, do they? It’s only human to project one’s failings onto others. So white America took Trump’s bait. And it was easier, too, to sell that line of nonsense, that racism, that prejudice, that bigotry, to a white majority that was already those things, and always had been. It was a self-reinforcing process, which was inevitable once America’s white middle and working class began to implode. 

Fascism was coming to America. And it did.

Those of us who warned of it were called alarmists and hysterics and so on, when we warned of camps, genocide, bans, raids, purges. As all those things came to pass, and, sick to our stomachs, we survivors tried to warn all over again, we were mocked, shamed, and condemned. By white Americans. Even the good ones. We were told we were underestimating the power of white America to do the right thing.

But we understood something that white American never has about itself. White America has never done the right thing. Ever. At least not in modern history. White America, again, the chart shows us, has been for segregation and war and brutality — and against desegregation, women’s rights, civil rights, and so on. White America, as a group, as a majority, has never, ever voted for anything even slightly towards greater equality, justice, freedom, for all. It has only ever voted to preserve, maintain, and expand its own power. Ever.

White Americans — the good and reasonable ones — overestimate their social group so badly that they probably imagine a majority of white people voted for Obama. Wrong. Even Obama couldn’t win a majority of whites. The only candidate who came close was Bill Clinton — and even he failed. White Americans, again, never voted any way but fanatically “conservative”, which, in global terms, means more like majorities in Iran or Russia than Canada or Europe — regressive, ignorant, brutal, hostile, selfish, and supremacist, not modern, gentle, fair, wise, sophisticated, thoughtful, peaceful, tolerant.

White America’s escalating temper tantrum — its pattern of regressive voting — finally escalated in Trumpism. That is how all of America ended up here. Ruled by white America’s fascists and fanatics, too. Which even the sane and thoughtful white Americans despair at. But will they finally understand themselves? Can they look in the mirror once and for all?

We survivors and scholars have seen all this before — the phenomenon of the deceptive majority. By “deceptive majority,” I mean the idea that good and reasonable white Americans have about themselves. That as a majority, they are good and reasonable, and so goodness and sanity and reason will prevail in the end. They have not in America precisely because white Americans badly overestimate just how sane and reasonable their group in society is. How can they be, when they think guns matter more than healthcare and human rights?

I’m sorry if that sounds harsh. But again, I am only speaking to you factually, empirically, objectively. White Americans have voted over again and again for their guns and their Bibles — but they have never, ever voted as group to have healthcare or retirement for all or any single aspect of a functioning modern society whatsoever. Not to this day.

White America seemed to prefer supremacism and theocracy and authoritarian-fascism over modernity, as a social group. And that is how America ended up being a failed state. That, my friend, is the ugly and difficult fact.

That is the problem of the white American voter. And it spells real trouble.

Because when we say things like “Biden will win in a landslide!” what we are really saying is: white American as a group will, for the first time in modern history, not vote Republican. That they will, as a group, vote for something other than regressivism of the most extreme kind on offer. That the massive tide and force of history will suddenly turn on its head. That a decades long trend will simply reverse itself en masse, like never before.

We are asking for something greater than we may know — for history to deliver us a genuine transformation in long-standing political and social attitudes amongst a majority that has never, ever felt the way we wish them to. Who have never, ever been on the side of modernity or greater democracy or more civilization.

We are hoping for change of the deepest kind. Are we overconfident, then?

I’m not saying that a Biden landslide is impossible. But I am willing, at this stage, to call it unlikely. I don’t think white America is suddenly going to reverse decades of history. I think history has a terrible momentum and inertia, which doesn’t turn itself around so easily. I think social attitudes and political preferences don’t simply magically upend themselves overnight. I don’t think white America as a majority is going to back Biden. (If it does, it will be thanks to young people, though.)

Where does that leave us? Not in a very good place. The problem of the white American voter is very, very real. More real than white Americans know — which is precisely why their pundits and intellectuals never discuss it: they are giving their own social group’s regressivism and imbecility a free pass. But it’s the elephant in the room, just how different white Americans really are, as a group, in the majority, how regressive, cruel, hostile, ignorant, and backwards. That’s not an opinion — it’s a sad, terrible, frightening fact.

It’s possible that minorities will deliver the election for Biden. That’s if turnout for them is much, much higher than for whites. We don’t know, really, if that’s the case. I’d say while the chances are slim, they are very real.

More likely, though, is the following scenario. White America votes the way it always has as a group, as a majority — to screw everyone else over, as hard as possible, even if it itself pays a price. That will lead to three possible outcomes. One, an outright Trump victory. Two, a undecided election, which the Supreme Court will obviously hand to Trump. Or three, the most likely, in my estimation, months of chaos, as America tries to figure out what to do next, about the mess its in, and the GOP makes every grab for raw power.

And the protests of the good and thoughtful white Americans don’t help: “not all of us!” Sure, Chet, not all of you. But enough of you have been like this for most of modern history. Embittered, hostile, cruel, backwards.

Is that about to change? I don’t know, my friends. I doubt it, but I hope so. So why do I tell you this? Because we minorities are what we have always been: barely tolerated interlopers and hated intruders in the Promised Land. You, my white American friend, are the only one with the power to change any of it.

Umair October 2020

‘Stop The Count’ Trump Protesters in Detroit.

[urbanstreetwear1]

Hat Caps: From Functional Outside Apparel to Urban, Street-Fashion Accent

You see, I could write this information because I personally observed the change of this business first hand growing up. When I was 6 years of age my parents passed me a skateboard for my birthday and I never put it down. I hope I still had that skateboard; a red Problem on Elm Road skateboard with banana orange wheels. It absolutely was very ill at the time. I easily started studying every skateboard magazine out there. I think I had a 10 year membership to Thrasher. I will almost recall every skateboard magazine cover dating back to about 1986 and I have viewed the culture and design modify and evolve significantly over the years. Very nearly 25 decades later that same market which was after frowned upon is currently thriving. During those times, skateboarding was just not "accepted" and many people wherever not so pleasant towards skaters themselves; if you'd a skateboard you the place where a hoodlum simple and simple. It wasn't recognized by anyone or any tradition at the time. When persons found you carrying a skateboard they got afraid considering you were going to take their purse. Now skateboarding is in the Olympics!

In 1986 I acquired my first style of the skater model and which was the start of the road wear market for me. I observed manufacturers like Vision, Airwalk and Powell Peralta pave just how for urban brands today. Several metropolitan apparel inspirations nowadays stem from what the god fathers of block use created so several years ago. Without them the wouldn't be what it's today.

Type is a thing that improvements and then returns around. It is really a way for people expressing themselves and display their true shades to the world. There are numerous different types of outfits that guys are carrying nowadays. One of the several types of fashions that are getting about, hiphop apparel and downtown street use have strike the areas and become rather popular. A number of the major forms of clothing that is one of them fashion wear is going to be described at length, so you may understand what type of style innovation is using place.

A warm development in fashion among teenagers that's been scattering lately like wildfire about the nation is named downtown Urban Street Wear . If you are an adolescent buying a way to appear cool in front of your pals and the ladies, you then have to keep along with what one other kids are wearing on the streets.

There are numerous several types of trendy block apparel utilized in the major cities, nevertheless the clothing that's frequent in the majority of the downtown roads would be the loose jeans which resemble the parachute trousers I wore in the early 1980's that smoke out, which are almost always topped off with sneakers. When it comes to street clothing for men a lot of them wear darker colors, while the women wear light shades such as green and gentle blue. Most of us believe the very first conventional metropolitan clothing trends originated in southern Colorado, but they really begun in the internal cities of New York.

Urban road wear then developed since it branched out of the East Shore in to the West Shore, which designed that apparel had a far more hip hop turn to it in the internal cities, but also produced a far more surfer inspired search as it branched out in to the beach areas. In Japan but, many kiddies and young adults you can find really to the Anime animation characters and you will see many street wear attire with picture of those Anime heroes on them. This form of gown and clothing is one that's here to stay for a lengthy time. The reasons why downtown road apparel has lasted way too long is because of its affordability, trendy search, performance and their capability to evolve to fit into very nearly any type of metropolitan atmosphere and any culture.

Road wear clothing arrived to existence throughout the 1980s. This type of clothing provides a vintage search and is touched by the hipster and the sneaker culture. That apparel also supplies the section of a vintage design sneaker. But do make certain that you don't get mixed up with those loose, huge, super measurement clothing. This clothing is typically an assortment of informal clothes such as for instance T-shirts, trousers, sneakers, baseball hats etc.

The clothing was initially followed in Japan and was regarded being an urban fashion during the 1980s. The Japanese viewed, discovered and needed the road use to an completely various level. Several places followed suit and several organizations have also endorsed their very own brand for this kind of clothing.

Let us examine some of the street wear clothing tips. The standard block use is generally a set of orange jeans and a white coloured t-shirt. But these days, you run into a number of other various types of this type of clothing. In various nations, you can find different variations of those outfits. Like for instance, just in case you are situated in Los Angeles, the clothing often picked during warm weather is parkas or padded coats. The decision for men's apparel could be confined but in regards to women's apparel they have a variety of types to select from such as for example shorts, gowns, slacks, dresses and so on, all of which come underneath the sounding block use clothing. Just in case you prefer getting into relaxed wear, you can pick from Tracksuits, shorts, blouses, skivvies etc.

Whenever you use this sort of clothing, you receive a way to express yourself. You actually don't need copying every style that you see in a magazine; you are able to in reality add your own clothing style. Your style of apparel can actually reflect your personality. Broadly speaking, you will feel comfortable and relaxed while wearing such clothes. More over, you will sense lively and produce a level of one's own.

It is better advised to buy such garments online. Associated with that you can get lots of offers daily when you buy on line and at once the price of the clothes is going to be relatively less when comparing to garments ordered from regional retail stores. In addition, you have the option to refuse and trade in the event the ensemble does unfit you.

[eveninglottie]

write what you want regardless of the genders. it's better to spit the story out and then go back and revise then get hung up on whether or not every interaction or plot point could be part of an 800 word call-out tweet-longer that briefly trends on fanfic twitter. everyone comes at fiction from their own distinct background. you could write the most 'pure' romance ever, regardless of the genders, and it could still inadvertently trigger someone or raise concerns. comfort can be misleading.

so I don’t want you to think I’m disagreeing with you here, because you’re right. people spend way too much time thinking out the possible doomsday scenarios of what they might do instead of just doing it to see what happens. I am one of those people, for sure, it’s stopped me from doing pretty much everything I’ve ever wanted to do my whole life, so we’re on the same page here with both the concept of not worrying about what other people will think and also how no one holds the magic gatekeeping key which dictates what is problematic or not. every person is different and some things will upset people in a way that doesn’t upset you. that’s just a given. 

but I think that’s not really helpful when you’re trying to figure out your own motivations for doing something. 

like, yes, is a lot of this affected by how I think other people will react to things I create? of course. everything i do will be affected by how I think other people will react. that’s just how my brain works, and it’s my job to keep growing more confident in myself to counteract that (because the older you get you really do give less of a fuck and boy it’s so nice!!) what I was trying to bring up in that post was my own reasons for feeling more comfortable writing one thing than another. 

because I just think it’s fascinating and complicated and I’ve mentioned more than once to friends that it really just surprised me how freeing writing m/m has been vs m/f. it’s like my descent into sk was this moment of enlightenment when I realized “hey this is a hell of a lot easier to talk about when there are two boys involved!” like I realize that the majority of my writing the past two years has been on my own, and even though I can tell you’ve I’ve written well over 500k words and only posted maybe a fifth of that I can’t prove what I’m about to say so you’re just going to have to take my word for it, BUT I’ve included so much more discussion about sexuality and how characters express it and grow with it and figure out for themselves what they are. like it was never a thing I thought about a lot when I was writing my m/f fics (even tho all the women were still bi but that’s a whole other barrel of monkeys). it was never me sitting down and interrogating my choice for writing that pairing the way I did. I just did it. (I didn’t stop to consider the gender is what I mean, I thought about literally all the other things but gender and sexuality were not included in that) but now there’s a whole other sphere of characterization that I keep finding myself drawn to, and even without realizing it, it becomes a big part of how I write certain characters. (like deciding to write keith as demi while still being sexually and physically attracted to shiro has been really eye opening for me as someone on the asexual spectrum.)

because like, for example, I wrote a fem!bilbo fic, right? so clearly I was thinking about gender a bit, but most of that had to do with me having always reimagined that story (and lotr) with female protagonists. that’s what I did with a lot of childhood faves, actually, eragon, harry potter being two of the most prominent, and thinking about fem!bilbo and how that would change the story especially if she was in a relationship with thorin and the shire was maybe a bit more stifling for a woman, etc. - BUT that was one of those pairings that I’d never been drawn to when it was m/m. I couldn’t really get into it, and I was not a fan of the hobbit movies at all, honestly, and I tried, and it was only when I switched things around did that fic click for me, but I wonder a lot if I were to have come to hobbit fic later, after I’d gotten over my aversion to m/m (not in general, just me writing it, because reasons), would I have written it with bilbo as a boy? would I have been less likely to imagine bilbo as a woman? or was it a number of factors that led me to write that fic which really couldn’t have existed in any other incarnation, and would it have been a different fic entirely?

(the hp thing in particular is SO WEIRD to think about now because a lot of what I’ve been grappling with in my drarry fic is very male-centric? not like in a bad way, just thinking about the rivalry and bonds between boys and how boys look up to their male mentors and authority figures in very different ways than they do their female counterparts and also what does being interested in other boys do to one’s internalized and very misogynistic/homophobic ideas of Legacy and Family and Proper Gender Expression specifically when it comes to sex with other men like it’s Very Gendered in my head and it’s hard to separate that from what I used to be interested in which has expressed itself in other ways, specifically roslyn as chosen one in ascendant which I’ve said before was the result of a decade of rewriting those boy heroes as girls because I felt so connected to them and wanted girls to be every bit as important as boys, like I could draw a straight line from me writing bits and bobs of girl!harry as a fourteen year old and me writing roslyn in ascendant and wow I kind of want to punch myself in the face for how long I’ve rambled on about my own stuff but you know what no this is my tumblr and I get to obsessively and exhaustively talk about my own fictional worlds if I want to)

so it’s been a bit of a mindfuck trying to reconcile this shift in my own interests with the fact that I am a woman who identifies as largely asexual. and I think it’s important to sit down with yourself every once in a while and really look at the things you produce and do some self-examination. because I do wonder a lot if my comfort writing m/m now is because of this lack of pressure I normally feel when writing female characters or if it’s because I don’t have to interact with Me As Author so much when I write about boys because I am not a boy or if it’s because I feel a lot more comfortable identifying as queer when for the majority of my life I’d forced myself to be straight even though it didn’t feel right. 

then there’s the whole conversation about women writing m/m and how a lot of queer men feel they’re being fetishized or that their stories are being appropriated by women, in the same way that white people writing stories about people of color can be appropriative, men writing about women, straights writing about lgbtq+, cis people writing about trans or genderqueer people, et cetera with literally any minority being written by someone not from that minority, right? 

and I think it’s a bit reductive to say that it doesn’t matter. because it does matter. you’re right in saying that it matters to someone and I think the job of anyone who creates any kind of content is to think about that and be mindful that you don’t create in a vacuum. your art has power even if you don’t think it does, if you don’t want it to, and that’s something no one should take for granted.

now, I am not saying that certain people do not have the right to write certain stories. no one has the right to write anything, just as no one is forbidden from writing anything. and no one writing anything should be harassed for writing something that people perceive is out of their wheelhouse (because a lot of marginalizations are not visible! abuse, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, whether you’re neurotypical or not! and there’s no requirement that you make public your trauma/identity to provide cred! in fact it’s kind of horrific that anyone thinks this!) it’s a complicated dynamic but the more we talk about these things the easier it is when a marginalized person says, “hey this thing you wrote is kind of bad,” the writer can go “oh man I’m sorry, let me think about it and see what I did wrong so I can do better in the future” OR “oh wow I see what you mean, but this is important to me” and the reader can go “I respect your right to write what you want and in the future I’ll do more to shield myself from this kind of content” instead of Cancelling someone because they didn’t effectively prostrate themselves before the ultimate judges of problematic content, a bunch of randos on the internet.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, yes, I agree with you that it’s not necessary to worry about this stuff, and that a lot of it is energy wasted especially when you’re worrying about theoretical responses from people who read your stuff, but that’s not helpful to me, because I think that’s disregarding the fact that we live in a society with weird power dynamics that are constantly shifting. I think it’s my job as someone who is mentally capable of dealing with this kind of self-examination to push back on some of these things when I can. because if I didn’t challenge myself every once in a while, I wouldn’t grow as a person or a writer and if there was one mantra I would live my life by besides the assertion that I would be blissfully happy if I downloaded my consciousness into a robot body, it would be that You Have To Be Okay With Critique and It’s Good When People Call You Out In A Safe Setting, like everyone is a dick and an asshole and a Bad Person and pretending you’re not is the most useless battle you could ever fight. we contain multitudes and some of those tudes are downright ugly.

quick sidebar: I would not have been able to have this kind of conversation with myself four years ago, and something I have not even talked about is how my shift toward more m/m content began at the same time as I was getting used to getting medical treatment for my grab bag of mental illnesses, like it’s pretty obvious that I got into sk right about the time I settled into my meds so what does That even mean?? so many THINGS to consider!!

idk. I know when I write stuff like this people think I’m beating myself up over it, but I’m really not. I just like talking about it sometimes and this tumblr is where all my neuroses go to live forever more in the annals of this blue hell until I chicken out and delete them the next day. I guess I know that when I read other people talking about things I’ve also been thinking about, it’s nice to hear. and as this is something that is still new to me, fandom in general is still bonkers to a part of my brain because I came into it as an adult, the whole conversation (if there even is a conversation because there might not be but there’s one going on in my brain) about women writing m/m is interesting complicated and something I think about a lot. clearly without any real focus or conclusions to be drawn, because I dropped out of college and never learned how to make my point in a concise and understandable manner. 

anyway I hope you don’t read this as me arguing with you nonny, I just wanted to clarify what I mean in the original post

[wardencommanderrodimiss]

Witches, Chapter 16: congrats Apollo you’re not back in hell. this case, you’re only on the margins of it.

[Seelie of Kurain Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

[Witches Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

Among the ethical questions Apollo has pondered in his time as a lawyer, “is it wrong to search for a new job on my current employer’s office computer?” is the least consequential and least dire one. Not that he’s thinking of leaving the WAA, not at this moment, but being stuck spinning in a chair while Phoenix and Athena go out to investigate - it might not become a trend, but it might be, and he’ll need to prepare a contingency if it does. If he, the lawyer who got this place renamed from Wright Talent Agency to Anything Agency by being the first lawyer in seven years to work within its walls, who put the pieces together for Phoenix to let him get his badge back, gets squeezed out of it. 

Fine. He’s used to it. Foster home after foster home and before any of them a home in the mountains of Khura’in, Apollo doesn’t fit, Apollo goes away to the next place that will take him for a little while longer.

But Phoenix is only so reliable and some part of Apollo suspects that he’ll get yanked away by the fae and leave the case suddenly on Apollo’s shoulders, and instead of pondering the ethical question - the answer is, he doesn’t care if it’s wrong, but he’s not going to do it because Mia would know and he’s not going to test a fae queen’s patience - he sets to work researching the scene of their crime. The Shipshape Aquarium’s website prominently displays what they call the Aqua Tunnel, a glass tunnel that runs under the aquarium’s largest tank, allowing a full view of fish to the sides and right above their heads. Apollo’s stomach churns just seeing the pictures of visitors standing there, illuminated blue in the dark, water all around them held back only by glass that can’t be thick enough to put him at ease. It looks like drowning feels. 

So it’s almost like a good thing that this is the case that he’s been squeezed out of. 

Then Athena texts him to tell him that their client is an orca, one of the marine animals on display and performing at the aquarium, and the dizzy lightheadedness that the Aqua Tunnel instilled in him turns to dizziness from the breathless laughter wheezing forth from his lungs.

The woman who had shown up on their doorstep really didn’t say much specific about her friend and her case, did she? Apollo desperately wants to see how Phoenix bluffs his way through this one and is desperately relieved that he’s only involved in this case from the margins. Athena tells him that she wants to hear later about the time Phoenix cross-examined a parrot; their human client (Athena says human, anyway, because she needs to distinguish from their orca client, but they probably can’t say for certain yet, human) mentioned it as the real actual reason she came here looking for Phoenix Wright.

Apollo drags his feet across the carpet to bring the spinning chair to a halt - wait, maybe this is why he’s so dizzy - and heads for the shelves back behind Phoenix’s desk. His oldest cases, and a few that he acted as Mia’s assistant on, and a few of hers even before he was a lawyer at all, rest there, and Apollo had read through some of them again on the really slow, lonely days before Athena was here and while Trucy is at school. He knows exactly where to find that one, the one where Phoenix cross-examined a parrot to defend the future Chief Prosecutor and get a forty-year legend of a prosecutor indicted on murder charges. 

(How many legends has Phoenix torn down in the strangest of ways, as a rookie, while disbarred, a force to be reckoned with no matter his personal circumstances?)

The parrot’s name was Polly. Apollo sort of hates that as much as he hates everything else about Phoenix’s chaotically stupid bluffs working out for him, and that this is what he so admired about Phoenix from the start. It’s a lot less fun to be the one behind the bench, bluffing frantically, than it is to follow it in a transcript. 

He drops the file on Athena’s desk and sticks a pen in the relevant part so they can review it later. Her last update said that they’re going to do their own investigation to find possibility of a human culprit, so that the orca won’t be put down, and it’s radio silence from there out. Apollo goes back to the aquarium website. Trucy sends him photos from the wrestling match she and Jinxie are attending; she won’t be back until early evening. 

The other bookshelf out in the front room is where the fun happens. He’s found the same book there twice, sure, but almost never with the same cover. A weathered leather-bound tome, cracking along the spine, surely a grimoire full of old fae secrets, contains Mia’s taxes. A textbook cover proclaiming this a study of real estate law contains biographies of famed stage magicians. The only ones that stay the same are the thin picture books slipped in between matters of law and magic: Deauxnim, all of them, Elise or Laurice. Bored again, he thumbs through one, marveling at the elaborate illustrations, and the pages are cold to the touch. On reaching the end, a loose sheet torn from a sketchbook slips out, drifting feather-slow to Apollo’s feet. It’s a simple painting, three people and no background rendered in pale watercolor - a man with stark white hair and a visor that makes him look like he stepped out of a comic book, a beautiful woman in a suit jacket with a magatama around her neck, and another, older woman with hair tightly bound up on the top of her head and the same soft smile, albeit wearier and more lined, as the first woman. His eyes keep drifting back to the woman with the magatama, the yellow dot on her lapel that might be an attorney’s badge, her knowing brown eyes. The page, then the book, he slides back where they came from, but he can’t close the cover on the sensation that he’s supposed to know who she is. 

Every time he thinks he’s dug into every nook and cranny of this office, turned up every little scrap, there’s always something new. He hasn’t had the chance - that makes it sound like he wants to be doing this instead of being so bored out of his skull that he ends up hunting through decades of paper - to explore the shelves since Athena came to the office. The last notable anything he found before her arrival was an accordion folder containing receipts for what looked like every single thing Phoenix ever bought from September 2016 through the next six months. What neurosis created that habit?

He glances back at the spine of the picture book, still holding the image of the middle woman’s watercolor eyes in his mind. Mia? Could she be? He doesn’t ask, not out loud, and she doesn’t give any hints. 

Back at Phoenix’s desk, where the desktop computer is, the overwhelming blue of the aquarium website mocks him and his memories of water rising up over his head, and he spins the chair away and stares at the back wall, the sun-faded movie film poster that doesn’t show a title, and the shelf of case filings. He doesn’t care if Phoenix wants him to man the office tomorrow - he is not missing this case for the world, not because it’s Phoenix Wright back in court for the first time in eight years, but because he desperately wants to know how this orca matter pans out. (And okay, maybe he does want to see what Phoenix is like behind the bench when he’s not backed into a corner, his life on the line against a serial murderer, no other choice in his eyes but to become the thing that Kristoph framed him to be seven years earlier. Maybe Apollo’s still looking to find the legend he admired within the man that he knows.)

His phone, left on his desk, begins buzzing and continues buzzing. Someone’s calling, probably Phoenix, because he’s the only one who calls regularly instead of texting. What sort of trouble has their case run into, or maybe he’s wondering if Trucy’s back yet because she can be somewhat unreliable when it comes to letting anyone know where she is. But the name displayed on screen isn’t Phoenix - it’s Klavier.

They’ve never spoken on the phone before. Apollo’s heart seizes up, beats out a swift staccato rhythm. What the hell is going on that he would call? “Hello—?”

“Tell me your boss isn’t defending an orca.”

Apollo collapses into his desk chair, nearly tipping it off of its wheels. “Where did you hear about that?” he asks. “That’s not - please tell me that’s not a - a timeline constant, or whatever, that you didn’t see it happening, or - tell me you’re not prosecuting the orca!”

Klavier laughs. “Nein, Forehead, I am not sure even you could convince me to take that to court.” His chuckle continues for a few moments after but trails away into silence, long enough that Apollo wonders if the call has been dropped. Apollo inhales to say something and Klavier cuts across him, maybe coincidence that they chose the same time to speak, maybe not. “Herr Samurai told me about it. He’s the one prosecuting that whale of a defendant.”

He starts laughing again and Apollo groans. Determined to not give him any more satisfaction, he simply asks, “Blackquill doesn’t have an office space, does he?” He’d dismiss the thought entirely on basis of common sense, but Klavier has to have spoken to him somehow, and common sense would have a convicted murderer not prosecuting at all. Who’s to say what they’re doing over at that building?

“He does not, but he was here to speak with the Chief Prosecutor over some or another matter, and stopped by my office before he left to tell me that your boss’ first case with his new badge is…” Klavier makes a dismissive, disgusted noise from the back of his throat. 

“The client when she showed up at the office didn’t say that her friend who needed defending was an orca.” Apollo has a sudden need to defend Phoenix against Klavier’s disdain, not least because that disdain sounds particularly like someone else. “Though, I mean, when he and Athena found out, yeah, that was a, uh - a choice, they made, to continue.”

“You aren’t working this one?”

“No. I’m stuck back at the office.” Like they’re a real agency that is going to have clients show up more than once every three months. “Missing out on a free trip to the aquarium” - and all the fun drowning phobia that could come with it - “but at least I don’t have to figure out the defense plan for a killer whale.” He doesn’t mind a challenge, finds all the outlandish challenges in the past have made him a better lawyer, but it’s a killer whale. It’s there in the name, and he can’t ask it for its testimony to get its side of the story, put that together with the rest of the evidence, with what he sees and hears. A client who only spoke a little English, and pretended not to have even that, sure. An orca might be taking Phoenix’s “have total faith in your client” mantra a little far. 

“Which aquarium is this?” Klavier asks. “There’s the two big ones around here, ja?”

Apollo spins his chair back to his desk, finds that he doesn’t have the computer here, or his laptop up, and racks his brain for the name. “It’s the Shipley” - no, that’s the victim’s name - “Shipshape Aquarium.”

“Ach, the pirate one.”

“You’ve been there?” 

Apollo hasn’t - there had been been a middle school biology class field trip that his foster family of the time couldn’t afford to send him on; they had five kids in that house and naught to spare for any class trips. Clay came back with a googly-eyed shark keychain that Apollo still has clipped to his bag, and the proclamation that the aquarium was “totally lame” and if they wanted to see fish they could go to the pet store and walk through the fish section for free. 

(And then they did, and then they couldn’t stick to their for free part of the concept and bought a betta fish that lived for four years after they did extensive research on the proper care and tank setup, which caused Apollo to take up a crusade against the store for the little plastic containers they kept the poor fish in, and then Clay said again, not for the first or last time, that he should be a lawyer because he could get really passionate about arguing and his surname made the whole deal better because with a surname like Justice you have to be either a lawyer or a criminal, basically. That was two years after he left Khura’in, after he was starting to realize it might be a long, long time, if ever, until he returned, but he had never stopped thinking about being a lawyer, not because of Dhurke but because of Clay, who never knew Dhurke. He just knew Apollo. And he thought that would be the career for Apollo, not because he was Dhurke’s son, but just because of Apollo.)

“Mhm.” Klavier sounds more subdued than usual. “Ja, I have. Many times.”

“You don’t strike me as a fish person.”

“That could be because I’m a human person, do you think?” He’s laughing again, but again, it falls off quickly. “It was Daryan who so enjoyed the aquarium, not I. You didn’t suppose his shark aesthetic was an accident?”

“I never really thought about it,” Apollo admits. Maybe that’s not quite true - the thought had passed his mind, and then gotten shuffled away as many more important impressions of Daryan replaced it - namely, that he was an asshole, and probably a criminal. And then actually a criminal, another of the people Klavier loved who turned out nasty. “Though I guess that makes sense.” If there’s anything that could make that hairstyle make sense. 

“We went there often, even after we were celebrities - every time we’d come home from a tour, less and less as that was, especially as I started traveling for reasons that weren’t tours, we’d visit that or the other aquarium around the city. Hard to sneak through the crowds when you’re famous, admittedly.” He gives another softer, sadder laugh. “The fans coming up for autographs made it harder to play our favorite game of harassing each other about what fish looked most like the other one.” A thoughtful pause, where Apollo thinks he’s dwelling on the times passed with someone no longer around in the same capacity as his memories, mourning a friend turned into a monster - and maybe he is, but the actual words he follows up the silence with are, “I’m not sure what fish I’d call you. Something very small and very red, surely.”

“Ugh.” Just when Apollo wants to be charitable to him, and sympathetic. “You’re hilarious.” He tips his chair back and stares at the ceiling. They’re not in court, but he’ll never let one of Klavier’s statements go unchallenged. “I know exactly what you’d be.”

“Oh?”

Apollo grins as he says it, the one that Trucy always teases him for because she says it’s his texting Prosecutor Gavin look and she’s sort of correct, but it’s more like a roasting Prosecutor Gavin look. “A clownfish.”

His jab is rewarded with a strangled, choking laugh.

Apollo toys with the idea of asking him why he didn’t glamour himself free from the squeeze of the crowds, but decides not to. He’d never told Daryan about his history and the abilities he had - that, Apollo remembers, Klavier saying he never had the words to tell his best friend and then he was gone. (Apollo remembers him saying that because Apollo, without the words to tell Clay about Dhurke, sympathizes.) Maybe he didn’t want to so obviously display his secret in front of his friend. Maybe he liked the attention, the screaming adoring fans, back then before Gavin was the name of a murderer, too. He had nothing to hide from back then. 

So instead, the prior part of the conversation that Apollo circles back to is, “So Prosecutor Blackquill came by to let you know, specifically?” Any angle he looks at it seems like one of Blackquill’s manipulations, a stab into that open wound of Klavier’s mistake. Something to use against him, measuring his reaction, assessing the best way to get under his skin - tell him Wright is back in the legal world, tell him that Wright is making a mockery of the legal world with an orca, and watch and wait to see if there are fireworks. 

“He did specifically wish to let me know, but it is not as though we have never spoken with each other before.”

“Right. And you thought he was pleasant enough, or whatever.” Should that surprise him? Klavier’s best friend was Daryan, an utter asshole, after all - and Klavier can be a real dick in court too. 

“He is not unpleasant, which is something not quite the same, especially not as we are lawyers. I think he may just have wished to see my reaction as I found out about what your boss is up to.”

If he isn’t being manipulative, he’s simply a troll, and yeah, that sounds like the conclusion to draw about Blackquill. “You’re right,” Apollo says. “That probably would’ve been pretty funny to see.”

“Hmph. I don’t imagine you were any more composed - you probably yelled loud enough to wake the dead, ja?”

Yes, he had yelped “What?” to the empty office, nearly dropping his phone as he did, and the longer he takes to come up with a retort to counter that assessment, the more Klavier is going to start laughing at him. “How do you suppose Chief Prosecutor Edgeworth feels?” Apollo asks. “He’s done this thing allowing him back in court for whatever reason and now Blackquill’s using his freedom to prosecute to take an orca to court.” Klavier doesn’t respond, just laughs at that, but Apollo can’t laugh for more than a moment. He rubs at some stray ink marks on his desk and adds, “Do you have any idea why he’s set this all up?” he asks. “Let Blackquill do this? Not the orca specifically, but prosecuting at all”

Klavier goes quiet. “I presume, as do the few colleagues I’ve spoken of this with, that he thinks the verdict was wrong - that he hopes, in some convoluted manner, to clear Herr Samurai’s name and overturn his conviction.”

“You think?”

“I respect Herr Chief greatly and would at least like to hope that there is some reason to his actions.” Right, this is Edgeworth, not Phoenix. Edgeworth’s the one who’s not a cryptic fae bastard. “I could not tell you what I think, myself.” Bitterness coats his words as he adds, “I am not known to be someone good at guessing if someone I know is capable of murder.”

“I…” Apollo clumsily searches for some kind of condolence. “I don’t think anyone is.” Klavier talks to him about these things because he knew Kristoph, too, but sometimes Apollo thinks that Klavier forgets that he did know Kristoph, too. That it wasn’t his brother, no, just his boss, but still blindsided him. The evidence was there but otherwise Apollo never could have guessed - he just chose to believe the evidence. But what if it was a friend, now, a brother, a coworker - if Clay was accused, if - or Trucy, Phoenix again, Athena - if there was evidence to it, what would Apollo do? He doesn’t know. 

“You have your Truth, though. I suppose that makes it a little easier, wouldn’t it, ja? You see and you know they are lying - know more than they are saying, are involved, did it.”

“Yeah, but it could be any of those options, like you said. It’s not necessarily just, did a murder.” He pushes off from the desk and starts slowly spinning his chair again. Everyone has secrets, but they’re probably not all murders committed. It’s all context, during cases, and he’s a defense attorney, he’s supposed to trust his client, but everyone else caught up in a thing— “Not that it helps me with Blackquill.”

“Too secretive even for our eyes - ja, he’s a bit of an odd one.”

“A bit? A bit? Do you say that because you’re already so far out there odd that he only seems a bit—”

“Ja, ja, you work for an ‘Anything Agency’ that is defending an orca—”

“I’m not defending the orca!”

“You are an accomplice. All of you are guilty. Blackquill is prosecuting the orca as well, and all of you are a bit odd.”

A bit. Understatement of the decade. “And you’re still a clownfish.”

-

Athena’s car pulls into the lot before Trucy gets back, which means that Apollo could’ve just shut the place down for the day and gone with them to the aquarium and it wouldn’t have changed a damn thing but that he had time to talk with Klavier. Not like anyone showed up with another case. 

“I got to feed an orca!” Athena’s shout begins before she has thrown the door open. “But the penguin hated me.”

What, exactly, is Apollo supposed to say to this? “I’m sorry?” he offers, and behind Athena, Phoenix snorts stifling laughter. “How’s the case for tomorrow looking?”

“Eh.” Phoenix wiggles his hand noncommittally. Athena presses the heels of her hands against her eyes. “We’ve got enough of a possibility to get it to go to trial, but nothing more than that, and that’s probably just in part because Prosecutor Blackquill is a lunatic.”

“Is he really that bad?”

That’s a young woman’s voice asking that question, but Athena has been face-to-face with Blackquill and knows exactly how bad he is, and Trucy heard her and Apollo complain about him for weeks after Mayor Tenma’s trial. Phoenix steps into the office and aside, and behind him stands a girl maybe Trucy’s age, with a soft round face and big gray eyes, her light brown hair pulled up in tight twists. Her clothing looks like Iris’ robes, with a shorter hem, down to the large beaded necklace from which a magatama hangs. 

Oh. Oh no. Do all the fae dress like this, or is this one of the relatives that Iris mentioned to them in Nine-Tails Vale?

“I’ll let you make your own determination from the gallery tomorrow,” Phoenix says. “If you’re coming. If not, we can catch you up but I’d rather go over the case again with Apollo and see if we can figure anything out.”

“Of course I’ll be there tomorrow!” The girl claps her hands together. “Your first trial in ages, Mr Nick! I wouldn’t miss it!”

“Who’s this?” Apollo asks. He sounds calm, really, he thinks, and then Athena shoots a quizzical look, eyebrows pressed together and turning up where they meet, at him. Of course. He can’t hide, not from her, but either she hasn’t registered the similarities between this girl and Iris, or she’s been assured, by Phoenix, by spending some time with this girl already if they all came in together, that she’s not terrifying.

Not any more than the fae are, conceptually, for what they all have the powers to do.

“You can call me Pearl!” The girl inclines her head forward politely. Apollo notes that she didn’t say that’s what her name is, just that’s what she goes by. “I’m a friend of Mr Nick’s!”

Her clothing, her careful wording of an introduction, and now an odd nickname (nickname, don’t think the pun, don’t acknowledge it) for Phoenix. Add it all up, and he doesn’t like the sum. “Hi,” he says. “I’m Apollo.”

“It’s very nice to meet you.” Her language is formal but not stilted; it sounds like the most natural manner of speech, coming from her. Mr Nick. She’s just polite, then; polite, refined, almost regal in mannerism, her every movement stepping further into the office made with deliberate care. She tips her head back, her expression serene, scanning the air of the office like she’s looking for something.

“Pearls is an old friend of mine who we ran into at the aquarium,” Phoenix explains, with no indication of whether she’s a human “old friend” or the other sort. “She gave us some help with our investigation.” 

“Oh, I didn’t do much of anything.” Her cheeks start to turn pink and she quickly brings her hands up over her face. “It was just good to see you lawyering again! But you haven’t gotten any better at keeping your office clean.” She lowers her hands, one of them falling only to her mouth to chew on a thumbnail, and she surveys Trucy’s magic props spread out on every available surface. “Why doesn’t she just keep everything in the Magic Panties and take out whatever she needs only when she needs it? They’re already enchanted and there’s no cost to using them, and poor Mystic Mia has to look at all this!”

“Huh?” Athena asks. “Mia, that’s - she was your boss, wasn’t she, Mr Wright?”

Which is when Apollo realizes that he hasn’t ever mentioned Mia to Athena, and from the expressions on Phoenix and Pearl’s faces - slow dawning surprise for the former, and narrowing eyes, rising anger, for the latter - Phoenix hasn’t told her, either.

(He feels awful that he feels some sort of - satisfaction? No, that’s too strong a word. Relief, a little bit - that Athena wasn’t told the secrets off the office. That Phoenix isn’t always good at communicating with her either.)

Instead of sitting down and mapping out the case, their evidence, and their plan of attack for the trial tomorrow, as Phoenix clearly still wants to, he sinks into the couch with a long sigh and explains Mia’s continuing presence to Athena, the way he did for Apollo and Vera last year. (“So that’s why the lights did that this morning!” Athena exclaims, and Apollo is really curious what she thought was going on otherwise.) 

Pearl sits primly next to him, hands folded neatly in her lap, watching Phoenix without ever blinking. “Mystic Mia is my cousin,” she says when Phoenix has finished his brief summary - nothing in it new to Apollo, but Athena next to him sits hunched forward with her elbows on her knees, her hand cupped over Widget as though ready to start a therapy session based on whatever emotional testimony she finds in Phoenix’s words. “But she left to become a lawyer when I was very small and I don’t remember her very well.”

“Oh!” Athena sits up suddenly. “If she’s your cousin, and she was a faery, then you’re…” She doesn’t finish the statement, either waiting for an affirmation from Pearl before she speaks it into truth, or being extra cautious with the idea of not asking or accusing her what she is. But Pearl nods, and Athena slumps back against the couch and says, “That makes me feel so much better about the smelling blood that you did back when we were investigating! That’s so much less weird.”

“That still sounds kind of weird, whatever you’re saying,” Apollo says, literally biting his tongue a second later as the fear of telling one of the fae that she’s weird - even a true statement as that is - takes hold. A bit odd is such an understatement. 

Pearl, though, does not react to that, and Apollo doesn’t hear about the blood-covered coin until later. In the moment, the door violently bangs open and Trucy barges in, a huge grin swallowing up her face, excitedly shrieking, “Pearly!”

-

The apartment door creaks open and the approaching footsteps stop abruptly. “Bad day, huh?” Clay asks.

“Mmph,” Apollo says, his face pressed into the couch cushions. He considers leaving it at that but knows that Clay won’t let it go, and a second later the door closes and the weight of his best friend settles in on his legs. Apollo turns his head to the side, unable to see Clay but at least able to be heard without yelling. He doesn’t have the energy to yell. “My coworkers are defending an orca in court.”

“Like, a whale? Like that kind of orca?”

“Is there another kind.”

Clay cackles. “Holy shit.” 

-

Phoenix sends the kids off long before he leaves the office himself, pondering a whistle and a bloody coin and a looped fifteen seconds of security footage and a dead man still without an official autopsy report. That’s the first thing they’ll be slapped with at the trial tomorrow, and if they’re unlucky it’s going to turn out to show that the manner of death wasn’t blunt force trauma at all and they’ll be in deep shit with nothing to bluff on from the outset. If he’s really unlucky, they still won’t have finished the autopsy, as late today as it was ordered, and he and Athena are going to get through a good case before the full report arrives and smashes their every conclusion to bits. 

He leans his head in his hands, staring down at the surface of his desk as though he can divine the answers from the scratches in the wood. “Mia,” he says, “what am I doing?”

Silence answers him. He lifts his head and looks out the window, to the bare empty rooms of the long-ago closed Gatewater Hotel, that whole damn lot cursed because that’s what happens to a place when it’s used as a staging ground to frame one fae royal for the murder of another. He’d been glad that particular branch of the Gatewater went under, as he’d stopped leaving these blinds open and really did miss the sunlight shining in through, even if he still had to pull them shut when the night became dark and the cold yellow city light cast a pool on the ground that night after night still marked where Mia died. 

How does he get over the death of someone who’s only sort of gone?

“I did this for Edgeworth,” he continues, “but now other people want my help - Sasha, and Athena, and - I don’t know if I can do this anymore. I don’t know if I should. Do you think defending an orca is going to make me any less of a laughingstock? Maybe it’ll be better publicity for me. People think orcas are cute, right?” He doesn’t have much opinion, but Athena and Pearl and Trucy all seem to agree. “Maybe that would put some trust back to me after, y’know, having to set up an entirely new legal experiment just to get Kristoph convicted. That really looked good for me, huh, makes me seem real honest.”

He leans back, hangs his neck over the back of the chair. “How long were you chasing Redd White for, anyway? Was that when you left Grossberg’s, when you found out that he was the one White bribed for information about your mother? If you’d been chasing him for seven years and came up with no solid connecting evidence, just a list of names - would you have given up fighting in an honest manner? How many people could he have blackmailed into suicide in that time - is it wrong to stop someone like that, even with—?”

Even with forged evidence. Fudge it here and there for the safety of innocent people because sometimes the guilty are too damn smart to be found out. That’s not why the devil forged evidence, but it certainly is what the Demon Prosecutor’s mantra was. No way to know, so damn them all.

“Or,” he asks, “are you a better person than me? Would you not fall so far?”

He should probably get home soon, make dinner for the girls before they just eat cookies and bagels. Pearl doesn’t have Maya’s appetite, thank god, and hosting her doesn’t send him bankrupt and empty the entire pantry. It’s been so long since she last dropped by that even if he did have to shell out for a five-course feast tonight, he’d do it. Trucy adores her, and vice versa. It’s good for them to get to see each other again. 

He makes sure to leave the computer on, cursor blinking on an open document so that if Mia has anything to say, either to the case or the latest installment of Phoenix’s forever-ongoing personal crisis, she can let him know. (Right after her death, Maya left the computer on, slept on the couch, and in the morning before she came to cheer Phoenix on in court found flip reciept and suicde folder compile names. And she had dutifully followed her older sister’s last, typo-marred instructions, cryptic as they seemed at first, but when the surrounding cards were played, it made sense, and Mia saved Phoenix’s life for not the first and not the last time.)

He flips the back room lights off and sees, standing next to the couches, between Phoenix and the door, the Gavin hellhound.

Phoenix lets out a shaky breath. Like he wasn’t doing a good enough job of reminding himself that he’s an imposter walking back into the courthouse tomorrow, spot who doesn’t belong, and the convicted murderer doesn’t either but Edgeworth’s put them both back there because he believes in them. But Edgeworth’s faith doesn’t change the past, only the future, and he’s only one man against the multitude of specters literally haunting Phoenix.

“What do you want?” Phoenix asks the barely-corporeal fae hound. Feathery plumes of white smoke drift off of her tail and the backs of her legs, her edges blurred against reality, the classic archetypal image of a ghost. She opens her mouth wide enough that she could probably fit her jaws halfway around a basketball, pulling her lips back, showing off her teeth. 

He has no idea when Kristoph summoned her - at what point his patience gave out and he reached to the magical heritage his blood allowed him, binding for himself a hound bred for the Wild Hunt. He first ever saw her after Kristoph was in jail, and he out, when he and Trucy noticed the beast stalking them, never coming close, never making a threat, but observing, studying, gathering information for someone. And he first saw her teeth when she yawned, and through the Sight she changes just slightly; shining gold tips the ends of her misty fur, and her teeth drip and bleed with the rotting red of death, the kind of curse Kristoph cast. It all snapped into clarity that instant, whose monster this was, and where the dark red marks of teeth in Zak Gramarye’s neck came from. 

She didn’t kill him. That isn’t what her kind are bred for; they don’t kill their prey themselves. They flush out their quarry and chase it back to their masters, herd it in and corner it, to let the handler deal the final blow. Zak came back to Los Angeles because of the statute of limitations was about to run out, and magic that lies in contracts often runs parallel to the laws of human land, but he also came back knowing that he was being watched, being followed, being hunted, and Phoenix knew by who but not how. Didn’t know how until he saw the dog whose lineage was dedicated to the hunt and her teeth that left the impression of her pursuit. 

Zak Gramarye died by a blow to his head, but the jaws of death were tight on his throat before then. 

He tried to play it cool, for a while, what with her haunting his apartment and the office every so often but then more when Apollo was there and then not at all. Don’t let her smell fear, bribe her with human food, the way Phoenix knows to befriend the fae. It took him a long time to understand why she was still around - she wasn’t pursuing anyone, hadn’t sunk her teeth into a new victim, and Kristoph was shut away in iron. He figured she should be gone.

And he really should’ve figured out what Klavier was - a stolen human child, replaced by Kristoph, who Phoenix knew long ago was a changeling - when, after the verdict came down, he watched Kristoph laugh and Klavier flee and the dog followed Klavier. Fae hounds are bound to one master only, always, until they’re set loose or die, and she was Kristoph’s but followed Klavier. She shouldn’t have been able to shift allegiance like that, and she couldn’t have, not to anyone else but Klavier, because the Gavins - they were the same to her.

Knowing that Klavier is the man commanding the hound, or just letting her wander loose to her own devices (however a creature like her, so bound up in the will of one master, makes determination of what she wants to do herself) doesn’t make Phoenix feel any better at her presence. Not today, and not this time of night when ordinarily, no one would still be here.

She pulls her ears back, jaw opening again, but instead of keeping her head level, she turns her open mouth toward the floor and gags. The horrible sound grates down his spine like claws and his throat like broken glass, like he’s the one choking. With a last wet cough, something yellow falls from her throat, and she snaps her long, disproportionate jaws shut, lifting her head back up to look at him. She licks her lips with her long black tongue, weirdly solid against her wisping fur, and smacks her mouth open and closed a few times. Then she noses whatever-it-is toward Phoenix and looks up again, expectantly. 

“Fine,” he says, squatting down so that he can get a better look at it without turning his eyes entirely away from her. It’s an attorney’s badge, its gold plating flaking off to show duller silver below. A well-worn attorney’s badge. “Huh? Is this Kristoph’s—?”

Cold to the touch, cold in his palm, he turns it over. Eight years later he still knows that number by heart.

“Why did you have this?” he asks, his words choked out around his heart risen up into his mouth. He’d ask why she ate it, but that just seems to be a thing that the fae do. Why she had it is the same as why she ate it: because she had it. But why? “Did Kristoph take it when I had to turn it back in to the Bar Association?” 

He still doesn’t actually know what happens to a badge of someone no longer a lawyer - he decided he didn’t want to know, mourned the ambiguous fate of his badge, whether it was melted down to become part of a new badge for a new attorney who wasn’t a fuck-up, or had the numbers shaved off and gold plating reapplied and new numbers engraved to become a new badge for a new attorney who wasn’t a fuck-up, or just got dumped in a box for record-keeping about attorneys who are fuck-ups. “Did he send you in to take it for him? Like a trophy?”

He has no way to know where her hollow red eyes are focused. She’s nearly nose-to-nose with him and showing no sign that she understands a word he’s saying. Even if she does she probably can’t convey it back to Klavier, as though he would know the answer either. What person alive has spent more time with Kristoph than either of them, and they don’t know him at all. 

On the off-chance that Klavier can actually hear what is being said to his hellhound, or if he knew that she had swallowed Phoenix’s attorney’s badge, he looks her in her empty eyes and says, “Thanks.”

She spins about, her tail swinging right into his face and through it and it feels like a faint misting of snow, the powdery top layer gusted up by the wind, and streaks straight through the closed door, out of the office.

Leaves Phoenix sitting on the floor, and his heart in his hand, tiny and tarnished and ice cold.