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archetypal-archivist · 4 years ago

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Hermitcraft-What is Glass but Crystal Light?

There is a woman, sleeping in the heart of an eldritch being beyond mortal ken. There is a man, strapped into a chair, watched over by worried friends as his mind flies across the cosmos- looking for someone. There is a ship that sails the rivers of light that flow through the outer reaches of the void. And long ago, there were two boys who were nearly consumed by a star that should have stayed dead.

This is their story, split into ten parts, each inspired by a song and each part written within the song's duration. May they receive their happy ending yet.

Also known as, I took on a drabble writing challenge and came out with 1500+ words of Sad Grian the Space Sailor content. Links to the songs will be at the bottom.

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The boat rocked through the waves, glowing light washing against its hull as nebulas and galaxies spun by. Grian stretched out his hand, letting the solar winds trail over and through his fingers, giving his skin a pale, silver glow. To Mumbo, standing stock still- near invisible in the light of the void, purple and dark and impossible to describe- Grian looked ethereal. Impossible. Like light in the void, like a man made of nothing, stretching out beyond his galaxy to see a glimpse of his lover across the cosmos... Was he talking of himself or of Grian? Best not to think about it. (Best not to think.) He was too boring for the brunet, he knew, but even if his redstone skills lacked the ability to hold his love’s attention, not like the starry seas could, it at least gave him this. Back at home, his body lay strapped into a cold metal chair and electrodes and wires poked harshly against his temples. Iskall watched helplessly as his friend’s eyes flickered behind his closed lids. Alas, if only his friend could see the heart that stood before him, wishing for a spark of that brilliant mind to be turned his way. (Sailor Song by Autoheart)

The seas were cold comfort, although few could tell. Grian knew that better than most. Mumbo was precious, truly, but he was better off without him. The seas had claimed him, marked him when they were younger, back when it was just him and the sea and the drowning feelings inflicted upon them both by a man too much like a black hole to be survived. He and the sea had come out changed, something less than human, in the case of his friend, and a bit less than whole for him. Mumbo really did deserve a whole person, not just a shell of one. But still, even if his heart had been eaten by the void, despite the sea’s best efforts, he could leave Mumbo this- a kiss, pressed to a sleeping temple, a key on the table, and a bottle of dreams. All he had left of his heart, all that he could give. (This is Not Goodbye by Sidewalk Prophets)

Taurtis was not always the sea. He was not always light. But always, as before and as always and as he always will be, he was not enough. Grian blamed him, he knew this too. He had come out of the mess of Sam and his pull just as broken as his best friend, but somehow Grian always spoke as if he had come out the poorer of the two of them. As if losing his physical form and his very name, his very identity, was somehow less of a burden than simply losing a heart. Perhaps that was why Grian was so cruel to him now, insisting that having Taurtis wasn’t enough these days. Perhaps losing a heart really was a burden. But compared to a body, to a soul set loose among the cosmos to join the solar seas and the stardust whipped up by the waves? Having to learn the art of surrender in all its brutal perfection? No, Taurtis had it worse by far. But even if he had lost his body, even if Grian blamed him for not protecting them both, even if he wasn’t enough (had internalized the blame, just a bit). Well. At least they’ll be together forever now. He would learn to be enough, maybe. Given time. Time enough in all the world. (Neptune by Sleeping at Last)

The void was not dark. The void was not silent. Beings roamed its reaches, things of light, borders and physics and string theory made flesh. The voids were treacherous, and those who sailed the cosmic seas knew its dangers well. There were things that lurked in the void’s fractalling, mind-hazing fog, in the light that was anything but. Things that ate men alive, bundled them up in contradictions and questions until their who unraveled from their what, until their atoms pulled apart at the seams. But the most eldritch of things in the void was hope. The most dangerous by far, it’s light cast out across the void, glimmered upon the waves and luring in the foolhardy and the desperate into its reach. And yet, it never struck. Never consumed, not as the other monsters of the void did. It didn’t need to. Any who caught glimpse of its might would throw themselves into its mass whole-heartedly. And yet. And yet. Not all who lost themselves to hope were devoured. Deep in its heart, there sleeps a woman. Her name is Stress, because that is what she is. And the heart of the hope at the center of the void is always breaking, because that woman, that Stress in the fabric of reality? She is trying to break free. And someday, she will succeed. And all will be torn bloody and new again. The seas know it. The absent skies know it. Taurtis knows it, in his piecemeal state. And oh, how hope pulls at him for the knowing. Best to leave his Grian in the dark. { Voidfish (Plural) by Rachel Rose Mitchell}

Vintage Beef knew better than to sell to traders and pirates like the man before him. Anyone who looked like they stepped out of a children’s picture book weren’t likely to be able to pay. Pirates belonged in a by-gone age, even ones that stank of light more than anyone he had ever met. But the man before him, edged in salt-spray golden glow, seemed so lost. So desperate. What was a drink, in the face of that? So he served the man a drink and a side of cow, as a treat to keep the man from hopefully getting too sloshed. No luck. And soon, the story came pouring out, a story of a pair of boys and a man who shone like stars, who blinded them with his light and sucked the life from their bones like marrow. A black hole in all but name. The fork in his hand clicked against the man’s teeth as he choked out the words, hands shaking. A childhood gone wrong. Beef just nodded, wondering, lost in the face of such loss. He could understand that, perhaps. But what was his own lost prospects, lost to his bar and his job, in the face of a lost life? He just hoped the man didn’t end up like all other men in story books. Stories ended. And, as the man stumbled out of the bar, starshine glittering around him like grief, he seemed as if he was rushing into his epilogue. Best wishes, Beef spared him a thought. He would need them. (Golden Leaves by Passenger)

Joe loved the sea, for all that he could not bear to touch it. As an ender hybrid, a bit like that prince in the far tower, its waters would burn him to the quick. And he loved the man he caught glimpses of when he stared out across the waves even more. The man had no name, not that he knew of anyway. Though, it’s not like he could ask, locked in his tower as he was. Part of the job description of a poet, of course. Call it an occupational hazard, just like falling for impossibly distant figures straight out of myth or legend and feeling your consciousness splinter across the cosmos to bring you inspiration in your dreams. (Sleep… hurt. He tried not to think about it.) But yes. The man on the edge of the sea, who rode the waves like he was made to. Perhaps he would write a story about him… (Venus by Sleeping at Last)

Grian knew that things were coming to a head. The sea beneath his boat was insisting that it was not actually the sea. Again. He must be going mad, too, losing his mind just like he lost his heart to that awful void-beast monster from so long ago. But somehow, it felt right, to listen to the sea. To lean over the prow and let his fingers trail through its liquid light waters, let the starshine climb up his veins and ooze through his pores, through his system. It was dangerous, yes, but when he cried tears that glowed like joy, it felt good. Cathartic. Like a piece of his was returning to him. He could never get his heart back, and even if he could, he’d turn right around and hand it to Mumbo. But maybe, just maybe, things would be okay. (It’s Alright by Mother Mother)

Taurtis knew the end was coming. And he was okay with it- longed for it even. He had a heart, unlike his friend. But where he was going, the woman who he had set that feeble organ on, he didn’t need it. Ha. This was why Grian really was stupid, as much as he was his best friend. As if you needed a physical heart to love someone. Deep in the heart of hope lived the most beautiful of women in existence, and she would wake soon. And her emergence would kill him in all the ways that didn’t matter. So in the face of that, why not give his best friend one last gift? A steady trail of heart’s blood was perhaps not quite equal to a heart, but for Grian- so caught up on the physicality of the world, the goof- it would do well enough. And perhaps, with this, he would stop moping. Heroes got their happy endings at the end of time, right? (Never Seen Anything “Quite Like You” by The Script)

Bloody hell. What a way to wake up. Stress stared out across the broken remains of a world blown apart by her emergence. How awful it was that her chance at life was paid at the price of a hundred thousand lives. Tears ran down her face. She did not want this. But soon, a man came to her, or a figment of one perhaps. A breath of comfort on the wind, blacker than pitch, black enough that pulled light from the void itself. It wrapped itself around her, kissing away her tears. Clothing her in mother of pearl- fitting, for she knew she was destined to bear forth a new heart of hope. She did not want this, but the affection was appreciated all the same. It would be the only kind touch she would receive in a while, the work would take up most of her free time for the next millennia at least. The void-black ghost introduced himself as Taurtis, at her service, to help her in her task. It was more freeing than service to his best friend, he explained. A service chosen, not owed or forced or bound. And besides, he whispered shyly. He loved her. And perhaps, as Stress turned her eyes to the newborn universe beyond, she could learn to love him too. (cover of On the Arrow by AFI, sung by Rachell Rose Mitchell)

In the distant black, a goddess bore forth a new universe, her shadow of a lover at her side. In the light of the sea, a ship capsized as the waters underneath shuddered and bucked, for the spirit that ensured the ship’s safety was dead. And the man aboard it did not drown. To his amazement, of course. He really had expected to die. But then, hearts full up of love are perhaps the lightest things around and instead of sinking, Grian floated. And when he saw he could do that, joy filled his heart, buoying him higher, and he swam. He had his true love to return to. And when he returned, soggy and beaming, he saw just what lengths his Mumbo had gone to watch him and he freed him from his prison of redstone and wire to kiss him awake. He laughed, giddy, despite Mumbo’s groggy confusion. They were free! Free of longing, of hoping, of heartlessness and cold metal substitutes for love. They could be together! Mumbo just blinked, once, twice, before breaking out into a bright peal of jingling laughter. They were free! He tried to pick up Grian to swing him into a kiss, but his long vigil in his machine left him loose-limbed and weak. Grian kissed him anyway. (Time to Run by Lord Huron)

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(Sailor Song) (This is Not Goodbye) (Neptune) (Voidfish Plural) (Golden Leaves) (Venus) (It's Alright) (Never Seen Anything "Quite Like You") (On the Arrow) (Time to Run)

#hermitcraft #my writing #minecraft #space #minor hermitshipping #taurtis #grian #stressmonster101 #vintagebeef #joe hills #mumbo jumbo #trigger warning: sam is mentioned #fanfiction

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dwellordream · 3 years ago

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“...Historians concur that live-in domestic service was primarily an urban phenomenon in the late nineteenth century. One estimate suggests that between 15 and 30 percent of northeastern city-dwellers hired live-in domestics. The historian David Katzman, who has generated the most refined statistics, demonstrates that even within relative geographical proximity, city-dwellers hired servants more often than did rural dwellers, and city-dwellers with large pools of foreign labor more than city-dwellers without. Nationwide at midcentury there was one domestic servant for every ten families, with a considerably higher ratio in large cities like Boston and New York.

A greater proportion of Bostonians hired domestic servants than did residents of any other northern city, with 219 servants per thousand families. With traditions of household service born in slavery, even after the Civil War, the South led the nation in its reliance on domestic servants, with Atlanta in 1880 boasting 331 servants per thousand families. Even in the South, though, the difference between city and country was notable, with Atlanta in 1900 hiring four times as many servants per thousand families as in the rest of Georgia. Together these figures suggest the flourishing of an era in the history of Victorianism. It was common for American bourgeois city-dwellers on the Atlantic seaboard, even ones of modest means, to rely on the labor of maids to sustain their households.

Of course, the end of the story is popular cliché. With the opening of more lucrative and less degrading jobs for young women as sales clerks, ‘‘typewriters,’’ and teachers, the ‘‘servant problem’’ became terminal, and by the First World War, American housewives could not depend on the hiring of live-in domestic help to assist them in their housework. It is significant, though, that even when ‘‘necessity’’ suggested the reintegration of daughters into the domestic economy, they were gone for good. The culture had put girls to other uses, from which they would not return to their mothers’ sides.

We still might ask why girls were often excused from domestic labor— especially given the compounding weight of the advice literature recommending otherwise. The answer lies in the increasing role played by daughters and servants in the bourgeois quest for refinement. Even when the gross number of live-in servants declined as production moved out of the home, the hiring of at least one domestic remained a prerequisite for middle-class status. The statistics on who hired servants bear out the middle-classness of this phenomenon, with 65 percent of servants in the Northeast in 1860 working in households with no other servants. In an increasingly mobile and prosperous society, hiring servants was one way to demonstrate standing, a concrete and conspicuous way of demonstrating what you had left behind.

One historian argues that the cultural importance of servants should be measured in the amount that some less prosperous families were willing to spend to hire them—sometimes as much as one-third of family income. Clearly, the freeing of daughters from steady household work and the hiring of domestic servants of lesser, often foreign, status went in tandem with the changing purpose of the home itself. Eighteenth-century households had required helpers to assist in domestic production. The homes of the mid– nineteenth century elite instead featured housework ‘‘as the creation and maintenance of comfort and appearance,’’ in the words of the historian Christine Stansell.

As the Beecher sisters observed, families were increasing ‘‘in refinement’’ such that they no longer wished to live in close intimacy with ‘‘uncultured neighbors,’’ far less daughters of foreign shores, who were working as servants. Thus one mill-owning family in rural Vermont made a point of hiring Irish help rather than the daughters of neighboring farmers, who might object to eating in the kitchen and expect to be ‘‘one of the family.’’ Architects reflected such changes by midcentury, such that servants’ quarters were designed as discrete parts of the house, with back stairs and separate entrances. Custom increasingly favored uniforms and servant dining tables in the kitchen.

At the same time that middle classes aspired to higher standards of comfort and appearance in accordance with new possibilities, women’s primary responsibility shifted from the supervision of a household manufactory to family nurturance, the raising and socializing of children. Much has been written about the evolution of new ideals for motherhood following the American Revolution, as women gained responsibility for raising virtuous citizens. ‘‘Republican mothers’’ shaped new daughters as well as new sons. Initially considered necessary allies in the steady work of processing the stuff of survival, the daughters of middle-class families became themselves the prime products the home produced—the embodiment of the principles of sensibility and refinement.

Mothers’ new responsibilities did not erase old ones. The historian Jeanne Boydston has appropriately criticized the readiness of her colleagues to mistake the ideology of domesticity for reality, arguing that by no means did the productive work of the home cease with the industrial revolution. Instead, Boydston argues, the emphasis on the emotional task of mothering tended to eclipse from view, but not eliminate, the continued real labor—the making of clothing, the putting up of preserves, the carrying of fuel—still carried on in the middle-class home. She is right in her argument that ‘‘paid domestic workers did not free the mistress of the household from labor.’’

But even Boydston acknowledges that domestic servants instead did the work that would have been done by other females in the household—including adult female relatives and daughters. An interesting case in point is the urban family of woman’s rights advocates Henry Blackwell, Lucy Stone, and their daughter Alice Stone Blackwell. As Boydston tells us, Lucy Stone, who was raised on a farm, still kept chickens, worked a garden, and tended a horse and cow, even as she lived a prosperous middle-class existence outside of Boston. Alice Blackwell later remembered that ‘‘she dried all the herbs and put up all the fruits in their season. She made her own yeast, her own bread, her own dried beef, even her own soap.’’

In her lively diary, however, Alice Blackwell reports doing little household work. Such chores as emerge in her diary were designed to interrupt her incessant reading, which was thought to be responsible for her bad headaches. Thus her cousin, visiting the household, ‘‘had undertaken to find me something to stop my reading: churning; and I churned in the cellar till the butter came.’’ In fact, advice writers who had failed in their efforts to promote domestic work for daughters on other grounds often focused on the value of domestic labor as a source of exercise. The Beecher sisters observed that if girls did strenuous housework, their parents would be spared the expense of gymnasiums. ‘‘Does it not seem poor economy to pay servants for letting our muscles grow feeble, and then to pay operators to exercise them for us?’’

Louisa May Alcott, whose collected opus represents a powerful gloss on the domestic debates of late-Victorianism, repeatedly suggested the healthfulness of housework, ‘‘the best sort of gymnastics for girls,’’ according to Dr. Alec in Eight Cousins. Her Old-Fashioned Girl explicitly contrasts the healthy republican daughter skilled in domestic arts with the languid late-Victorian belle, afflicted with boredom because of her lack of home chores. Mothers undoubtedly continued both to supervise and perform much household maintenance, but they did so assisted by domestics rather than their own daughters. What did middle-class girls do instead of housework?

This was a question which greatly concerned commentators, who asked, as did Mary Livermore in 1883, ‘‘What shall we do with our daughters?’’ Mary Virginia Terhune, too, lamented the passing of housework as girls’ raison d’être and with it ‘‘that prime need of a human being—something to do.’’ Parents found a range of things for daughters to do, including the ornamental skills of sewing, playing piano, writing and reading associated with self-culture. Increasingly, also, they sent daughters to school. Common schools designed for both sexes did not include sewing.

In later years, the Beecher sisters observed, ‘‘A girl often can not keep pace with her class, if she gives any time to domestic matters.’’ And they noted, ‘‘Accordingly she is excused from them all during the whole term of her education.’’ Girls themselves noted the increasing power of lessons in any competition with housework. Agnes Hamilton remarked that first her French tutor and then her German homework prevented her from doing her ‘‘share of Monday’s work.’’ It was not long before the work of some girls was reassigned.

Those who were serious about domestic education, such as a composer of ‘‘An Ideal Education of Girls’’ that appeared in an 1886 issue of Education, suggested, in fact, that this disjunction be acknowledged. A girl should receive the same education as a boy until the age of twelve, its author suggested. At that time a girl should drop out of school for two years and learn the complete running of a household, returning to school only with that formal apprenticeship accomplished. Only such complete separation of activities would allow the household its due.”

- Jane H. Hunter, “Daughters’ Lives and the Work of the Middle-Class Home.” in How Young Ladies Became Girls: The Victorian Origins of American Girlhood

#history #victorian #servants #american #jane h. hunter #how young ladies became girls #class

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mcrmadness · 4 years ago

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"I’m not from the US” ask set: 4, 7, 13, 14, 15, 16, 19, 22, 26 :) :)

Thanks! :) Here is the ask set if anyone wants to send more asks!!!

Sorry for taking so long with the answer, I got bit too excited and had a busy weekend so I��ve been writing this a little bit every day because I managed to make tired on each time because of the amount of text I’m apparently able to produce because I’m a proud Finn who loves their country a bit too much :D

4. favourite dish specific for your country?

Hmmm. This is interesting question, our cuisine reminds the German one a lot to begin with and I feel like it’s just so very... basic (like: potatoes and meat/sausages + milk products). There’s also many regional dishes that I haven’t eaten because I’m from the East Finland and those are popular in the West or so, and some of these sound really disgusting too. And I want to leave out desserts like mämmi or other foods like Karelain pies and focus on actualy dishes not... So I’d say my favorite is Karjalanpaisti aka the Karelian hot pot (UK)/Karelian stew (US) so it also has bit of Russian roots for it, too. It’s more common here in the East and I don’t know about other families, but that is what my mom makes as the main food for Christmas but sometimes she cooks it even if it wasn’t Christmas. So it’s just beef, pork and liver stew and eaten with potatoes. The broth also tastes sooooo good if you put butter on a rye bread and then dip the bread in the broth! I usually don’t eat the beed/pork pieces because I have to chew them for so long that they become so dry and lose all the taste, but I LOVE liver. And during the few past years my mom has bought local, organic Highland cow liver and made us our own stew without the beef/pork (unless beef is organic since I only eat organic meat) and omg, it’s just so good :D

And another one worth mentioning: fried vendace! It’s a small fresh water fish (’muikku’ in Finnish) and it’s a famous dish (’paistetut muikut’) especially here in Finnish Lakeland. These are always the highlight of the summer when the vendace/fish restaurants open and you get the summer’s first (and often the last too because of money lol) fried vendace meal from a restaurant :p

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7. three words from your native language that you like the most?

- Niin kuin / Niiku / Niiko. This is a filler word, you can start a sentence with it or put it anywhere. It basically means the same as saying “like” in the middle of a sentence in English. Like, the way I’m doing now. It depends on the dialect which version one chooses to use, “niiko” is not typica for my dialect but I’ve adopted it to my speech anyway.

- Kylömä. This is a dialect word, typical for my dialect, it comes from the written word “kylmä” which means “cold”. Here in the East we like additional letters, especially vowels, so this often becomes “kylymä”. And when wanting to make it even more Savo dialect-ish, you say “kylömä”.

- Häh? / Täh? That’s right, German is not the only language with a word for the question mark mood - Finns also will say “hä???” when something goes over our heads. I think it comes from the word “mitä” which means “what”, which then has evolved into “mitäh” and from there to “täh” and finally to “häh?” But I’m not a linguist, it just sounds most logical for me like this. I also like other Finnish interjections and I wish I had similar words in English.

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13. does your country (or family) have any specific superstitions or traditions that might seem strange to outsiders?

Finland isn’t really that superstitious anymore. Back in the day, before modern religions, Finland was very much superstitious and especially into magic a lot. And there were gods everywhere, if you saw a face in the tree, it could have been nothing else but the forest god. And what still playfully lives from these eras of magic and spells are the spells we’re talking about during Midsummer. Mostly they were about running around naked and doing random things like sleeping with flowers under your pillow in order to see your future parten in your dream, or do things in order to get good luck at future marriage. But I don’t know if anyone does those anymore, we just playfully joke about them every year.

Talking of Midsummer, I think I need to mention here our tradition about: drowning. That’s right, in Finland there’s always a number of people drowning during Midsummer because alcohol and swimming don’t go together but people still go swimming while they’re drunk and then accidents happen... So, whenever the Midsummer approaches, everyone is wishing for good weather so they can go out and have fun and get drunk with others (except for me because I’m an introverted teetotaler who hates people and heat waves lol) but at the same time we’re wishing for a bad weather so as little people would drown as possible. The better the weather, the more people will drown. But still if the weather is bad, it makes everyone angry because they wished for better weather but at least more lives are saved, then... So you can basically never win, as long as people will go swimming while drunk and forget to look after their friends (because they’re also too drunk to notice someone disappeared).

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14. do you enjoy your country’s cinema and/or TV?

Not really. There only a few comedy shows that I really like - Kummeli being the ultimate best and I pretty much grew up with that show. I don’t like Finnish drama series nor movies because I just can’t stand the acted Finnish. It sounds the same as normal spoken language too but I just can SEE from the people they are acting and it gets on my nerves so much. Plus Finland loves melancholy so we can’t even have police series without it being about human relations instead of investigating stuff and people are just constantly lying, angry at each other and crying 24/7. I don’t like that sort of negativity at all, it makes me just angry myself.

Plus Finland only has like 5 different actors that are in every goddamned show and movie, and then we also have just like 3 different people who are hosts in radios and tv shows and like... why??? Kinda tired of seeing the same faces everywhere all the time!

But I have to mention that a few good movies have come from Finland during the past couple of years: Tom of Finland is actually a great movie and it’s great for anyone interested in the LGBT+ history (especially the gay community’s) too as it tells about this Finnish artist whose drawings have inspired many today’s praised LGBT+ icons too. I don’t know if you can find it with foreign subtitles or so yet as it’s mainly spoken in Finnish. The same director also made a movie about Tolkien, this one is entirely in English (apart from a few pseudo-Finnish words here and there because Finnish inspired Tolkien a lot in real life too) but it was a good movie anyway.

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15. a saying, joke, or hermetic meme that only people from your country will get?

Well, in Finland we have this phenomenon called “Suomi mainittu, torilla tavataan!” aka we get so excited everytime Finland is mentioned anywhere even a little so everyone gotta “meet” at a market place to celebrate it. It literally means “Finland mentioned, let’s meet at the market place!” No matter what is the original language of where the mention is, and it doesn’t matter if we don’t understand the language, if we can clearly tell it’s about Finland, we need to leave a comment in Finnish and go crazy about it because our lil country was noticed somewhere finally.

And here’s an extra one:

Source. Write “Finnish bus stop” on Google and you get tens of these photos. We really love our personal space.

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16. which stereotype about your country you hate the most and which one you somewhat agree with?

I don’t know if we have any wrong stereotypes? I even tried googling this and I agreed with every single one of them? :D But I googled a little bit more and apparently people tend to see Finns as very rude because of our introverted and emotionless nature and I have to disagree with this one. Yes we’re introverted (but still extroverts exist too, I myself am an ambivert) and especially our monotonous language can make us seem very emotionless as well, but the “rudeness” comes from the fact we show our respect by not paying too much attention to others. We even run away from people we know if I we happen to see them in a supermarket and they didn’t see us yet, we’re ust shy! :D I’m also pretty sure that the dark, Finnish sense of humour (we’re the kings of dank memes btw) can also often go way over other people’s heads and what we meant as a deadpan dark humour can seem like something very offending to those who have gotten used to a very different and more light-hearted humour.

Finns can seem very pessimistic. I was once watching a video, because I’m learning German, about how different the people of Berlin are to other Germans and they have this very similar “attitude” to things as people from Nordic Countries too: instead of saying “oh that’s a great one” we tend to say “well it could be worse”, but we mean exactly the same with this.

Finns are also very humble and we just HATE bragging and we don’t like it at all if someone else is bragging about themselves, which is why especially Americans easily get our nerves. We even have a saying that goes “self praise stinks” because no one likes someone who loves themselves too loudly. That’s why we find it hard to take in compliments and instead of a “Oh thank you!” you get something like “Oh that was nothing, really, not a big deal at all...” but on the inside we’re very flattered, just too shy to show our true feelings.

I guess this answers to the both aspects of this question!

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19. do you like your country’s flag and/or emblem? what about the national anthem?

The flag is a white one with a blue cross and yeah it’s nice. It looks calm and it’s just... simple. At least I don’t have trouble remembering which color is which unlike with all those flags with two or more stripes. I legit cannot remember in which order they go in which countries’ flags and whether a country as horizontal or vertical stripes. So at least that is nice, otherwise I probably wouldn’t be able to draw the Finnish flag either. I associate the colors with Finland because they’ve always been there so I couldn’t even imagine a different kind of flag at all.

The emblem then is a yellow lion on a red background, with some swords. And flowers because... why the heck not? No but I honestly have no clue why it’s a lion. There’s never been lions in Finland? Other than in zoos and our biggest wild cat species is lynx so... why a lion? (I clearly have to do some googling here.)

The national anthem is a bit boring one and I don’t know if I’ve ever even read the full lyrics. At least I never could memorize them... but I guess it sounds like... Finland.

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22. what makes you proud about your country? what makes you ashamed?

I’m proud about lots of things. There’s many things Finland has done right and what other countries should really learn from, e.g. how to deal with homelessness. And how a democratic country actually works. And how cops should actually be like - there’s more racism from other agencies than from the police in Finland, and withing the past 20 years only 7 people have died from polices’ bullets and they were occassions where these people were going to harm other people or themselves. And every time a police uses their gun, that will be investigated thoroughly to see if anything was done wrong there and if it looks like there was no right to use the gun, there will be consequences.

There’s also lots of things that cannot really compared to the other European countries, like the laws about animals, for example. I eat organic meat that comes from Finland because it’s nothing like the meat industry in other places in Europe (I think all Nordic Countries are a lot like Finland with this). An ex-friend once tried to convince me of why also organic meat is bad and animals get treated badly but this person did not understand that you can’t send me photos from farms in another European country far from Finland because it is so far from how things are in Finland to begin with. Our animal right laws are a lot stricter than anywhere else in the Europe and I really trust the agriculture of Finland and there are no big secrets, most farmers also have voluntarily signed up to a website that shows their vet checkup results etc. publicly, which is great because it means they care about the animals too and not just about making money. (Of course Finland is not perfect and occassionally farms with terrible animal healthcare issues are found and there’s still lots of things where we could improve, but I’m saying that, at the moment, animals in Finland [and Nordic Countries] do have a lot better rights and lives than anywhere else in Europe or even in the World we have only a small portition of the problems that are present in other European countries’ intensive farming habits on a daily basis.)

And from here we get to what makes me ashamed: our justice system. It’s way too easy on people! I mean, our “lifetime” is not lifetime, every goddamned murderer will get to walk free after a decade or so, sometimes a lot earlier if they are behaving nice, and we have already had so many cases where someone has got out and then killed yet another person. But for some reason we just can’t keep murderers behind the bars because apparently Finland believes that sociopaths won’t kill ever again if they behave nice in the jail (which btw are more like hotels here). And what about rapists, child abusers and other assholes? Oh, no jailtime, fine is fine!!! Or maybe in parole but nah, why bother put them behind the bars :) And despite the great animal rights laws, the consequences in animal rights crimes are nonexistent. You might get fined and they can forbid you from ever owning an animal again, but absolutely no one is supervising this. There’s so many animal hoarder/abuser cases where animals have been taken away and they’ve been fined and told that they are not allowed to keep animals anymore, and it won’t take too long until they again have a house full of animals, or they are again charged for animal abuse. And nothing ever changes.

But I’m also really ashamed of those loud asshats who keep shouting their right-wing views. What especially gets on my nerves is that when ever a transgender person is mentioned, these people just can’t keep their mouths shut but they just have to be there in the comments saying how... okay I don’t even bother saying what they say, you all know what transphobics say so all that bullshit and it just annoys me so much because I KNOW they are doing that on purpose to be provocative but I so wish I had some huge mallet I could beat sensibility in their heads but I also know they will never change their minds because they’ve already decided to think like that and they want to just upset others with their opinions. I just hope everyone would walk away from them because if no one answers for them, I’m sure they would stop eventually because no one bothers to continue bullying if there’s no one around to bully anymore.

***

26. does your nationality get portrayed in Hollywood/American media? what do you think about the portrayal?

Very rarely. Usually it’s another “torilla tavataan” moment if Finland is mentioned in an American TV as it’s so rare, and usually then everyone will know about it even if they wouldn’t be interested in the media. Usually there’s been a Finnish person or a person with Finnish roots making that media whenever it gets mentioned (e.g. Iron Sky was made by a Finnish team). But usually it’s rather annoying because of course Russia is always mentioned everywhere and sometimes even Sweden! But Finland? Neverheard. Which probably is the reason because most Americans have never even heard of Finland and they have absolutely no clue where that is and if that is even a real place.

More often Finland is linked to Santa Claus but even then they get it wrong because Americans believe Santa comes from the North Pole and the North Pole is not in Finland (and Santa comes from Finland and not from the North Pole :D). And one common belief is also that there’s polar bears in Finland. No, there is none. Just regular Eurasian brown bears but no polar bears.

#lokigodof #mcrmadness' random stuff #ask games #finland #finnish #long post

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bluepenguinstories · 4 years ago

Text

Happiness Overload Chapter Fifty-Six

Coriander Rule #56: Never trust someone who sits on top of a pile of popsicle sticks and obsesses over art, for such people will surely monologue.

Exhibit A, and the only exhibit to date: this Dr. Popsicle Stick Lady. Or whichever of her doctor names she gave herself. Who gives a fuck, am I right?

Now, before the rule turned out to be true, my client, Velvet, was on trial for the crime of trusting someone who had way too much fun with popsicle sticks. She didn’t know she was on trial, but she totally was. We both were, but I wanted to think I was the defense attorney. Or the prosecutor.

“I’m telling you, I’m getting bad vibes,” I tried to keep my voice low as I muttered to Velvet.

“Don’t worry. If it comes down to it, you’ve got that backpack blaster and I’ve got this gun I found.”

Tch. “Found”. More like looted off an enemy guard. Not that semantics ever helped anyone.

“Why does someone like you want to help us defeat the guys that you work for?” I called out.

She bobbed her head to and fro as if she was listening to a song. In fact, she grabbed the popsicle sticks that were in her hair and started tapping them against the pillar she sat on. “Look at all the things you can do with a little bit of arts and crafts!”

“You’re not answering my question!” I snapped.

“Oh, but I am! You see, this huge corporation claims to want what’s best for humanity, but they failed to realize that without art, Earth is just ‘eh?’ But that’s just how corporations are, aren’t they? They stifle creativity and restrict art until it’s sanitized and marketable! Just like that snappy slogan I just used! If they can’t find a use for art, they find it useless. Me? I just can’t abide. I need to show everyone all the ways art is essential to humanity!”

“But aren’t you on their side?”

“I’m on the side of art, the greatest side you can be on. As long as I’m inspired, I don’t mind where that inspiration comes from! I need to be free to explore all mediums, and even discover new ones!”

...Yep. There it was. The monologue.

I tried to look around me. I couldn’t see any form of exits besides the way we came in. Figures. If there was a way for her to have gotten out, wouldn’t she already? Considering how The Flashbulb seemed to go to great lengths to hide her existence, I had to assume that she was trapped there.

Yet another ridiculous person we just had to meet. Go-fucking-figure. Really, how could this person help us, anyway?

“Velvet, let’s just turn back and find some other way around,” I nudged her. “I don’t think we’ll find anything here.”

“Really? We found a person. That’s already one thing.”

Gah. The fu...fu...fudgetrucking nerve! Did she not notice the red flags?

Or maybe she did and she’s just confident she can use the situation to her advantage. She’s probably already thought something up. That’s just like her.

“Aaaaand...DONE!” Lord Popsicle (look, it wasn’t like anyone was going to care what I called her) announced. She held up some wooden block.

“We can’t see shit, dumbass! You’re too high!”

“Astute observation!” She dropped the wooden block down. It landed without so much as a scratch. I was hesitant to approach it, as I knew I needed to be on my guard.

“I get it, I get it! I’m a scary lady you just met who recently learned how to use popsicle sticks as chop sticks! It was hard at first, but I got the hang of it! Also, that wood block is made entirely from recycled...guess!”

“How about no?” For real, not even (if I had to guess) five minutes in and I was getting real sick of the repetition. ‘Art’ this or ‘popsicle’ that. How irritating.

“I like that! Unorthodox answer! Quite artsy!”

Velvet took a few steps forward and pointed the gun upward at our supposed helper. “I’ve got this, Corey Andy.”

“I’m going to ignore that for now,” I replied.

Why does she have to come up with the most ridiculous names? There’s no way I’m going to be referred that way.

I walked over to the wood block and picked it up. Then, my hands began to shake: it was a picture of Velvet and I, which, would have been fine. I mean, the details were amazing. Our forms were near perfect. That wasn’t the problem. No, it was that the picture was of me standing on my tiptoes and kissing Velvet’s forehead. Something that happened not all that long ago.

What started as shock and possible fear turned into anger and confusion.

“How could you…”

“How could I draw so fast? Mostly a force of habit from back when I had to finish my dad’s paintings for him.”

“No!” I shouted. My hands were balled into fists, I dropped the painting on the ground. “How could you have known? Unless…”

Beside her buzzed two little flying drones which were about the size of flies.

“Oh, that’s what you mean! I used these little bugs! They’re small enough that they can fit through the cracks within walls! It’s nice for when I need inspiration!”

“Who gave you the right?!”

Velvet turned to me. “This isn’t the time to lose your cool,” she urged me. She was right, too, and by all accounts, it must have seemed like I was making a cow out of beef jerky, but I had my reasons. I didn’t know what those reasons were yet, but they were there.

It used to be my job to spy on people. This shouldn’t bother me.

“Not only can they watch people, but they can also listen in to their conversations, and let me tell you, I’m so glad that you two found a way to get in here. I was really hoping you would. I just loved both what I heard and what I saw. The motivations, the struggles. The pain and joy. It’s all so poetic! I just had to capture your likeness.”

I dropped the painting and stepped on it. “Capture that!”

Was it petty? Sure. Would it drive home how serious I was? You betcha. No more games.

“Is it smudged?” She leaned over and looked down. “I was going to say you could keep it, as a gift, but if you want to use it in that way, that’s fine too! As long as it served some kind of purpose, I’m glad! Besides, I can always make another. The important thing is, no matter how fast or slow I am with my art, I always put effort into everything I do!”

“Look, Velvet and I don’t care!”

Velvet continued to point the gun at the art nut. “I would have phrased it better, but she’s right: we’re trying to fight an impossible battle against an entity that can’t be defeated, so if you want to help us, you’ll step aside and show us where the exit is.”

Damn. I forgot how fierce she could be when she wanted to.

“Give it up, Velvet! There’s nothing she can do to help us. Keep your aim on her and let’s walk back. If she knew where an exit was, why would she be in here?”

Velvet started to walk back, still aimed at the one atop the popsicle pillar. I pressed a button on one of the straps of the backpack and the lasers set their sights on Popsicle Lady.

“If you try anything, I swear…” I stopped myself. I sounded ridiculous. So far what had she done? Spied on us and drew a picture? In other words, a little creepy, but harmless. Velvet was right: we needed to be as efficient and free of distractions as possible. Creepy or not, if that woman wasn’t going to be our enemy, there was no need to attack her.

But as I started to walk back and try to catch up with my silk spun partner, I felt the force of something hit against me and the force thrust me against a wall.

“What the –”

I tried to move my arms, but nothing would happen. For whatever reason, I was stuck.

“What a beautiful wallflower you’ve become,” mused someone from up above.

I could hardly turn my head to face her. Whatever substance had covered me must have been pretty strong.

��What did you do?!”

“Oh, that? That’s gorilla glue! And no, in case you’re wondering, it’s not made from actual gorillas! I’m as surprised as you are, I’m sure!”

“Argh!” I tried to thrash about with the same results. No movement.

“Nothing I can do to help? Isn’t that what you said?”

“Spice!” Velvet cried out.

“Since when was that my nickname?” I groaned. Oh, it didn’t matter.

“No, I will help you two out! By drawing out your potential! True, your goal is a near-impossible one, and you were right to focus on it, but you won’t get very far without some guidance! So allow to make you my muses and become wonderful works of art!”

Ladies, gentlemen, kind folks of the jury, I rest my case.

Damn it, I really thought I was onto something. Usually I could just wing it and when an opportunity arose, I’d take it. I thought that was one such opportunity, but now look at the mess we were in.

“This is all your fault!” Coriander yelled. Whether she thought that way or was just pissed at her situation was anyone’s guess, but I didn’t blame her. “We should have never trusted this art freak!”

It’s not that I trusted her, I just thought that we had caught a lucky break. But then again, maybe I really did trust that person. Maybe I had gotten so used to finding allies recently that I believed there could have been someone in that evil lair who could help us.

You’ve gotten softer, Velvet, I scolded myself. Softer, silkier, smoother. Velvety.

I knew I’d have to take a life eventually. It went without saying that being in such a place and not expecting to have to kill was absurd. As hesitant as I may have been before, I wasn’t about to let anything happen to Coriander. So I set my sights, aimed, and…

I saw myself step forward with a pistol. She pointed it right at me. In my hand wasn’t the same heavy weapon as before, but also a pistol. We both aimed at each other, and then everything went black.

Engulfed in total darkness. Or so I thought, but there was a light somewhere. Above? A dim glow? Either way, I stood, once again.

Stop it. Stop getting distracted by this. My target is the art lady. After that, I need to free Cor...Coral? Never mind. It would come to me.

I aimed the pistol, which I somehow obtained, and shot straight ahead. I was surrounded by Velvets on all side, who also took aim, and before I knew it, confetti. Wait. Confetti? Or nothing?

That’s right. It’s all an illusion. I don’t really get it, but I just have to analyze my surroundings, focus, and then the weak point should appear in my mind.

“I know what you’re doing!” I cupped my hands and called around. “But it won’t work!”

“Cut! Cut!” The voice of the art lady boomed. “End scene! Perfect!”

“What’s going on?” I yelled in response.

“You’ve been cast in the leading role of some new blockbuster movies! But who am I, you may ask? I am the great Dr. Lynch, of course, director extraordinaire!”

I groaned. “I don’t care what you call yourself! I just want to get a move on!”

“So you’re the type of actor who gives every performance your all? Excellent! Next scene!”

I don’t think so.

I ran forward, sure that if I just broke through I would be free of the illusion, and then I could break Coriander free and together we would –

Bright, orange glow. Beat up cars. Explosions in the distance.

“Fine. I’ll bite. What kind of movie is this, anyway?”

I wasn’t sure if she’d answer, but to my surprise, she did.

“It’s an art film! Of course, all films are art, because good or bad, corporate or independent, they all have effort put into them. But, is effort the only thing that goes into art?”

I wasn’t about to answer that. I decided to wander around the city landscape a bit. Even if it was some green screen, illusion, ‘movie magic’, whatever, I didn’t see myself making much progress until I could figure out a way to exploit the situation.

Maybe I should think like a hacker, like the good old days. Only this ‘movie set’ is the software, and I’m the infection.

I went around and kicked some rubble. These “streets” were already on fire, destroyed by some unknown force that I didn’t care to know.

Off in the distance, I could see a group of people in what appeared to be superhero costumes. Jeez, what a bunch of dorks.

“Dr. Banter, I’m going to need you to get irritable!”

“That’s my secret, Admiral: I hate it when you leave the toilet seat up. I hate it when you don’t wash your hands after you use the bathroom and then wipe your dirty hands on the shower curtains. I hate when you put used paper towels in the recycling! I hate when you leave your shoes around everywhere! And when you snore!”

“Yes! More! We need you to turn into Bunk and smush Lowkey!”

I grimaced. While I didn’t know what was being referenced, it was clear this ‘movie’ was parodying something. Regardless, I wasn’t having any part of it. I picked up a brick and threw it at the group.

“Hey assholes! How do I ditch this popsicle stand?”

Everyone turned to me and looked stunned.

“It’s Black Velvet!” Admiral (I guess was his name?) pointed at me. “The secret agent who works for Condom! Why is she attacking us?!”

Condom? Really? Couldn’t they have picked a better name?

“Maybe she’s being mind controlled by Lowkey!” Someone covered in tinfoil suggested.

“You’re right, aluminum foil man! Or maybe Condom is really a front for the evil organization, Gorgon!” Some guy who looked just like a thumb suggested. Everyone looked at him in disgust. Honestly, I was too. I mean, he looked like a thumb.

“You may be the god of fungus, mighty Thumb, but you are not very bright,” Admiral replied. “Besides, that’s spoilers for the next movie! Dude, you’re not supposed to give that away.”

Are they...breaking character?!

I shook my head. It was best not to get sucked into the nonsense. What was that old saying? ‘Exit stage left’? Very well. I turned to my left and began to run.

“Smart thinking! You need to find a way to escape, don’t you?” Came the voice of ‘Dr. Lynch.’

“Gee, I didn’t know this was the director’s commentary track!” I retorted as I ran through a torn down building.

I know this isn’t real, but I don’t know how else to explain this.

“How are you doing this?”

“Should you really be asking that? That’s like asking a director ‘what’s my motivation?’ There are some things you should just know!” Her voice boomed.

She’s right. Somewhat, anyway. I didn’t know how she was doing these tricks, but I knew what my motivation was, and that was good enough.

“Mark my words, I’ll find an opening, exploit it, and break free! Then I’ll break Coriander free!”

“That’s what I like to hear! You might want to hurry, though! I hear poly...urine? Poly...uranium? Um. It’s a hard word to say, but I hear it’s quite toxic! Plus, as we speak, popsicle sticks are being dumped on her, so if you don’t hurry, she’ll suffocate to death!”

I’ll burn this whole set down if I have to. I’ll reduce every piece of “art” that she has to ash. So what if it’s true that most people don’t even “save” one person in their lifetime? As long as both Spice Bae and I are still alive, I’ll fight time and again to keep it that way.

Heh. I needed to be careful with my line of thinking; I didn’t want to be mistaken for an actual hero.

There were worse ways to die and I would have rather chosen any one of them over what was being done to me.

“So that’s just it, huh? You’re planning on confining me here until I die?!” I shouted.

“Hm? Hm?” It was like she was humming a tune. How irritating. “Oh, you can call me Dr. Bob Ross!”

“I’d rather not.”

“Very well! And to answer your question, no, I’m not just confining you. I’m confining both of you! As we speak, your little gal pal is in that little box and hallucinating up a few good movies for her to star in. I can’t wait to find out what movies she was in after she’s all done! But, if she spends too long in there, her mind will erode and wear itself out. That is, unless she finds the willpower to break free. But even if she does, that box is pretty sturdy!”

So basically I have to break myself free and break her out. Or she has to break herself free and break me out

“You two are stronger together, right? And I’m willing to bet you and her are pretty strong individually, as well. So this shouldn’t be too much of a problem, right?”

That’s right. Velvet thrives on life or death situations. As for me…

“If I could just reach the buttons on my backpack…” I muttered.

“Velvet was what you called her, right? Well then! She will become Velvet, the movie star! And you...I haven’t decided yet. But I’ll make you my muse yet. Maybe I’ll make a sculpture out of you…”

That wasn’t going to happen. No sculptures. No human arts and crafts projects. None of it.

Up another torn down building I went until I reached a floor where there were no walls and I could see the sky outstretched.

Where is there to go from here?

“If it’s all an illusion, then there isn’t very far that I can go. Theoretically,” I let out a deep breath. How hopeless. I didn’t know how to go ‘off-screen’.

“There’s no escape! I will rule all of Nude Pork City and there’s nothing you can do!” Cackled a snobby British voice.

“The...fuck city?” I jolted. Startled, I turned around and saw a skinny man in a green leotard with a horse mask on. He cackled once more.

“This movie is PG-13! You can say ‘fuck’, but only once!”

“Dude, you just said it again.”

“Fuck!” He cried out, as if he had already been defeated. The most surprising thing of the whole ordeal was that I could actually hear what he said from underneath that horse mask. “No matter! No one can defeat me, for I am Lowkey, the villain!”

I looked up. Could I find my way out by running to the highest point of the building and jumping out? But then that might just kill me. Ugh. It would really help if I had a laptop next to me right now.

“Hey! Why aren’t you paying attention to me! I am Lowkey!”

“Sorry, this just isn’t my kind of movie,” I explained.

“Heh. Heh! HEH!” He cackled once again, then pulled the horse mask off. Underneath, was an emaciated face which sported greasy black hair. Even if I swung that way, I didn’t think I’d find him all that attractive.

From his suit, he pulled out three little grenades. “You talk a big game, but you’re still human!”

“Still not my type!” I called back, then rolled over behind a pillar. He tossed the grenades my way. I thought I was a safe enough distance, but they detonated, and the explosion sent me back to the further end of the building. Not only that, but the explosion was causing the building to collapse.

I struggled to stand back up. I had to hold onto the very pillars that were crumbling.

I need to run. I need to run and tackle that guy and then get out of here.

From behind me, that same snobbish voice: “Hey cupcake!”

“What...did you call me?” I growled.

“Hey cupcake, why don’t you and I go back to my place later?” He mocked. “Velvet? Like a cupcake? Are you sweet like one too? Do you taste good like one? Hm, cupcake?”

How did that Dr. Lynch woman know that about my past? Did she really know that much about me? Just how did this movie operate?

“Shut up!” I leaped and grabbed onto his leotard, then reached into his pocket and grabbed one of his grenades. “You want to taste something? Taste this!” I shoved it in his mouth, then pulled the pin and let go.

There was little time: I needed to run down the collapsing building before it could come crashing down and reduce everything to rubble.

But isn’t that what I want? To bring it all down? To destroy the “art” that would hurt the ones I care about? Why does this building feel real, anyway? Did she create this elaborate of a set? If it’s not real, then what danger am I in? If I’m in no danger, I shouldn’t be worried about anything…

I stopped.

“Where...where did the gun go?” The one that was taken off of the guard. I had it. Then it was replaced by a pistol. Somehow.

Because it wasn’t real.

When I got to that “movie”, I had nothing. I had to use a brick. I had to use that villain’s grenades. Grenades that weren’t real.

So in other words, I have nothing. But wasn’t that par for the course? I came to The Flashbulb’s lair with nothing. I’ve had all sorts of risky endeavors, and each time, I would just acquire things as I go.

I ran anyway. For whatever reason, I ran.

No. I don’t have nothing. There’s someone I came with that I care about.

On cue, just as it came crashing down, I escaped. Not even a second after, credits started to roll.

...Wait, what?

‘The End’

Then, the list of the actors who played the characters showed up in front of me. I just couldn’t believe the whole environment was covered by text. Names I didn’t recognize to characters that didn’t matter. Then, I saw my own name. Or...my character’s name? Next to it, it listed…

“No...it can’t be…” I gulped. “Scarlett Johansson?! Really? Come on! I have more class than that!”

Then, answering my call, Scarlett Johansson’s name was crossed out, and a new name replaced it.

“ZENDAYA?!”

I shook my head. “Just stop it! Why can’t I be me?”

Thus, Zendaya’s name was crossed out as well, and finally it said:

‘Velvet as HERSELF’

I nodded my head. “Much better.”

“Stay tuned for a post-credit scene!” Boomed Dr. Lynch’s voice.

Right. There was still that matter.

“Not happening!” I shouted, then ran toward the front where the credits were and kicked forward. As I did so, I hit a wall.

Literally.

Everything turned to black. But my eyes opened once more.

There was gas all around me. I began coughing uncontrollably and it ached just to stand. I didn’t understand why, but I did my best to break free, anyway. I banged my fists against the walls.

Pounding of fists.

It seemed like I was going to lose consciousness up until that jolted me back awake. I still couldn’t turn my head. All those popsicles were growing quite heavy. But, that sound. It must have been Velvet.

If she can do that...if she’s still trying…

I had to as well. It’s not enough that she could try to break free on her own. It had be me as well.

At first, all I could manage was to twitch my fingers. With each passing second, it was getting harder and harder to breathe.

But, if I can twitch my fingers…Yes!

I balled my hands into fists and with as much pressure as I could muster, I slammed my fists against the wall. It didn’t amount to much at first, but I kept trying. After a few tries, with increased force, my arms broke free and I could move them again.

However, the pain was excruciating. I cried out. I couldn’t cover my mouth.

“Hm? Oh, hello there,” Dr. Bob Ross turned to me. I raised my arm up and pressed the button on the backpack. Lasers fired around me and broke me free from the wall. With a thud, I landed.

After I brushed off the popsicle sticks, still disgusted, I looked up toward where that mad artist was.

“I’ll break Velvet out myself, then I’ll get up there and kick your ass! Mark my fucking words, you’re dead, kiddo!”

Dr. Bob Ross burst into laughter. “Okay, okay. Congratulations are in order. But you broke free a little sooner than I expected. I’m not ready for you yet.”

I cracked my knuckles and gave a fiendish grin. “Nobody’s ready for me. I can deal so much pain.”

“I’m going to need you to stay put and wait your turn,” she didn’t seem to heed my boasts at all. I watched her spin her finger, and from the ceiling, a giant claw reached down and pried my backpack off of me.

“Hey! What gives!”

She cupped her hands together and shouted: “Popsicle house time!”

“What?!”

Something dropped in front of me. Once again, I found myself confined.

Four walls. Small, dim, with a roof that was only a little above my head. My only reprieve was one window. I looked out: the room on the outside had grown brighter. I could see the encased area where Velvet was, but I no longer heard her knocks against the walls.

She better still be alive, dammit.

I leaned my head out a little more. Next to me was another popsicle house. Someone else leaned their head out: a bearded old man with gray, curly hair.

“She locked you up too, huh?”

I wasn’t about to dignify that with a response. Instead, I walked off to the other end of the popsicle house and ran toward the wall with full force, elbow in tow. Rather than the house breaking apart, all that happened was a world of hurt.

“Ow! Ow!” I winced. “Maybe I need to try harder.” I walked back, then ran again, with even more anger and drive. Again, nothing but pain.

“God damn! Who knew popsicles could be so sturdy?”

“Welcome to Gay Baby Jail,” the old man greeted once more. That time, I peeked out of the window once again.

“What did you call me?”

“That’s the name of the cell you’re in. Once she puts you in Gay Baby Jail, you’re not getting out unless she wants you to.”

I shook my head and lowered it against the window. “This is stupid…everything is so ridiculous.”

“This is your life now. Consider yourself a gay baby.”

“Ugh…” I groaned. “I am getting out of here. I don’t care how. I have to.”

“Why?”

“Because I have someone out there...we protect each other. I’m not saying I care about her, but she’s important to me and I’m going to do all that I can to make sure she’s well!”

Once again, I tried to break the walls that held me in. I wasn’t about to accept that it was useless. There had to be something I could do.

What wonderful muses I happened to acquire. Things were going so smooth that I almost felt like I needed to shake things up more. But patience. Those two were an inspiration, sure, but inspiration wasn’t instant. So while they were kept occupied, helping me along, I had to study them well.

“Now let’s see their character bios…” I pulled up a tablet. Just about everyone’s records was stored in The Flashbulb’s database. If we didn’t have a profile on them, well...I’d just have to make one, wouldn’t I? But let’s not be too hasty.

“What did they say their names were again? Velvet...and...Coriander? Is that right?”

Velvet was easy enough. Sure, there were many Velvets in most universes, but then there was matching a name to a face. Lucky for me, that also proved to be easy. Next was Coriander.

That one was a little harder. There were a few Corianders out there. More people named Cilantro, to be honest, but that was neither here nor there. But a Coriander that had some sort of relation to the Velvet whose profile was displayed in front of me? Unheard of. So instead I refined my search to all the people associated with that Velvet until I saw an image that matched “Coriander”.

My eyes lit up. Yes! YES!

“This! This right here! This is the inspiration I need!” Oh my, how interesting things were. To learn such things about those two. I could use that.

But enough about those two. They were a little preoccupied. My little muses were making me proud, reminding me of why I got into the game in the first place.

Yes: my backstory. Or more, my “midway” story. My humble origins as an intern for The Flashbulb, back when I was still among fellow artists. “But aren’t you still an intern?” The spectators might have asked, were there an audience to spectate on my thoughts. To answer those hypothetical spectators: yes. But there was an explanation for that.

It all started back in Flashbulb University (note: Flashbulb University was not an accredited university), a school where interns for The Flashbulb went, fully funded by the Education Department. We never really learned much, but the wiser of us would join clubs, otherwise we’d just get displaced and used as fodder for whatever tasks those in proper departments wanted done.

I had wandered down the halls, having gotten as lost as ever, when I pulled out my map. At the time, I developed a keen interest in the art of map making, as well as studying architecture. As it so happened to turn out, the layout of the university was...excuse my language...uncreative. If I had my way with the layout, well...I wouldn’t do anything. That wasn’t a medium I was willing to tackle just yet.

Yes. As loathe as I was to admit, there were certain arts that I would never be able to see myself doing. The art of cooking, the art of staying organized, the art of money management. Who needed any of those skills? Not me. Especially when I could just eat whatever was made at the cafeteria. My taste buds could handle anything, and not only that, I got to experience someone else’s art. Really digest it fully (most of the time).

One day in that very cafeteria, I met up with my fellow intern buddies, Dr. O’Keefe, Dr. Kahlo, Dr. Kubrick, and Dr. Méliès. Each of us were aspiring Flashbulb members as well as members of the Painting and A/V Clubs respectively.

“Every form of art will be available to you,” Dr. Louvre told me when I first joined. So naturally, the first thing I clung to was the art of film-making.

So we all sat, some of us eating tacos, others eating escargot. Me? I ate dried squid, of course.

“So what projects have you been up to?” Dr. Kubrick opened up the discussion.

“I’m studying a venus flytrap,” Dr. O’Keefe answered.

“I’ve been staring up at the moon,” it was Dr. Kubrick’s turn.

“No way! So have I!” Dr. Méliès replied, a hint of astonishment in his voice. Then, I glanced over and noticed the two staring into each other’s eyes.

“I see the moon in your eyes,” Dr. Kubrick uttered such words.

“I see the same in yours.”

Was that really so inspiring? Yes. In much the same way I found inspiration from a burning building, Van Gogh found inspiration from the night sky. With that in mind, inspiration could come from anywhere. No, not just anywhere. Everywhere. Every little thing.

So while everyone began to chat among themselves, I began to doodle. Nothing in particular. Unlike my father, it wasn’t so much nature that inspired me, but humanity. Rather, the vague shape that humans took on.

That must be the reason I was recruited, I thought while reminiscing. Back in the memory, I recalled what happened as soon as Dr. Kubrick and Dr. Méliès left.

Dr. Pollack showed up and slammed his fists on the table.

“Hey guys!” He looked around. “Sorry, I should be more discreet.”

He sat down. “Sorry, I’m just frustrated.”

“Having an art block?” I asked as I sipped on oyster milk.

“No. It’s this...this whole thing! Day in, day out, we’re stuck as interns.”

“Well, there’s no way out of it,” Dr. O’Keefe replied. “The Flashbulb isn’t known for its upwards mobility. If they decide to put us in a department, they will, otherwise, we’re here doing their chores for them and anything else that needs to be done that they don’t want to do. Of course, if someone decides to attack the main headquarters, they keep us around so we can be their human shields.”

“Some saviors of humanity, am I right?” He slumped over.

All that time since I’ve known them and I never realized they had such ambitions.

“You know, if you want to be part of a department so bad, it’s not all that hard?” I spoke up.

“What was that?”

“Yeah, ya heard me. Easy peasy.”

“How do you figure that? It’s not like there’s an A/V Department or an Arts and Crafts Department.”

“Of course not. But there is a Fine Arts Department.”

“Those guys? Really? They’re all a bunch of snooty snobs!”

I scowled. “The answer is right in front of you, yet you refuse to see it.”

“Fine, if you’re so smart, tell us.”

“We bring the Arts and Crafts club and the Painting club and the A/V club to them. We could be the first department with its own set of sub-departments. So if you want, present them the opportunity to expand the Fine Arts Department. Those guys love the word ‘expansion’. All you have to do is say ‘expand’ and they get all hot and bothered. Try it.”

Those three looked at each other, then ran off. Not long after, the plan was a success, and Dr. Louvre as well as Dr. Cannes approached me.

“We have you to thank,” Dr. Louvre towered over me and every syllable out of his mouth boomed. “Without your help, we wouldn’t be able to,” he drew a deep breath, breathed the words between his nondescript lips. “Expand.”

He cleared his throat. It seemed that word had quite a powerful effect on him.

“But what about you?” He continued. “Isn’t there something you should want? With your artistic talent, we could make you one of the leaders of the Fine Arts Department, alongside the likes of Dr. Cannes and I.”

I shook my head. “All I want is my own studio. Food prepared for me. All the art supplies I could ever need. An assistant. That’s all.”

“Very well. It shall be done.”

Yeah, that guy sounded so big and commanding, but in actuality, he was too afraid of my artistic talents and so the Fine Arts Department left one day to a version of Earth, with no specific mission attached. While I was content to stay in my studio, I wished they would have invited me. Shame, too. They never did come back to the headquarters, and ever since, it seemed as if most people were too afraid to visit me. They gave me food, water, any art supply I needed, but that was about it.

Oh well. That was all history (in the sense that there were many gaps and the information that was known paints an incomplete picture). I had two muses now, and I would help them reach their full potential. Speaking of, it was probably about time for Velvet’s next movie to start. It should start getting good now that the movies were going to dig deeper into her consciousness.

Ah, I should’ve known by now; the walls were too thick. My movements grew weaker. It hurt just to stand.

I need to...I need to rest a bit…I’m sorry.

Right before passing out, I had just one more thought: Aha! So that’s how it works!

Then darkness once more.

Once again, I found myself leaning against the window, my only reprieve.

Then, I heard the worst thing I could hear: nothing. No more knocks against those walls.

Has she given up?

I kicked the popsicle wall that held me and screamed out. After a few huffs, I paced about.

“She better not be dead! I won’t allow it!” I growled. “She’s too good for that!”

“Relax,” the old man in the other cell called out to me. “If anything, she’s just passed out. Her second movie is probably about to start. It usually takes at least four movies to kill someone.”

Of course. She passed out before. When she first met me from a previous life, she held me at gunpoint while I held her at laserpoint. Her gun was empty. Before my lasers could fire, the power went out. Then, she passed out. It ended up being up to me to carry her and I to a locker, as I was worried about whatever danger could have lurked. Those were memories I still had, as painful as it may have been to recap.

“That...that doesn’t reassure me.” Even still, I felt too defeated to do anything other than relax. So I went back to the window.

“Maybe if I had a lighter or a flamethrower or something…” I shook my head.

“What do you need one of those for?” The old man asked.

“Are popsicle sticks flammable? I mean, they’re wood, right?”

“Those are the questions which will haunt me up to my deathbed.”

“Don’t be such a baby,” I scolded. That was something I needed to tell myself as well, huh? Why was I so worried about someone who didn’t need worrying about, anyway? She was capable. So it was fine. Ugh. No it wasn’t.

I shook my head.

“I can’t do nothing, and it’s not because I don’t think I could survive on my own. That’s not the issue. We could both probably survive on our own. But, I mean, just in case, I’d like to be there…” No, that didn’t sound right. “Well, what I mean is, even if we could both survive on our own, I’d like us to not be on our own as long as we’re alive, y’know? Gosh, maybe I’m taking this whole ‘til death do us part’ too seriously.”

“You sure do care about her, huh? So what, you two married or something?”

“What?! Why would you think that? That’s ridiculous. Anyway,” I smiled. “Yeah, I do. Even though I was supposed to hate her, it somehow ended up like this. She can get on my nerves sometimes but I know she just likes to see my reaction. If it’s something that really bothers me, she knows not to do it. She knows when to be serious, too, and she can be really supportive.”

“Sounds like the real deal.” “Oh yeah. That’s not even going into her talents. She can find the smallest details in the shortest amount of time. Hell, she’s the very definition of ‘think on your feet’. Like, sure, most of the time she’s lazy as fuck, but then when push comes to shove, she really shines. Her hacking skills are unparalleled, and she’s so resilient. Able to take on foes far stronger than her and still maneuver around whatever obstacle in her way. Being able to improvise and use anything around her to her advantage. Honestly, she inspires me, and I hope I can inspire her too.”

I lowered my head against the edge of the window and shook it. I felt like tears were about to fall out. So, at the very least, I made sure to smile.

“What’s wrong with me?” I shook my head.

“You’re a gay baby, all right,” he sounded like a fucking sage.

“Shut it, you. No one asked.”

I thought that maybe if I used my environment to my advantage, just like how I described Velvet, maybe I could have broken out. But I saw nothing that I could use.

Even if that were the case, I wouldn’t give up.

Ugh. Talk about weird dreams. Something about a fisherman’s wife and a giant squid. Being a pirate sure was a mess.

I got up from my uncomfortable cot in my captain’s quarters and stumbled out. As my accursed luck would have it, I had a headache. Like all things, I blamed it on the sea.

Yes, that very sea in which our pirate ship, the Jo-Ann’s Revenge resided.

My body ached as I swayed to and fro, as if enchanted by a sickening sea shanty.

God damn, how much rum did I have last night?

“Mornin’ Velvetbeard,” ol’ paranoid Connard greeted in ever the dull tone. “I hear the marines have taught the parrots to read our minds. We must steady our guard.”

“Uh, yeah. Okay. Jot that down or something.”

Our crew ate our share of mackerel and sardines for breakfast all while we gathered around the table and made plans for our next raid.

“So there’s a trade ship that was spotted,” Connard reported.

“Do we know its contents?”

He nodded. “Doritos, fruit snacks, top ramen. All your favorites.”

“Hot pockets?”

“Yes.”

“Ugh...but when I think of all the sodium…” I leaned over the table and rested my head on it. “Can I just, like, go back to bed? I’ve got this massive headache and I’m tired of pirating.”

“I knew it!” The Jolly Kelly Roger barged in. “You’re not really a pirate, are you? You’re a spy for the marines!”

“The fuck? Forget the plank, I’ll throw you overboard with my bare hands.”

“Go ahead! I hear there’s a pirate ship full of catgirls and I’m prepared to swim over to them!”

I looked up. “Real shit?”

“Mm-hmm! Anyways, see ya. I’m off to cat paradise.”

Jolly Kelly Roger was never seen again.

Meanwhile, three years later, and I wasn’t quite sure what all happened, but Connard went to chill in some pyramid and I lost most of my crew. All that was left was Blanka, Connard’s best and only friend. Who for some reason decided to go with me of all pirates (people).

“How did it even come to this?” I shook my head. Three years, and the headache still hadn’t gone away. It was like a coconut kept dropping on my head every morning.

“Something something gray stoner pirates,” Blanka replied, although Blanka was no longer there.

It was up to me to take on the marines and the 51st Fleet all by my lonesome. So I did. I infiltrated their ranks by punching a hole in the bottom of their vessel and jumping up. To think it was common belief that it was impossible to sneak in. Ha.

I’ve already done it once before, in fact. Like, some odd years back. When I was a wee little Velvetbeard. My first mate, Violetbeard was rumored to have been captured by the 51st fleet, so I took it upon myself to sneak in and find her, for the thought of what horrifying things they could have done to her was too much for me to bear. Unfortunate for me, I never did find her, nor a trace that she was even there. The best I could manage was stealing a pirate ship from them. That is why the Jo-Ann’s Revenge exists.

Now, onto the sneaky pirate stuff…

“There’s gotta be something I can do,” my voice grew weary in what must have been such a short amount of time.

You’re nothing without your technology.

Maybe that was true at one point in time. Even if that was still true, anything could be technology if it could be utilized…

“Isn’t the right, popsicle stick sticking out on the ceiling?” I looked up. Such a faint hope. How to get there. But wasn’t that what my whole journey was built on? Some faint hope that I took a chance with and made it far enough to find myself where I was. So being “stuck” wouldn’t register to me. Even in my past life, though others were convinced I was stuck, I still tried and fought anyway.

There were “ledges” (so many quotations, I know. Bear with me), I could use. Flimsy, easy to break, but that lent me more hope than despair. All I needed was one, maybe even a few, and I could make my attempt…

So, one foot over the other one, and just a few steps more, and I had gotten the diamond stick in the rough. The wooden needle in the needlestack. Just as my luck had turned bright, I lost my footing and fell back onto the metal floor.

“Owwww,” I groaned. There went my youthful back. Now I welcomed the embrace of my newfound elderly back. Oh, and the embrace of several popsicle sticks. One of which, I held in my hand, and when I shook the rest off of me, I got to work.

“You okay over there?” The old man called.

“The okayest,” I scoffed. Then I got to work chiseling away at the wall in front of me.

“What are you doing, anyway?” “Well, old gay baby, I don’t know about you, but this gay baby wants to leave the crib.”

“She can see you, you know.”

“Let her try and stop me.”

“How bold.”

“I’m not bold, I just happened to make the first move.”

“Bold statement.”

That guy was frustrating me. But, deep breaths, I tried to play it cool.

“What are you even in there for, anyway? I just realized I never thought to ask.”

“I was hired as her assistant after the last one got set on fire and had to be hospitalized. I told her that her paintings should have more men in them, especially men in diapers. She scowled, put me in a diaper, then kept me in here.”

“Oh jeez. I’m sorry.”

“Why? It’s not all that bad once you get used to it. I actually rather enjoy it. Plus, I don’t have to go to the bathroom, because I’m always already there.”

Ew. Ew. EW.

“Okay, uh, what was your name again?”

“Dr. Michelangelo.”

That made too much sense.

“Okay, Dr. Michelangelo. You stay right there. I’m not breaking you out.” Once I was free, I hoped and prayed that I never had to meet him again.

Hold on, Velvet. This gay baby is learning to crawl.

So far, so good. The whole sneaking business was a go. Then came the inevitable.

“Jolene, I know you’re there! You stole my man!”

Shivers ran down my timbers. The unmistakable voice of Mustachebeard, the fearsome vice-admiral for the marines. For the record, yes, I did say I was Jolene when I infiltrated their ship last time, but no, I did not steal anyone’s man.

I did my best to avoid detection, knocking marines out one by one as I traversed the hallowed halls of the ship. I stole a musket off of one of the marines, which really helped once I made it above deck of the ship and found one of the vice-admiral’s lookouts. I ran up to her and before she had the chance to pull out her weapon, I pointed the musket I had looted right at her face.

“Y’arr. Name’s Velvetbeard. I’m here to steal your heart.”

“You,” she growled. “I heard you’re the worst pirate to have ever existed.”

“Nah, there’s worse. There’s gotta be, right? I mean, I can’t be that bad, can I?”

I pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. As it turned out, the musket had no ammo. That, and I didn’t know how a musket worked.

“Nice try,” she smirked. “Now men! Fire!”

Behind her was a firing squad, which meant that I was as good as dead. But instead, everything went black. Everything began to spin in place.

That girl, whatever her name was...was kind of cute.

Yes. There was the headache, in full force. My head felt ready to split itself open and all the contents would spill forth for the world to see. It all felt both so uneasy and yet so familiar. As if it was all a rehash of something that I had been a part of before. Something long gone.

It was but a small opening, but that opening was good enough for me. Like a baby, I crawled through and as soon as I was out, I ran over to the metal box that Velvet was trapped in. I kept banging my fists against it.

“I’m impressed, but at the same time, I wish you’d slow it down! She’s got at least two more movies left in her! The next one will surely dig deep into her psyche.”

“Not. Gonna. Happen,” I growled.

That same gloved metal claw came, likely to pick me up. Some artist Dr. Bob Ross was if she thought I was going to be fooled twice. I swerved to my side to avoid the reach, then I grabbed on to the metal spring and I began to hit the wall with the metal claw.

I was awoken by that same lookout, the one I thought was kinda cute. We were in the middle of a cabin. She shook me awake. As it stood, I was grape jelly.

“Come on, we gotta work together if we wanna make it out.”

“Ugh...what happened?” I rubbed my forehead.

“We were invaded by the Polo Wearing Pirates. Fearsome bandits, they are. As much as I hate to admit it, I need your help. Everyone else aboard the ship has died.”

“Oh, I see what’s going on. Some kind of enemies to lovers type thing, right?”

“Wrong. This is serious. We will never be anything more than enemies.”

“Then why did you kiss my forehead?”

I paused.

She was gone. I was somewhere else. In the clouds? Or aboard another pirate ship. Or in a room, where my former first mate was, Violet. Just Violet.

“Why hello,” Violet greeted.

“What...what are you doing here?”

“You wanted to see me. So I am here.”

“But…” It was ten years. Tears began to trickle down. “I can accept you being gone.”

I knew where I was. At a park. Close to where the school was.

“You’re still the same timid Velvet I knew.”

“How do I escape this movie?” I demanded. Was it me coming back to my senses? No. It was just something that came out.

She approached me. Between the high seas and what I thought to be the closing credits. But maybe they were cornflakes in the wind.

“You wish you knew what happened to me. But you never will. That you may have accepted, but it will still be on your mind. The thought of what became of me. Whether I lived or died, and if I lived, have I lived a good life?”

I shook my head. “Maybe I wonder from time to time. Maybe you will always be someone that I’ll miss. But you know what? So will anyone else that I meet. I’ve accepted that I’m not the type to forget people, no matter how big or small the impact. So...deal with it.”

Yes. That was what they called a flashback. Or forward. Or somewhere in between, on the side. Because I was still next to that blue haired spice.

“So you see, ten years ago there was someone who knew me as someone else. I’m still an anxious person from time to time, but I’m also much more than that. In fact, some would even go as far as to call me ‘badass’.”

“What are you talking about?” My enemy, not lover, asked.

“I...maybe you’ll find out in a later stage of our relationship,” I teased. We got up, but I fell again.

“Sorry,” I croaked. “Now I must inform you that I feel like I am dying.”

My eyes. They eclipsed.

Pounding sounds began to erupt, like my own heartbeat. I clutched my chest, but that didn’t feel right.

“Oh no!” The blue haired wonder cried out. “We have to hurry! The ship is exploding! Our ship is going down!”

I tried to get up, but I could feel the heat. Smoke rose up all around us and I started to cough. Not only was the rest of the ship on fire, but so were my lungs.

There.

At last, the box was broken. Gas leaked out and dissipated. I covered my mouth, but I could still feel the effects making me dizzy. Not to mention that I already felt weak from my previous two ordeals.

I looked around and there Velvet was, on the floor. I rushed to her.

“Hey! Hey!” I shook her.

“Our ship is sinking…” I heard her mutter.

“No it’s not! See, I’m right here!”

I held her against me. It took me a few more seconds to register that she was just asleep, but even still, I needed her awake. Then, I thought of something.

“Hey if you wake up, I’ll kiss you on the lips.”

Her eyes shot open. “Real shit?” She uttered with a groggy voice. Then she looked over and saw that it was me, “oh hey, enemies to lovers.”

I groaned. “I wish you wouldn’t remind me.”

Now, there was just one other matter to attend to...but before I could get to that, Velvet tugged at my shirt collar.

“What about the kiss?”

“Can’t it wait? We’re in the middle of a fight.”

“No.”

I let out an exaggerated sigh, then leaned in and gave her a peck.

“Really?! That’s it?! Come on!” She jolted up.

“I’ll do it for real later,” then I turned my attention to what was behind her: the gun that she had before passing out. I took it and almost dropped it, the damn thing was so heavy. Just a few more steps, though, and I would then part with it.

“Hey Popsigirl!” I yelled.

From atop the pillar, I saw a hand emerged which then proceeded to wave at me.

I growled, then threw the gun at the pillar. All the popsicle sticks began falling down, one by one, as the mad artist’s tower crumbled.

Court dismissed.

#happiness overload #scifi #surreal #comedy #drama #gay #writing #stories #fiction #velvet #coriander #pirates #superheroes

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stoiccthulhu · 4 years ago

Text

Update time...actually, why should these be titled? I mean, whats the point of writing a title to these if all I’m going to do is ramble on and on with no specific topic of discussion, just several things on my mind?

Election day 2020 happened yesterday and I voted for nobody. And if I would have voiced my polling choice I would have voted for the candidate I see as being the best option in line with my thoughts and opinions concerning the state of the world at the moment as well as the future.

You can insert whomever you want to believe that would be based off an assumption and a look at my internetting footprint, but you would be wrong, but that’s part of the fun of interpreting what I’m writing down for you in the future. Trying to figure out what I’m actually saying. While it makes complete sense to me, because you don’t have the hidden key phrase you can’t decipher what it is that I am putting to digital paper.

I get it, I’m an asshole.

And this isn’t, completely, a justification towards my actions but a direct result of your intervention within my life that has caused this behaviour. Think of it sort of like a self-fulfilling prophecy. You interpreted me, came back, and intervened in any little way imaginable. Negatively or positively, but no matter your justification, it was still an intervention that didn’t need to happen because, as Malcolm once said, “Life, finds a way.” And just like destiny, it will find a way. But enough of all that crazy talk, you’re here because you want to hear all about my political leanings and to unravel the mystery as to this anonymous random on the internet’s preferred presidential choice in the election that has already passed.

But before I do that, let’s get some shit off my chest because I tend to swear and if you don’t like it, go the hell away. I’m sick of people being sensitive over everything. As if they’re looking for any reason to complain or get offended nowadays.

“The internet has given everyone in (the world) a voice, and evidently everyone in (the world) has chosen to use that voice to bitch about (anyone they find offensive)” -Holden McNeil (with some modern revisions)

And that’s why I’ve chose not to be PC in this thing, whenever I feel the urge to put pen to paper, relatively speaking.

Like, let’s see who I can offend right off the bat.

Women need to start getting punched more and treated like human beings instead of china dolls. If you’re a pro-gender equality advocate, and you’re a woman, you need to be willing to be punched in the face for doing ANYTHING a man would otherwise be punched in the face for. They also need to be held accountable for the shit they do to everyone. I am a strong supporter in believing that no matter what women say about women controlling the government and such, while women have great communication skills, they have the worst track record when it comes to not being aggressive, biologically speaking.

In the wild, whom are normally the more aggressive of the genders? Whom is usually the one more protective of the young? more willing to go out to hunt?

To be fair, I have a very limited knowledge when it comes to the animal kingdom. But, I mean, the Black Widow is normally depicted as being a deadly female, the female preying mantis devours the head of her mate after they’re done mating. There are so many, example, of females being worse than males in nature its hard to ignore. And, to add religious believers to the list of people offended, if you’re not ignorant to science and knowledge, or at least the pursuit of it, we evolved over a long period of time from apes, which, by nature, makes us, humans, not white people, black people, yellow people(to stick to the color scheme), brown people(gotta throw the other Asian people’s in there as well), animals. Highly evolved and communicative animals, but animals none the less. Was that supposed to be one word? Nonetheless?

Doesn’t matter. So, if you stick with my logic, you’ll see that women are terrible. Terrible. But, because men like to have sex with females as opposed to men for the most part in today’s society women have a stranglehold on the pelvic reason of an entire world, which means they can make anyone, for the most part, do anything they want and see things their way, even if they’re saying the sky is as green as the skies of Namek. An example of this is perfectly laid out in a clip from That 70′s Show. Kelso and Hyde prove women can’t play fight because they’ll turn it real, for whatever reason, just because they’re girls. To prove this, Kelso and Hyde play fight, and it looks bad, but they stop, laugh, and hug it out. Then Jackie and Donna play fight, starting out playfully, but then turning it into hair pulling and needing to be pulled apart. Both visibly angry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUwxxJvtQnI

(OK, my memory was bad, it was Eric and Hyde, and it was set up differently, but the concept is still there.)

And I get it, they’re actors, being paid to do what the script is telling them to do, but it is true. Girls are worst during puberty as well, from what I’ve heard. And I get it, I have a biased standpoint being a male, but in today's culture that shouldn’t matter, it’s about what’s being said, not my gender.

Now that women are out of the way, lets also as black people, but not specifically black people, its more of a systemic form of racism that I believe shouldn’t exist. In which, if you are not of that specific race, you are not allowed to say the n-word. What makes me giggle right now is that with just that sentence every single person reading this probably got a bit riled up. A bit ruffled in the feathers because I’m not a black person. And if you weren’t, you are now, knowing what you know now.

So let me provide you with some context so you can understand how I’m not racist at the same time as saying what I said above.

I enjoy rap music and hip-hop, as do a lot of people throughout the world, black or otherwise. Which, in this current climate, would be considered one of the forms of cultural appropriation we tend to sweep under the rug because it doesn’t fit our narrative of being offended about something. Because I like rap music I tend to learn the word to all of the songs I enjoy listening to. Because I learn the words to the songs that I enjoy listening to I sing along. But, because I’m not black, I have to ruin my flow to edit myself just because the artist chose to use nigger in their song. Which, as an artist, is their choice.

Now, why should I have to edit myself? I have tried to replace it with “wigger”, but because of the closeness of the words, I felt that would still be offensive if I was ever overheard by the wrong black person who, understandably, would be mad if they heard a pasty white boy say the word nigger without any context.

I just think, unless the person is using the word in a hateful way, directed at the person the speaker either personally knows or is conciously speaking about, as in “i hate that nigger” or “you’re a nigger”. If it’s something like that, totally beat the shit out of that racist.

But if you’re singing along to Wu-Tang, and you say:

I be that insane nigga from the psycho ward I'm on the trigger, plus I got the Wu-Tang sword So how you figure, that you can even fuck with mine? Hey, yo, RZA! Hit me with that shit one time! And pull a foul, niggas, save the beef for the cow I'm milkin' this ho, this is my show, Tical! The fuck you wanna do on this mic piece, duke? I'm like a sniper, hyper off the ginseng root PLO Style, buddha monks with the owls Now who's the fuckin' man? Meth-Tical It shouldn’t be labelled as being racist.

There is more rattling around in my head right now, things that I’ve been thinking about for years, and things that have been bothering me for just about as long, but for now those were the two that fell out when I vomited all over my keyboard.

And if you’re offended. Get over it. You need to start.

Oh, I almost forgot. I was going to tell you whom it was I was going to vote for yesterday if I had voted for anybody. Jokingly I wanted to write-in “Obi-Wan Kenobi”. But in truth I was going to vote for Biden. Not because I thought he was the better candidate, but because there was not a good option at all, he was just the lesser of two evils. This election has made me decide I want a third option when it comes to my politicians, or at least, get rid of political parties all together. We spend so much time infighting and holding each other back instead of up no real change has happened in the past decade? Longer? And whatever change that does happen gets nitpicked apart so much it becomes a shell of its former self. But, enough about that. I have a baby demanding eggs and waffles and I still need to tag this.

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snowbellewells · 6 years ago

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Captain Swan is my Favorite Rom-Com: While You Were Sleeping, Part Seven

by: @snowbellewells

(I really have to apologize for how long it has been since I updated this little movie AU. I could make all kinds of excuses, but I just think I’ll beg your understanding and promise that I fully intend to wrap it all up soon. Unless things change as I am writing, there should be only one more installment after this one before the fluffy ending. Thanks to all those who have still been reading and asking about this one; I really appreciate your interest.

And now, back the CS-inspired version of While You Were Sleeping....)

Part Seven ~

Those curious, unknowing words had barely left Liam’s mouth than Emma was sucking in a fractured sob, desperate to hold it in her throat. She gave the man in the hospital bed a tiny, wavering smile before shaking her head and barely murmuring, “No one important, sorry. Don’t worry about it.” Then she was gone in a rush of blonde hair whipping out as she turned quickly - her coat rustled, the door opened, and she was gone in a mere blink of the eye.

Liam turned questioning eyes on his brother, only to find Killian’s gaze still trained on the door the unknown woman had slipped through, a torn expression on his face. It was a look Liam had never quite seen on his younger sibling’s countenance before, or he would have known exactly what it meant. As it was, his concern and confusion was only redoubled. “Killian? What - who was that? Is she alright?”

When Killian’s eyes returned to meet his own, Liam Jones sensed even more strongly that he was missing some crucial part of a puzzle he hadn’t even known existed. He was a man who knew what he wanted, what needed to be done, and always had a plan of action for getting there. He hadn’t left his father’s home and chosen trade to make his own way successfully on a mere whim or by chance, and this uncertain feeling that he had missed something crucial worried and upset him even more than waking up not sure where he was or what had happened had done.

His brother seemed to quickly grasp his unease and moved swiftly to alleviate it. Shaking free from whatever thoughts had been troubling his own mind, Killian gave a somewhat pained, self-conscious half-smile before idly scratching behind his ear in a gesture that was a dead giveaway to someone who had known him all his life that he was either uncomfortable, nervous, hiding something...or all three combined.

All the middle Jones sibling said however, after clearing his throat and shifting uneasily on his feet, was, “I’ll fill you in as best I can in a moment, Brother. Aye? I do hope she will be fine, but who she is...is, well...just a bit more complicated.” He dipped his head slightly to Liam, eyes seeking his older brother’s hopefully. “You trust me, right?”

“Of course,” Liam affirmed, not even hesitating. This was Killian, whom he had grown up with. The man before him had refused to rat him out, even when falsely accused of cheating at school on the one test Liam had ever cheated on (thought two years younger, Killian had possessed a gift for languages which far surpassed his elder sibling’s, even if it was Liam who brought home the straight As). Killian had woken at dawn to milk cows with him before the bus arrived, even willingly taking the chore over during Liam’s senior year when Liam had found an early internship in his field to beef up his college aps, and Killian had been the one who’d saved with him to buy their first vehicle - a truck they had shared until Liam left for college and that he knew Killian still treasured.

“Good,” Killian murmured in a gravelly voice, a warmth in his eyes conveying just how glad he was to see his brother, regardless of what else might be on his mind. “Do you remember fighting off muggers? Or being pushed from the platform at your usual commuting station?”

Liam felt a slight pounding behind his eyes when he scrunched his forehead in thought, letting out a pained hiss and resolving not to try that a second time. He vaguely remembered standing on the platform, some stranger getting in his space, flipping his scarf, yelling, and the sensation of falling, but it was all a bit jumbled. Bringing a hand up to his temple, Killian leaned back to stand and seek the call button before pressing it anxiously. Turning his eyes up to his darker haired sibling, Liam mused, “Possibly? ...At least, maybe parts of it, I think.”

Killian ran an agitated hand back through his already disheveled hair, making Liam want to chuckle at the way the strands were beginning to stick out at all angles and in every direction. For his part, the younger brother did not look amused, but more flustered and upset with himself before finally saying, “I’m sorry, Liam. We should have been calling to have you checked out first thing, and here I am, like a bloody fool, bombarding you with questions the moment you finally wake…”

Something about his brother’s self-remonstrating rant set off further little alarm bells in Liam’s mind. “Wait, so I was mugged? At the station? How long have I been out?”

Killian shook his head, coming back to take his brother’s hand and squeeze tightly, gaze catching his and boring into Liam’s intently. “Long enough to have us all worried, Liam. Let’s just say I’m very glad you’re talking to me, that you know me, and leave it at that until a doctor arrives.”

Liam didn’t like it, but he could see that he wasn’t going to get any more information on his health from his sibling at present - Killian could be every bit as stubborn and bullheaded as Liam knew himself to be when determination was called for, and so he was wise enough to realize that pushing directly wouldn’t get him anywhere. Blowing out a breath in frustration, he swiped a hand through his mussed - despite their close crop - curls and forced himself to focus on his second point of confusion. “Fine, we’ll leave my condition to the doctors, if you insist… but Killian, at least tell me who that lass was who just ran out of here. She seemed upset. Did you - or did I unknowingly - do something to cause her distress?”

Killian bit his lower lip in deep thought for a moment, weighing his options. Liam might not have remembered being engaged, even if he had been; of course, Killian now knew it wasn’t the case anyway, but also that the whole mix-up (though it had gotten out of hand) had begun as an innocent mistake. Something within him, in annoyingly close vicinity to his heart, couldn’t bear to have Liam, and then their whole family, blame Emma as he had mistakenly done, and then turn her out of their affections. His chest ached at the lonely yearning in her voice and expression when he had confronted her - as if she were just waiting to be rejected once more, even as she clung to some fragile hope that this time might finally be different.

Liam’s eyes were beginning to narrow suspiciously, and Killian knew he had better speak up before his brother deduced just how carefully he was weighing his words. Clearing his throat, Killian plunged in with a version of the truth that he hoped might spare everyone - well, everyone but his own traitorous affections. “You don’t recognize her? She’s a toll booth operator at the station you go through every Saturday. According to her, and the police for that matter, you were mugged while waiting for your train and pushed onto the tracks. She… Emma, her name’s Emma… jumped down as well, and somehow managed to roll your unconscious self out of the way before you were both run over.”

Liam’s eyes were wide in shock by the time Killian got that much of the tale relayed, but he was also nodding along with at least some degree of recognition. “Aye, you’re right,” he said softly, eyes somewhat unfocused as he thought back. “I do remember a bit of that altercation - shoving, one of those crooks making off with my briefcase, and the sensation of falling…”

“Exactly,” Killian confirmed, with a dip of his chin in a definite nod. He hesitated as his older brother’s brow furrowed in consternation, clearly frustrated as to why he didn’t remember his - to Killian’s mind anyway, angelically beautiful - savior. Here was where he could stop and let the rest of the chips fall where they might. However, the aching need he had seen on Emma’s face - to belong, to matter to someone, to be a part of something, even something as taken-for-granted by most as a family, pushed him further. His voice was still low, more of a hoarse croak really, because some part of him wanted Emma to be free and unattached, to know if he could enchant her as Liam had done from afar, but still he spoke up trying to comfort himself with the belief that he was sparing everyone else pain - Emma, his family - and giving his brother a gift if the driven sod took his head out of work long enough to recognize and grasp it. “Not only that though,” he added, seeing that he had Liam’s focus once more. “She tells us the two of you are engaged as well.”

“What?” Liam questioned, looking (if possible) even more perplexed than he had been already. “Engaged?”

Killian nodded again, succinctly, calm on the outside, even as his stomach churned. None of what he said was untrue, and yet he was being a bit misleading - not that Liam seemed exactly opposed, merely confused and surprised.

“Brother,” Liam began slowly, “why is it that I seem to remember most other people and things, but not this Emma? At least not beyond vague smiles and greetings as she took my tokens for commutes. Are the rest of you certain she isn’t lying? I would have thought I’d remember proposing to someone; not to mention that if I had, I had always imagined it would be Belle.”

Again, a part of Killian wanted to bite his own tongue off as he prepared to speak further, but he had committed to his course of action now and plunged ahead, all the while still trying to convince himself that he was doing what was best for everyone. “To be honest with you, Liam, I had always supposed you and Belle would return to each other as well,” he answered honestly. “You’d be the one to know what happened there more than I. What I can do is tell you what I’ve learned of Emma while you’ve been sleeping…” He attempted to inject the offer with a bit of teasing humor, and did in fact draw a rueful chuckle from his older brother.

He then proceeded to share details of the dinner Emma had spent with his family, their reactions to her and affection they held for her, and even his own impressions and how much he genuinely liked her as he had gotten to know her. Before Killian realized, nearly an hour had passed, and Liam wore a thoughtful, but much more at ease, expression on his face as Killian’s words finally ran out.

“You know, Brother,” Liam spoke slowly, deliberately, “perhaps I shouldn’t be so worried about remembering every detail, and instead thank my lucky stars someone who sounds as enchanting and wonderful as you make Emma Swan sound has wound up in my life. Maybe I had better get to know her and see if she still wishes to be my wife rather than trying to recapture the past and allowing her a chance to slip away.”

Killian nodded in agreement, relieved to see that Liam didn’t seem particularly troubled or reluctant at this prospect. He honestly wanted to simply feel relief altogether; this was the response he’d hoped for after all. His brother was alright, Emma wouldn’t have to leave their family and return to her solitary life; things could work out for everyone. But, for someone who was getting what he wanted, why could he feel nothing but heaviness and dread in his heart?

~~~~~~~********~~~~~~~~

When Killian stepped outside the hospital onto the busy sidewalk, the chilly bite to the New England air had sharpened further still with the coming of evening. He didn’t have to search long though to discover that Emma was still nearby, clearly having lingered despite her hurt and disappointment, as he could see her huddled against the cold on a bench in the bus stop shelter a mere few yards away. As he neared her and stood in the entrance, as if asking permission to join her with a cocked head and arched brow, Emma glanced up and met his eyes almost sheepishly, before shrugging and nodding her assent.

She didn’t actually speak aloud until Killian flopped down on the bench beside her, offering him a quirked half-smile in tired self-deprecation before asking, “So, now that Liam’s all caught up, how huge of a crazy stalker does he think I am?” she asked lowly. “Did you guys call the cops, or should I just be prepared to be carted off to therapy?”

Her head bowed again after that, as if she didn’t want to - or couldn’t - keep holding his gaze. Killian sucked a surprised breath into his throat and nearly choked on it. He had long since realized she was sincere and no scam artist after all, but he hadn’t really grasped her level of shame and contrition. Unable to leave her in that sort of turmoil any longer than absolutely necessary, he reached over to cover her cold bare hand with his own where it rested on her knee. Keeping his voice equally low, he still hoped it would convey some warmth and cheer, as he could feel shivers tremoring through Emma’s wiry frame next to him. “Actually, Liam’s decided he’d quite like to get to know you, Lass. He doesn’t remember you - or proposing, for obvious reasons,” he winked at her there and she gave a surprised snort of laughter, even as she also tried to surreptitiously swipe away a few tears, “but after hearing how you saved his life and how much we all love you and how well you fit in, he seemed to see it as an opportunity to get to know someone amazing rather than just letting you vanish.”

It was Emma’s turn for her breath to catch in stunned disbelief. Shaking her head, she did look back at him then, a tentative smile curling her lips even as she returned his stare in pure awe. “How did you…? What - Why would you do that for me, Killian? You know that it was all a big misunderstanding.” She stammered, at a dazed sort of loss, before her protest faded.

“Because I didn’t want you to have to be alone,” he offered simply. “You clearly already think a lot of Liam; he seemed to want to get to know you. You two can handle it from there - but it didn’t seem necessary to cause a lot of hurt feelings and embarrassment when it might all work out for the best anyway. Besides, my family would hate to lose you….and so would I.” He shrugged his shoulders, not sure what else to say in explanation.

It was a gesture that Emma mirrored sheepishly, a tiny smile crossed her face, even as her cheeks blushed bright red. “Who knows? We might end up married in the end after all, huh?” she responded playfully.

“Exactly,” he smirked back. However, he had to swallow hard around the growing lump in his throat to do so - more certain than ever that the perfect happily ever after for her and his loved ones was going to pain him even more than he had realized at first.

Pressing her lips together, Emma seemed to be carefully gathering her thoughts for one more thing she wished to say, not noticing Killian’s inner conflict before he schooled his expression and kept it from showing on his face. “You know, not so long ago, my adoptive mom, Ingrid, was in the last stages of terminal cancer. We’d done all we could to fight it, but her body had taken enough...it was shutting down on her…” She paused, licked her lips, and then straightened herself in her seat and plowed on. “I was sitting at her bedside, clinging on for dear life, cursing the world, and cancer, and Fate, that I would be all by myself in the world again… and she reached over, touched my face, and in just barely a whisper, said, ‘You’ll find a family again, my girl. I know it.’ Those were… h-her last words. And I - I didn’t believe them until right now.”

Blinking rapidly, she looked up into his eyes with her teary green ones shining. “Thank you, Killian. For giving me a chance. I adore your family, and I certainly don’t want to hurt them… You know that, right?”

He could tell she was about to start rambling in reassurance, and so he reached out to cover her lips, shaking his head with a humored grin. “Emma, Emma,” he soothed, breaking in before she could get on too much of a roll, “It’s okay. I know.”

For a second he stared into her eyes, shocked, and his hands darted away from her mouth quickly, feeling almost heated by the spark of chemistry that ricocheted from where their skin brushed. They were both silent, waiting, until the moment nearly passed.

Licking her lips once more, Emma nodded as if in acceptance of all they had discussed, then finally murmured, “Well, I’m grateful….So let’s see what happens… Unless….” She almost trailed off, looking away and then back to him again, “Unless you can give me some reason I shouldn’t see where this thing with Liam might go?”

Killian shook his head, barely even hesitating before he answered, “Of course not, Lass. Liam is the very best of men - my brother or not. I wish nothing but happiness for the both of you.” And that was that - even if he felt his heart sink inside him as he said the words.

Tagging: @searchingwardrobes @laschatzi @whimsicallyenchantedrose @jennjenn615 @revanmeetra87 @teamhook @branlovestowrite @therooksshiningknight @aloha-4-ever @kmomof4 @linda8084 @vvbooklady1256 @bmbbcs4evr @the-captains-ayebrows @winterbaby89 @spartanguard @nikkiemms @cinnamonduckling @capswantrue @flslp87 @ultraluckycatnd @gingerchangeling @blackwidownat2814

#csromcom18 #while you were sleeping movie au #cs movie au #cs ff #part seven

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fsuvegan-blog · 6 years ago

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A Deeper Look into the Vegan Community

One community that has grown immensely throughout the world within the last couple of years is the vegan community. The vegan community refers to people who don’t consume dairy, eggs, meat or any other type of animal product. This community may even extend to those who not only don’t consume any animal products, but don’t use anything made with different types of animal products in them or who don’t use any types of products that have been tested on animals. They may choose not to consume or use these types of products by force, due to food allergies, or simply by choice, for a more holistic diet or to support the animals.

I was first interested in this community when I started to see veganism more recently in the last five years. It has become increasingly popular among people today. It started to fascinate me more when I became friends with people who are a part of the vegan community. I decided to take a deeper look into this community not only because of the personal connections to this community, but because of the believed health rewards and environmental benefits from becoming vegan.

I believe that members of the vegan community want to be able to reach as many people as they can in order for people to get a better understanding of what being vegan entails. More times than not, there is a lot of stereotyping that happens to groups people are not a part of. I believe that anyone in any group wants to educate others about these assumptions to truly let people know what they’re all about.

Over the last decade, the vegan “plant based diet” has risen significantly. The proportion of Americans following a vegan diet has increased substantially in the past 15 years from approximately 300,000 to 500,000 people in 1997 to between 2.5 and 6 million in 2012 (Radnitz, Cynthia, Bonnie Beezhold, and Julie DiMatteo). According to Gordinier, “Veganism has been edging into the mainstream for years now, coaxed along by superstar believers like Bill Clinton and Beyoncé.” On reason the vegan diet has become more popular is the recent acceptance of veganism. Veganism used to be thought of as a bland world filled with only tofu and rice. As Jeff Gordinier recalls, "you would say the vegan word and the chef would look at you like you had three heads and just got off the commune." Now people everywhere are fully embracing the vegan diet and even branching outside their own realm of cooking to try and conquer their own versions of vegan meals. There have also been inaccurate portrayals of veganism in the media played out by major food companies as a way to get people to continue to purchase animal products from big corporations. As said by Jan Deckers, “... M. Cole and Morgan (2011) reveal that newspapers tend to undermine veganism through ridicule, as well as through portraying vegan diets as impossible to maintain and through presenting vegans as faddists, ascetics, sentimentalists, or even hostile extremists—a general discourse that they label as ‘vegaphobia’.” While this may give those outside the vegan community a negative portrayal of veganism, there are still evermore people turning to the ‘dark side’ and trying to change things up with switch from animal products. Clearly, vegans are doing something right as people continue to try this lifestyle out for size.

Some people choose to become vegan to support animal activism. The entire process of turning innocent animals into the meal on the plate before you is extremely grueling. As stated from Jan Deckers, “Much debate has been held over the question of which animals might be capable of experiencing pain, which can be distinguished from nociception as the latter perception of a noxious stimulus can be unconscious.” There once was a point in time where across all cultures, animals were one of the most cherished parts of society. Our whole existence depended on them. Now we’ve come to a place where we treat animals as the scum of the Earth. As the Animals and Ecology: Towards a Better Integration says, “...treat commodity animals reductively as less than they are, as a mere human resource, little more than living meat or egg production units.” Animals are raised unnaturally strictly for the purpose of becoming someone’s meal. In chicken farms, hens are ‘debeaked.’ As described by Jan Deckers, “Debeaking is a process whereby about one fourth of the beak of the chick is removed by means of an electrically heated blade that cauterises the chick’s blood vessels as part of the animal’s beak is snipped off.” These chickens are stricken of part of their biological nature. One ideology associated with veganism is dualism, which is the idea that humans and animals are a mutual part of the Earth. Not only is the treatment of animals for food production extremely cruel to the animals, but its effects are detrimental to the environment as well. Did you know, according to Casta, Sylvia, and Assumpció Antón, “...to produce 1 kilogram of edible beef protein, 20 kilograms equivalent of plant proteins are required.” Mat McDermott writes “...the USDA data shows that in 2015 9.2 billion land animals were killed in the United States alone for their meat—8.8 billion chickens, 232 million turkeys, 115 million pigs, 28 million cows, 28 million ducks and two million sheep. That’s 28 animals killed for every US resident.” This indicates a global issue in the sustainability of food resources in the current diets we are upholding. Bruce Friedrich reported “The intensive method for raising animals for food today is both destroying and depleting our arable land...this excrement is swimming with bacteria, antibiotics, hormones, pesticides and other filth, polluting water and destroying topsoil.” If these are the conditions in which animals are being bred to feed mass majorities of the population, what does it have to say about the quality of food we’re intaking? Do people even consider some of these factors when eating their food? How many people actually consider these things when putting a meal together?

One reason people choose to follow veganism is for health reasons. In order to follow the vegan diet, one must not consume any animal products. This can be a tedious task, as a large majority of foods made today contain trace amounts of animal products. It takes a vast amount of creativity and knowledge to be able to make new snacks and meals that adhere to these rules. Veganism is believed to be one of the healthiest diets to follow, due to the limited amount of dairy and meat involved. However, according to Sally Fallon, “Animal foods provide nutrients unavailable from plant foods including vitamin B12, vitamin A, vitamin D, coenzyme Q10 and important long chain fatty acids such as DHA and EPA.” Many vegans end up having to take vitamin supplements to get the necessary nutrients required for healthy living. They also may have to supplement their meals with many snacks throughout the day in order to keep their energy up. Yet, many people fail to realize that while criticizing the vegan diet, there are a significant amount of problems with the traditional diets of Americans. Noted by Sandra Hood, “...many chronic diseases that affect people in the western world, including over-consumption of food leading to obesity, are often accompanied by vitamin and mineral deficiencies.” If vegan diets are so lacking in vitamins, then how is it that so many people following traditional diets are overweight or have mineral deficiencies?

In conclusion, it can be debated whether or not the vegan diet has a positive impact on a person’s overall health. Between the rates of cancer, coronary disease and heart attacks of vegans and non-vegans, it becomes increasingly difficult to tell which group is living the better lifestyle. It can be argued from case to case, person to person about which is healthier. One thing that members of the vegan community and non-members can agree on is that we all want better treatment of our environment in order for us to keep living on our beloved planet Earth. This can come from changing the treatment of animals in the food industry. This can also come from changing laws and policies that would bring about drastic environmental change and treatment globally. Doing this research has definitely given me a better insight into the vegan community and one day I may even find myself trying out the vegan lifestyle.

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writingwithcolor · 7 years ago

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Pluralistic distinctions in Hinduism

Hi everybody! If you follow my personal blog, you may have noticed I've been busy becoming a doctor, which unfortunately meant I had to be effectively dead to the world for a couple of months.

But now that's over, and I'd like to address a couple of points that have come across the WWC space in that time. Some of these are unanswered questions on Indian history and Hinduism and some relate to questions that have been answered already that our followers have raised some commentary on, so if you asked a question about any of those topics, please read through this post as it's going to cover a lot of ground.

One question (directed at me in particular), asked how it is possible for a person to be both a Hindu and an atheist. Another raised some concerns about the view of the sacredness of cows in modern Hinduism, and the intersection of cow-veneration and caste. I think both of these intertwine and ultimately come together in the same place.

To start, let me deconstruct the basic structure of a common or garden Hindu myth:

Indra and/or Brahma: *does something stupid*

Indra and/or Brahma: I screwed up.

Indra and/or Brahma: Halp.

Vishnu: *concocts elaborate plan to restore order to the world, usually involving shapeshifting, logical technicalities, and possibly orchestrating a war or two*

If that looks silly to you, compare it to the central story of Christianity:

Humanity: *does lots of stupid stuff*

God: Y'all are screwed up.

God. You need halp.

God: *concocts elaborate plan to save mankind, involving shapeshifting, logical technicalities, and ritually sacrificing himself to himself*

Please resist the temptation to come at me for this, literally everyone. I'm casting everything in deliberately silly terms, because if the Hindu myth looks silly to you and the Christian myth does not, you're merely getting a sense of what I did growing up, only in reverse.

Nontheistic Hinduism

If you take the words of what we commonly call "religion" literally, you miss a great part of the picture, and I believe this is true for a literalist/fundamentalist and for a nonbeliever. When we look at a religion, we must examine it as a historically-situated phenomenon, because that's what it is. A religion doesn't just arrive one day fully-formed, even in the case of a single founder, which Hinduism doesn't even have.

"Religion" comes from the Latin religio, meaning "bond" or "reverence." In a broader sense, it means "obligation," "sense of right," or "conscientiousness." Already it seems obvious how subjective those terms are. You may have heard of the "Just World hypothesis," which underpins most religious thinking, in that if we just do the right thing, destiny/fate/the world/the next world will naturally pan out in our favor. The trouble with that, even if you believe it's true, is that you're still stuck trying to figure out what "the right thing" is. Enter sacred texts, which seem to be formulas for the right behavior and belief, and it looks to many like we've got an answer to this problem.

If only it were that simple. "The right thing" turns out to be different in every text you read, because these texts were written in different times and places by different people who, if they found some way of living that they thought was "the right thing," found something that worked for them in that time and place, but wouldn't necessarily function for anyone else anywhere or anywhen else.

Our ancestors may have promulgated a lot of BS that has since been proven wrong, but they weren't stupid. They at least tried to make sense of the world but due to environmental factors and limited horizons around the world, those explanations they came up with, in sacred texts and practices and rituals, differ from each other in crucial ways.

But they do say something about how humans have viewed the universe and our place in it over time. That's what I find compelling: the multitude of ways that our ancestors attempted to explain the workings of the universe. I think the comparison and contrast tell us much more about ourselves, how we work, and our place in the world than any religious dogma. What's cool is the pluralistic thought and argumentation and attempts to analyze real phenomena that might just happen to be wrapped in a context that we in the modern world view as religious but in ancient times it was just how a given group of people lived. Personally, I couldn't care less about the specifics of salvation and divine grace and devotion.

So, yeah, I'm really not interested in hearing about how great and liberating your religion is. That's great and I'm happy for you, but I really want nothing less than to participate. Stop trying to convert me, please.

People often argue that being confronted with death makes you religious. I would beg to differ. I've dealt with a lot of death, especially in recent years, and if anything it's made me less theistic, not more, but also more thoughtful, more nuanced, and more appreciative of family and human connection.

With such an attitude, in a world constantly strained with tensions between different religions, and between the religious and non-religious, it's difficult to sit comfortably in any single group identity. So, yes, I very often feel like I have no spiritual and political bedfellows other than people who've been dead for 1300 years and will forever dwell in anonymity.

In that sense, I've been lucky to have the background I do. Although history is full of heterodox views springing up all over the world, in India many of them were recorded and never fully stamped out by political entities that favored the orthodox. I have to chalk this up to the origins of the thing we call "Hinduism" being a very organic synthesis of elements from South, Southeast, East, and Central Eurasia, which all brewed together in the Indian subcontinent into a chaotic patchwork of tribal and communal distinctions in practice and belief that were, until about 1 CE, probably far more fluid than they were rigid. It's always been impossible to enforce a singular belief system in that part of the world, so in that mix, people believed in all sorts of gods, and some of them believed in none.

There have been codified schools of thought that explicitly denied the validity of established rituals, the existence of and even the human need for belief in gods.

I talk about a few of them here.

Some quotes:

There is no heaven, no final liberation, nor any soul in another world. Nor do the actions of the four castes, orders, and others, produce any real effect.

- a verse attributed to the Cārvāka school

God is unproved.

- Sāṁkhyapravacana Sūtra, 1.92

But, after all, who knows, and who can say

Whence it all came, and how creation happened?

- Nāsadiya Sūkta, verse 6 (Rig Veda, 10.129)

Yes, despite the stereotype of India as a land of spiritual supernaturalism, explicitly and implicitly nontheistic belief systems have existed there since nearly the beginning of recorded history. Sanskrit has a larger non-theistic literature than Ancient Greek or Latin. "Hinduism" became the catch-all term for the collective indigenous beliefs of the Indian subcontinent, regardless of particulars. The terms "Hindu" and "India" come from the same derivation (referring to the Sindhu, or Indus, River in the northwest—but I won't assert that the two terms mean the same thing, as that is categorically untrue). Therefore to claim that atheism is somehow "un-Hindu" is historically, anthropologically, and linguistically ignorant. While perhaps unusual, disbelief in gods and the supernatural is as valid a position in "Hinduism" as any other. It does mean, though, that it also coexists under the same label as its polar opposites—strong theism, superstition, and virulent fundamentalism.

Cows and Hinduism

This tension can be seen in some of the issues surrounding the position of the cow in modern Hinduism. This potentially arose in the first place for secular reasons—it is true that cows probably acquired some status of reverence because of their utility in tilling fields, providing milk, dung for fertilizer, etc. But meat is also a pretty useful product. Did you know that modern India is the world's 5th largest beef producer, 7th largest beef consumer, and largest beef exporter? All this despite legislation against cow/bull/bullock slaughter in half the country. Plenty of societies through history have both valued the cow's utility while alive and dead. Why the special status in Hinduism?

Cows have always been useful animals, but also more expensive to keep and maintain, compared to other herd animals such as sheep or goats, so they became a symbol of wealth in ancient Asia. This association is thought to be very old, potentially dating to before the Indo-European expansion. As they were expensive, only those at the top of the social heap could afford to keep many, and in ancient India, that was the Brahmin caste. If you want to keep your cows, you can't have the possibility that someone's going to poach it for dinner, and so casting the cow as a respected or venerated creature is a pretty effective way to do that. This also means that you get to keep your symbol of wealth and status and the poors don't get to have any.

As cow sacrifice and beef consumption is actually very well-attested during the Vedic period, what probably happened is that around 800 BCE, with the ascendancy of the Kuru Kingdom and the codification of rituals at a state and urban level, beef-eating began to be disfavored by lawgivers. Heterodox movements at the time, which would give rise to Buddhism and Jainism, also emphasized vegetarianism and as these were becoming popular among all social classes, the orthodox priesthood adopted certain hallmarks (like vegetarianism) which had the side effect (intentional or otherwise) of making avoidance of cow slaughter into a status symbol. So previously enthusiastic meat-eaters became strict vegetarians. Other non-Vedic elements made their way into the Brahminical religion around this time, such as the cycle of birth and death, and these ideas are regarded as a characteristic of Hinduism today. However, as the influence Brahminical orthodoxy was limited to a core in north-central India, around the modern Delhi area, beef-eating continued as a practice on the frontier. Today, Nepal, the most Hindu country in the world, consumes beef quite freely.

As mentioned before, you can argue that "Hinduism" isn't really a single thing. When someone says that Hindus don't eat beef, what they mean is that certain varieties of Hindus don't eat beef. Some Hindus don't out of religious reasons. Some hold no religious belief against it but don't do it out of habit or tradition or other ethical consideration. Some religious Hindus thrive on beef. Beef is typically a nutritionally-dense, readily-available food for poor and working class people, including those from disadvantaged caste groups. The act of condemning them for their eating habits or taking away a primary source of nutrition using a religious excuse is an act that can't be disconnected from its historical and sociocultural underpinnings discussed in the previous paragraphs. An attitude toward the cow that may have started as an innocent economic consideration has become laden with a ton of cultural baggage about as complex as the history of the subcontinent itself.

I don't eat beef myself. I've eaten it before, and it usually made me feel a bit ill. I guess descent from countless generations of vegetarian Brahmins left my gut unprepared for that particular kind of meat. Beef production also uses too much carbon for my comfort and I once ate a hamburger in front of a cow and it turns out they have very judgey eyes. I'm holding out for vat-grown meat, personally.

However, when states in India pass beef bans, they do it on the grounds that it's an honored animal in Hinduism, and while that's true, there's a historical and social context behind that and not all varieties of "Hindu" actually observe that prohibition. Politicians are doing it cynically to drum up support among a certain contingent of "values voters" so they can keep their jobs in the next election cycle.

Regarding the place of religion and cows in modern India, many people, intimately familiar with the realities on the ground, have written on the topic better than I ever could. With the arrival of a new wave of invaders and colonizers, Europeans and the British in particular, identities shifted yet again, and those echoes are felt all over the modern republic. Here's a good read.

Hinduism and Pluralism

When we take care to not drop all adherents of a particular religion into a sack with the worst ones, we need to remember to extend that courtesy to all religions, because all religions have assholes trying to make everyone around them think like them, and those are the people we usually end up hearing about on the news. The choice to eat or not eat beef (or anything) is a personal one that, while informed by society and background and culture, isn't solely determined by it. A claim, by a Hindu or non-Hindu, that any particular thing is "the Hindu way" is to fundamentally misunderstand the history of the thing that we've come to call "Hinduism."

I don't think it's a coincidence that societies like the Gupta Empire, the Tang Dynasty, the Abbasid Caliphate, and the Italian Renaissance are regarded as "Golden Ages" and were also more open to pluralism and heterodoxy than the societies before and after them. Scholarship, philosophy, and science always flower when different views speak to and challenge each other freely and openly, and when they challenge the established power structure, even unsuccessfully. If you can't withstand a robust challenge to your worldview, then you're not growing, and if you're not growing, you're failing. If you have an allegiance or affection to a particular identity, then you owe it to yourself and those like you not to let the ones you call your own succumb to the worst among them.

So, I'm happy, comfortable, and proud to claim the label of Hindu even if I believe humans made demons and humans made gods, and that the stories I grew up with are just (really cool) fantasy. I do it because the Hindu right would like everyone to believe that there is a single, homogenous Hinduism that never actually existed, and that is a view that I find at best impoverished and at worst geopolitically dangerous. By claiming the label "Hindu" when I refuse supernaturalism and pseudohistory, I am able to do a small part to render that worldview false.

--Mod Nikhil

#Hindu #Hinduism #Pluralism #religion #atheism #mythology #Christianity #food #food mention #culture #guides #long post #asks

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trollhunter94 · 8 years ago

Text

Troll Hunter

Characters: Hunter!Reader x Winchester Brothers.

O/C: Castiel, Hank the witness + mystery Easter characters.

Warnings: None

Words: 1700

A/N: This is for @sleepywinchester ’s URL writing challenge. I hope you enjoy reading it, as much as I did writing it. Ps. This story is now head cannon for me.

Summary: The reader and Team Free Will take a case in Sun Valley, Arizona, when there are a string of missing people and eye-witness accounts of a Mountain Troll.

“I swear… It was ten foot tall and one ugly son of a gun” the redneck stated, distraught as he cradled his riffle and took a swig from his flask.

“It had a moustache"….“And the dang thing took my best breeders”.

“Your breeders?” Dean prompted, leaning forward with a raised eyebrow.

“Yeah, those cows have won best in show for five years running. What am I going to do now?” The man took another drink and wiped a tear from the corner of one eye.

Dean rolled his eyes and shot a familiar look of contempt to Sam.

“We’re very sorry for your loss”. Sam gave the man a sympathetic expression.

“We’ll do everything we can to find your cattle. Is there anything else you can tell us?”

“Well, after barging through my fence and cow-lifting, it headed in that direction”, he explained pointing West.

“Also, he had one of those water rescue hoops stuck around one of his legs”

“Is there a lake or swimming pool around here?”, you chipped in as you pulled out your phone to get a map of the area.

“No, but there is a reservoir and boat house up by the forest” he stated as he sat down on a tree stump.

“Found it. Jack’s Shack. It’s about two miles north west of here. Just off Route 66.” Putting the phone back in your pocket, you gazed back at the depressed man.

“Thank you for your time Hank" you said, reaching to the other pocket and retrieving a card.

“Here’s my number. If it comes back, please call us straight away”.

“Of course” he sighed.

You then motioned to Sam and Dean to walk with you.

Reaching the car, you and stood at the passenger side of Baby, as Dean walked to the Drivers door and propped his hands on the roof.

“What do we know that is ten foot and has a craving for cow?” Dean asked, lifting his eyes to access his internal memory of Supernatural lore.

“With a moustache”, you added playfully.

“Get this, there have been accounts of Trolls in the surrounding area, dating back to the 50’s". Sam suggested, genuinely thinking it a possibility.

“Seriously?” Dean snorted sarcastically.

“Yeah, no it could be a Troll….. Or a Giant. No! It’s Bigfoot” he snided with fake realisation.

“We should check this place out, regardless”. Sam urged, knowing that this was the only solid lead.

“Alright, fine”, Dean responded. “I’ll tell Cas to meet us there.”

———–

Arriving at the Boat House, you could see Castiel waiting for you guys outside.

The three of you immediately stepped out of the impala, eager to escape the remnants of Dean’s broken wind.

“Hello Dean” Cas spoke in a low and calm tone. “Sam, Y/N, good to see you” he nodded.

I’ve already checked the building. There’s no sign of anyone, but the back door was left open".

Dean strolled to the boot, propping it up with a shotgun. “So, somebody left in a hurry” he said, as he changed the cartridge in his favourite pistol.

“There’s no sign of a struggle though", Sam interjected. He looked to the distance in every direction.

“What are we even looking for?” Castiel asked, feeling uninformed of the situation.

“A giant, beef-loving Mexican” you spoke seriously, knowing that it would puzzle him.

He scrunched his face and looked to Sam for reassurance. “What did the man do?”

Sam’s amusement was clear, as a wide smile plastered his face.

“We’re looking for something tall and hairy” he explained. “With a moustache” he added, motioning to you.

Dean joined the congregation, passing Sam a gun and giving you your hand-decorated angel blade.

He gave a friendly roll of his eyes at the happy giggle that escaped you, receiving the masterpiece.

Splitting up to search the surrounding area, you and Castiel went right, whilst Sam and Dean went left.

Castiel stayed within a short distance of you, watching the background and turning occasionally to check behind.

You walked past a grouping of large boulders. They were shaped like eggs and had strange markings around them like ribbons. They were also circling a small mound of disturbed earth.

Your investigation was interrupted by a manly scream, followed by inaudible shouting.

It sounded like Dean. You and Castiel both shared a worried look before he stepped forward and grabbed the collar of your jacket.

Your thoughts and perception were warped as you moved through space, landing in the vicinity of the brothers.

Never in your wildest dreams could you have imagined who or what was waiting for you.

Dean and Sam both had their weapons drawn, aiming at a human-sized rabbit and two large hairy creatures either side of it.

The two creatures stood straight with their arms crossed and looked very frustrated.

The rabbit was poised, gripping a boomerang in his right hand.

“Alright…Take it easy mate”, the rabbit spoke, sounding Australian and looking directly at Dean.

“What the cuss is going on?” you asked, taking small steps towards both parties in the standoff.

“Who are you?” Sam sternly questioned.

“Who do you think!” he said sarcastically.

“I’m Bunnymund". Pausing for a second, he continued. “The Easter Bunny”…

Sam pulled back and put his gun away. “Your the Easter bunny?” he asked with disbelief.

“Nuh uh” Dean said, shaking his head. He lowered his gun and started pacing, trying to register the situation.

You had no words, just standing and gawping at the giant, talking rabbit.

“Then who are these hipsters?” Dean asked, pointing to the hairy creatures. The one on the left took offense from his outburst and gave an angry grunt. “They’re Yeti, from the North Pole. They work for Santa”, he said casually. “Oh, come on!… Really?…. Santa?” Dean waved his hands and gun in frustration and refusal.

“Santa’s real” Sam gasped. He continued, “well, if Elves and fairies exist"….

Castiel walked up to the Yeti closest to him. His face was portraying curiosity, stunned himself, to learn of their existence.

He placed a hand on the Yeti’s head to read it.

The Yeti raised it’s fluffy eyebrows in confusion and pushed Castiel’s hand away slowly.

Watching the interaction, you couldn’t help but laugh with amusement. This seemed to diffuse the tension in the atmosphere.

So, who are you? And what are you doing here?“ Bunny questioned, looking between the four of you.

“I’m Sam, this is Dean, (y/n), and Cas. He’s an Angel and we’re hunters”, he explained.

“Hunters!” The bunny exclaimed. “One of your lot killed Tooth!” His anger was evident, as he was being restrained by his companions.

You and Sam shared a look, instantly knowing that he was referring to Garth.

This seemed to infuriate Dean as he shouted back. “Hey! Firstly, we’ve never killed a ‘tooth’ and second; your friends here have been taking innocent people”.

The Yeti’s both gave a defensive moan at the accusation. Bunny furrowed his brows before coming to a realisation.

“The Yeti’s didn’t take them, it was Pitch”.

All four of you stood silently, waiting for elaboration. Bunny sighed when he realised that he was going to have to give you the crash course.

“Pitch Black is the bogeyman, who is creating an army of nightmare Trolls in order to destroy us Guardians and fill the children of the world with fear.

This tsunami of information had left you and Sam gobsmacked. Dean had only focused on the first fact.

“The bogeyman” he whispered in a high pitched tone. “Sammy” he quickly called, looking to his little brother. “What do you know about this?”

“Not much" Sam replied, running a hand through his long hair.

“It’s just a bedtime story from the dark ages". He lifted his head to ponder through his memory. “Actually, Bobby did mention it in his hunting guide”.

“Oh, he’s real alright” Bunny chimed in.

“Okay” you stated with your hands raised, gaining everyone’s attention. “What the heck are Nightmare Trolls, and how do we fight them?”

“He infected one of the Yetis with his nightmares and found a way to clone it.”

“So, how do we stop them?” Sam queried.

“By finding the original Yeti” Bunny said informatively. “His name is Phil”.

“How would we know which one is Phil?” Dean asked sheepishly.

"That’s why these two are here” he explained, using his paws to point either side of him.

"So, where do we start looking?” You asked, eager to find the Bogeyman.

“Well…” Bunny started, “we chased a Nightmare Troll here before running into you guys. It must’ve found a tunnel into the Warren”.

“Okay” Sam prompted, unsure of what the Warren was. “Let’s start there”.

Bunnymund gave a wicked smirk before tapping his large, fluffy foot against the ground.

The earth began to rumble and give way, leaving a wide hole that was dark and never ending.

“After you” Bunny gestured to the four of you. Castiel stepped up to the edge to inspect the hole.

Looking back up with reluctance on his face, he said to Dean “summon me when you get there” before fluttering out of sight.

Sam let out a huff of amusement at Castiel’s cowardice. The two Yeti then shared a grunt before jumping in with enjoyment.

Dean stumbled to the opening, glancing down and then turning back to Bunny.

“You’re crazy if you think I’m jumping down there” he spoke with caution.

“Don’t jump then” you said with a hint of sarcasm as you stepped forward and used both hands to push him in.

His girly scream soon faded before you gave an excited smile to Sam and jumped into the unknown.

Thanks for reading. Part 2 coming soon.

Tags:

@uselessace @konankami @sumara62

#elsie url challenge #TFW #Spn #ROTG #hunter!reader

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paullassiterca · 6 years ago

Text

Gene-Edited Chickens Are Here

The first gene-edited chickens are scheduled to hatch at the Roslin Institute at The University of Edinburgh in Scotland. The designer birds have been modified to resist flu, which spreads rapidly among CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operation) birds and has the potential to be transmitted to humans.

“If we could prevent influenza virus crossing from wild birds into chickens, we would stop the next pandemic at source,” Wendy Barclay, a virologist at Imperial College London, said in a news release.1 The simplest way to stop the widespread transmission of bird flu would be to change the way chickens are raised, putting them outdoors on pasture as opposed to crowded in disease-ridden CAFOs.

But researchers discovered in 2016 that the ANP32 gene in chickens codes for a protein that flu viruses depend on,2 and cells without the gene were impervious to flu. Since then, they’ve been on a mission to change the gene in live chickens, and now it appears they’ve succeeded.

Gene-Edited Chickens Created

In order to create the transgenic chickens, scientists used the gene-editing technology known as CRISPR, or Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeat. Unlike genetically engineered (GE) foods, which may have genes from other species inserted, gene editing involves altering an organism’s DNA.

They targeted part of the ANP32 gene in order to create the flu-resistant chickens. “We have identified the smallest change that will stop the virus in its tracks,” Barclay said.3 Already, however, they’re anticipating that the public may be less than enthusiastic about gene-edited chickens on the dinner table.

People eat food from farmed animals that have been altered by decades of traditional breeding,“ Barclay told Reuters. "But they might be nervous about eating gene edited food.”4 Indeed, just as is the case with genetically modified organisms (GMOs), there remain many unknowns about gene editing as it pertains to human health and the environment.

Further, foods produced via gene-editing are not subject to regulation by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) or other regulatory agencies — although an advisory board recommended gene-edited foods could not be labeled organic.5

In fact, in March 2018, the USDA released a statement noting that it would not regulate CRISPR-edited crops, stating, “With this approach, USDA seeks to allow innovation when there is no risk present.”6

Gene editing, with its loose regulation, accessibility and quick results, has been called the next “food revolution,”7 at least for plant foods, but it’s unclear whether the same will hold true for animals. In the U.S., it’s been proposed that gene-edited foods do not need to be labeled, either, but the European Union ruled that they should be regulated the same as GMOs.

Gene Editing Causes Side Effects in Animals

Gene-editing technologies are relatively new, but they’re moving ahead at a feverish pace. With the innovation, however, have come a few setbacks that should, at least, raise a few red flags.

Researchers have used CRISPR-Cas9 and other gene-editing technologies to create cows that can tolerate warmer temperatures (so they can be raised in the tropics), goats with longer cashmere wool and rabbits and pigs with bigger, leaner muscles.

Serious side effects resulted, however, including enlarged tongues in the rabbits.8,9 Among pigs that were altered by deleting the myostatin (MSTN) gene, which limits muscle growth, the larger muscles came along with an extra vertebrate in 20 percent of the gene-edited animals.

“This phenomenon has never been reported in other MSTN-mutant animals,” the researchers said,10 and therein lies the problem. While scientists have made great strides in mapping out genomes of entire organisms, much remains unknown about the purpose of individual genes and how they interact with one another.

As such, making tweaks to genes, even those intended to be precise, often lead to surprising and unintended consequences.

GE Foods Could Affect Gene Expression Patterns in Humans

In the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) considers most genetically edited (GE) foods to be “substantially equivalent” to non-GE foods and, as such, categorizes them as “generally recognized as safe,” with no need for premarket approval.11 Yet, there is much we don’t know about the fate of GE foods, and GE food-derived DNA, once they enter our bodies.

Research published in Food and Chemical Toxicology revealed, however, that DNA from food not only can survive harsh processing and digestive conditions, but “DNA fragments up to a few hundred base pairs can survive and reach blood and tissues of human and animal consumers.”12

“There is limited evidence of food-born DNA integrating into the genome of the consumer and of horizontal transfer of GM crop DNA into gut-bacteria,” the researchers added.

Vertical gene transfer, or vertical inheritance (i.e., natural reproduction), is the transmission of genes from the parent generation to offspring via sexual or asexual reproduction, such as breeding a male and female from one species.

By contrast, horizontal gene transfer involves injecting a gene from one species into a completely different species, which yields unexpected and often unpredictable results. Mae-Wan Ho, director of the Institute of Science in Society, stated:13

“It is now clear that horizontal transfer of GM DNA does happen, and very often. Evidence dating from the early 1990s indicates that ingested DNA in food and feed can indeed survive the digestive tract, and pass through the intestinal wall to enter the bloodstream. The digestive tract is a hot spot for horizontal gene transfer to and between bacteria and other microorganisms.

Recent evidence obtained with direct detection methods indicates that horizontal transfer of GM DNA is routinely underestimated, largely because the overwhelming majority of bacteria in the environment and particularly in the gut cannot be cultured.

… Higher organisms including human beings are even more susceptible to horizontal gene transfer than bacteria, because unlike bacteria, which require sequence homology (similarity) for incorporation into the genome, higher organisms do not.”

The Food and Chemical Toxicology study also found that micro-ribonucleic acid (micro-RNA) from GE foods may enter the body and affect gene expression in different organs.

According to Ho, “One type of nucleic acids, the microRNAs (miRNAs), are specifically involved in gene silencing via a vastly complex and flexible process that changes according to the environmental context. Consequently, GMOs based on miRNAs have many potentially adverse off-target effects, which are radically unpredictable and uncontrollable.”14

While GMO foods and gene-edited foods are not technically the same, similar concerns exist for both technologies. Jaydee Hanson, an analyst at advocacy group the Center for Food Safety, told National Geographic that gene editing is essentially “the new kind of genetic engineering, whether you call it transgenic [GMO] or not.”15

GMO Chickens Produced to Make Cheaper Drugs

Scientists at The University of Edinburgh’s Roslin Institute (the institute responsible for creating the first cloned animal, Dolly the sheep) have also created GE chickens that have genes added to code for IFNalpha2a, a human protein with anticancer and antiviral effects, and macrophage-CSF, a protein that helps produce white blood cells.16

The chickens lay eggs with anticancer effects in the whites, and the researchers believe the substances could be extracted and used as a cost-effective method of drug production. Previously, researchers introduced DNA coding for the malaria parasite into the goat genome linked to milk production.

The experiments were geared toward producing an “edible” malaria vaccine, with the ultimate goal being that children drinking the milk would become vaccinated in the process.

Animals Being Gene-Edited for Disease Prevention and More

The Roslin Institute’s flu-free chickens are just one example of gene-editing technology at work. Researchers have also snipped out a section of pig DNA intended to prevent porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) — a common and often fatal ailment among CAFO pigs.17 Such edits are permanent and passed down to other generations.

In another project, this one funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, researchers have added the SRY gene to cattle, which results in female cows that turn into males, complete with larger muscles, a penis and testicles, but no ability to make sperm.18 Male (or male-like) cattle are more valuable to the beef industry because they get bigger, faster, allowing companies to make greater profits in less time.

Other biotech companies have taken to targeting genes intended to ease animal suffering, which they believe may soften regulators and consumers who are wary of the technology. “It’s a better story to tell,” Tammy Lee, CEO of Recombinetics, told the New York Post.19

The company has snipped out the genes responsible for growing horns in dairy cows, for instance, which means they wouldn’t be subjected to the inhumane ways the horns are currently removed (with no pain relief).

Are Gene-Edited Foods in Your Supermarket?

The first gene-edited foods are expected to begin selling in the U.S. in 2019.20 Among the possibilities are “heart healthy” soybean oils, fiber-rich or low-gluten wheat or nonbrowning mushrooms. As for gene-edited animals, the FDA proposed to classify animals with edited or engineered DNA as drugs, prompting backlash from the biotech industry,21 which doesn’t want such foods labeled.

As for whether or not these foods are safe to eat, no one knows, but what is known is that gene editing produces off-target edits or, in other words, unintended changes to DNA.

When researchers at the U.K.’s Wellcome Sanger Institute systematically studied mutations from CRISPR-Cas9 in mouse and human cells, large genetic rearrangements were observed, including DNA deletions and insertions, near the target site. The DNA deletions could end up activating genes that should stay “off,” such as cancer-causing genes, as well as silencing those that should be “on.”22

Whether the government decides to classify gene-edited foods similarly to GMOs or conventional foods remains to be seen, but without labels you’ll have no way of knowing whether the food you eat has been genetically edited or not.

Jennifer Kuzma of the Genetic Engineering and Society Center at North Carolina State University estimated that about 20 gene-edited crops may hit the U.S. market in the next five years, to say nothing of the potential for gene-edited animals over that time.23

As it stands, all gene-edited crops are excluded from organic certification, so for now the best way to avoid gene-edited foods, if you so choose, is to purchase organic.

from Articles http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2019/02/05/gmo-chickens.aspx source https://niapurenaturecom.tumblr.com/post/182572710431

0 notes

jerrytackettca · 6 years ago

Text

Gene-Edited Chickens Are Here

"If we could prevent influenza virus crossing from wild birds into chickens, we would stop the next pandemic at source," Wendy Barclay, a virologist at Imperial College London, said in a news release.1 The simplest way to stop the widespread transmission of bird flu would be to change the way chickens are raised, putting them outdoors on pasture as opposed to crowded in disease-ridden CAFOs.

But researchers discovered in 2016 that the ANP32 gene in chickens codes for a protein that flu viruses depend on,2 and cells without the gene were impervious to flu. Since then, they've been on a mission to change the gene in live chickens, and now it appears they've succeeded.

Gene-Edited Chickens Created

They targeted part of the ANP32 gene in order to create the flu-resistant chickens. "We have identified the smallest change that will stop the virus in its tracks," Barclay said.3 Already, however, they're anticipating that the public may be less than enthusiastic about gene-edited chickens on the dinner table.

People eat food from farmed animals that have been altered by decades of traditional breeding," Barclay told Reuters. "But they might be nervous about eating gene edited food."4 Indeed, just as is the case with genetically modified organisms (GMOs), there remain many unknowns about gene editing as it pertains to human health and the environment.

In fact, in March 2018, the USDA released a statement noting that it would not regulate CRISPR-edited crops, stating, "With this approach, USDA seeks to allow innovation when there is no risk present."6

Gene editing, with its loose regulation, accessibility and quick results, has been called the next "food revolution,"7 at least for plant foods, but it's unclear whether the same will hold true for animals. In the U.S., it's been proposed that gene-edited foods do not need to be labeled, either, but the European Union ruled that they should be regulated the same as GMOs.

Gene Editing Causes Side Effects in Animals

Gene-editing technologies are relatively new, but they're moving ahead at a feverish pace. With the innovation, however, have come a few setbacks that should, at least, raise a few red flags.

"This phenomenon has never been reported in other MSTN-mutant animals," the researchers said,10 and therein lies the problem. While scientists have made great strides in mapping out genomes of entire organisms, much remains unknown about the purpose of individual genes and how they interact with one another.

As such, making tweaks to genes, even those intended to be precise, often lead to surprising and unintended consequences.

GE Foods Could Affect Gene Expression Patterns in Humans

In the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) considers most genetically edited (GE) foods to be "substantially equivalent" to non-GE foods and, as such, categorizes them as "generally recognized as safe," with no need for premarket approval.11 Yet, there is much we don't know about the fate of GE foods, and GE food-derived DNA, once they enter our bodies.

Research published in Food and Chemical Toxicology revealed, however, that DNA from food not only can survive harsh processing and digestive conditions, but "DNA fragments up to a few hundred base pairs can survive and reach blood and tissues of human and animal consumers."12

"There is limited evidence of food-born DNA integrating into the genome of the consumer and of horizontal transfer of GM crop DNA into gut-bacteria," the researchers added.

"It is now clear that horizontal transfer of GM DNA does happen, and very often. Evidence dating from the early 1990s indicates that ingested DNA in food and feed can indeed survive the digestive tract, and pass through the intestinal wall to enter the bloodstream. The digestive tract is a hot spot for horizontal gene transfer to and between bacteria and other microorganisms.

The Food and Chemical Toxicology study also found that micro-ribonucleic acid (micro-RNA) from GE foods may enter the body and affect gene expression in different organs.

According to Ho, "One type of nucleic acids, the microRNAs (miRNAs), are specifically involved in gene silencing via a vastly complex and flexible process that changes according to the environmental context. Consequently, GMOs based on miRNAs have many potentially adverse off-target effects, which are radically unpredictable and uncontrollable."14

While GMO foods and gene-edited foods are not technically the same, similar concerns exist for both technologies. Jaydee Hanson, an analyst at advocacy group the Center for Food Safety, told National Geographic that gene editing is essentially "the new kind of genetic engineering, whether you call it transgenic [GMO] or not."15

GMO Chickens Produced to Make Cheaper Drugs

Scientists at The University of Edinburgh's Roslin Institute (the institute responsible for creating the first cloned animal, Dolly the sheep) have also created GE chickens that have genes added to code for IFNalpha2a, a human protein with anticancer and antiviral effects, and macrophage-CSF, a protein that helps produce white blood cells.16

The experiments were geared toward producing an "edible" malaria vaccine, with the ultimate goal being that children drinking the milk would become vaccinated in the process.

Animals Being Gene-Edited for Disease Prevention and More

The Roslin Institute's flu-free chickens are just one example of gene-editing technology at work. Researchers have also snipped out a section of pig DNA intended to prevent porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) — a common and often fatal ailment among CAFO pigs.17 Such edits are permanent and passed down to other generations.

Other biotech companies have taken to targeting genes intended to ease animal suffering, which they believe may soften regulators and consumers who are wary of the technology. "It's a better story to tell," Tammy Lee, CEO of Recombinetics, told the New York Post.19

The company has snipped out the genes responsible for growing horns in dairy cows, for instance, which means they wouldn't be subjected to the inhumane ways the horns are currently removed (with no pain relief).

Are Gene-Edited Foods in Your Supermarket?

The first gene-edited foods are expected to begin selling in the U.S. in 2019.20 Among the possibilities are "heart healthy" soybean oils, fiber-rich or low-gluten wheat or nonbrowning mushrooms. As for gene-edited animals, the FDA proposed to classify animals with edited or engineered DNA as drugs, prompting backlash from the biotech industry,21 which doesn't want such foods labeled.

As for whether or not these foods are safe to eat, no one knows, but what is known is that gene editing produces off-target edits or, in other words, unintended changes to DNA.

When researchers at the U.K.'s Wellcome Sanger Institute systematically studied mutations from CRISPR-Cas9 in mouse and human cells, large genetic rearrangements were observed, including DNA deletions and insertions, near the target site. The DNA deletions could end up activating genes that should stay "off," such as cancer-causing genes, as well as silencing those that should be "on."22

Whether the government decides to classify gene-edited foods similarly to GMOs or conventional foods remains to be seen, but without labels you'll have no way of knowing whether the food you eat has been genetically edited or not.

As it stands, all gene-edited crops are excluded from organic certification, so for now the best way to avoid gene-edited foods, if you so choose, is to purchase organic.

from http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2019/02/05/gmo-chickens.aspx

source http://niapurenaturecom.weebly.com/blog/gene-edited-chickens-are-here

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jakehglover · 6 years ago

Text

Gene-Edited Chickens Are Here

But researchers discovered in 2016 that the ANP32 gene in chickens codes for a protein that flu viruses depend on,2 and cells without the gene were impervious to flu. Since then, they've been on a mission to change the gene in live chickens, and now it appears they've succeeded.

Gene-Edited Chickens Created

Gene Editing Causes Side Effects in Animals

Gene-editing technologies are relatively new, but they're moving ahead at a feverish pace. With the innovation, however, have come a few setbacks that should, at least, raise a few red flags.

As such, making tweaks to genes, even those intended to be precise, often lead to surprising and unintended consequences.

GE Foods Could Affect Gene Expression Patterns in Humans

"There is limited evidence of food-born DNA integrating into the genome of the consumer and of horizontal transfer of GM crop DNA into gut-bacteria," the researchers added.

The Food and Chemical Toxicology study also found that micro-ribonucleic acid (micro-RNA) from GE foods may enter the body and affect gene expression in different organs.

While GMO foods and gene-edited foods are not technically the same, similar concerns exist for both technologies. Jaydee Hanson, an analyst at advocacy group the Center for Food Safety, told National Geographic that gene editing is essentially "the new kind of genetic engineering, whether you call it transgenic [GMO] or not."15

GMO Chickens Produced to Make Cheaper Drugs

The experiments were geared toward producing an "edible" malaria vaccine, with the ultimate goal being that children drinking the milk would become vaccinated in the process.

Animals Being Gene-Edited for Disease Prevention and More

Are Gene-Edited Foods in Your Supermarket?

As for whether or not these foods are safe to eat, no one knows, but what is known is that gene editing produces off-target edits or, in other words, unintended changes to DNA.

As it stands, all gene-edited crops are excluded from organic certification, so for now the best way to avoid gene-edited foods, if you so choose, is to purchase organic.

from HealthyLife via Jake Glover on Inoreader http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2019/02/05/gmo-chickens.aspx

0 notes