#and a man being soft and passive means he's in his feminine energy

[apostate-in-an-alcove]

I think something that really irks me about the whole "feminine energy and masculine energy" garbage that gets peddled on TikTok and other platforms is the fact that there's this constant implication that a woman being masculine is a serious error in her that needs to be fixed. Masculine women aren't broken and in need of a supposed masculine man to push them back into their femininity; their masculinity (whatever that means and looks like to them) is a feature of them that doesn't need to be repaired because they were never in error to begin with.

[herejusttosufferalong]

Two separate but interconnected thoughts:

(I am about to truck in some traditional gender stereotypes. Gender is a construct! I’m just trying to make a point about two cis/het people!)

There has been some discussion here of the “Nic-sexual” phenomenon of straight women feeling attracted to N in a way they are never attracted to other women. My theory is that it’s because, despite being an extremely feminine person in a lot of ways (including her physical appearance), she has an element of the traditionally masculine in her energy. I’m thinking of her confidence in interviews, the way she speaks her mind so freely, her deeply grounded sense of self-worth. In interviews with Luke, she is the dominant one. He follows her lead and is in a supporting role. (By the way, I mean this only in a positive light — haaaate when people say things like, “God, can she ever let the man speak?”) Maybe some straight women are responding to that energy?

By the same token, there is an element of Luke’s energy that is traditionally feminine. He’s more passive, more reserved, more likely to listen to N in full heart-eyes mode than to commandeer the interview and tell some long story about himself (#men). I think many of us find this extremely refreshing. It’s what N means when she says he has “no ego.” (Withholding further comment on the topic of his ego for now 🙃.) And yet, just like N clearly has strong feminine energy too, L is definitely masculine, especially in terms of his physical appearance.

That’s all to say that I think one of the reasons we find them so appealing and, frankly, so fucking hot together is that there is yin and yang stuff happening on all kinds of levels with them. He looks all big and manly, but is soft and sensitive. She looks all tiny and doll-like, but is fierce and badass. She can be submissive and dominant; so can he. It’s 🔥.

☯️💃🏼☯️🕺🏻

[outmakingmoonshine]

I love reading your takes!

I put this under the cut because it's a bit long.

I agree Carmy wants to be seen and understood, especially by Syd. Maybe only by Syd. He only really makes the effort to be seen and understood with her tbh. I can't find a gif right now but in season 1 he kept doing this thing where he would literally move his head into her direct eyeline if she wasnt looking at him when they were talking, like he wanted her to see and understand the real him. That there's more to him than the big shot chef and culinary prodigy she saw him as.

I've only just noticed he doesn't do that anymore after 1x07 when she saw the worst of him and he shattered that illusion for her in a pretty harsh way. But in his defense he did try to get her to see him many times before that. He still wants her to see him but now I think he's afraid because when she saw him last time she left. She came back but he knows she could leave again any time.

Imo Claire kinda treats and talks to Carmy like he's a small child which is just strange to me. Why would she wanna date someone that imo, she doesn't see as her equal. She molly-coddles him and tells him things like "never apologize" which is such a ridiculous thing to say to someone who makes so many mistakes and hardly ever learns from them. I bet she expects an apology from him now though! She encourages him to be juvenile and irresponsible. As someone in a demanding job herself, she should know taking him out on multiple random excursions in the middle of the day while he's trying to open a restaurant is irresponsible and unprofessional.

One of the things I love about Sydcarmy is Syd treats Carmy like an adult even if he doesn't act like one sometimes which is exactly how he wants to be treated, like an equal. She doesn't baby him or molly-coddle him, she doesn't make him feel fragile and small or tell him empty words that mean nothing just to make him feel better in the moment like he's a toddler and she tries to encourage him to be responsible and professional. She treats him like a capable grown man and I find it so interesting that with Sydney he instictually acts more like a capable grown man than he ever does with Claire.

He wants to be the one to take care of Syd, to be her rock and the one she leans on, he wants to be the initiator in their relationship, he wants to seduce her, make her feel beautiful, wants her to feel like he can help fix all her problems, he wants her to feel like he's someone she can fall back on, someone she can rely on to lead her in the right direction if she needs it etc. All things that relate to Mars which is the planet/God associated with masculine energy. But he's also more than willing to be soft with her and openly lets her see his gentle and sentimental side.

Where is any of that energy with Claire because he's definitely the more passive, feminine energy counterpart in that relationship. Not that that's bad at all but my point is, that's not who Carmy is or who he wants to be. Claire leads everything they do, she had to ambush him into communicating with her, had to guilt trip him into hanging out with her, she's the one who initiates the vast majority of the intimacy between them, he never tries to be there for her emotionally, he's never thoughtful with her, she has to drop hints for him to want to do anything nice for her, he makes no effort to look after her or seem like he's capable of looking after her or that she can rely on him or anything.

Carmy is naturally a masculine being with some of the best feminine energy you can find in a man imo; he's willing to show his emotional side, willing to talk about his feelings, to admit when he's wrong and apologize sincerely, tries to be intuitive and thoughtful etc but there's only 1 character he's comfortable showing all those sides of himself to and letting them see who he really is. He barely wants to talk about his feelings with his own sister who probably understands him more than anyone, but with Syd you can't shut him up! It's like he wants to tell her all his hopes, dreams and deepest fears all the time. He wants her to know all sides of him and every part of him.

Claire shoves Carmy into that box of the passive, emotional, non-masculine man that needs to be wrapped in cotton wool and hidden from the world but that's not what Carmy wants, he doesn't want to be babied or treated like a fragile person. He shows who he wants to be in his interactions with Syd 99% of the time. Watching Claire/Carmy scenes Carmy always seems slightly uncomfortable with her imo, like he's hiding himself which he never does with Syd. He might keep things from her but he wants Syd to see him. It's subtle but with Claire he's so different to the anxious but still confident leader we see in the kitchen that it stands out so much to me. Even the way he carries himself in scenes with her is off, his body language is off and more awkward and anxious than usual, his eyes are hard and guarded when he looks at her wheras with Syd they're nearly always soft and open. The way he talks to Claire is also very guarded and somewhat closed off even if it seems like he opens up to her, he only tells her surface level things. He doesn't want her to see the real him, he lets her see whatever she wants to see and fits into whatever box she puts him in and I think it's because he doesn't trust her and he just doesn't care whether she knows the real him or not. He trusts Syd and he saves the real him, all sides of him, for her eyes only.

*When I say masculine and feminine energy I'm not talking about men and women, I'm strictly talking about the duality of energies that both exist in all men and women at varying degrees. Carmy and Syd both have a great balance of each imo. Syd's very feminine but she knows how to use her masculine energy and uses it well.

Carmy wants to take on a masculine, provider role in his relationship with Syd and her femininity brings that out in him even more. But Claire is also very feminine, why doesn't she bring that instinct out in him at all? Why doesn't he want to appear like a capable man who can look after her the way he does with Syd?

Tbh the possibility of a Claire/Carmy endgame is like 0.001% to me. Even if SydCarmy are only ever "platonic" and subtextual, I can't see it ever happening. There is nothing in their story that says they belong together, that she makes him happy or that he needs her in his life at all which you kinda have to establish early on for it to be believable in the end and they've already thouroughly established that with sydcarmy. Imo it's way more likely that Richie and Carmy get married than a Claire/Carmy endgame.

Carmy wants to be understood more than anything

Thinking about this magnificent post (their gifs) and the core of what I ship sydcarmy.

Carmy seems to feel rejected by his mother since early childhood, and tolerated a portion of their extended family humiliating him for his career. He was bullied for leaving home, and when he came home, he was resented for making a decision of not doing it sooner. I want the show to address this last aspect because of the horrible abuse he suffered in nyc every day, then loosing the closest thing to a parent you ever had, he probably had some sort of breakdown.

Regardless, my point is that Carmy rejects a lot of parts of his persona, because everyone around him also did. That is probably why he had a stutter (it is common in kids who don’t feel anybody wants to listen to them) he himself said that he was afraid of speaking half the time. Rejection is his core wound. Hr never felt understood or truly embraced. He didn’t have friends. He needed everybody to valid his relationship with Claire before being comfortable with putting a name to it. He doesn’t recognize his talents in drawing, he had to fake a whole personality to get through a social gathering with people his age.

Claire was okey with him pretending to be someone else in that party, she acted like it was cool. She pushes him to do a lot of things without asking for his opinion. For me, she is ignoring his voice at various levels too. She is even dismissive “talking about dead brothers you wanna go to a party”

And then you have Syd, a woman who is also romantically interested in him, that wants to know his side of things. Most of their grow as partners had to do with mutual honest communication, they have this telepathic conversations about a shared passion. She sees him. She understands him even with how little she has.

I am not saying it is about how many things he has in common with Claire vs Syd. Is about how Syd has seen the worst of Carmen and stills helps him to get better because she also sees his kind nature. It is about how she knows when he is being shitty and held him accountable. It is the lack of difficulty in their understanding and mutual respect, even when they are pissed at each other.

If Carmy chooses the dismissive ex girlfriend over the partner that had understand him more than anybody else he has ever meet, I am sorry, but wtf are you trying to tell me?

[selene-tarot]

Hi! So I did a reading on Sebastian Stan. I'll accept ben barnes and chance crawford I'm not doing a pt. 2 for him though.//Thank you 💃🤗😘

Chace Crawford Personality Reading

DISCLAIMER: This is all ALLEGED, please take this reading with a grain of salt, the reading may not be a 100% correct and just know this is tarot, don't take it super seriously. This is for entertainment purposes only.

Cards I drew: Trickster rx, Queen, Slave, Warrior, Athlete rx, God rx, Artist rx

So first words I heard is that he's a 'sweet asshole'💀 so basically to me this means he's the personified version of the '"jerk with the heart of gold trope"

May say or joke about things that seems to be taken lightly but is actually being dead serious; Ex: Let's say he mentions sacrificing animals in his closet, everyone laugh thinking he saying this to be funny when he actually means it.

Complains a lot/ Maybe cynical

Has more of a feminine energy; It's in the sense where he has mannerisms and behaviors that you'd expect more from a woman rather than a man(if this makes sense)

Passive Agressive

May come across as entitled/snobbish

Ego Issues

Engages in scandalous and risky behavior to get the GP's attention whether positive or negative

Has a soft spot for kids

Can be really comforting. The type where you can tell your problems and he wouldn't surprisingly be judgemental

Resilient especially in his career; If he were to get into a scandal now that could possibly fuck up his career, he would still be able to hold down a decent job in the acting field.

[horrorslashergirl]

Slasher OC: Alexander Chirilă (Update)

Authors Note: He was supposed to be a supporting character, but my brain developed his character more and decided to make him a full on OC.

Full Name: Alexander Chirilă

Nickname(s): Ally, Alex, Sasha, Black Killer, Panther, Blackburn, Colton

Age: 38

Gender: Male

Nationality: Romanian

Place of Birth: Bucharest, Romania

Current Location: Travels all around the world to find his twin brother to kill him (formerly), Traveling alongside his brother and sister (Currently)

Occupation: Assassin

Languages: Romanian, English, Japanese, Greek, and Belarusian

Appearance:

Height: 6'8

Weight: 240lbs

Body Type: Atheltic

Skin Color: Warm Beige

Hair Color: Dark Brown

Hair Style: Short on the sides and longer on top, unlike his twin brother Decebal, his hair isn't wavy, has a spikier look

Eye Color: Pale Grey, almost white, giving the impression he is blind

Clothing: His clothes are all black, wearing combat gear that consists of black shirts and black jackets, black cargo pants, and black combat boots, black gauntlet gloves. He also wears knee and elbow protection along with a tactical bulletproof vest and utility belt where he carries his weapons. As an assassin, he wears a tactical black skull mask.

Other features: Unlike his twin brother Decebal; Colton has a much darker and scarier appearance, especially the two scars on his face that start from his hairline, down his forehead, and over his eyelids, continuing over his cheeks and neck and stopping at his collarbones.

Weapons: Twin Katana swords, throwing knives, grenades, gloves with metal claws and twin guns strapped on the holsters on his thighs.

Power/Skills:

Murderous expertise

Strength

Skilled usage of weaponry

Skill in hand-to-hand combat

Knifesmanship

Swordsmanship

Ruthlessness

Fearlessness

Marksmanship

Stealth

Superior agility

Impressive Flexibility

Overly High Inteligence

Knowledge about Bombs and Chemistry

Medical/Surgeon Skills

History/Bio:

Alexander Chirilă was the second born son to father Apostol Chirilă, and his mother, Maria Stratulat of Moldovic heritage. He was born after 20 minutes after Decebal was born, during the communist era in Romania, and because the parents couldn't support both children, they passed Alexander to an orphanage only to be sold over the country boundaries for human trafficking.

Before he could be bought for organ trafficking in America, an old lady took him in, raising Alexander, choosing a new identity for him so that he could protect him from his former life.

Until the age of 12, former Alexander, now Colton was raised in America by the old lady who quickly got sick by a severe form of cancer. Before she could die, she decided that Alexander had the right to know about his former life and she told him his story before she died in her bed.

After the reveal, Alexander researched all about the information, finding out what his biological parents did and about Decebal, only to blame his older twin brother for what happened.

As a teenager, Alexander was raised more by the streets, doing everything to survive, drug smuggling, stealing and he even killed a man for trying to steal the drug package he was carrying. That's when a hitman saw the 16-year-old boy and took him in, seeing all the hate and rage in Alexander's white eyes.

The hitman trained Alexander to be a ruthless killer, making him a master of sword fighting and hand-to-hand combat. Spending time along with assassins and hitmen, he meets Yumie Takahashi, a female assassin with prosthetic blade legs that quickly took a fancy for him, following him all around to the point where she fell in love with him, but Alexander doesn't return her feelings and used her blind love for him in his own greedy ways, her being his lap-dog.

Later on, Alexander and Yumie meet Nikita Sergei in Belarus while they tried to track down Decebal. They meet the Belarusian during an ambush between the Belarusian Police and the Belarusian Mafia, Nikita being one of the Mafias hitmen.

Nikita was almost killed during that bullet rain between Police and Mafia, only for Alexander to save him, but for that Nikita had to work for Colton, being his left hand next to the right hand, that being Yumie.

The three continued together, Yumie and Nikita assisting Alexander on his mission of annihilating his twin brother, Decebal.

After a brutal fight between the two brothers which resulted in both of them almost dead, they get on an agreement of peace between them, with the help of their third part, their little sister Nadia.

Personality:

Alexander is the complete opposite of Decebal in the matter of personality. Decebal is a happy-go-lucky, easy-going, charming, seductive, and modest guy, while Alexander is brutal, snarky, comes of as straight-up rude, blunt, and sharp-tongued if provoked, but overall keeps to himself since he has a problem with his 'intimacy'.

The smaller twin brother, unlike Decebal who is all laid-back, Alexander has a bad temper, but the type of temper that comes and goes, like the one of a child. He would be considered passive-aggressive.

Alexander doesn't know how to deal with his strong emotions and usually they manifest into a tsunami of uncontrollable feelings; especially when teased about sensitive topics, and may have outbursts of anger which would be considered 'funny' because he gets all red-faced, voice shuttering and doesn't know what to say or how to react. This part of his personality may also come off as very shy and sensitive, especially if people flirt with him because he is socially awkward and he never was one to be good at smooth-talking.

After making peace with his big brother, Alexander may open up little by little, showing good traits of his personality, but is still the opposite of Decebal.

Unlike Decebal, who is very charismatic, sensual, and opened up about his sexuality; Alexander is the very hard opposite, especially considering he had never been intimate with someone. Alexander is very shy when it comes to his intimacy and sexuality, almost to the point if someone presses him with sexual questions he will get all flustered and defensive.

This is a sign that Alexander is very self-conscious about his complete inexperience in the matter of getting intimate. It's a very big irony, seeing how on the battlefield he is very confident in his combat skills.

A good trait of Alexander is that he is a very big hard worker. He has the mentality that you cannot achieve something for free and have to work hard to earn it, since all his life he had to work to make it through life: As a little kid, he had to take care of the old lady that was his guardian until she died, then he had to do everything his Master said if he wanted to achieve the assassin training.

One thing that he shares with Decebal is the daredevil and competitive side, but Alexander's competitive side takes a very serious turn, finding himself willing to challenge his big brother at all kinds of provocations. It's the brotherly antagonistic demeanor.

His favorite drink: Green Tea

His favorite food: Ramen or Chicken and Rice Casserole

Other Characteristics:

Alexander loves fairytales and all types of mythic legends, mostly because the old lady that was his guardian in the first part of his life always used to tell him these types of stories before bedtime.

He is actually a very good cook. When he went to train with his Master Hitman, he has also signed the duty to do the cooking and clean the Masters' house as a form of payment for the training services. The Master would throw the food on the floor or at Alexander if it wasn't good enough and Alexander had to cook the dish again until it was 'perfect'.

He is an earlier riser in the morning, mostly because that's how he was raised; his assassin training started very early in the morning and before that, he had to prepare breakfast for his Master.

He loves to listen to the birds singing in the morning while he drinks his coffee or green tea.

His scent can be described as on a more feminine edge; giving off floral scents like lotus, orchid, and jasmine, with middle notes of vanilla tobacco, bergamot, and white musk.

Unlike his big brother Decebal who is a heavy drinker, Alexander cannot hold his liquor and is a sad drunk, getting depressed over the fact that he was separated from his siblings at birth, especially Decebal. When Alexander gets drunk he tends to mutter to himself 'I wish I never was born'.

Considering his personality, he would be described as a tsundere.

He is a master at chess due to playing with his Master in their free time. He can sit for hours and play chess, probably the only thing he is the most patient with.

He loves hot springs; immersion in warm water produces hydrostatic pressure on the body that results in reduced joint inflammation and increased mobility, plus it helps him relax his vulcanic mind.

He is a smoker just like his siblings, Decebal and Nadia.

Despite his scars and hard training, he has soft baby skin.

Symbolism for Alexander:

Black Panther- speaks to our soul with the shimmering energy of the Moon; this big cat is the ultimate shapeshifter and the master of disguise. Panther’s sleek black coat cloaks its true identity in the shadows. It isn’t until you are close to a Panther that their illusion falls away and who they really become visible. Alexander may seem like a very cold and harsh individual, hard to approach from the distance, but as you get closer and closer to him, pulling away all the layers that hide him, you learn that he is actually a pretty sensitive and misunderstood guy.

The Black Panther is a loner, hunting solitary. They hunt silently, seeming to appear and disappear in the blink of an eye; this means that Black Panther people can be very elusive. You may have to wait for them to find you. This means that you will have to wait and be patient in order for Alexander to open up to you, which cannot happen in one day. People who have the Black Panther as their spirit animal rarely reveal too much about themselves.

The Lotus flower- is a symbol of purity, enlightenment, self-regeneration, and rebirth. Its characteristics are a perfect analogy for the human condition: even when its roots are in the dirtiest waters, the Lotus produces the most beautiful flower. This shows Alexanders' persona, like a lotus bud, in his earlier life and so on, he was buried deep within lots of responsibilities, hardships, and struggles. We can say that once he made peace with his older brother, his blooming slowly started to take place, Decebal acting more so like the essence to Alexanders blooming. Its journey from a muddy seed to a glorious blossom offers the hope that something beautiful can grow from suffering, that we too will eventually bloom.

[serendipitybutterfly]

Thanks for your reply about Jimin, I think that it's hard for me to understand some things, i have always read that Jimin has more Femenine Divine than masculine, but idk the difference between them and how affects you when you are balanced out with both energies, like in the physical realm, it's weird, because i really think that he knows that his view about masculinity was distorted and that he does not need to act like that to be considered a real man.

Hi! The thing is, about what we call the 'Divine Masculine' and 'Divine Feminine', is that we're all connected to both and should respect and honour both equally. Even if we naturally resonate more with one or the other, we should strive to connect with and honour both... Both within ourselves and also in other people, other beings in general, all existence in general.

These are the primordial energies of the universe... The opposing yet complimentary forces which, nonetheless, through their union create all existence... And we all are manifestations of that union, reflections of it... Like a microcosm of the universe, we reflect that union and creation over and over and over... Within us, the children, are both the Father and the Mother.

The words Masculine and Feminine are often tied too closely to Male and Female... Now, that's where culture comes in. What is considered masculine in one culture may be feminine in another, and vice versa. As such, for the purposes of this discussion, it might be best to use the ancient Chinese philosophical principle of Yin and Yang. We all know that symbol, right? It represents the primordial opposing but complimentary forces of the universe I just talked about. Men and women and male and female are just microcosmic representations, or aspects, of these forces.

Yin is slow, soft, receptive / yielding, diffuse , cold, wet, and passive. Yin is associated with water, the earth, the moon, femininity, death and night. Yang, on the other hand, is fast, hard, solid /penetrating, focused, hot, dry, and active. Yang is associated with fire, the heavens, the sun, masculinity, life and day. However, as the symbol shows, there is Yin within Yang and Yang within Yin and when they are in balance, there is harmony. Neither is superior or inferior to the other and neither is good or bad. They simply exist as opposing forces and balance one another.

I want to point out here that these energies really have pretty much nothing to do with the aesthetics of gender according to your culture. For example, a woman may dress in an extremely 'girly' way, yet still have more Yang energy. Likewise, a man may outwardly seem very manly or macho in appearance but actually have more Yin energy. Those things are just outward appearances and are ultimately not that important on a spiritual level. What is important is that no matter whether you're more connected to Yin or Yang, or feel more strongly feminine or masculine, you learn to honour both within yourself and others. It will lead to a more harmonious life.

Now, back to Jimin, from what I can tell he IS more connected to the Yin, or feminine, energetic principle right now but that's because the connection to the masculine side needs strengthening and healing. From what I picked up, this isn't really a natural state (for example, I feel like perhaps as a child he was probably more balanced than he is now), but is most likely the result of some negative experiences in the past. What I see is that he's a person who is actually supposed to be very balanced in these energies. Maybe more than most people are. And that balance will bring him inner peace and security in himself. He's a Libra afterall... Doesn't it always somehow come back to balance in the life paths of most Libras? I always seem to see that...

Speaking of astrology, the other questions you asked (don't worry I saw the rest of your asks!) were about timetohajima's astrology readings on the boys and what she said about their futures in terms of marriage and romance. I really think her readings and discussions on astrology are extremely fascinating and definitely tend to resonate with a lot of things I pick up in tarot. However, speaking as someone who is interested in astrology but by no means an expert, I think the reading of someone's birth chart by an experienced and knowledgeable astrologer can basically provide a blueprint of everything that will happen to them in life. On the other hand, if you visit a tarot reader and ask them to tell you your future, barring certain circumstances where undeniably fateful cards pop up, all a tarot reader will tell you is where the path you're currently on is likely to lead... If you don't like what they say and decide to hop off that path and get on another one, that future will most likely change.

The readings I did on the guys' future marriages were, as I pointed out then, based on the current energy at that time. If I did the reading and it said that they'd get married but then a week later one of them suddenly decided to become a monk, the future would change. So what she says about their marriages is based on her reading of their charts and it would be up to her to divulge what information she deems appropriate to share about another person's reading. I certainly understand that there are boundaries which feel wrong to cross and try to be careful and conscientious about that myself. Essentially, based on my own readings, I'm afraid I can't tell you who's who from what she said.

All fans can do is pray for the best for them; that if they want to get married, they'll end up happily so. That's what we should do for ourselves too! 😂 So, on that note, to all of you who've made it this far reading this very long reply (which hopefully makes sense), if you hope for true love and marriage in your life, I offer you my heartfelt blessings and prayers for your success in that area! May we all be loving and beloved! 🙏 💜💘

[dallanebbia]

blooming (2/6);

fandom: bnha pairing: kacchako; bakugou katsuki x uraraka ochako word count: 3579 warnings: mentions of violence inspiration: [link] synopsis: 

Ochako doesn’t understand much about the world outside the limits of her village, but she does know this: She loves her family, and at the end of the day, she’ll do anything to keep them safe – even if it means sacrificing herself to do it.

When she runs away to join the army in her father’s place, the only thing she leaves behind is an untouched cup of tea, and a whispered apology nobody is awake to hear.

(or, in which an attempt is made to write a kacchako mulan au)

parts: [1] [2] [3] || AO3: [link]

This is how the world works: Bakugou Katsuki is born the son of a tailor and grows up at his father’s knee, learning the family trade, and works to support his family. He marries a local girl from the next village over, has a son, and goes off to war at the shogun’s request. He may die at the hands of old age or sickness or the hands of another man, but his memory will only be remembered by his family line.

This is what people expect when Katsuki is born, but it’s a mistake that is quickly, violently corrected.

This is what actually happens: Katsuki is brought into the world as the son of a tailor and Lady Mitsuki, the legendary onna-bugeisha of the famous Houjou clan. He grows up with a needle in one hand and a bokken in the other, and is trained to be fearless and ambitious and great. He dreams of being a famed warrior, a legend that will be remembered in the annals of history forever, and he is determined to claw his way to the top on his merit and nothing else.

Katsuki joins a military academy and graduates with top honors and accolades, mentors under the famous General Hakamata, and is given command over a moronic bunch of civilian recruits that are soft and weak and useless. Instead of fighting in the heat of battle, he is tucked away in some rural pocket of Japan with fucking Monoma breathing down his neck, and his current goal is to whip the idiots under his command into shape so he can get to the frontlines and fucking fight.

In light of this, it comes as no surprise that he doesn’t have time for a family, let alone a wife. At least, that’s the idea – until he meets Uraraka.

__

On the first day of training, Katsuki has all the recruits stand in a line, brusquely introducing himself and ignoring the usual niceties. He doesn’t care about any of these extras, resorting to his usual habit of using descriptive (albeit sometimes offensive) nicknames as he assesses the recruits one on one with a good, old fashioned spar. Some show more promise than others, but every man who steps into the sparring ring with him is systematically destroyed as he gives no quarter.

Katsuki sneers when he sees the next recruit, a boy tripping his way into the sparring ring. The brunette is the shortest one of the bunch, and the youngest too, judging from the squeaky voice and the baby fat that clings to an innocent-looking face. The kid is shaking so hard that it’s visible even from across the ring, and Katsuki looks away, knowing that the fight is going to be another waste of time.

“Hey!”

The boy yells, and Bakugou’s gaze slides back to see that the kid is staring him down, a determined look in those wide brown eyes. “Don’t look away from me!”

Katsuki likes people with guts, which is the only reason he bothers to reply. “Why the fuck would I pay attention to a waste of space?”

The kid only looks more determined after he says it, which Katsuki can grudgingly respect. Still, he leaves his body loose but doesn’t put the effort into settling into a stance as the spar starts, which is a dumb fucking mistake as the boy sprints forward immediately.

The kid is small, but he’s fast. Katsuki opens with a punch that’s neatly avoided, and counters the foot that tries to hook around his ankle and yank him off balance, pulling his head back and redirecting the nasty hit aimed at his neck to his cheek instead. The punch has no power behind it, no momentum, and it’s easy to shake off the mild sting and kick out at unbalanced legs in a way that sends the kid sprawling.

Katsuki is a little impressed. He’s also pissed that the kid is even able to touch him, which is why he decides to have some fun and scare the little shit with a clearly telegraphed kick. The boy barely dodges, wild-eyed and feral and desperate as he rolls into a crouch, and Katsuki can’t help the twinge of curiosity that settles in his spine.

“Tch, you actually hit me,” he says offhandedly, and the boy grimaces through his heavy panting.

“There’s more where that came from!”

Katsuki barely refrains from rolling his eyes, but moves forward first with the intent of finishing things quickly. When his punch lands, it should be the end of it – but the kid takes it head on, and has the fucking audacity to use his outstretched arm to pull him close and try elbowing him in the face. It’s sloppy and slow, so it’s simple to bat away the arm and send a kick to the boy’s exposed back, sending him face first into the dirt as Katsuki moves forward to pin the kid down.

He doesn’t expect the dirt that’s flung into his eyes, and that tiny sliver of respect grows, just a little.

He has to take a second to clear his vision, but he’s not a captain for nothing. He lets the incoming kick knock him down to orient himself, then body slams the boy into the dirt and locks his hands around those skinny arms. The kid struggles, but Katsuki presses down on the bird-thin wrists as a warning. Then, it’s over.

The boy yields, and Katsuki gives the chubby-cheeked boy a less offensive name as a reward for actually using part of his brain - Round Face.

The kid, however, clearly doesn’t appreciate Katsuki’s magnanimity. “My name,” the boy pants, “is Uraraka.”

He cocks his head to one side, taking in the boy’s exhausted yet determined expression. Looking at the kid head on, without the timidity and clumsiness, there’s something odd about the boy that rubs Katsuki the wrong way - it's a gut feeling, a sense of wrongness that gets stronger the longer he stares, but he doesn’t have the time to think about it right now. Instead, he tucks the thought away to think on later, after he finishes kicking everyone’s asses.

__

By the end of the first week, Katsuki is about ninety-five percent sure that Round Face is actually a woman.

The theory first hits him midway through the third day, when he lets the recruits pause for a water break. Some, like Sparky, take the opportunity to laugh and playfight with each other on the grass, clearly not working hard enough with the kind of energy they have to spare. Others, like Soy Sauce Face and Birdbrain, retreat into the shade of the trees and rest like sensible human beings, or stretch to keep their muscles limber for the next round of exercises Katsuki has planned for the day.

And then there’s Round Face, who makes his way to the water troughs and dunks his entire face in. The boy is red-faced and sweaty, likely sunburnt too, and Katsuki has to bite back a snort at the sight of the kid, balancing on his toes as he just barely manages to lean far enough to get his head under the water.

Round Face looks a little better when he emerges with a gasp, dropping back onto his heels and stumbling back with a sigh of relief. The neckline of his training shirt is wet alongside his face, and Katsuki only catches a glimpse of something off when the kid uses the bottom of his shirt to wipe his face.

There are bandages, wrapped around the kid’s upper torso. He cocks his head, watching a little closer as Round Face joins the others in the shade - there’s a subtle sway when the kid walks, leading with the hips instead of the chest, and even though his strides are strong, they’re also oddly short and narrow, even for a boy of his size. It almost reminds Katsuki of the way his mother walks and fights, her weight shifting differently due to her lower center of gravity.

Wait.

Katsuki blinks, stares, then blinks again, eyes narrowing. Sure enough, there’s a telltale lack of protrusion at Round Face’s throat that makes the suspicion fully settle into his mind.

Over the next few days, he makes it a point to keep an eye of Round Face, and the more he observes, the more obvious it becomes. There’s the softness of the boy’s features, the way his strength is anchored in his legs rather than his upper body, and a feminine edge to all of his movements both intentional and subconscious. There’s also a deference built into the kid’s behavior that is pretty typical of most women he’s met, all passiveness and silence and demurely averted eyes, and he never, ever, takes off his shirt around the other men, even when his top is soaked through with sweat.

It… explains a lot. Katsuki personally knows that gender means shit when it comes to combat, but while it's true that men usually have a physical advantage over women, Round Face is one of the rare cases. The kid can kick in someone’s teeth with all the explosive force of a jackrabbit, and wields the tanto and bo staff like a demon possessed, yet lacks the upper body strength to do anything but lift the nodachi that he stubbornly insists on learning to use. At the same time, he – she? – is fucking baffling. Tiny as a male or female, surrounded by other men who are literally twice her size, but somehow she’s still consistently winning an average of four out of five spars, even against bigger opponents.

She’s a goddamn walking contradiction, how she manages to make giants like Shitty Hair eat dirt in the morning while struggling to pull a boulder up a mountain three hours later, and for some reason, he finds himself fascinated.

Katsuki can’t explain the weird magnetism surrounding the girl, but when Monoma, that shitty rat bastard, finally decides to show his ugly face, he’s caught in it too – the fuckface immediately zeroes in on the girl like a moth to a light. He’s lives on ferreting out people’s weaknesses and using them to his advantage, and Round Face – small, short, tiny Round Face, who can take out a man twice her weight but still trails in every other training exercise – is the obvious and easy victim.

“Uraraka, was it?” the smug bastard asks snidely, looking down at her as she slowly trudges back into camp behind the rest of the men, lagging behind by a wide margin. “How pathetic.”

“Your parents must be disappointed, having such a useless son,” he comments airily, as Round Face’s arms tremble under the strain of hefting a water bucket in each hand, her arms outstretched parallel to the ground as she staggers up the mountain.

“It’s interesting, how you’re still so terrible at this, Uraraka,” he says when she collapses in a sweaty, panting mess, as the rest of the recruits shoot pleading, frustrated looks in Katsuki’s direction.

It’s clear to everyone that Round Face is Monoma’s punching bag for reasons nobody can figure out, but in this Katsuki is powerless. He’s a Monoma, an advisor and trueborn nobleman, and he outranks Katsuki both socially and at court. He might call the bastard names, but when it comes to this he can’t interfere, no matter how much he wants to.

To her credit, Uraraka simply stands there and takes every one of the poisonous insults, her eyes blank as she stares stoically at Monoma’s face. Katsuki can see, though, the way her shoulders slump and the defeat that slowly eats away at her once determined posture, and proceeds to create a little, tiny accident that keeps the fuckface from entering the training areas for a good week. There are boisterous hugs and laughs of relief from the men, Katsuki waving off their cheers with a scowl, but nothing hits harder than the small, thankful smile on Uraraka’s face that sends his heart plummeting into his stomach.

When he’s lying in his bedroll that night, he looks up at the canvas of the tent above him and breathes, “Fuck.”

__

In hindsight, it’s only a matter of time before someone else sees what’s so obvious. Monoma figuring it out isn’t a shock – for all that Katsuki loathes the pointy-faced bastard, the man is intelligent when it counts – but what is surprising is that Monoma tries to use Uraraka to blackmail him.

Katsuki is the son of the disgraced Houjou heiress and a goddamn tailor, and Monoma is the second son of the most powerful noble clan in all the shogunate. He has no idea what the fuck he has that Monoma can’t buy with his clan’s backing, but all at once the answer is clear.

It comes down to power, as it always fucking does.

Monoma’s playing the long game with his political ambitions, aiming for the imperial court, but he needs the backing of powerful people to assure his position. Katsuki, with his relationship with General Hakamata and his ties to one of the oldest samurai families in Japan, has enough secondary influence to weigh things heavily in Monoma’s favor.

“You son of a bitch, you’re really trying to fucking blackmail me?” Katsuki barks out a laugh, glowering. “I’m not gonna do shit for you, fuckface.”

“You sure about that, Captain?” Monoma, artfully arranged on a lounge seat that is a waste of both money and space, looks remarkably unruffled, sitting like a satisfied cat basking in the afternoon sun. “Even if I accidentally let it slip that your favorite new recruit is a woman masquerading as a man?”

Katsuki bites down the rage that simmers in him at the mention of Uraraka. He doesn’t give a flying fuck about the ridiculous law that prohibits women from combat – growing up under his mother’s tutelage, he knows better to go around sprouting any of that traditionalist, sexist bullshit – but he knows that most men don’t feel the same way. If Uraraka is found out, she’ll be dragged to the capitol in chains and executed, her family publicly denounced for their disgraced daughter. The very idea of it makes his blood run cold.

“Even if I did agree, nothing’s gonna happen,” Katsuki says, trying a different angle as his mind runs through different options. “The old man can’t afford to play with court politics on the frontlines, and my bastard of a grandfather hates my fucking guts. They’re not gonna do shit on my behalf, let alone for some fucking stranger.”

“Doesn’t sound like my problem, then, does it?” Fuckface sighs contentedly, and Katsuki wants to punch the smug little bastard in his pointy face. “It’s amusing, how protective you are of the girl – imagine, the Butcher of Niijima, trying to play the big, brave warrior who rescues the weak, fragile little damsel in distress?”

“Weak? Fragile? Are you fucking blind?” Katsuki says incredulously. He pointedly ignores the familiar stab of regret at the moniker that made him famous; it's a trigger that usually sets him off, but he bites back the rage and focuses himself again.

“Most definitely not,” Monoma says, clearly disappointed that there isn't a more explosive reaction to his little dig. On the other hand, Katsuki wonders if the man is actually an idiot or if he’s just willfully ignorant of the fact that Uraraka could kick his skinny ass any day of the week. “So – do we have a deal?”

Hands curl into fists at his sides, his scowl deepening. The obvious, logical solution is to tell Monoma to fuck off and continue on, leaving Uraraka to her unfortunate fate. The alternative is to agree for the sake of protecting a girl he barely knows, only to end up with the same outcome. He knows that he’ll be laughed out of his grandparents’ clan compound for the audacity to demand political support after years of acting like he’s better off without them.

Monoma waits, eyes sharp as he watches Katsuki wage an internal war with himself, and then grins. “Why don’t we make things a little more interesting, captain?”

“Hah?”

Monoma’s eyes wander off to the side, landing on the trunk of a dead tree, rising out of the ground and towering over the rest of the camp. The branches are long gone, the cracked trunk worn smooth from years of rain and wind, and the wood stops flat abruptly, as if a giant had come and chopped the top of the tree off in a single, clean cut.

“Let’s make a wager, Bakugou.” The fuckface stands smoothly, moving towards the racks of weapons laid neatly to one side, and selects a bow that he handles with surprising ease. Monoma then pulls an arrow out of the quiver, and in one smooth movement sends it flying upward until the tip buries itself into the wood at the very top of the dead tree. “I’m sure we both are familiar with this little exercise, hm?”

Katsuki looks to where the arrow sits, high above their heads. It’s a common test for soldiers training to be army officers – climbing to retrieve a flag or an arrow from a tall perch, slowed down by training weights, is a rite of passage that Katsuki is intimately familiar with. Suddenly, he knows where Monoma is going with this.

“I’ll forget all about little Uraraka-chan, if that arrow is in my hands by dawn tomorrow morning – on one condition,” he says, and Katsuki narrows his eyes. “The girl retrieves the arrow, and she uses the weights from the captain’s tests. I’ll even sweeten the pot – I’ll leave you and your little camp alone for an entire month, as long as you send copies of your reports to me so I can pretend like I’ve been supervising.”

It’s fucking tempting – keeping Uraraka safe is already a win in his book, but the opportunity to kick Monoma out makes it too hard to pass up. Katsuki thinks of Uraraka, remembers the determination and fire in those brown eyes from their first spar, and bites back a smirk.

He sees Monoma’s pleased expression from the corner of his eye, a victorious smile on that stupid face of his, and Katsuki bares his teeth in a grin. “You’ve got yourself a deal, fuckface.”

__

Katsuki doesn’t waste any time, digging out the weights as the men run their final laps around the valley, and he’s waiting for her when Uraraka finally drags herself into camp long after sunset. He drops the heavy metal disks into her arms, ignoring the confused expression she wears, and draws her attention to the arrow, embedded high above them.

“Get the arrow by sunrise,” he says, and watches as Uraraka’s face pales even further under the silvery moonlight. “If you can’t, don’t bother showing up for training.”

He ignores her stammering, frantic questions, heading back to his tent where Monoma is waiting. He only glances back once, and smiles in proud satisfaction when he sees Uraraka approaching the tree with the weights strapped to her back, the determined set of her shoulders highlighted by the full moon behind her.

He's relaxed all throughout the night, calmly reading through letters and communications while studiously ignoring Momona's increasingly infuriating gloating. The man is lounging around like he's already won and talking shit, and for the first time, Katsuki lets someone run their mouth without complaint despite how much he wants to talk back.

His thinly-fraying patience pays off hours later, when Uraraka stalks into the tent and stakes the arrow into the wood table, less than a hand's width away from Monoma's fingers. She's panting heavily, and Katsuki doesn’t even care that his heart lodges itself into his throat at the sight of her. She looks flushed and angry and fucking glorious, and it sends something hot stirring in his gut.

Monoma jumps at the action, his features a comical mix between shock and fury, and it’s goddamn hilarious. “What was it you said? Fragile?” Katsuki straight out cackles. “A deal’s a deal, fuckface. Get your arrow and your shitty ass out of my damn camp.”

Monoma looks like he wants to argue, but grits his teeth and leaves like a dog with its tail between his legs when he catches Katsuki’s gaze. Try me, fuckface.

“I’m fragile?” He looks over, seeing Uraraka looking down at her reddened hands in offended bewilderment. “… wait, you bet on me?!”

“The shitty bastard did.” Katsuki grabs one of the pears beside him and tosses it at her, watching with a warm sort of fondness as it nearly hits her in the nose. She glares at him, bristling, and he blames that on what he says next.

“There’s nothing fragile about you, round face.” Her eyes widen in surprise at the words, and the flush on her cheeks darken. “Now get outta my tent.”

Uraraka stares at him for about three seconds, stunned speechless, before mumbling something and sprinting out of his tent like her life depends on it.

Katsuki glances at the arrow, embedded into the table still, and yanks it out, twirling the shaft between his fingers. The look on her face, tired and feral and victorious, is burned into his mind, and although he has never considered himself the marrying type, he absently thinks that having a woman like Uraraka for a wife wouldn’t be so bad.

[chibimyumi]

Hi Chibimyumi! Can you please give examples of Yuta's thoughts about social struggles ( mental health, gengered bias etc.) ^-^ And what do you think about FuruTod's dress?

Hello Anon ^ω^

I would gladly!

Mental Health

Furukawa does not actually talk about mental health outside his own scope at all; he keeps everything on a personal level only.

He is fairly strict to himself; Furukawa seems to value problem-tackling way more than self-therapy. I have never seen him comfort himself with mental hacks or softness; whenever there is a problem he would call everything for what it is without any sugar coating. Examples include him referring to his actions using the words ‘cowardice’, ‘weakness’, ‘arrogance’, ‘naivety’, etc. Furukawa would not linger on these derogatory terms however. He accepts these as simply descriptors rather than ultimate identifiers. Having weaknesses does not make one weak, and sugar coating problems is counterproductive to combating them, after all.

An example of this is actually as recent as today (June 19th, 2019), where on the TV programme ZIP, Furukawa openly talked about himself running away from rehearsal, using the unapologetic word 逃げ出す (nigedasu・run/bolt away).

Furukawa also grew a lot in the recent years. In the past, rather than facing his obstacles head on, he would shamelessly ask others to solve the problem for him. He learned the consequences of this passive attitude the hard way, alas, but he did learn. And he is determined to let the lesson count. Likewise, he has also learned that a challenge is just a task that he might have to work harder for to take on, rather than be upset with himself that we was not ‘born to be able to do it’. In one interview where he was asked how he felt about being promoted to ‘Ogosho’ (Prince), now being ranked the same as other legendary performers, Furukawa answered as follows:

“I don’t have talents. Unlike Inoue-senpai (Inoue Yoshio), I can’t just open my mouth and hit notes so beautiful it moves people’s hearts. I am not like Iku-senpai (Yamazaki Ikusaburo) who can just stand there and suck people into the play with sheer charisma. But I believe that my weaknesses are my biggest weapon. These weaknesses keep me motivated to work harder than anyone, and I believe that my ardent hard-work is the soul of my performance. I hope that rather than ‘one show’, my performances can be a journey of growth that I share with my audience.” (*Starts sobbing* Furukawa, you are a beacon of inspiring energy T^T)

Furukawa is not some mental-health guru who gives advice, but in my opinion, he is incredibly effective because he leads by example. By always being open and casual about addressing weaknesses and problems, he reminds his spectators that it is not shameful to talk about these, and that the shame is only as big as one makes it to be. Likewise, he reminds people that there is no such thing as one rigid standard set in stone. “Rather than setting a goal according to one’s ideals, I think it is more important to strive for flexibility in preparation for these ideals” [Link].

To me, it is especially extraordinary because he is a man, and therefore socialised to reject and spit on weakness, and be shamed for having such ““unmanly traits””.

Gendered Bias

Japan is an incredibly and infuriatingly gendered society (personal story; I myself wear incredibly girly clothes, but my “opinions” are probably not “girly” enough. Once I was just talking to someone, and they advised me to “not speak so scarily, instead I should speak cuter”, because it does not fit my femininity.)

Born and raised in the middle of nowhere in a very traditional household where his father was the absolute and only authority, Furukawa too grew up with rigid gender standards. As a result, Furukawa is not entirely without bias either of course, but he is always keeping his eyes open to check what bias there might be. He is a critical thinker, and unpacks the psyche behind a person’s behaviour to the bottom. This allows him to gain a more objective view on cause and effect in human behaviour. (The Sebastianess is real). This ‘unpacking’ is probably what helped him see through the artificialness of gendered conventions, and helps him check for bias. Perhaps it is this talent that made him so good at his job of producing amazing interpretations for his roles, perhaps it is his job which nurtured this talent. Or it’s both.

This is just me surmising, but it is likewise possible that he is so feminist because he does not feel sexual attraction for women (or anyone else); this probably helped him rationalise and shielded him from falling for the sexualisation of women which reduces them into a piece of meat to be owned.

In the after-talk show of ‘Marie Antoinette’ at the Imperial Theatre, Furukawa was asked what role other than Axel von Fersen he would have liked to play.

Furukawa: “M.A.” (the initials of the lead roles Marie Antoinette and Margrid Arnaud).

Host: “Which one?”

Furukawa: “Both. These women are amazing, but I cannot play them. This world is made by men for men like me, and yet, we all still manage to fail despite everything being customised by ourselves (laughs). What does success of a man even mean then? I admire women who have succeeded despite all the odds. If I were ever reborn as a woman, I want to play heroines like these people.”

(And the fans unanimously agreed that we don’t want him to reincarnate, we just want him to play these roles the way he is XD)

Without trying to point the finger to Japanese gendered society (too hard, with fully manicured nails and a new set or diamond rings), I am astonished by how emancipated Furukawa turned out despite his background.

Scary and Being Scared

Furukawa is hyper aware of the fearsomeness of toxic masculinity. He once admitted that he actually has trouble interacting with women, because he grows too self-conscious of being scary, and fears he might not be able to catch his own bad behaviour on time. He said that he is so tall he towers over even most men (in Japan) on top of having a villainous face. (???? Ô.ó) In addition, he said that his speaking voice is low to begin with, but when he is scared it becomes even lower, and he sometimes accidentally raises his voice. All in all, he said there is no reason for women NOT to be scared by him. So, he rather keep himself at bay.

In this post about Furukawa’s respect for women, we see how mindful he is in approaching women. Though this story is inspiring, it is possible this respect comes from a place of fear. Regardless, it is still rare to see a man so graciously acknowledging toxic masculinity AND admitting fear (fear for anything, really! And that’s why I love him).

In one of the old shows ‘Heat Up Eve’, Furukawa was talking about how hitting on girls is a very scary thing to do. He wondered how girls even deal with this. In the phoning-corner-event, Furukawa asked the calling fan how she would handle the situation, and his team-mates suggested him doing a live simulation with the fan. Furukawa agreed to put on his scary-face, and produced the following gem:

Der Tod’s Costume

I really, honestly like his standard costume a lot. In normal light I am not entirely sure, but in stage-light (as it is meant to be) it is a magnificent piece of art.

It is rather patriotic since TOHO already declared a “New Era of the Japanese ‘Elisabeth’ with their new Ogosho“, but I really like the details on his lapel that may have been based on a Sodenashi Haori.

His other costume for ‘The Last Dance’ is something I have not really made my mind up about, though I am happy to see him with a cape again. This vaguely Victorian-Napoleonic era uniform also has some Japanese factors in it, but I am not sure I like the breaks of the knots that don’t reach its buttons...

Though, I really like how his hair is tied back into a pony tail with a ribbon. Der Tod’s original visual design had shorter hair, but they aborted that idea. This pony-tail look with long bangs makes it look like the huge banners are not false advertisement XD.

Regardless, I am happy they finally made Furukawa his own costumes and dropped the previous costume that was Shirota Yuu’s (whose built is MUCH larger). It looked like YunTod was wearing his father’s clothes...

Inoue-senpai (left) also expressed how he was a bit jealous of Furukawa’s costumes, and joked:

“Furu-kun’s clothes are so elegant and refreshing, I think it reflects what kind of Der Tod he plays. Here I am carrying a dead fish tail; what does that say about me? (laughs)” [Source]

[smallgayblanket]

5 and 11 for the apocalypse squad? 👀

Guilty pleasures

Jackie:

Obviously, he feels guilty having any time/day off..so to have a day where he can lounge around is always kinda a guilty pleasure to him..I feel like something he often avoids is alcohol, and its usually a depression or a guilty pleasure to have a glass of something hard and rough to burn his throat.

Also if anyone makes a fruit cake he may quietly ask for a piece..

Marvin:

I totally see Marvin kinda guilty for being into hypnosis. Being the magician I think it ironic that he’d sit there and watch spirals just to unwind and chill out y’know? I also think he has a small pet shapeshifter that he hasn’t told anyone about and he secretly takes care of it in return for comfort.  aaand maybe collects candles and gems in various sizes and shapes and gets excited when he buys new ones but does it alone?

Really likes lavander scented stuff.

Also loves bubble baths with a face mask, buts that only if hes really needing a self spoil day. 

Henrik:

This man is a sucker for touches..someone come play with his hair and he’d melt, he’s in dire need of it but won’t admit it. He also sings in his office alone, but god forbid anyone caught him singing “ive been working on the rail road” while he files his papers..

He’s also a sucker for mint flavoured stuff. Those mint shell coated chocolate balls are his favourite. 

Chase:

I actually think Chase is secretly really fucking good at like comic book style art. Sketching in his spare alone times.

Course chilling out with a video game and some pizza is a huge pleasure but he’s not always guilty about it XD  

Lemon tarts are a special treat of his. 

Anti:

Well, asides pain..

He likes to listen to like 8bit sounding music and stuff, like the undertale theme and game themes, stuff like that. 

He also has a fondness for sour foods/green apple flavoured stuff and he’s never been sure why but it makes him happy.

Knives are always good.

Dumb but I think Jumper is one of his favourite movies just??..cause.. idk. 

Shawn:

A guilty pleasure for him is a bottle of whiskey and a walk out in the night. No work, no people just him and his bottle and his whistling tunes. 

Also one of his guilty pleasures is coming to Jameson’s bar for a drink..just to watch the other manhandle the bottles and do his magic. A small stupid thing, but for some reason Shawn holds it dear. 

Also I feel like he likes to bake? Breads and stuff, nothing sweet, but just making a nice fresh loaf would be a nice stress relief and fresh bread always tasted great, especially with his famous stews/broths. 

Jameson:

Jameson likes to read and do puzzles, but I also think he’s a sucker for dancing.  Its hard to get him on the dancefloor with anyone around but alone he has some very nice moves.

I also think he really likes cartoons, but because they’re childish feels silyl for watching them..however he loves the vibrant colours and that the characters are alot easier to read.  Plus he likes the escapism. (Though he does enjoy those old classics like Mary poppins and chitty chitty bang bang) As well as some detective shows. 

Liquorice has been a fav, despite some of the others thinking it gross. 

Robbie:

Robbie has a whole fucking stash of soft items and adores every one of them- its no secret really since everyone buys them and usually finds him buried in them but he loves making nests with all his soft stuff.

Sometimes he’ll also get embarrassed about his outfits too..some very soft and small and even a little feminine that he gets shy about. 

Also he mumbles n fidgets and likes to stim so playing with slime or toys or watching stim vids is a huge pleasure of his. Hes also just a huge cuddle slut. 

Robbie loves foam squishes the most.

Bad or petty habits

Jackie:

He tries really hard to stay even on everything, but often his sleep can fall out of whack being a hero and all. Sometimes he also gets more injured in fights then he should. Because hes kinda intoit .He also struggles with poor self-image on rare occasions. Also, he pushes himself hard- He’ll just push and push until he finally crumbles and he has no energy left. Which takes alot because he has a fuck ton of energy.

Marvin:

Dealing with dangerous magic and getting hurt is a big number one..also he doesn’t always take proper care of himself and occasionally dabbles in self-harm. Both for the thrill and the fear of not being able to feel anything during the waves when feels unwanted n ignored. 

Henrik:

Horrid diet and absurd amount of coffee drinking..his sleeping has never quite been enough and hes just ti red..

Also, he bites the edges of his glasses whenever he’s taken them off his face for closer inspection/idel thought when not looking at anything important. 

And he has some serious OCD for stuff. Hence why his office is so neat yet specifically organized and why hes extra stressed when its cluttered and messy… 

Chase:

Drinking obviously..and the bad thoughts that he should off himself..toying with guns and drowning in bottles of alcohol- sometimes questioning whether to down any bottles from the medicine cabinet..He also forgets to eat sometimes, and his chronic sleep condition paired with migraines can be a bitch to deal with and alot of his poor drinking and sleep habits make them worse. 

Anti:

Oof huh..Anti is a mess. He has a huge habit of isolating himself and not sharing or dealing with his emotions as he should. Also he toys with knifes which, yknow aint safe so he ends up with odd lil knicks and cuts. He bottles up alot of shit and none of its good for him but he struggles to open up to anyone about it.

He often feels alone and empty and that hurts.. 

Shawn:

Shawn man..He also tends to bury himself in work of making toys and ignoring everyone. Hard lad who doesn’t talk much about feelings and does get touchy easily at all which results in kinda being highly touch starved. He too drinks, forgets to eat and usually only sleeps when his body is at it’s limit and he cant keep his eyes open enough to work. 

Jameson

My lad Jameson here seriously seriously struggles with eating. He has anorexia, his ribs are far too viable, he’s very much like a twig, but it all stems from the pain in his throat.

Not to mention he talks despite his broken vocal cords- which is painful, but he doesn’t want to burden people with his sign language.

He also has an awful habit of being unable to say no, defiantly quite the passive polite Pisces. 

Robbie

Robbie, hes a pretty good boy..though he can struggle to listen. Sometimes he bites things he really should..eats things he shouldn’t and also tends to overindulge in foods which usually means a stomach ache. 

Other than that the others usually keep a good eye on him so he never struggles too bad, but he does sometimes wish he wasn’t so childlike n helpless. he tries his best to be helpful but he can get really lonely when the others are busy.. 

He’s also a wee bit clumsy and that’s meant some nasty bruises.

Oh and he chews his sleeves alot. 

[valgee]

416 Cigarettes

I walked out of that job; the second job I’ve flat fuckin walked away from because a corporate promotion was a way to get paid more to do more to get paid less to still do more. This aligned causally with an actual factual divorce, my own, I was spiraling down the familiar avenues of self-destruction and loathing in Las Vivas. 

I found inspiration in an old flame. She messaged me sweet music and abruptly left the conversation when I hollowly expounded on my future plans to move away with my spouse. The declaration felt empty; I realized that she in my shoes wouldn’t continue to be unhappy. That was the genesis of my resolve.

My grandmother was in the hospital again; my dad made it sound quite dire. I resolved to visit and then never return home once I was on the open road. Ocean Springs had become a broiling cesspot of bad emotions and confusion infused negativity. The literal plan was to drive forever, see every friend on the planet, run out of gas, and fling myself off the nearest bridge. What actually happened was 20 days of pure unadulterated traveling and freedom, 65 hours of road time, and 4,242 more lodged into my personal mileage.

The first stop was Obligation, I visited my ailing grandma who was more assailed by a macabre atmosphere centered around her inevitable death that she would prefer not to be constantly reminded of. It was my between my father and my Aunt Mae to take care of her, as her third and youngest child had eschewed responsibility in the wake of my grandfather’s death, who had been paying her to take care of grandma and “When mama dies, that’s when we’ll get the real money.” The iceberg of disgust was rearing from an ocean of contempt when my cousin and Aunt Mae addressed me sincere, for the first time, about my relationship with my father, or the lack thereof. In my two decades of visiting there, it had never been explicitly stated by any member of the family, at least not direct to me or my sister, about how my father had fought in court for partial custody, two weeks every summer, except we went for two months because it was a full half of our family. My sister and I never saw our dad during those two months, save for a few days at the beginning and end. Vindication was the sensation of Obligation, a rider to the discomfort so fine; we were all discovering the darker natures of each other amidst the cloud of deaths future and past. I found mine in a father estranged yet so much like myself, I don’t want to be him, I don’t want to become him. I was an excuse to escape his own Obligation, time spent with offspring was a rare chance. The irony was lost on him, that it was so rare of his own volition, and now sought rabidly as a superior solution to fomenting his mother’s wasting away with his candid appeals to activity that she sloughed off for the dishonesty it was. I sloughed off him, too, and escaped to my next destination after a terse visit.

I ran out of gas in Ohio. I trekked a mile to the nearest gas station that did not sell gas cans. In the adjoining Subway, in the bathroom, I made a friend who only came there to piss, as he told me, and I, too, came there to piss, but also pick grass out of my socks, accrued from the highwayside walkabout. As I set out to the next gas station, the bathroom man offered me a ride, promising me he had nothing but time. I acquired my can, I acquired my gas and he extended his offer  to drive me to my car. On the ride over, he told me his entire fuckin life story. He was a drug dealer from the podunk town in Ohio I was now in, he’d gone to Miama (Ohio) one weekend and come back with a kid, can you fuckin believe it, my baby mama only ever calls to fight or fuck and my girlfriend, who I’m livin with, hates that, you know? But Iunno, I’ll go over there and lay a line of coke down and she’ll, like, bend over, and rip it and back that ass up, she’s got a nice ass, you know? My girlfriend does, too, they got nice asses, Iunno. See, I like you, I can tell you anything and you don’t know shit, you don’t fuckin know anyone.

The second stop was Liberation, my dear friends Parla and Kelly in the Windy city I love. I rediscovered my Air element in the playful streets and inviting sunshine; this would be the last time I brought nice weather with me. I found Parla in a trend of bashful but passionate feminism but I was not yet shook of my tangled brain to connect with her genuinely, but I wanted to tell her that she didn’t have to qualify her validity to me, to me. She taught me macrame on a heated roof, we let strings dance in the wind. We laughed together in sopored stupor. I met her downstairs convenience bang, he brought me to his brazilian jujitsu class and I flattened myself for the experience. At first, he seemed threatened by me; he couldn’t fathom a masculine presenting presence having a dual platonic relationship with two attractive feminine presenting entities. He thought I had to banging one of ‘em. I couldn’t just be being friends. But we do. We are. I love them. We broed out with the irony lost on him; I struggle to relate my newfound gender identity to new people. I struggle to relate it to old friends who knew me before I knew me, but I felt as accepted as I ever was with them. Kelly came to me, drunker than she’d ever been, and cried in my lap. I wasn’t sure why she was upset, she couldn’t seem to articulate it or anything else, but I helped her into bed, glad I could be there for her. I may have overstayed my welcome, squatting in the daybed for a week, but I love that city. I reconnected with Roni and they gave me my highest highs, and my lowest lows, journeying to the highrise dance parties, and the basement bar belows. I left Chicago only with the promise of my closest friend to see next, my Water.

The third stop was Reconfiguration, I reconvened with the squidlord, TJ, and he opened his home to me fully and I could feel my soul reaching exponential bouts of healing here. I walked the streets of Perkasie, Pennsylvania, and garnered strange looks for my queer appearance. I got lost but I enjoyed it. He played hooky and took me to NYC where we see the Times Square, we Tai Chi in Central Park, and he misses his girlfriend’s texts. I am reminded of the spouse I left and the passive aggression for my identical transgressions. I ate street food, I poured out my entire romantic history to him as he strummed his ukelele. I didn’t mean to keep it so secret; our time together in college lent to a dual lifestyle: romantic and social were separate. I don’t know that he understands more now, but he knows more now; water struggles to perfectly reflect the shape and source of fire. Since the beginning of my trip, I had struggled with my break-up. In Chicago I had made peace, in Perkasie I found it. TJ, ever the empath, skirted the topic of suicide, and renewed his disdain for the exit. We listened to Listener, their newer work topical. I wanted him to reinvite me to live with him, but he didn’t. I left for my next destination, between NC and Chicago, my oldest internet friends implored me to visit, and given the week between opportunities to link up, I had gone to Perkasie. So, I carted off to Fort Wayne, Indiana.

My fourth destination was Sublimation, the subtlety, the transcendent, the phase change. I showed up late, and was greeted with first a soft intensity inside eyes. I descended into their basement and ensconced my weird ass in their wonderful family. Soothing cold fingers lightly brushed my heated skin as I imbibed the alcohol I’m super allergic to, to catch up with everyone else. I remember dancing, I remember thinking to be careful and respectful, she has a boyfriend, I remember dancing close enough to nudge once accidentally, and every subsequent wanton nudge was frivolously shameless. I don’t remember what happened next. I woke up, still drunk, and naked, in a bedroom I didn’t recognize. I regrouped and pissed and found my bearings, and she was there, her neck torn to shreds, a signature of mine reserved for my deepest drunken emotions. I haven’t done that to someone since I had my skeleton rended from my body, years ago. I didn’t remember, but the memory was there, buried in her earth, and I could feel it, and I do remember that next morning I spent digging for the memory with her again. And again and again. I almost made her late for work. I slept on the couch to shake off the drink and hangover, and awoke to dinner plans once she and her mother returned home from work. I was made conscious of my current unemployed status, and I wore the bruises she gave me on my neck defiantly. We talked about what happened without remorse. We flirted casually and lightly, hunting Pokemon with her family in their mammoth obsessed hometown. I tried to climb one at her behest, but I could feel my core trembling, my legs still weak. I had given her all of my fire. We returned home and made love again and again. There wasn’t single awkward silence in the immense amount of silence we shared, the intense longing eye contact we shared, the energy flowing between us that we shared. By this time, I had no money left to simultaneously feed myself and put gas in my car to make it home. I didn’t want to leave her, but I promised to return sooner than possible. I left with a heart beat I could hear again. I had forgotten what it was to fall in love with someone naturally and not try to force it for old times. My final destination was the only one planned before I left.

My fifth stop was Syncopation. My friend, Brandon, in Memphis, and his musical stylings. I arrived through the night, into the day, and met his improv friend on no sleep. I wrote for him in his journal, and he wrote for me. By this time I hadn’y paid my phone bill for a month and had no chance of doing so now. Without data, I couldn’t message Her without a wifi connection. It was a less than optimal situation; I feared giving the impression of nonchalance. Brandon played me a ballad, dedicated to me and my journey, and I rapped over it with an honest retelling of the Story So Far + Some Other Tangential Things. He lamented not recording it. I love things that live in moments. I spent one night and the next day. While he worked, I went with Shelby, his roommate, and also my old friend from college, to her place of work, the Memphis Zoo, where she got me in for free. I wandered the animals, and took in the sunshine. I saw a woman hit her head on a wall in the Nightmare room, but she was fine. I proceeded to get ultra lost in Memphis, and unable to connect to even Starbucks wifi. I navigated by touch and cavalier direction picking and arrived at his house. I was unable to access the inside, though a former lover of Shelby’s was sleeping off a hangover within. Brandon came home, let me in, and I played videogames and read until he came home. The ex eventually left, and Shelby broke down in tears, disgusted by the experience. The ex was an emotional vampire, and Shelby struggled to say no. She blamed herself for reasons she shouldn’t have, the ex took advantage of her and Brandon’s hospitality. I remember being good at the kind of honesty good here.. I felt for her, but I didn’t know yet how to show it again. I’m glad I could be there for her, though. I left that night and arrived in Ocean Springs, only falling asleep at the wheel 14 times. I crashed direct into my bed, a cool $0.14 over target to make it home, indicator on E, and slept for a long time. 

Over the last two weeks, I’ve done nothing but pine for someone in Indiana, and my life on the road. By tomorrow, I’ll have both back, if the road only for a little while. 

[wintersonbartheswoolf]

“It has teeth, art, and a way of cutting through to the soft parts untried.” -JEANETTE WINTERSON

WRITER, READER, WORDS       1997

The writer is an instrument of transformation.

To begin with the reader. The ordinary reader is not primarily concerned with questions of structure and style. He or she decides on a book, enjoys it or doesn’t, finishes it or doesn’t, and is, perhaps affected by it. When the fiction or the poem has a powerful effect likely to be lasting, the reader feels personally attached to both the work and the writer. Everyone has their favourite books to be read and re-read. Such things become talismans and love-tokens, even personality indicators, the truly bookish will mate on the strength of a spine. The moderately bookish may be more cautious about splicing together their literary and lubricious endeavours but the passion they feel for certain printed sheets will be as lively as any got between plain. The world of the book is a total world and in a total world we fall in love.

Falling for a book is not the nymph Echo falling for the sound of her own voice nor is it the boy Narcissus falling for his own reflection. Those Greek myths warn us of the dangers of recognising no reality but our own. Art is a way into other realities, other personalities. When I let myself be affected by a book, I let into myself new customs and new desires. The book does not reproduce me, it re-defines me, pushes at my boundaries, shatters the palings that guard my heart. Strong texts work along the borders of our minds and alter what already exists. They could not do this if they merely reflected what already exists. Of course, strong texts tend to become so familiar, even to people who have never read them, that they become part of what exists, at least a distort of them does. It is very strange to read something supposedly familiar, The Gospels, Great Expectations, Jane Eyre, and to find that it is quite unlike our mental version of it. Without exception, the original will be as unsettling, as edgy as it ever was, we have learned a little and sentimental used the rest. The critic Christopher Ricks, in his essay on the Victorian thinkers, Arnold and Pater, points out how often people misquote their favourite texts; the misquote subtly shifting the meaning to one which better reflects the reality of the speaker. On a national level we do this all the time, co-opting works that win favour with our way of life, rejecting those that don’t. Books that will neither co operate nor disappear sooner or later get the Modem Classic treatment, in a bid to familiarise them at the level of challenge.

I do not mean to say that any of this is conscious; mostly it is not, and therein lies a difficulty. Art is conscious and its effect on its audience is to stimulate consciousness. This is sexy, this is exciting, it is also tiring, and even those who welcome art-excitement have an ordinary human longing for sleep. Nothing wrong with that but we cannot use the book as a pillow. The comfort and the rest to be got out of art is not of the passive forgetting kind, it is inner quiet of a high order, and it follows the intensity, the excitement we feel when exposed to something new. Or does it? Only it seems if we are prepared to stay the course, not give up and doze off, not leap from rock to rock after new thrills. Books need to be deeply read as well as widely read which is one reason why it is wise never to trust a paid hack.

Our unconscious attitude to art is complex. We want it and we don’t want it, often simultaneously, and at the same time as a book is working intravenously we are working to immunise ourselves against it. Our best antidote to art as a powerful force independently affecting us is to say that it is only the image of ourselves that is affecting us. The doctrine of Realism saves us from a bad attack of Otherness and it is a doctrine that has been bolstered by the late-twentieth century vogue for literary biography; tying in the writer’s life with the writer’s work so that the work becomes a diary; small, private, explainable and explained away, much as Freud tried to explain art away.

It seems to me that the intersection between a writer’s life and a writer’s work is irrelevant to the reader. The reader is not being offered a chunk of the writer or a direct insight into the writer’s mind, the reader is being offered a separate reality. A reality separate from the actual world of the reader, and just as importantly, separate from the actual world of the writer. The question put to the writer ‘How much of this is based on your own experience?’ is meaningless. All or nothing may be the answer. The fiction, the poem, is not a version of the facts, it is an entirely different way of seeing. When we talk about the artist’s vision we pay lip service to this other way of seeing but we are not very comfortable with it. If it exists, which we doubt, it is some kind of trick and nobody likes to be tricked. If it doesn’t exist then we need not worry about responding to it. We can respond to the lifelikeness of the piece.

It was the Victorians who introduced an entirely new criterion into their study of the arts; to what extent does the work correspond· to actual life? This revolution in taste should not be underestimated and although it began to stir itself before Victoria acceded the throne in 1837, Realism (not the Greek theory of Mimesis) is an idea that belongs with her as surely as the fantasy of Empire.To fix the date is difficult but I do not think it far fetched to say that the gap between the death of the last Romantic (Byron) in 1824 and the heyday of Oscar Wilde in the 1890s, is the gap where Realism, as we understand it, was birthed and matured.

It is instructive to look at how dress codes alter between, say, 1825 and 1845. The eighteenth-century dandy is out, the sober Victorian so beloved of costume drama, is in. No more embroidered waistcoats, lurid colours, topiary wigs, dashing cravats, pan-stick faces and ridiculous buckles and heels. For men, the change is immense and as men are stripped of all their finery, women are loaded down with theirs. There is a marked polarisation of the sexes, and whereas Byron could cheerfully wear jewels and make-up without compromising his masculinity any man who tried to do so throughout the sixty glorious years might pay for his display with his liberty. The new foppishness of Oscar Wilde and the Decadents in the 1890s was as much a strike back into what had been allowed to men, as a move forward into what might be. As the eighteenth century disappeared (and centuries take a while to disappear) it took with it, play, pose and experiment. And I am not only thinking about dress. Can anyone imagine Tristram Shandy as a nineteenth-century novel?

The reaction against Romanticism was a very serious one, and if the Romantics were emotional, introspective, visionary and “very conscious of themselves as artists, then the move against them and their work was bound to be in opposition; to be rational, extrovert, didactic, the writer as social worker or sage. The novels of the 1860s, the novel form we still assume to be the perfect, perhaps even the only model, were at that time a strange hybrid of the loose epic poem and the pamphlet. It was not the inheritor of the play, pose and experiment of Smollett and Sterne. The dreary list of Braddon, Oliphant, Trollope, Wood, need not bother us here, although I think that the eagerness with which the sentimental and the sensational was mopped up by novel readers, was in itself a backlash against the intensity demanded by the Romantic vision. Even Byron at his most rollicking and least controlled is an intense poet. Intensity was not a Victorian virtue. Or was it?

It was women poets who benefited from the collapse of the Romantic sensibility. Whilst the male poet suddenly found himself at odds with his poetic tradition; he should not be dreamy, contemplative, a little mystical, a little delicate, a woman had no such struggle. If the sensibility of the Romantics looked ‘unmasculine’ to a fast developing action culture, it could certainly be feminine. We think about women novelists as being a nineteenth-century product but the rise and the popularity of the woman poet is just as extraordinary. The woman poet, unlike the majority of the women novelists, accepted her mantle of Otherness gracefully. She would lead the mind to higher things. She would redirect material energies towards emotional and spiritual contemplation. LEL (Letitia Elizabeth Landon), Felicia Hemans, Christina Rossetti, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, each accepted the distinction of the poet as poet. The particular struggle of Tennyson, how to be sensitive in an age that disliked sensitivity in men, was clearly not a problem for a woman. I do not want to suggest that women writers, and in particular women poets, found themselves in a blessed century, but I do think that the perceived alliance between the qualities peculiar to poetry and the qualities peculiar to women gave women a freedom to work their own form within the authority of tradition. It was this freedom, I think, which cleared the ground for the significant contribution of women to Modernism. Like Romanticism, Modernism was a poet’s revolution, the virtues of a poetic sensibility are uppermost (imagination, invention, density of language, wit, intensity, great delicacy) and what returns is play, pose and experiment. What departs is Realism.

That should be unsurprising. Realism is not a Movement or a Revolution, in its original incarnation it was a response to a movement, and as a response it was essentially anti-art. The mainspring of tension in the best Victorian writers is not religious or sexual, it is between the dead weight of an exaggeratedly masculine culture valuing experience over imagination and action above contemplation and the strange authority of the English poetic tradition. Who should the poet serve? Society or the Muse? This was brand new question and not a happy one. 

If the woman poet could avoid it, the male poet and the prose writers of either sex could not. Of the great writers, Emily Bronte chose well. Charlotte Bronte and George Eliot continually equivocate and the equivocation helps to. explain the uneven power of their work. Dickens is to me the most interesting example of a great Victorian writer, who by sleight of hand convinces his audience that he is what he is not; a realist. I admit that there are tracts of Dickens that walk where they should fly but no writer can escape the spirit of the age and his was an age suspicious of the more elevated forms of transport. What is remarkable is how much of his work is winged; winged as poems are through the ariel power of words.

The Victorian denial of art as art (separate, Other, self- contained) was unsustainable, and like many a Victorian neurosis began to collapse under its own image. That art should not be art but a version of everyday life was absurd and men like Wilde, Swinburne and Yeats were proving it. The Muse was fighting back, cross-dressed as a pretty young· man or dressed in robes of Celtic Twilight. It began to look as though dowdy Realism was dead.

How dead? Phases in literature do not suddenly begin and just as quickly end, there is a scuffle, an adjustment, and usually a longish period where what is gone and what is coming make their way together. Only by looking backwards do we see the obvious signs of change. The effort to renew in language its poetry, the effort we call Modernism, was not an effort that could cancel out the longueurs of the New Georgians and their fakey pastorals or the high detail of the ageing Victorian novel. The novel was popular and during its determined reign literacy in England had increased measurably. The measure was a vast and newly created reading public who wanted to use a book as we now use television. Sentimental poetry and easy prose were perfect. Realism might be plain but the plain man would pay for it. Against this, it was inevitable that Modernism would be seen as a highbrow, intellectual snob movement cut off from the tastes of the people. The fact is that the tastes of the people were cut off from literature. How could they not be? Mass literacy was not a campaign to improve the culture and sensibility of the nation, it was designed to make the masses more useful. The writer faced another new problem: his public were no longer his educated equals.

Why should that matter? Comparative to the population, art always has been practised by a few and seriously appreciated by a few, usually the ones paying for it, commissioning it, supporting it. During the nineteenth century the most significant social change in Britain was the change from a controlling aristocracy to a controlling plutocracy. We all know the stereotype of New Money puffing on a cigar and ordering in books and pictures by the yard. The trouble is that books and pictures cannot be made by the yard and nothing is so contradictory to a money culture as art. I am not suggesting that the old system of patronage by Church or Peer was a perfect system or that we should try and return to it. But faced with big business and the average buyer all the arts find that they are being asked to explain themselves in a way that is anathema to their own processes. To support the arts honestly you must either b serious or disinterested. If you are serious you will tolerate and even encourage the necessary experiments and innovations (and failures) that keep art alive. If you are disinterested, recognising that the arts are important even if they move you very little, you will pay the money and leave others to be the judge of your munificence. Roughly speaking, that is how patronage worked until the Industrial Revolution.

What should the poet do? The richest man he knows is Mr Belch who owns the Blacking Factory. Belch’s Blacking is a quality product and as everybody knows, quality sells. Belch thinks he would like to support the arts and he fancies having a book of poetry dedicated to him because he thinks that poetry is the ultimate useless commodity and it is a measure of his wealth that he can afford it. He has a look at. the poems and judges them pretty awful stuff but he gives the poet money and attaches no conditions to the offer, except an advert in the back and 50 percent of sales.

The poems do not sell and they are unfavourably reviewed. Belch is furious. Quality Sells. It says so over the gates of his own factory and he has made millions out of it. The poet can’t even cover his printing costs. Belch declines to support the poet’s next volume and instead finds a pretty painter whose flowers sell by the roll of canvas.

If business is not interested in the arts, and it isn’t, except for tax purposes, advertising lines and conspicuous decoration, then how will the artist support herself if she has no private funds? Sell her work is the obvious answer, but that is not an easy answer when there is often no common ground between purchaser and producer. I do not mean that the writer and the reader should be computer-dating compatible. Some of my favourite books are written by people with whom I doubt that I could spend one hour. In print I can live with them forever because the strong line connecting us is love of language. The connection need not be so esoteric; I am a writer so I will be looking for connections that are not likely to interest the general reader so much. The general reader need not sit down and ponder the runes behind the words, but if he or she wants the pleasure out of a book that cannot be got out of anything else, that reader has forged a link with the writer. A link of commitment to pursue language, the one writing it, the one reading it,a shared belief in a serious endeavour.

It is difficult when the writer is serious and the reader is not. Again, that is a newish problem, reading having become a leisure toy and not a cultural occupation. Of course we read for pleasure, but the enjoyment got out of literature is not the enjoyment to be had from a ball game or a video. I do not want to make a hierarchy among ball games and books; I know that they are pleasures of a different order, I wish that the huge body of readers and sports fans did. Art has been bundled away along with sport and entertainment and sometimes even charity, but it belongs by itself, a separate reality, a world apart. Readers who don’t like books that are not printed television, fast on thrills and feeling, soft on the brain, are not criticising literature, they are missing it altogether. A work of fiction, a poem, that is literature, that is art, can only be itself, it can never substitute for anything else. Nor can anything else substitute for it. The serious writer cannot be in competition for sales and attention with the bewildering range of products from the ever expanding leisure industry. She can only offer what she has ever offered; an exceptional sensibility combined with an exceptional control over words.

How many people want that? Proportionally as few as ever but art is not for the few, it is for many, and I include those who would never pick up a serious fiction or poem and who are uninterested in writing. I believe that art puts down its roots into the deepest hiding places of bur nature and that its action is akin to the action of certain delving plants, comfrey for instance, whose roots can penetrate far into the subsoil and unlock nutrients that would otherwise lie out of the reach of shallower bedded plants. In the haste of life and the press of action it is difficult for us to examine our feelings, to express them coherently, to express them poetically, and yet the impulse to poetry which is an impulse parallel to civilisation, is a force towards that range and depth of expression. We do not want language as a list of basic . commands and exchanges, we want it to handle matter far more subtle. When we say ‘I haven’t got the words’, the lack is not in the language nor in our emotional state, it is in the breakdown between the two. The poet heals that break down and not only for those who read poetry. If we want a living language, a language capable of expressing all that it is called upon to express in a vastly changing world, then we need men and women whose whole self is bound up in that work with words.

For the writer, serving the much maligned Muse seems to be the best way of serving society. When we think about those writers who have most contributed to the language, we find that this is so.

That kind of work will never be popular, that is, it will not please most of the people most of the time. This need not matter, provided that there are a sufficient number of people concerned enough for serious work to keep the writer read and fed. The relationship between the reader and the writer’s work has to be one of trust, for even the most convinced of readers will not be always convinced. We come back to those favourite books, inevitably parts of a writer’s work will find more favour than others. To trust is to submit to the experiment, to stay the course, to sit up late and wait. Mistakes will be made. No writer is free from failure and we cannot judge a writer’s work until the whole body of it has appeared, and perhaps we have to wait longer still. Our own age is very quick to judge and even to pre judge, perhaps as part of a determined effort to make sure that art never opens its own mouth.

It has teeth, art, and a way of cutting through to the soft parts untried. 

Did the Modernists too far strain the relationship between reader and writer? I think not. The Romantics had been subjected to invective no less fierce than that aimed at Eliot, Pound,Joyce, Woolf, Stein, HD and company. Revolution upsets order and most of us prefer a quiet life. The revolt against Realism was really a revolt of tradition. The Modernists were trying to ,return to an idea of art as a conscious place (their critics would say a self-conscious place), a place outside of both rhetoric and cliche. This was a normal enough revolt, and one that had been carried out something over a hundred years earlier by Wordsworth and the Lake poets, and a hundred years before that by Dryden. Periodic refinements in the language poets use have to come at a time when what should be said simply is being said elaborately and when what should be subtle and complex is being too crudely treated. Spoken language alters and poetry, if it is to be living, must move with those changes in language but also stretch them, refine them, so that the thoughts and sensibilities of a people, as reflected in their speech, are kept taut. Poetry, poetic fiction, is not artificial language (or at least when it is, it ceases to be poetry), but it is a heightened language. It is recognisably the language we all use but at a pitch beyond the everyday capacities of speech.

It is easy to see why, compared with Kipling, Housman, Bridges, and most of the First World War poets (not Owen), T. S. Eliot’s ‘Prufrock’ (1917) and The Waste Land (1922) looked prosy, and were attacked for failing to be poetry. Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads (1798) had been attacked for the same reason. What Eliot was doing was consciously re linking verse language with street language but refusing to talk down. The language he creates is one flexible enough to stretch around new and difficult ideas and fixed enough within a poetic tradition not to degenerate into a merely private response (always a problem with lesser Modems, such as Richard Aldington). Whatever it was, it had not been seen before, although it had been anticipated by Robert Browning. Whatever has not been seen before causes trouble. For the ordinary reader, the Modernist writer looked desperately difficult (Eliot) desperately dirty (Joyce) desperately dull (Woolf). Novels were meant to be novels (stories), and poems were meant to be poetic (pastorals, ballads, and during the war, protests). Amongst its other crimes, Modernism was questioning the boundaries between the two. Some very good writers, including Robert Graves, thought this blurring particularly wicked. 

If it strikes us as strange that a group of people working towards returning literature to its roots in speech (which is not the same thing as forcing literature down to speech), should be regarded as remote and disconnected, it is worth remembering two things: 1) That we judge new work by a template of the past from which it has already escaped. 2) That the popular novelists and popular poets seemed to be the rightful inheritors of literary tradition because they were perpetuating what had been done well enough and often enough to be familiar. The fact that familiarity usually means something we no longer question, something we no longer see, is a point in its favour. As creatures of habit, the more we can remove from our immediate consciousness the better. To read something that gives us a certain satisfaction and a certain pleasure, even if its manner and its method is exhausted, is more acceptable than grappling with the new.

Good writers, of any period, write a living language. As their innovations and experiments become commonplace, lesser writers copy them, and in their hands the language is no longer living, it becomes inert. Men like Galsworthy, Bennett and Wells, borrowed from the great Victorian novelists a prose style they and their contemporaries had had no part in forging, and although they borrowed it well, there was nothing of any note that they could add. Even as they were working, speech patterns, and therefore thought patterns and patterns of feeling were rapidly changing. Ours has been a century of rapid change, and if literature is to have any meaning beyond the museum, it must keep developing. To compare the prose style of Woolf ’s Jacob’s Room (1922) with Bennett’s Riceyman Steps (1923) is an exercise in astonishment. Looking now, with hindsight, we can see at once which book is modem, that is to say which style proved the right equipment to put into words that which was only just bubbling into collective consciousness.

That is what I mean when I talk about exceptional sensibility. The true artist does have a kind of early warning system, an immanence that allows him or her to recognise and make articulate the emotional perplexities of his age. Writers who seem to sum up their time are writers who have this prescience. It is not that they make better documentaries than the rest, this is where the realists miss the point, it is that they make better poems. The emotional and psychic resonance of a particular people at a particular time is not a series of snapshots that can be stuck together to make a montage, it is a living, breathing, winding movement that flows out of the past and into the future while making its unique present. This fixity and flux is never clear until we are beyond it, into a further fixity and flux, and yet when we read our great literature, it seems that it was clear, at least to one group of people, a few out of millions, who come to be absolutely identified with their day; the artists.

Art does not imitate life. Art anticipates life.

Although the major Modernists soon made unblockable inroads into the literary tradition it was inevitable that their purity of purpose would be questioned. The Bloomsbury Group attracted a vengeful type of pseudo-criticism that confused the writer with the work and caricatured both. Art for Art’s sake, which was really the chant of Marinetti and the Futurists, stuck to those writers and other artists who seemed stubbornly determined to put the Muse first. The young men (and I do mean men) who were the younger generation in the 1930s, Auden, Isherwood, Spender, Day Lewis, MacNeice, were either Communists or Socialists who passionately believed in a truly popular art. The ivory tower was under siege.

In fact, the stake-out between Ivory Tower and Red Square was no more real than the apparently conflicting claims of Society and the Muse. While avidly reading and· not disputing the innovations of their elders, the new young men wanted to write for the working classes. What they forgot was that the working classes didn’t want to read them. As a member of the proletariat myself, I can confirm that there is nothing drearier than the embrace of a bunch of Oxbridge intellectuals who want to tell you that art (theirs) is for you. The express view of the highbrow Modems was cleaner: take it or leave it. What they knew, and what the eager young men of the Thirties reluctantly came to know was that it is not possible to produce a living literature that includes everyone unless everyone wants to be included. Art leaves nobody out, but it cannot condescend, we have to climb up if we want the extraordinary view.

Ours has not been an easy century for art. At times, to talk about it at all has seemed crass. Two World Wars, the Spanish Civil War, the General Strike of 1926 and the Depression of the 1930s cut short those experiments in language and in thought that human beings perpetually make and perpetually need.

For myself, in the literature of my own language, I can find little to cheer me between the publication of Four Quartets (1944) and Angela Carter’s The Magic Toyshop (1967). Of course I am cheered by Beckett and by Pinter and Orton and Stoppard, but they are dramatists and, with the exception of Beckett, the solid body of their work comes out of the 1960s, as does that of Adrienne Rich.

Robert Graves has·soldiered on, pledging deep allegiance to his lover-Muse and now that he has been dead ten years, we see how right he was to go his silly stubborn way and retire to get on with his work. The social conscience lobbies of the Forties and Fifties, including those Angry Young Men, have not won nearly so well, and it seems that they had not nearly so much to say.

The 1940s and the 1950s seem to me to be a dead time, in my terms because the anti-art response, Realism, bounced back again in a new outfit but wearing the same smug expression. I would hazard that a really good writer, like Muriel Spark, was handicapped by her period. Miss Spark does not want to be a Realist, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie should confirm that, and yet a Realist she has been, and what a pity. Iris Murdoch might have been something else (see The Black Prince), and might yet (The Green Knight) but I do not worry too much about her. I do not worry about Kingsley Amis at all.

I would have thought that the rise and rise of TV and film would have entirely satisfied our ‘mirror of life’ longings. The screen large and small can do perfectly what the ordinary Victorian novel could do, which is why adaptations of same work so well. Adaptations of Dickens do not work well because what gets lost is everything that really matters; language.

As the relationship between reader and writer continues to change, it might be worthwhile to ask what it is that we want from one another. If the reader wants the writer to be an extension of the leisure industry or a product of the media, then the serious writer will be beaten back into an elitism beyond that necessary to maintain certain standards; it will be an elitism of survival and it is happening already. Writers are fighters, they have to be, because to begin with, they are the people who must stand up for their own work, but must they continually be called to defend not only their. own work but the very concept of art? Even to use the word ‘art’ is to provoke a response either quizzical or violent. If there is no such thing, do we mean that there never has been any such thing, that there is no such thing now, or the writer who is fool enough to use the word simply does not understand it?

We seem to have returned to a place where play, pose and experiment are unwelcome and where the idea of art is debased. At the same time, there are a growing number of people (possibly even a representative number of people), who want to find something genuine in the literature of their own time and who are unconvinced by the glories of reproduction furniture.

To those people I ask this: that their relationship with their writers should be a direct one, the agency of the book is their common ground, and the only way into a piece of literature is through the front door - Open it. Once there, if the arrangement of the rooms is unfamiliar and the fabric strange, reflect that at least it is new, and that is what you say you want. It will be too, a world apart, a place where the normal weights and measures of the day have been subtly altered to give a different emphasis and perhaps to slide back the secret panel by the heart. Check that the book is made of language, living and not inert, for a true writer will create a separate reality and her atoms and her gases are words.

[irginia-blog]

Women love to dream of what it means?

Every day, during our long sleep hours, there is a "rapid eye movement" period, where blood flows to sexual organs, sexual excitement occurs, males exhibit penile erections, and women become vaginal moist. Every time, we can easily do ", usually for 20-25 minutes. What's more, women are more likely to have sex in their dreams during their periods.

In fact, people in the sleep can feel sexual pleasure and sexual excitement, is a very safe way to release sexual pressure, physical and mental benefits. So, do we also need to pay "guilt, it is healthy and imaginative sign.

Here are 5 women who have opened their hearts and talked about the dreams they've been through. Hope that we provide analytical can help you better understand the dream that give us information. Of course, the meaning of each person's dream can not be exactly the same, nor should it be answered simply and uniformly - because everyone's final answer is hidden in her own heart.

Dream of being raped

"The dream of the scene is the confusion of battle, I was captured by the army of women, shaking and waiting for the upcoming fate. Soon, the old tent was opened a corner, several Mamalielie soldiers came to me from the crowd pulled out, thrown into a new military mat, they began to tear my clothes, get pinched my body...... Then I was scared and couldn't fall asleep for a long time. I found that my body felt a very thorough feeling of comfort. Do I have a tendency to abuse?"

analysis

This is similar to rape, is Sadomasochism themes, appeared in numerous women's sexual dreams in frequency beyond our imagination. A large number of women have become heroines of rape in their dreams, but that does not mean that they are really eager to be treated rudely by a strange man in real life.

Anita's dreams are of the same nature as such fantasies. Like the analysis of any dream, there is no need to dwell on the details of the dreamer's narrative, for dreams always express an inner craving in an exaggerated and direct way. This is a dream in the most typical battlefield, soldiers and prisoners, are in fact expressed a common theme -- the dream of the people eager to succumb to a powerful under control. This "on the yield of longing is not simply referring to her and her boyfriend's bed, may also exist in all aspects of their life together. Perhaps she would like to find more masculine masculinity in the partner, or hope that the other person will be more aggressive emotionally.

Dream of incest

"I recently met a boy who felt good about himself, and we fell in love. But what happened next is very difficult for me to say - I often dream of having sex with my brother the night after I dated my boyfriend. In my dream, I was in a dimly lit room, ready to have sex with a man. I couldn't see his face, and I was nervous. I was afraid something bad might happen. We just kept kissing and touching each other, but every time we got to the critical moment, someone broke into the door, and then I was horrified to find that the man in the arms was my brother!"

analysis

Although Freud believed that the "Incest" impulse was hidden in everyone's mind, the dream of incest reflected more than just the symbol of the dreamer's desire to break through taboos. Like incest, with the risk of being discovered and punished, secretly touching certain moral boundaries. Meng Meng's dream is likely to indicate her basic attitude towards her love affair. Maybe she and the boy fall in love with some obstacles, such as the opposition of family or friends. But like her reaction in the dream, her subconscious wants to further develop the relationship with the boy, while fearing that he will be told otherwise. This ambivalence is the theme that runs through the whole dream.

In addition, some people in the relationship between husband and wife nervous, or with his girlfriend (boyfriend) encounter difficulties, will do such incest dream. The reason for choosing family members is that they have been comforted by them during their growing up. A similar dream in such a situation is to remind us that our existing relationship does not satisfy us emotionally and spiritually, and that both sides need to make efforts to improve it.

Dreaming of homosexuality

"It was a very strange dream: I fell in love with another woman in the countryside! She was as beautiful as Venus on the oil painting, and her whole body was emitting a dazzling radiance. And I seem to be a man, holding her body tight and feeling her soft breasts. Then, in the split of our bodies, I suddenly realized that I was a woman! Recently, I have often dreamed of getting into bed with women, and I enjoyed it very much. I wonder when I wake up. Do I have homosexual tendencies? What the hell is going on here? Well, to say one more thing, I'm working for a software company. I'm surrounded by men. I'm nervous about my work. There's very little time to relax. Many times I think I'm not a woman."

analysis

Many heterosexuals have homosexual dreams, especially women. In today's age, women's bodies are viewed as a feast for the eye, and we enjoy far more opportunities to see the same body than men. When I was young, I was a mother. I grew up as a star and model in various media and, of course, the heroine of erotic works. So women are more likely to see women who are having sex in their dreams. That doesn't mean that dreamers have homosexual tendencies.

The apple fairy dream should be just to help her accept her femininity in terms of sex. It is obvious that she is working for men, and she is also very much in pursuit of their approval and recognition. In this case, Miss Right enjoy a perfect female body and charm, is actually expressed in indirect: she is very wants to keep her own femininity and charm, want to be or that he should become the beautiful woman in the dream, in other aspects of sex and life are more fully enjoy their gender roles as a woman.

Dream of having sex with your ex boyfriend

"Last Christmas, I had an engagement with my fiance, and we were going to get married when we got the house key, eleven.". I believe I love him very much and make sure he loves me. I can say that I don't think I'm emotionally lacking. The only problem is, I often see former boyfriend broke up in a dream in the two months, and have sex in various environments and he is crazy (but in fact, we had sex is a kind of more conventional). Such embarrassing dreams often make me feel guilty and feel a little worried about my future life."

analysis

Not only if Elim, a lot of people's lives will dream of their own and old boyfriend or husband go to bed again, just a few people will confess, they worry that this means not loyal to the incumbent. In fact, such dreams only show that the dreamer has picked up some unfinished events in his mind". Usually, this is just because dreamers don't have the opportunity to express their feelings to each other completely when they break up. There is not enough mental energy to recover from the last romance.

Breaking up passively, in particular, is often a powerful blow to the self - worth and self-esteem of the injured party. As a kind of instinct for self preservation, the subconscious will often take this too painful feeling of up to be psychologically prepared to let oneself to face before never understand things. I dream of having a relationship with my old boyfriend, but in fact I remind myself that I should finish the feeling before. Of course, this does not really need to see that person again, but instead of avoiding the conflict in his mind, ending it completely, saying goodbye to him forever.

Dream of interacting with animals

"That wonderful dream I've always remembered, it happened when I first got married.". In dreams I was chained to the ocean by a man with a scaly leg, but I could still breathe. He first poured a beautiful blue liquid on me, and then began to make love to me. Although I was frightened, I did not know what would happen in the future, but my body was relaxed and comfortable, and the whole person was as if lying in a big bed full of foam. By the end of our touching, he again poured the blue liquid on me, and told me, "after 49 days in a row, I shall become a mermaid completely.". Then I found out that he was a fish. I'm completely dead."

analysis

Dreams that are closed to animals are not scary, but are indirectly reflected in the animalistic nature of human subconscious preservation. Generally speaking, the significance of such dreams lies in what animals appear in dreams and how they bring feelings. If someone dreams of dolphins, it is possible that the subconscious desires a softer, more caring sex, because the dolphin is a caring animal. Dream to lion, tiger, may represent the dreamer for passion, full of wild sex, subconscious is trying to seduce you to embrace their own natural animal.

But the episode in King's dream does not focus on how she and the fish - like man are entangled in sexual matters, and more of a symbol of intimacy. The whole dream show theme, first is a kind of beautiful and full of love, and she is in love with be made one moment, feel pleased and longing for the fear of losing your fears. Perhaps, this complex ambivalence was just about the state of life she had just entered.

Related investigation:

Women often dream of being raped

Women often dream of being raped

There are many studies about dreams, and there is a universally accepted survey in Psychology: 39% of women have been raped, 29% of men have homosexual experiences in their dreams, and 8% of dreams are related to sex.

Not long ago, a new poll released by Canada found the new annotation for ". For the first time in more than 40 years, countries have conducted such investigations. The survey was conducted by Antonio Zadera, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Montreal in canada. And he questioned at the age of 20-89 between the 109 women and 64 men, so that these respondents reported more than a month has a dream, the dream content, including what happened, and who appeared in their dreams.

The results showed that 8% of dreams were related to sex. Among them, men's "dream lovers" are mostly perfect women in fantasy; women are romantic with lovers of the past or real stars and big people. In addition, men are more likely to be in a dream with more than one female sex; and 4% of the women's sexual dreams will bring about orgasm for. In addition, this study also found that women's sexual dreams, even as much as men.

The role of the body "

1., the body of various organs and functions of the system for self inspection and maintenance;

2. sleep orgasm can make people get rid of the mental pressure during the day;

3. "is a kind of compensation for the real life did not get satisfaction.

[weirdnature]

Digital Field Notes Part I: The Gym

As I walked forward, an angel greeted me.  He beamed triumphantly as he circled the skies, a god in his own domain, and as I passed I sensed my own wings unfurling.  The potential for new heights just a few strokes away.  But it does not take long for my senses to be seized by the clang of metal against metal as something large and heavy strikes the tile floor like a projectile launched at terminal velocity.  As the chorus of clangs fill my ears, I look back to the angel and find that he has transformed into Icarus right before the fall.  It is with foolish excitement that I realize the gym is a place where human meets god, where health and harm are two sides of the same dumbbell, and where the normal and strange find ways to coexist between the equipment that they share.     

In the gym, contradictions fly in the face of logic. Television screens display live footage of two different basketball games and a slideshow of  tips for getting stronger and more fit, including suggestions to drink more water and eat healthy foods. These images provide motivation, an ideal to strive for, examples of the epitomes of health and proper workout technique. Yet, around the corner, vending machines suddenly come to life, casting a heavenly glow on the energy drinks and so-called “healthy snacks” they encase.  Like a street magician diverting your attention as he picks your pocket, these machines draw you in, attract you with lights and colors, and, after you have lost your dollar, gift you with double the daily recommended value of sugar in one drink and a full serving of pesticides and processed soy in one thin bar. 

Similarly, ellipticals are posed like runners in mid-stride, and it is their stationary movement that has a peculiar effect on all who seek to run without touching the ground.  For a moment, machine and athlete are joined, indistinguishable and inseparable, each acting on the other to create a sense of vibrancy in the machine and passivity in the athlete.  

A piece of gym equipment becomes vibrant matter, and a prime example of how a thing can “affect other bodies, enhancing or weakening their powers” and “by virtue of its particular location in an assemblage…[make] things happen, [become] the decisive force catalyzing an event” (Bennet).  For it is the vibrancy of the machinery that works the athlete, and the machinery of the athlete that acts on the equipment.  When the two become separate entities again, the machine remains animated, maintaining its momentum for the next person it will ensnare.  It is this human-machine connection that creates a place of constant movement, where the lines between animation and stasis are drawn and then crossed.  Trespassing like this commonly occurs in a place where binaries are both perpetuated and challenged.         

The gym is observed as a center for self-improvement among individuals who believe that their ideal can be achieved by committing themselves to exercise. This quest for self-improvement is an all-consuming mandate that the environment of the gym places on the individuals within its boundaries. Language on posters and television screens promote being “powerful,” “great” in direct opposition to being “good,” “big,” and “conquer[ing].” 

In essence, the gym promotes an image of the ideal that individuals must strive, sometimes with great exertion, to attain. No pain, no gain, right? Perhaps. This language is an implement for culture to influence, even control, citizens. It forms barriers that define the ideal, the normal, and the strange through physicality and appearance. Machinery and other technology are utilized in order to participate in this quest for the ideal. This blurs the lines between what is naturally given and what can be artificially manipulated. In this way, even life becomes a barrier between the machine-dependent ideal and normal or strange standards. These cultural practices regarding conceptualizing ideal, normal, and strange body types as well as integrated technological use and dependence “produce what is experienced as the ‘natural,’ but many theorists also [insist] on the material recalcitrance of such cultural productions” (Bennet). Cultural influence is reinforced by promoted access to social media websites that enable the rest of society to comment on one’s physical prowess or changing appearance.

Since ability to use technology is so integral in the quest to achieve the ideal, this holds significant implications for those that do not need to use it or are unable to utilize it. Walking through the gym, the disparities between the methodologies implemented to attain the ideal body became very evident. While some follow the advice (that many of us find easy to say, but difficult to follow) of drinking more water and cutting out processed foods, others take a different route of consuming toxins in the form of protein shakes and energy bars. With bright packaging, convenience, and flavours such as “peanut butter cookie,” it’s easy to understand why there now exist machines teeming with chemical artificiality in a place originally dedicated to natural wellness. However the question remains whether such sustenance, though achieving quick results, is truly sustainable for our health. Perhaps it is those who are able to obtain the “perfect” body type without these supplements that are the pinnacle of immunity, while the normal must ingest some sort of toxin (in regards to Esposito’s writings on vaccination) to ultimately build theirs up. To take it further, maybe it is the people who cannot go without the artificial who are resigned to normal status within our culture. Immunes could be regarded as those who require little, if no, artificial assistance in achieving ideal physicality. Those who are unable to achieve the ideal physicality with or without artificial means could be viewed as the “strange” of society, without the fitness necessary to fully function within it.

The ideal body cannot be so easily defined as one specific physical appearance. The gym holds a diverse group of people who have different cultural visions of the ideal body. For the average American woman today, the ideal body is that of a small waist and wide hips, so those who adhere to the American ideal would focus their exercise on what would produce that body type. In Chinese culture, however, the ideal body for a woman is a small waist and narrow hips. Similar standards are held true for men in different cultures. The American man is expected to have wide shoulders and developed abdominal muscles, whereas the Indonesian man is expected to have more developed leg muscles. Despite variations in cultural expectations, there is one binary that remains true, albeit to varying degrees, for all genders: women are expected to exemplify softer, feminine bodies while men are supposed to exude muscular and fit bodies suited for a more agentic lifestyle.

The gym was divided: the upper level held machines for cardio exercises, and the lower level was reserved for weight lifting exercises. To achieve a narrow body-type, the typical exercise that must be done would be cardio. Indeed, the vast majority of women working out could be found on cardio machines.  However, while cardio is essential for assisting in burning fats, it does not offer the best assistance in developing upper- or lower-body strength and definition. Such development is achieved mainly through weightlifting activities, which might explain why the ground floor was populated almost entirely by men. The socially constructed binary of gender expectations was physically present in the spatial arrangement of bodies according to sex.  That is not to say challengers did not exist, though, as members of both genders trespassed into unconsciously segregated areas.  Stereotypically-masculine-looking men could be found on the normally feminine ellipticals and stairmasters, placing their own masculinity into question.  And perhaps even more striking, were the normally soft, feminine women carrying their own weight in the testosterone-infused maze of free weights and strength machines.  

Walking into the gym felt as if we were walking into another world, at once a part of a college campus and also completely separate from the rest of it. Here, people come dressed in black leggings and form-fitting tank tops. Others arrive clad in basketball shorts and t-shirts that they might not normally wear outside at the risk of being too casual. It certainly felt strange and out-of-place to be strolling through the rows of people engaged in cardio and weight training while dressed in jeans and sandals rather than spandex and sneakers. We were outsiders, both in clothing and action, immune from the physical exertion everyone else was subjecting themselves to: shortness of breath, pounding hearts, microtears in the muscles, sweat building on foreheads. People were making themselves vulnerable—exhausting their legs and arms and lungs—in order to gain endurance. They were making themselves temporarily weaker in order to become stronger.  Further, if exercise was only a means to stay healthy, then having well defined muscles or running for long periods of time would not be the primary focus. According to Esposito, “… immunity is a condition of particularity: whether it refers to an individual or a collective, it is always ‘proper,’ in the specific sense of ‘belonging to someone’ and therefore ‘un-common’ or ‘non-communal.’” Having a ‘perfect’ body allows us to stand out from the crowd and be unique. We raise those that have superhuman abilities and treat them better than the rest. Maybe that’s our desire to separate ourselves from earthly things and join the gods in all their splendor and glory. In contrast, not being able to do some basic tasks, such as walking without getting tired or lifting somewhat heavy objects is seen as weak and undesirable—something that places you with the disabled, the old, and the sickly.

Often times, it is easy to see academics and athletics as being separate or even opposing. Athletes are recruited and are, in some cases, exempt from the academic requirements of other students. Maybe it is in part this greater leniency, as well as the stock characters in our pop culture (e.g., the stereotype pitting the underdog nerd vs. captain of the football team), which perpetuates the brains/brawn and mind/body divide, and groups together the academic with the civilized and the physically powerful with the more primitive. A quick and simple walk through the gym started breaking down those walls. A cursory examination of the gym may lead to the conclusion that physical appearance is our primary benchmark for differentiating between the ideal, the normal, and the strange. Upon a more in-depth look, however, one can see that some are pushing the boundaries of the mental capabilities such as their ability to overcome all-consuming thoughts of exhaustion and weakness, improve their dedication, and change ingrained habits. The gym was a place people went to test their limits, challenge their boundaries, and become the best version of themselves. Thus, it became a place that wasn’t its own entity apart from the university, but a continuation of it; a place of overcoming cognitive inhibitions through physicality and reshaping the corporeal through intellectual exercise. The boundaries between the rational and physical as well as the gym and academia are demonstratively blurred.

In a similar fashion, the lines between the natural bodies we have been given and the transformations available through technology have been transgressed rather extremely. Not content with our own natures, we seek to transcend the human - the primitive - and enter into a new form civilization: of engineering the naturally given body into a hybrid of the organic and the mechanical. Dysmorphic forms of the body, which conform to culturally approved binaries, are more and more becoming the norm. Enormous weight loss and bodybuilding represent two extreme bodily forms that are both ideal and strange. Ideal in that they represent superhuman ability and strange in that they represent bodily forms that are not naturally facilitated. The gym is a unique environment that enables humanity to challenge natural and cultural boundaries.

To be sure, healthy discourse challenging culturally construed categories and the language used to reinforce it is necessary, but it’s vital that we don’t use singular attributes to identify the ultimate value of people. If we are to believe that humanity is interconnected with all sorts of vibrant matter, then the sum of its parts would be infinite. The ideal, the normal, and the strange should not be defined solely by current culturally created categories that define human worth through individual, and sometimes artificial,  pursuits of health and extreme physical prowess. In the words of Ruth Hubbard:

Health and physical prowess are poor criteria of human worth. Many of us know people with a disease or disability whom we value highly and so-called healthy people whom we could readily do without. It is fortunate for human variety and variability that most of us are not called on to make such judgments, much less to implement them.

Associated with this post are several popular hashtags that people who work out at the USF gym use on social media posts regarding their workouts