#Not debilitatingly so for the most part. But enough that I just felt bad all the time.

[sophieswundergarten]

Hello I’d like to ask about “SQ thing” “immune” and “whistle” if it’s not too much trouble. These all sound good, and I’m very excited to read them!

Hi!! Thank you for always being so nice and supportive :D

"SQ Thing" was honestly a gut reaction to this lovely thing by @cptnwynnie, and is about SQ and The Sister :>

"Immune" is actually an ironic title now that I think about it, and kind of a dumb concept. It's another SQ fic! But it's about him having an isolated/weak immune system from living on the island and so he just gets sick a lot.

(All of my inspiration for SQ stuff comes from the exquisite @sqenthusiast so please go read their fics!!!!)

"Whistle" is a Milligan fic that I'm actually kind of excited about! It's supposed to be like a series of vignettes or one of those "5 + 1" kind of fics, but it's giving me a real hard time at the moment, especially since I'm still not confident in writing the adults

[ataraxetta]

What is your opinion of Gladio during chapter ten? I can't ship gladnoct after playing it.

All right, let’s talk about chapter ten.

To answer your question, I think Gladio was a dick during this chapter, but I think his world was falling apart around him and lashing out in some dickishness is a totally understandable and pretty standard human reaction to that level of upset. He was angry and grieving and feeling powerless and helpless in an intensely high-stress situation and he was handling it badly, in direct contention with Noctis, who was also handling it badly but in an opposing direction. 

I think that chapter 9 was an abrupt and brutal awakening for all four of the bros. Up until Altissia, I don’t think any of them had really been hit with the reality stick yet, not the full extent, because they didn’t have absolute confirmation of anything but that Insomnia had been taken, which is too broad to narrow down to personal grief. They knew a lot of people died there, but nothing more concrete than that, and they knew that they couldn’t trust what the papers were reporting which was enough to spark hope that maybe, somehow, their loved ones had survived. Maybe, somehow, things weren’t as bad as they sounded. If the reports of Noctis and Luna’s deaths were false, then maybe the others were too. Maybe, once they got to Altissia, it would be to find that King Regis and Clarus and Ignis and Prompto’s families had survived. Once they got to Altissia, everything would be solved.

So for awhile, in the safe space of the road trip and hunts and meeting people and helping people and exploring a new world they kind of got lost in the storybook romance of it all, all four of them. Fated lovers the Chosen Prince and the Oracle journeying toward one another after so long, making pacts with the Gods in order to take back their home from Empire and save the world from evil with their friends by their side. That would be heady as hell, being at the center of that. And then Altissia happened, city destroyed, Luna murdered, Ignis horrifically injured, complete devastation, lives ruined, and it suddenly wasn’t romantic at all anymore.  

I don’t think any of them really had accepted the full reality until they personally witnessed the fallout. Clearly none of them had actually stopped and even considered that Ardyn Izunia was actually a bad person. He couldn’t have been more obvious if he had TRIED that he was Sekritly All Kinds of Evol BadGuy, and they even talked about how creepy and untrustworthy and probably bad news bears he was! Repeatedly! And still none of them actually believed that it was a possibility that that sort of evil actually existed. Altissia made everything real. Regis, Clarus and countless others really were dead. Their home really had been destroyed. People who helped them really were being slaughtered because of the association. Those losses were real, the danger to the entire world was real, the responsibility to fix it was real, and the destiny Noctis had been dreading his whole life was the only option they had left. Chapter 10 is the guys dealing with not only what happened in Altissia but also drowning under the grief they hadn’t let themselves feel yet of everything that had happened before.

Enter chapter 10 Gladio and Noctis - character foils with personality types at different ends of the spectrum who were raised under similar circumstances and came out with very different world views and personal strengths that tend to highlight each other’s flaws - and the clashing of coping mechanisms.

Gladio’s instinct is to fall back on the precepts and moral code he was raised with (loyalty, strength, honor, pride in his calling, along with the kind of mental conditioning that would come with having been military trained from a young age) and hold his head up and carry on, no matter what. He has a goal and a duty to the world/himself/his family to do what needs to be done for the greater good despite the fact that he’s coming apart at the seams. He’ll do whatever it takes to keep moving forward. He has a job to do. They all have a job to do, and nothing can stand in the way of it.

Noctis withdraws. imo, Noctis has been suffering a staggering case of PTSD for most of his life that has never really been acknowledged or dealt with. In the prologue script thing Ignis confirms that Noctis had a drastic personality change after he was injured by the daemon that almost killed him, which happened after he lost his mother at a young age and years spent wanting nothing more than to spend time with his dad and rarely being able to, and before he witnessed the massacre at Tenebrae, and was followed by a long recovery and growing up watching his father slowly die from the power and responsibility that Noctis was going to inherit, as well as having the title Chosen One and all the expectation therein like a boulder on his shoulders since he was 8.  

I think this is why he’s grown up so isolated even surrounded by his friends, because he’s cultivated this distance as a means to protect himself, it’s the only way he knows how to keep functioning. He bottles everything he feels because he doesn’t know how to express it and he deals with disappointment by acting passive and/or aloof, and he deals with trauma by disassociating and retreating into himself. 

To Gladio’s point, I maintain that being the friend on the other side of those particular coping mechanisms would be difficult/frustrating for anyone, especially someone like Gladio who has always been blunt and expressive and brazenly and unapologetically himself and just can’t fathom the way Noctis’s mind works.

There are several weeks that we don’t get to see between chapter 9 and chapter 10, but it’s pretty heavily implied that Noctis has kept his distance from the rest of them, including Ignis, which is what seems to have been the main motivation for Gladio’s blow up on the train. To him it looks like Noctis doesn’t care, and worse that he’s so tangled up in his own head that he hasn’t even noticed that one of his best friends is suffering. What Gladio sees is Ignis, who has been through just as much as Noctis has since they left Insomnia and who has now also been permanently and debilitatingly injured in the line of his duty (both personal and professional) to Noctis, and who has despite all that powered through the pain and anguish and uncertainty and stepped up without hesitation and is trying, while Noctis has spent the last few weeks wallowing without even acknowledging the sacrifices that have been made in his name, just sulking around with the power of the Lucii in his pocket instead of on his finger like a blatant refusal to take up the mantle and be king and do his damn job.

Of course we have much more Noctis canon than Gladio canon to work with. We know that Noctis has been thinking of nothing else, and has kept his distance from Ignis because he blames himself, and because every part of his history is proof precedent that those close to him will die protecting him, and he’s so afraid of losing them. Just carrying the ring and all its creepy otherworldly whispering around in his pocket is physically painful and he knows the moment he puts it on he becomes a dying man. He feels guilty for wanting to avoid his duty, and the constant fear and insecurity that’s always plagued him has been proven valid and he doesn’t know how to come back from that: he’s failed everyone, including Luna, the one person in the world he swore to protect and the only promise he’s ever allowed himself to make.

But Noctis is incapable of expressing any of this, communication has never been his strong suit (see Prompto never really being able to trust that Noctis cares for him as much as we know Noctis does), and Gladio can’t be blamed for jumping to wrong conclusions when Noctis doesn’t share any of the right ones. There’s no evidence of splintering that’s happening inside. On the outside Noctis is going through the motions but has completely secluded himself and from what it looks like to me, barely spoken to any of them for weeks while he gazes moodily into the distance. That would be hard to swallow.

I’m sorry, this got long and probably mostly incoherent I’m terrible at explaining things. Basically my feelings are that I can and will defend both Gladio and Noctis on all points for their behavior after chapter 9 because I think they both fucked up and handled things badly and that it’s very realistic for them to be human and flawed (for all of them to be human and flawed, which they magnificently are I love these characters so much). 

I’m only upset because this really could have been such an interesting plot point and character development and so good if it had just been done well, but narratively the ball was dropped to the point where it just felt unfinished. Noctis and Gladio’s relationship was so strained throughout chapter ten and they were so harsh with each other that we as the audience needed to see them actually reconcile and apologize to each other and at least start working toward trusting each other again. We deserved to see this one loose end tied up for the impact it would have later on, y��know? I feel like their relationship was done a disservice by lazy writing.

[plutofit]

"I'm So (Not) Hood Inferiority Complexes" by David Pailin Jr.

I’ll never forget sitting next to my first girlfriend during vacation Bible school and a boy clearly from the inner city dared to put his foot on her chair... and kept it there.

Her eyes glanced at me with the words “... you're going to do something right?” written all over them.

Indeed I was. It was an obvious micro-aggression, as he had been staring at her ever since we sat down. I noticed and being petty, decided to share as much PDA possible, within the super sanctified setting we were in. Keeping that same energy, I moved her and her chair, so that his legs would no longer reach it. He countered this by moving his chair up and began tapping his foot on her chair to raise the stakes.

“He must think I’m scared of him because he's hood,” I thought to myself.

At 15 years old, I hadn't encountered a time or place to punch someone, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t prepared to... or afraid to. As we eyed each other while everyone was supposed to be praying, he said something that caught me off guard.

“You’re not better than me.”

Fast forward to college. I’m seriously bougie and everyone knows it. My friends and I were known for going to the ratchetest clubs in the most ratchet parts of town, flashing our refund checks around local girls who knew our tuition was way out of their ex-boyfriend's budget. If my actions didn’t say it, I had no problem letting the words "this is what net-worth looks like" flow from my mouth. I sold the dream of status and most importantly a future quite freely, and any girl who didn't want that was simply too dumb to appreciate it.

The only thing was, some very gorgeous and very smart women were very much unimpressed with suburban stability and access. In fact, it wasn’t uncommon for some of the most astute and most attractive women in our class to be seen getting cozy with some of the most notorious in the city. Am I saying that women are the reason why so many men are trying so hard to develop mob ties? I wouldn’t go that far, but their presence often exposes moments where men feel the need to define their masculinity and unfortunately showcase their immaturity.

From a very young age, my father made it a point to let me know there was no point in pretending to be where he was from because he left there for a reason. However, I didn’t realize until much later that I subtly thought I was better than those who came from modest means. It wasn't long before I was hit with a sobering reality. There were colleagues from debilitatingly discouraging backgrounds that were in the very same classes, the very same organizations, but got better grades, better jobs, and eventually higher incomes than me. I had every leg up a suburban black kid could have, yet I personally knew some with dramatically less thriving on a whole other level than I was.

Was I soft? Had my two parents, two-story house, and goodie-goodie two-shoes education coddled me all my life? If I was born in the projects in a single-parent home in a low-performing school would I be strong enough to get where they got or even where I am today?

I don't know... I hope so.

These are hard questions to grapple with as a man when a large part of your self-confidence is rooted in your abilities, accomplishments, and positioning compared to other men. Though I never wanted to "be hood" I listened to Thug Motivation 101 almost religiously, relating it to my world, where the bad cops were still the bad cops (trying to kill me) but instead of cooking coca-ina, to get by I was “hustling” in class or finessing at part-time jobs. On everything I love, I knew and still know every word to Trap Star, but a new sense of lameness and fraudulence surfaced when I found myself parroting the lyrics around people who’ve actually lived through similar tales. It was then and there where I felt what some wypipo people experience when their obliviousness is revealed for the first time. I was embarrassed, but I honestly didn't know who to say I'm sorry to. Even worse, I didn't know what the alternative was.

As a black man, the vast majority of rich black men that I saw in the media were either from the hood, pretended like they were from the hood, or continually associate themselves with prominent hood leaders. Even if I looked at my dad, he had street smarts that I would never get, and my mom definitely chose him over the suburban boys she grew up with. Nothing says success like getting it from the mud, but when you get it from the curb or the silver spoon that success just hits differently, especially in successful hood company. That's why so many do the ut-most to come off a little... gully.

I would love to say it's not a competition, but for men, few things in life aren't, so I will say be congratulator (not a hater) instead. That's all you can do. When you're focused on that and doing the best with what you've been given, you won't feel uncomfortable around someone more or less street than you. I know plenty who've been dealt with better and worse, but there's no sense in being insecure about it either way. Some go to the other extreme with elaborate campaigns apologizing for the advantages they have when they really could use that effort to help others. Many times all that bowing and scraping only adds insult to injury because it's actually patronizing.

I still cringe when I think back at the way I acted, but I'm happy that I've been allowed to build bridges since then. I can only hope that younger generations recognize the stupidity in allowing social status to create rifts between us when our experiences and talents can impact so much more together.

[themoguls]

"I'm So (Not) Hood Inferiority Complexes" by David Pailin Jr.

I’ll never forget sitting next to my first girlfriend during vacation Bible school and a boy clearly from the inner city dared to put his foot on her chair... and kept it there.

Her eyes glanced at me with the words “... you're going to do something right?” written all over them.

Indeed I was. It was an obvious micro-aggression, as he had been staring at her ever since we sat down. I noticed and being petty, decided to share as much PDA possible, within the super sanctified setting we were in. Keeping that same energy, I moved her and her chair, so that his legs would no longer reach it. He countered this by moving his chair up and began tapping his foot on her chair to raise the stakes.

“He must think I’m scared of him because he's hood,” I thought to myself.

At 15 years old, I hadn't encountered a time or place to punch someone, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t prepared to... or afraid to. As we eyed each other while everyone was supposed to be praying, he said something that caught me off guard.

“You’re not better than me.”

Fast forward to college. I’m seriously bougie and everyone knows it. My friends and I were known for going to the ratchetest clubs in the most ratchet parts of town, flashing our refund checks around local girls who knew our tuition was way out of their ex-boyfriend's budget. If my actions didn’t say it, I had no problem letting the words "this is what net-worth looks like" flow from my mouth. I sold the dream of status and most importantly a future quite freely, and any girl who didn't want that was simply too dumb to appreciate it.

The only thing was, some very gorgeous and very smart women were very much unimpressed with suburban stability and access. In fact, it wasn’t uncommon for some of the most astute and most attractive women in our class to be seen getting cozy with some of the most notorious in the city. Am I saying that women are the reason why so many men are trying so hard to develop mob ties? I wouldn’t go that far, but their presence often exposes moments where men feel the need to define their masculinity and unfortunately showcase their immaturity.

From a very young age, my father made it a point to let me know there was no point in pretending to be where he was from because he left there for a reason. However, I didn’t realize until much later that I subtly thought I was better than those who came from modest means. It wasn't long before I was hit with a sobering reality. There were colleagues from debilitatingly discouraging backgrounds that were in the very same classes, the very same organizations, but got better grades, better jobs, and eventually higher incomes than me. I had every leg up a suburban black kid could have, yet I personally knew some with dramatically less thriving on a whole other level than I was.

Was I soft? Had my two parents, two-story house, and goodie-goodie two-shoes education coddled me all my life? If I was born in the projects in a single-parent home in a low-performing school would I be strong enough to get where they got or even where I am today?

I don't know... I hope so.

These are hard questions to grapple with as a man when a large part of your self-confidence is rooted in your abilities, accomplishments, and positioning compared to other men. Though I never wanted to "be hood" I listened to Thug Motivation 101 almost religiously, relating it to my world, where the bad cops were still the bad cops (trying to kill me) but instead of cooking coca-ina, to get by I was “hustling” in class or finessing at part-time jobs. On everything I love, I knew and still know every word to Trap Star, but a new sense of lameness and fraudulence surfaced when I found myself parroting the lyrics around people who’ve actually lived through similar tales. It was then and there where I felt what some wypipo people experience when their obliviousness is revealed for the first time. I was embarrassed, but I honestly didn't know who to say I'm sorry to. Even worse, I didn't know what the alternative was.

As a black man, the vast majority of rich black men that I saw in the media were either from the hood, pretended like they were from the hood, or continually associate themselves with prominent hood leaders. Even if I looked at my dad, he had street smarts that I would never get, and my mom definitely chose him over the suburban boys she grew up with. Nothing says success like getting it from the mud, but when you get it from the curb or the silver spoon that success just hits differently, especially in successful hood company. That's why so many do the ut-most to come off a little... gully.

I would love to say it's not a competition, but for men, few things in life aren't, so I will say be congratulator (not a hater) instead. That's all you can do. When you're focused on that and doing the best with what you've been given, you won't feel uncomfortable around someone more or less street than you. I know plenty who've been dealt with better and worse, but there's no sense in being insecure about it either way. Some go to the other extreme with elaborate campaigns apologizing for the advantages they have when they really could use that effort to help others. Many times all that bowing and scraping only adds insult to injury because it's actually patronizing.

I still cringe when I think back at the way I acted, but I'm happy that I've been allowed to build bridges since then. I can only hope that younger generations recognize the stupidity in allowing social status to create rifts between us when our experiences and talents can impact so much more together.

[youngxanointed]

"I'm So (Not) Hood Inferiority Complexes" by David Pailin Jr.

I’ll never forget sitting next to my first girlfriend during vacation Bible school and a boy clearly from the inner city dared to put his foot on her chair... and kept it there.

Her eyes glanced at me with the words “... you're going to do something right?” written all over them.

Indeed I was. It was an obvious micro-aggression, as he had been staring at her ever since we sat down. I noticed and being petty, decided to share as much PDA possible, within the super sanctified setting we were in. Keeping that same energy, I moved her and her chair, so that his legs would no longer reach it. He countered this by moving his chair up and began tapping his foot on her chair to raise the stakes.

“He must think I’m scared of him because he's hood,” I thought to myself.

At 15 years old, I hadn't encountered a time or place to punch someone, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t prepared to... or afraid to. As we eyed each other while everyone was supposed to be praying, he said something that caught me off guard.

“You’re not better than me.”

Fast forward to college. I’m seriously bougie and everyone knows it. My friends and I were known for going to the ratchetest clubs in the most ratchet parts of town, flashing our refund checks around local girls who knew our tuition was way out of their ex-boyfriend's budget. If my actions didn’t say it, I had no problem letting the words "this is what net-worth looks like" flow from my mouth. I sold the dream of status and most importantly a future quite freely, and any girl who didn't want that was simply too dumb to appreciate it.

The only thing was, some very gorgeous and very smart women were very much unimpressed with suburban stability and access. In fact, it wasn’t uncommon for some of the most astute and most attractive women in our class to be seen getting cozy with some of the most notorious in the city. Am I saying that women are the reason why so many men are trying so hard to develop mob ties? I wouldn’t go that far, but their presence often exposes moments where men feel the need to define their masculinity and unfortunately showcase their immaturity.

From a very young age, my father made it a point to let me know there was no point in pretending to be where he was from because he left there for a reason. However, I didn’t realize until much later that I subtly thought I was better than those who came from modest means. It wasn't long before I was hit with a sobering reality. There were colleagues from debilitatingly discouraging backgrounds that were in the very same classes, the very same organizations, but got better grades, better jobs, and eventually higher incomes than me. I had every leg up a suburban black kid could have, yet I personally knew some with dramatically less thriving on a whole other level than I was.

Was I soft? Had my two parents, two-story house, and goodie-goodie two-shoes education coddled me all my life? If I was born in the projects in a single-parent home in a low-performing school would I be strong enough to get where they got or even where I am today?

I don't know... I hope so.

These are hard questions to grapple with as a man when a large part of your self-confidence is rooted in your abilities, accomplishments, and positioning compared to other men. Though I never wanted to "be hood" I listened to Thug Motivation 101 almost religiously, relating it to my world, where the bad cops were still the bad cops (trying to kill me) but instead of cooking coca-ina, to get by I was “hustling” in class or finessing at part-time jobs. On everything I love, I knew and still know every word to Trap Star, but a new sense of lameness and fraudulence surfaced when I found myself parroting the lyrics around people who’ve actually lived through similar tales. It was then and there where I felt what some wypipo people experience when their obliviousness is revealed for the first time. I was embarrassed, but I honestly didn't know who to say I'm sorry to. Even worse, I didn't know what the alternative was.

As a black man, the vast majority of rich black men that I saw in the media were either from the hood, pretended like they were from the hood, or continually associate themselves with prominent hood leaders. Even if I looked at my dad, he had street smarts that I would never get, and my mom definitely chose him over the suburban boys she grew up with. Nothing says success like getting it from the mud, but when you get it from the curb or the silver spoon that success just hits differently, especially in successful hood company. That's why so many do the ut-most to come off a little... gully.

I would love to say it's not a competition, but for men, few things in life aren't, so I will say be congratulator (not a hater) instead. That's all you can do. When you're focused on that and doing the best with what you've been given, you won't feel uncomfortable around someone more or less street than you. I know plenty who've been dealt with better and worse, but there's no sense in being insecure about it either way. Some go to the other extreme with elaborate campaigns apologizing for the advantages they have when they really could use that effort to help others. Many times all that bowing and scraping only adds insult to injury because it's actually patronizing.

I still cringe when I think back at the way I acted, but I'm happy that I've been allowed to build bridges since then. I can only hope that younger generations recognize the stupidity in allowing social status to create rifts between us when our experiences and talents can impact so much more together.

[artistsxcreatives]

"I'm So (Not) Hood Inferiority Complexes" by David Pailin Jr.

I’ll never forget sitting next to my first girlfriend during vacation Bible school and a boy clearly from the inner city dared to put his foot on her chair... and kept it there.

Her eyes glanced at me with the words “... you're going to do something right?” written all over them.

Indeed I was. It was an obvious micro-aggression, as he had been staring at her ever since we sat down. I noticed and being petty, decided to share as much PDA possible, within the super sanctified setting we were in. Keeping that same energy, I moved her and her chair, so that his legs would no longer reach it. He countered this by moving his chair up and began tapping his foot on her chair to raise the stakes.

“He must think I’m scared of him because he's hood,” I thought to myself.

At 15 years old, I hadn't encountered a time or place to punch someone, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t prepared to... or afraid to. As we eyed each other while everyone was supposed to be praying, he said something that caught me off guard.

“You’re not better than me.”

Fast forward to college. I’m seriously bougie and everyone knows it. My friends and I were known for going to the ratchetest clubs in the most ratchet parts of town, flashing our refund checks around local girls who knew our tuition was way out of their ex-boyfriend's budget. If my actions didn’t say it, I had no problem letting the words "this is what net-worth looks like" flow from my mouth. I sold the dream of status and most importantly a future quite freely, and any girl who didn't want that was simply too dumb to appreciate it.

The only thing was, some very gorgeous and very smart women were very much unimpressed with suburban stability and access. In fact, it wasn’t uncommon for some of the most astute and most attractive women in our class to be seen getting cozy with some of the most notorious in the city. Am I saying that women are the reason why so many men are trying so hard to develop mob ties? I wouldn’t go that far, but their presence often exposes moments where men feel the need to define their masculinity and unfortunately showcase their immaturity.

From a very young age, my father made it a point to let me know there was no point in pretending to be where he was from because he left there for a reason. However, I didn’t realize until much later that I subtly thought I was better than those who came from modest means. It wasn't long before I was hit with a sobering reality. There were colleagues from debilitatingly discouraging backgrounds that were in the very same classes, the very same organizations, but got better grades, better jobs, and eventually higher incomes than me. I had every leg up a suburban black kid could have, yet I personally knew some with dramatically less thriving on a whole other level than I was.

Was I soft? Had my two parents, two-story house, and goodie-goodie two-shoes education coddled me all my life? If I was born in the projects in a single-parent home in a low-performing school would I be strong enough to get where they got or even where I am today?

I don't know... I hope so.

These are hard questions to grapple with as a man when a large part of your self-confidence is rooted in your abilities, accomplishments, and positioning compared to other men. Though I never wanted to "be hood" I listened to Thug Motivation 101 almost religiously, relating it to my world, where the bad cops were still the bad cops (trying to kill me) but instead of cooking coca-ina, to get by I was “hustling” in class or finessing at part-time jobs. On everything I love, I knew and still know every word to Trap Star, but a new sense of lameness and fraudulence surfaced when I found myself parroting the lyrics around people who’ve actually lived through similar tales. It was then and there where I felt what some wypipo people experience when their obliviousness is revealed for the first time. I was embarrassed, but I honestly didn't know who to say I'm sorry to. Even worse, I didn't know what the alternative was.

As a black man, the vast majority of rich black men that I saw in the media were either from the hood, pretended like they were from the hood, or continually associate themselves with prominent hood leaders. Even if I looked at my dad, he had street smarts that I would never get, and my mom definitely chose him over the suburban boys she grew up with. Nothing says success like getting it from the mud, but when you get it from the curb or the silver spoon that success just hits differently, especially in successful hood company. That's why so many do the ut-most to come off a little... gully.

I would love to say it's not a competition, but for men, few things in life aren't, so I will say be congratulator (not a hater) instead. That's all you can do. When you're focused on that and doing the best with what you've been given, you won't feel uncomfortable around someone more or less street than you. I know plenty who've been dealt with better and worse, but there's no sense in being insecure about it either way. Some go to the other extreme with elaborate campaigns apologizing for the advantages they have when they really could use that effort to help others. Many times all that bowing and scraping only adds insult to injury because it's actually patronizing.

I still cringe when I think back at the way I acted, but I'm happy that I've been allowed to build bridges since then. I can only hope that younger generations recognize the stupidity in allowing social status to create rifts between us when our experiences and talents can impact so much more together.

[thegrammylab]

"I'm So (Not) Hood Inferiority Complexes" by David Pailin Jr.

I’ll never forget sitting next to my first girlfriend during vacation Bible school and a boy clearly from the inner city dared to put his foot on her chair... and kept it there.

Her eyes glanced at me with the words “... you're going to do something right?” written all over them.

Indeed I was. It was an obvious micro-aggression, as he had been staring at her ever since we sat down. I noticed and being petty, decided to share as much PDA possible, within the super sanctified setting we were in. Keeping that same energy, I moved her and her chair, so that his legs would no longer reach it. He countered this by moving his chair up and began tapping his foot on her chair to raise the stakes.

“He must think I’m scared of him because he's hood,” I thought to myself.

At 15 years old, I hadn't encountered a time or place to punch someone, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t prepared to... or afraid to. As we eyed each other while everyone was supposed to be praying, he said something that caught me off guard.

“You’re not better than me.”

Fast forward to college. I’m seriously bougie and everyone knows it. My friends and I were known for going to the ratchetest clubs in the most ratchet parts of town, flashing our refund checks around local girls who knew our tuition was way out of their ex-boyfriend's budget. If my actions didn’t say it, I had no problem letting the words "this is what net-worth looks like" flow from my mouth. I sold the dream of status and most importantly a future quite freely, and any girl who didn't want that was simply too dumb to appreciate it.

The only thing was, some very gorgeous and very smart women were very much unimpressed with suburban stability and access. In fact, it wasn’t uncommon for some of the most astute and most attractive women in our class to be seen getting cozy with some of the most notorious in the city. Am I saying that women are the reason why so many men are trying so hard to develop mob ties? I wouldn’t go that far, but their presence often exposes moments where men feel the need to define their masculinity and unfortunately showcase their immaturity.

From a very young age, my father made it a point to let me know there was no point in pretending to be where he was from because he left there for a reason. However, I didn’t realize until much later that I subtly thought I was better than those who came from modest means. It wasn't long before I was hit with a sobering reality. There were colleagues from debilitatingly discouraging backgrounds that were in the very same classes, the very same organizations, but got better grades, better jobs, and eventually higher incomes than me. I had every leg up a suburban black kid could have, yet I personally knew some with dramatically less thriving on a whole other level than I was.

Was I soft? Had my two parents, two-story house, and goodie-goodie two-shoes education coddled me all my life? If I was born in the projects in a single-parent home in a low-performing school would I be strong enough to get where they got or even where I am today?

I don't know... I hope so.

These are hard questions to grapple with as a man when a large part of your self-confidence is rooted in your abilities, accomplishments, and positioning compared to other men. Though I never wanted to "be hood" I listened to Thug Motivation 101 almost religiously, relating it to my world, where the bad cops were still the bad cops (trying to kill me) but instead of cooking coca-ina, to get by I was “hustling” in class or finessing at part-time jobs. On everything I love, I knew and still know every word to Trap Star, but a new sense of lameness and fraudulence surfaced when I found myself parroting the lyrics around people who’ve actually lived through similar tales. It was then and there where I felt what some wypipo people experience when their obliviousness is revealed for the first time. I was embarrassed, but I honestly didn't know who to say I'm sorry to. Even worse, I didn't know what the alternative was.

As a black man, the vast majority of rich black men that I saw in the media were either from the hood, pretended like they were from the hood, or continually associate themselves with prominent hood leaders. Even if I looked at my dad, he had street smarts that I would never get, and my mom definitely chose him over the suburban boys she grew up with. Nothing says success like getting it from the mud, but when you get it from the curb or the silver spoon that success just hits differently, especially in successful hood company. That's why so many do the ut-most to come off a little... gully.

I would love to say it's not a competition, but for men, few things in life aren't, so I will say be congratulator (not a hater) instead. That's all you can do. When you're focused on that and doing the best with what you've been given, you won't feel uncomfortable around someone more or less street than you. I know plenty who've been dealt with better and worse, but there's no sense in being insecure about it either way. Some go to the other extreme with elaborate campaigns apologizing for the advantages they have when they really could use that effort to help others. Many times all that bowing and scraping only adds insult to injury because it's actually patronizing.

I still cringe when I think back at the way I acted, but I'm happy that I've been allowed to build bridges since then. I can only hope that younger generations recognize the stupidity in allowing social status to create rifts between us when our experiences and talents can impact so much more together.