#and it just made me realize how like. arbitrary the distinction they were making was (even tho there was distinction!-

[welcometogrouchland]

We talk a lot about the merits of pop culture vs 'high culture' on this website and anti-intellectualism and stuff but where's the appreciation for ppl who deeply enjoy both. Can we make some noise for people who's favorite movies are like. Ratatouille and Eraserhead? Or something?

[scarlet--wiccan]

Honestly it seems like a fight to even have Billy's Romani heritage mentioned in the comics, even though he seems like the type to be really eager to learn about his cultural heritage. And it'd be a bonding activity that doesn't exclude Tommy, the way that something magically inclined most likely would.

On one hand, Pietro and Wanda being drawn with darker skin is a relatively recent development that still seems to be facing some pushback. On the other, I'd expect the lack of whitewashing to naturally apply to Luna, Billy, and Tommy as well? Even in the case of retro-reincarnation; if they're written and drawn as taking entirely after Wanda's family physically, instead of the Kaplans or Shepherds- that's what Heinberg and Cheung intended, it's how Magneto identified them as Wanda's kids, and everyone else has followed that trend- then I don't understand some people's logic behind that applying to everything EXCEPT skin tone.

To my understanding, making this sort of change to a character's official design requires a degree of editorial authority. Dauterman, Orlando, et al were able to do that for Wanda and Pietro because they had more direct control over them as title characters. They're making Speed or Wiccan comics, so they don't get to do official design sheets for Billy and Tommy. I'm sure that there were many other, more complicated conversations happening behind the scene, but I think that's the basic gist.

Having said that, there's really no reason they couldn't give Billy and Tommy darker skin, or just make them look more like Wanda, in Scarlet Witch, even if it wouldn't be reflected in other books. Artists get away with making arbitrary coloring choices all the time-- usually for the worse, but sometimes for the better. So, I think that they are making this visual distinction on purpose, and there's a couple reasons why that might be happening. A lot of people do arrive at the conclusion that Billy and Tommy should look more mixed, for lack of a better term, than Wanda because of their unconventional parentage. I don't love it, especially not when it means making them super pale, but I do understand the logic.

It's also completely possible that Orlando doesn't think or hasn't realized that Billy and Tommy are Romani, or have Roma heritage. Or perhaps he is just uncertain of what the best, most appropriate course to take, because it's an odd situation. This is why, even if he's not writing stories specifically about Wanda's race and culture, he'd benefit from a consultant or sensitivity reader.

I'd care a lot less about what these characters looked like, if I felt like the nuances of their heritage were authentically represented. I care about Wanda and Pietro being brown because there isn't enough inclusive representations of brown Roma, and because there is a gap in readers' understanding that Roma are a racial minority, so seeing us as people of color is necessary. If people had better understanding, or if there was a more inclusive range of characters, it wouldn't matter. Similarly, I want Billy and Tommy to look like Wanda because for some reason "Billy and Tommy are Wanda's kids" does not translate to "Billy and Tommy are Romani" in people's minds. If that was already a given, it would matter less.

Anyways, I've pointed this out before, but it does seem as if Dauterman may have changed Billy and Tommy's skin tone on his most recent covers. Its really hard to tell because of the lighting, but compared to last years #6, I feel like the base color here is closer to Wanda and Pietro's shade range.

Again, full aware that this is a stretch, but if you use Lorna as an example of how fair skin reflects in this sort of dramatic lighting, the tones used on Billy and Tommy are consistently deeper and warmer. I'm not making any assumptions, it's just something I noticed and it's made me very curious to see what the interiors will look like for SW #7.

[sir-arlieosaurus-lung-struggler]

the aromantic is confuesed

☆ Aromantic culture is just genuenly not understanding the difference between romantic relationships and platonic friendships.

☆ Fyi: apologies for the plethora of "like," statments, it just feels more natural for some reason. I expect this to possibly get hated on? I dont know, couldnt care less if it dose tho 🤷🏻‍♂️

☆ Like, I just dont understand the concept of cheating. I get its considered bad. I get why its considered bad as its a breach of trust/boundaries/etc, but i dont understand why people prefer to be monogamous as i genuinely just dont see a difference between friends and romantic partners, I get that there is a difference, i respect that differece where people draw it themselves, I just can't see it.

☆ Like, I see the difference between queerplatonic relashionships & friendship, but I just can't distinguish any other type of relashionship & romance for some reason.

☆ And i just dont get why theres a distinction between monogamy & polyamory either? Like, were people? Why not be open to the possibility of feelings not following the preset mold of a random relashionship Hiarchy? Like ofc you can have your own rules in a relashionship, but I just dont get why monogamy with the 1 perfect "other half of you" is the priority vs fulfillment? Like, I don't expect 1 person to be my "other half" for the rest of my life, nor do I want someone to expect that of me cause that just feels like dumping way to many expectations onto 1 person. And like, you can devide yourself amoung multiple friends why not multiple romantic partners?

☆ And i dont get wanting a lifelong relashionship like that? I mean i do get wantinv 1 but expecting 1 i feel is just throwing alot of expectations on anither person, people change, feelings change, alot changes in life. It reminds me of how people are expected to choose what they want to do for the rest of your life as a teenager.

☆ Why r y'all bringing the government into your relashionship? And why do y'all STRIVE for that? Like, "lets officially legaly combine ourselves into a unit and make it real damn difficult if we end up seperating." Why should having a romantic partner logustically help you in life?? Like "hey, these 2 ppl said i do infront of an officiant, lets see if we can improve theyre taxes." How is they're logistically a "making this relashionship official" outside of- consenting parties deciding they're in a relashionship????

☆ Like, everyone was assigned to make a different venn diagram and label it with arbitrary concepts and they're relation/similarities/lack thereof, and its graded on participation; But everyone still argued over the non answer because they just can't fathom they're being no wrong answer.

☆ This isn't really meant to change anyones mind on romance, do whatever tf you want with your relashionships its your life; This is just me being real fucking confused at why people arbitrarily made these catagories lol.

☆ This was origonally gonna be an ask on an aromantic culture is blog but I quickly realized this was gonna be way too long for that.

☆ I may or may not add more mini rants to this in future reblogs this is just what I could think of as I was writing. Thanks if you actually read all of this

[rametarin]

Laughing at a youtuber.

No, I will not link to them. More a personal rant and chuckle.

This black individual whose sex and gender I will not elaborate on, moaned about how women were/are all in on trans rights, until, and I quote,

“Women started feeling replaced by these trans women in sports.” And whimpering about how they’re, “still an LGBT supporter, still want to support, but, being real, women feel like transwomen are targeting their spaces to dominate them, and replacing them in female categories. Like sports, pageants and entertainment.”

You really going to go there. Transgendered people are less than 1% of the population. The entire god damned LGBT spectrum hovers around 5% the human population, across the world. There are places where it’s as high as 15-40%, but those places are big migratory hubs that are specifically LGBT strong points, and do not even remotely represent anything in any basic society.

And you, supposed LGBT supporter, fellow oppressed peoples supporter, marching in solidarity for equality and progress and diversity, mocker of, “those awful -phobic/racist conservatives,” want to whip out the flat sided buzz cuts and tiki torches and start going, “YOU WILL NOT REPLACE US” when the law starts treating transwomen’s rights and privileges as existing in the same category as and synonymous with a female sexed person, demanding that no distinction is allowed to be made between them or to qualify them differently. You were all for it, until it meant they got right of way and you had to adjust your speech and your spaces to prioritize their needs as a minority over yours as your sex.

Folks love, “being for social justice” when the platform treats them as an oppressed minority, but boy do they sure get awfully NIMBY the minute those same rules and that same community starts defining them as an obligate, inescapable oppressor based on their demography (race, ethnic group, language group, sex) in relation to another group, and all the “you’re not allowed to speak/you’re only allowed to agree with me or be wrong and then vilified for your dissent and obstruction of my justice,” that implies.

But some of you are realizing, when you follow this particular philosophy and community that believe in a certain way, you don’t get to go, “I believe this part is true, BUT I’m an oppressed minority, this other part of how this works shouldn’t apply to me and you shouldn’t get to just sandbag my opinion as if I’m the worst person in the world like this. Not like those horrible white men!”

Nope. Nope. That isn’t how it works. You’re now the middle child in this family with these arbitrary, family rules, not the Baby, whom gets away with being a mouthy, sassy brat and rewarded for laying it on the table at the bigger sibling, instead of punished for two weeks for speaking out of turn or place. You want to speak, now you have to torture your language and concede and submit to their norms, speak to them on their terms, never violate how they lay out their issues, or you’ll be sat in the same table Newt Gingrich sits on. The Big Oppressor to their pantheon of demons is white, able bodied, English speaking, cisgendered heterosexual, male sexed human beings. You rank beneath the ultimate boss of oppressor, but you rank over some other groups, and those ones get to talk to and treat you the way you think you’re entitled to talk down to white men as your natural oppressor. Those ones get to mouth off at you with righteous indignation as if you’re the effigy, embodying the force of their suffering demographically, same as you do your oppressor. Thems the rules of the game you’ve chosen to play. I don’t make them, I’m just unflatteringly spelling them out for you, unambiguously and without benefit of the doubt.

You follow the belief because it’s convenient, for instance, that arbitrary “privileges,” the definition for the concept that just existing as a demographic entitles you to certain social advantages and characteristics purely based on affiliation to said group, make an individual culpable for “that demographic”‘s historical abuses and exploitation of another group (or at least the responsibility for it leveid on the descendant that fits the description) then you follow the belief that also says you’re an oppressor just by not being in the oppressed demographic, therefore, you are their oppressor. You’ve been bamboozled and had your social and political gripes hijacked and appropriated to make YOU march for THEIR perspective and THEIR preferred resolution to your historical problems. Using their language, using their theories of society.

But the minute they expand on those beliefs some, and suddenly you become the oppressor you felt confident you were in the right for shouting down and smearing as the unequivical, indisputable capital E Enemy, you realize the No Holds Barred and absolutism of this way of approaching the social conversations may have some flaws to it or shouldn’t apply to you this way, just whites, and to some of you, just men.

You should’ve checked the fine print on the little red book when you started quoting it. And now you get to learn exactly where you stand and where they think people like you should go; Playing supporter and groupie for THEIR argument and war, where you show up and vote how you’re told, be counted in solidarity to their cause and fight their battles for them, or shut the fuck up and leave. But there’s no medium space. They own the legitimate one and you can’t have it.

So. Welcome to that spot beneath the bus, where they blame you for shit and hold you accountable for shit other people that look like you, may or may not have ACTUALLY said, or been interpreted to’ve said or meant that. You feel like you can’t say a word of dissent or opposition without being made an example of on the mainstream news or dogpiled by e-celebrity influencers on youtube and tiktok and twitch, all of them hoping to smile for the camera and go, “Pfft, this hater, right? :^)” for their own potential to reaffirm Bad People Bad and they’re a good person, and that their sycophants should also hate bad people. Because now you’re on the other side of that culture. This is the hell you helped make possible when you thought you were on the right side of history, and you were marching against evil itself.

The good news is that spot beneath the bus is very diverse and getting bigger every day as the puritanical dogmas of class struggle theory, critical X theory and other garbage becomes status quo. And miraculously, even more liberal than the absolutist garbage trying to run it out and replace it in mainstream hard left progressivism. Pull up a chair and get ready to think.

[dmss-blog-salian]

Blog Post - 04

Representation in Games – Let’s Play Instead of Preaching. 

Unless, you’ve been living in a cave, there is absolutely no chance you haven’t been exposed to progressive ideas on gender and sex.  You obviously have been exposed to the counter-arguments and “movements” as well. But, if you’re still confused about what’s going on, let me clue you in before we go any further and explore the many misconceptions that plague these narratives.

“Gender is a Social Construct” – You’ve most likely come across this statement by those on the “progressive” side of the socio-political spectrum. You might have even been baffled by the statement because You’ve known all your life that the existence of “Women” and “Men” is materially observable and demonstrably true. I don’t blame you for being baffled. In fact, so was I when I first heard the same. But, over the years, I have realized that these arguments and ideas are largely bogged down by a combination of semantics and scientific ignorance.

Before we deconstruct the statement, let me explain what a ‘social construct’ is – A social construct,  if I were to go with the simplest definition, is a reality that has been constructed by humans. This “reality” has no objective existence. A few good examples of socially constructed realities would be caste, class, national borders etc. There are no “lower class” people just as there are no “countries”. These are boundaries that humans place around themselves and others for whatever reason.

However, what we know to be objectively true is the existence of humans or people and that of geographic land masses.

So, what do people like Judith Butler mean when they say “Gender is a social construct”? Well, in my epistemological experience, I’ve come to understand that individuals like Butler borrow their ideas heavily from philosophies such as Relativism and off-shoots such as Post-Modernism. You see, in their heads, there is no such thing as objective reality and much like her mentors, such as Ferdinand de Saussure, she seems to believe that language itself can change material reality. As shocking as that sounds, sadly, sophistry has become the standard of intellect.

According to Butler, who is simply echoing the claims of Simone de Beauvoir, gender is a constructed reality in that the traits, interests, and behaviours we associate with a man or woman are  completely “made up”. When we say a woman needs to have long hair or a man needs to have facial hair, we are simply making up arbitrary rules about what it means to be a man or a woman. Credit where credit is due, but Butler is right about this one. Many of the rules used to define woman or man at the sociological level are mere constructs.

However, whether Butler intended her ideology to be interpreted the way it has been is a topic I shall attempt answering some other day. For now, it seems to me that her ideas may well have been taken out of context by the masses. Today, gender ideology is all about self-identification i.e. you can simply say you’re a man or woman on the basis of nothing more than just a mood, interest or feeling. This is where the narrative turns irrational.

Butler argues that sex/gender distinctions are largely meaningless and I have to say that she is definitely wrong here. For starters, the category of sex isn’t socially constructed. Males and females exist objectively across species. How do we know this? Well, it is self-evident and also backed up by empirical data. The term “male” signifies the member of any species that produces sperm and female signifies the member of the species that produces ova or eggs.

Contrary to the often misunderstood chromosome argument, sex is determined primarily via gamete production and it logically follows that in order to produce these gametes, you would require the necessary organs. So, yes, sex boils down to genitalia and other reproductive organs. Of course, the terms themselves are socially constructed, which is the case with every language, but materially, a female does not become a male or vice versa.

Now, I shall set aside fundamental scientific facts and focus on discussing one of the best representations of a female character in a game.

Ellie from ‘The Last of Us’ and Hopefully Not the Last in Positive Female Representation

Among the games I’ve enjoyed recently, The Last of Us easily ranks in my top 5. It’s got everything from a brilliant narrative to complex characters. Speaking of complex characters, Ellie stands out like a sore thumb and I mean that in a good way.

As Aneeta Sarkesian, founder of Feminist Frequency and also one of the contributors to the game, stated, Ellie is unlike the average female character. She isn’t portrayed as a sex symbol and the facticity of her female-ness isn’t limited to typical gender signifiers. She is a nuanced and emotionally intelligent character.

One of the most realistic aspects of her character is that she relies on smarts to overcome the enemy rather than brute physical strength. This might seem silly but to it’s a realistic depiction of our world. As stated earlier, biological differences means males are stronger and unlike every other game, Ellie’s creators decided to make things believable. She is portrayed as a survivor and a fighter with brains rather than superhuman strength. I found a certain depth to this portrayal. Also, we know through rigorous scientific research that there are no differences in intelligence between the sexes.

Hopefully, we’ll see more of such realistic and positive depictions of women within the realm of gaming.

What Does This Have to Do with the Artist?

In all honesty, I believe the artist is not obligated to be politically correct. So, even unrealistic, stereotypical or over the top depictions are not really a problem as far as I’m concerned. To me, art has always been about testing the limits of freedom and redefining the rules. In fact, art is the only medium through which I am permitted (for now at least) to do this.

I can paint the sky red, make the earth appear flat, and cause males to become pregnant. You can’t tell me to do otherwise. Therefore, topics like representation do not matter to me as far as my practice goes. I am of the opinion that art is just that – art. It’s about passion, entertainment and fun. For others, it might serve as a platform to highlight socio-political issues.

So, at the end of the day, do what thou wilt!

Sources:

Roberts, G. (2021). Judith Butler’s toxic nonsense. [online] UnHerd. Available at: https://unherd.com/2021/09/judith-butlers-toxic-nonsense/.

Murphy, M. (2020). Judith Butler resurfaces to remind the world she is a fraud. [online] Feminist Current. Available at: https://www.feministcurrent.com/2020/09/27/judith-butler-resurfaces-to-remind-the-world-she-is-a-fraud/.

Byrne, A. (2018). Is Sex Socially Constructed? [online] Arc Digital. Available at: https://medium.com/arc-digital/is-sex-socially-constructed-81cf3ef79f07.

Bainbridge, C. (2020). Why People Make Social Constructs and How They Can Change. [online] Verywell Mind. Available at: https://www.verywellmind.com/definition-of-social-construct-1448922.

whyevolutionistrue (2022). Is ‘sex’ socially constructed? [online] Why Evolution Is True. Available at: https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2022/10/26/is-sex-socially-constructed/.

www.youtube.com. (n.d.). Judith Butler: Your Behavior Creates Your Gender | Big Think. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo7o2LYATDc&ab_channel=BigThink.

Brzycki, M. (2002). GENDER DIFFERENCES IN STRENGTH: A COMPARISON OF MALE AND FEMALE WORLD-RECORD PERFORMANCES IN POWERLIFTING. [online] Available at: https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/brzycki/files/mb-2002-01.pdf.

Miller, A.E.J. et al. (1993) Gender differences in strength and muscle fiber characteristics, European journal of applied physiology and occupational physiology. U.S. National Library of Medicine. Available at: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8477683/ (Accessed: January 10, 2023).

‌ VentureBeat. (2014). The DeanBeat: Favorite female game characters that aren’t an embarrassment. [online] Available at: https://venturebeat.com/games/the-deanbeat-favorite-female-game-characters-that-arent-an-embarrassment/ [Accessed 10 Jan. 2023].

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Yuu know! Thinking of Yuuken! I just wanna add on to say I love him as a concept because as a transmasc, seeing how much of the fanbase is geared towards Yuu being a girl is... Disheartening. Official Game Yuu is completely ambiguous and I love that but sometimes I fear the game is geared towards the pkay being a girl. Obviously it was inevitable but still, Yuuken was like beacon of hope bc it gave us an OFFICIAL protag that was so very much NOT that, he was had a strong personality and a typically masculine body and character. It was just really nice for me - kinda like saying that everyone can enjoy twst, no matter what

[Referencing this post!]

While I think it’s true that a lot of TWST fan content is female-centric, it’s nice that the base game is so open to interpretation! I do get why you’d feel alienated at times though (as there are infrequent but subtle lines which imply that the game has already assigned Yuu a few arbitrary traits) 🥲 and feeling like you don’t “fit in” isn’t exactly a great sensation.

Something that I’ve never really managed to wrap my head around is how some people were genuinely… offended??? Insulted??? By Yuuken’s initial reveal? 🤔 I guess because he wasn’t the small, sweet, gender-ambiguous, feminine-looking (or even female) protag that some fans expected or wanted. I was also under the distinct impression that some fans felt… slighted??? Threatened??? By Yuuken simply because he, a version of Yuu that was associated with the official TWST brand, was not representative of their own interpretations of Yuu. I believe there were similar sentiments resurfacing when the light novel revealed Kuroki Yuuya (another guy) as its protagonist 💦 though Yuuya is admittedly a much less traditionally masculine character than Yuuken.

It seemed like it took people a while to warm up to them and to realize that just because other Yuus exist (even in an “official” capacity), it doesn’t invalidate the fandom’s own creations or make one Yuu “more canon” than the others. (TWST literally also made Yuuya after Yuuken, and that doesn’t mean one is “canon” and the other isn’t.) Like… the TWST staff are also allowed to make their own takes on Yuu as well, and that doesn’t mean they’re saying all other Yuus shouldn’t exist. I’ve never understood why that would be a cause for major concern???? 😔 Especially since the fandom often makes their own versions of Disney-inspired characters while also actively hoping to see TWST actually show their own twisted version of those characters. That experience was just a strange one to live through… but I think by now that those feelings have (thankfully) died down and we’ve pretty much embraced Yuuken and Yuuya 😌

I’m glad that you’re able to find comfort in Yuuken, Anon! Let’s continue enjoying this twisted rhythm together—because TWST is inclusive of everyone!

[queeenpersephone]

Thank you so much for the headcanons!!! first of all YES I would love to hear your thoughts on the im2/cw parallels. Second, I'm really interested in any hcs/metas you might have regarding how and why Nat falls for Tony? Most fics tend to be from Tony's POV while Nat's perspective is left so secretive

ofc, i'm so happy you enjoyed them! okay, i'll do the parallels in a separate post (if you can make gifs hmu), but i love that you picked up on how much nat's perspective is underrated in ironwidow fic. here are a few reasons i think nat falls for tony (i'm going to have a separate them out into concrete vs. cerebral - might be an arbitrary distinction, but another way to think about it is initial attraction/everyday compatibility vs. deep love/moral and emotional alignment)

concrete reasons

tony's confidence. nat needs someone who has no qualms

physical experience. nat is experienced. she likes that tony is unapologetic about his sexuality.

he's a great conversationist. nat is witty as hell, and there's really no one else in the mcu that's as clever and quick with words as tony (maybe clint, but that's bff energy only). we have plenty of evidence that nat likes humor, likes tony's sense of humor (see: 'miss me, agent romanoff?') and i really don't think she would end up with someone who's not willing just to engage in some teasing. i really think tony would actively try to draw it out of her as well, which would further endear her.

cerebral reasons

tony's relentless hope. this is tony's best trait imo and it's one that pairs really nicely with nat’s suspicion and doubt of other people’s motives and abilities. 

tony has red in his ledger, and he wants to wipe it out. remember brucenat? the goal there was to draw a parallel between bruce and nat's mistakes, ignoring that tony and nat's pasts are actually more similar. they hurt people, they were able to realize that their lives were not truly their own and break free of it, they consider themselves at fault when they were at the machinations of powerful people, and now they want to spent their lives repenting. relationships happen between people who might be ostensibly different, but deeply share the same values. i think tony manifests it as a futurist, an idealist, where nat is more concrete and detailed, but they can also appreciate the opposite perspective. i just think nat recognizes a similar mindset in tony, likely before he did in her. she understands him, and she likes that he understands her. 

tony, i think, is very thoughtful in gift-giving and spending quality time. i just think he’d make an effort to appreciate nat’s russian heritage and love of the ballet. he 100% made her a ballet studio and she was instantly a little in love.

he appreciates her abilities and i hc him as the only one to note her genius in closing the portal in avengers 1, so much that i put it in a fic. more than that, though, he actively tries to improve her abilities - gadgets, etc. she definitely love when he excitedly bursts into her room to show her a widow bite update

finally: i think my usual hc about ironwidow getting together is post-cacw. here, nat falls for him because he doesn’t run away from the world. he sticks it out, he fights, he forgives, he tries his best to fix whatever he breaks. seeing tony’s hope (that she’s appreciated for years) turned onto her? onto the idea that they can be friends, be more? it’s irresistible. by hoping, by depending on her, tony makes nat better. who wouldn’t fall in love after that? 

[writertothemaximum]

Pairing: Tobio Kageyama x Reader

Summary: Kageyama gets really pent up and gets super nervous trying to ask you to finger him.

Word Count: 3.6k

Warnings/Content: nsfw/smut, Kageyama bottoming, dominant reader, anal fingering, non-gendered reader, extremely fluffy, contains cuddles

Ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26867611

It was lunch on a fine day in the middle of fall and you sat down at your classroom table, ready to eat your meal for the afternoon. Kageyama sat across from you, looking somehow more irritated than usual. It was actually quite challenging to figure out when he was bothered by something or just you know, being himself. Only with Kageyama exposure in high quantities would anyone be able to crack the code that is his resting bitchface. After six months of dating, you were one of the rare few who had grown to understand it.

Simply put, crossed legs, a distinct lack of a milkbox, and a lack of will to eat the bento you oh-so-kindly prepared for him this morning meant something was on his mind.

You unwrapped the cloth covering the lunchbox, firmly opened up the lid, snagged your chopsticks, and picked up a big piece of chicken katsu. Flinging it around in the air like imitating an airplane for a child who didn’t want to eat their vegetables, you brought it to Kageyama’s face. “Tobio, say ‘ahhh’,” you said, your voice almost stern.

He poked around, finally making eye contact. Reluctantly, he opened his mouth, “Ahhh—”

The katsu landed safely on his tongue. He took a second to pull the thing out as you slipped the chopsticks out from his lips and he started to chew.

“How is it?” you asked.

He seemed a little bit more pleasant.

“Good,” he said, nodding.

“Good, good,” you said, nodding back, a proud smile slapped across your face.

There was a little snicker from the seat next to you.

“Baby-baby Kageyama getting fed his lunch like a little baby,” Hinata said, snidely. You know he did it just to piss Kageyama off. It always worked. It wasn’t even ever a good one. At least Tsukishima came up with clever insults.

“Shut up, dumbass!” he snapped back at him, looking back at you patiently for another bite. His irritation was back, though, and he stared at you as if his mind only had the capacity for getting you to feed him another bite. Also volleyball. Probably.

“Hey, Hinata-kun, do you want a bite?” you asked, turning your attention to your right.

Hinata’s eyes lit up.

“Of course!” he said, shooting over to you with his mouth wide open.

The look on Kageyama’s face was one of the most precious things in the entire world. He looked hurt, almost, as if offering someone else the bento he didn’t even want to eat was not only detrimental to his well-being but his entire soul. His whole face dripped down in shock and mortification, as if asking why you would do something so cruel to him.

Taking another piece of katsu, you sprung your chopsticks into the air, whipping them around like an airplane mid-flight, sound effects, and all. The tip of the rounded wood swung by Hinata’s mouth, just as Kageyama’s lips parted, ever so slightly.

You rammed the thing into Kageyama’s mouth.

Chopsticks still poking out of his lips, he stood up and pumped both fists into the air proudly, congratulating his victory.

Hinata’s fist smacked lightly on the top of his head.

“Bakegama, you’re the boyfriend, if you didn’t win I’d be concerned,” he said, almost chuckling.

Kageyama sat back down, taking the chopsticks out of his mouth, accepting a pyrrhic victory. Hinata reached over and grabbed a piece of katsu with his fingers and flicked it into his mouth. Kageyama grabbed the box and held it close to his body.

“Hey! That’s my lunch, you idiot!” he shouted at him.

Hinata pouted, mouth still full of flavorful chicken. “What, I was offered it, anyways.”

You laughed at the duo, the bickering so pointless they might as well been having any other ordinary conversation. It was like this every day, but that also meant there was a mundanity to it all. A wonderful sort of peace to the regularity of things. It was really pleasant, you hoped things would stay like this for a long time.

…

In the evening of that same day, you got a text from Kageyama asking if he could come over. A part of you was tempted to say no to see his reaction, but you said yes, as you weren’t really doing anything. It was past dinner and his night practice, anyways, so your parents wouldn’t get too much into your business. And plus, you still wanted to know what was bothering him.

So that’s how you ended up sitting on your bed, flipping through English vocab flashcards, a boy practically twice your size cradled in your lap. He seemed somehow grumpier than normal, if that were at all possible. He clearly wasn’t studying with you, his focus seemed almost completely centered around frowning and ruminating on, well…something.

He really liked to sit with you holding him like this. He told you it felt really comfortable and warm and he wasn’t really sure why he liked it so much. Whenever he came over, especially if he was tired (especially if he lost a match), he’d sit right there on your lap, snuggling in, getting all warm and cozy. He was the little spoon and he indulged in every second of it.

If that Shiratorizawa guy you met was a ‘guess monster’ Kageyama most certainly was a ‘cuddle monster’.

“It’s distracting.”

“What is?” you asked in response, flicking by the word for ‘arbitrary’.

“That,” he reiterated, not really answering anything.

“Tobio, what is that?” you said, emphasizing the word in the same way he did.

Was the English practice bothering him? You knew he was especially bad in that subject, maybe seeing you look over it made him anxious. You had a test tomorrow so you wanted to make sure you were ready, but it was unlike Kageyama to be petty over something like that. He was usually petty over…dumber things.

Kageyama shuffled in your lap, moving his hand down to his groin, adjusting his underwear. There was a soft pat as the elastic moved back into place. He just tucked an erection in his waistband, right? That’s what that was, right?

You snapped the rubber band around your flashcards and with a groan, chucked them across the room, aiming for your backpack, not quite making it.

You grabbed the boy in your arms and flipped the world around, landing his back firmly against the bed. Pinning him down and grabbing his wrists firmly with your fists, you squinted your eyes, as if to appraise this body of his. Your focus led down his T-shirt and to the hem of his shirt, which you grabbed firmly and dragged up his chest.

Yeah, he was hard, alright. The poor thing was poking out the top of his gym shorts.

“Tobio, what was that?” you said again, words pronounced and sharp.

He looked so overwhelmed like this, it was a good look on him, trying to form words with a stuffed brow and puckered lips.

“I-I uh…” he mumbled out, his head rolling to the side.

You frowned.

“What is it? Come on, there’s nothing to be ashamed of,” you said, deciding on a laugh. “Plus, if you’re honest, it’ll help us deal with your little uh, ‘problem’.”

Yeah, whatever it was it was going to be a sex thing. He was still so timid about that kind of stuff, it was really cute. You never pushed him into anything, so he’d make requests every now and then, and it was really funny to see him open up about what he liked. Almost as if you’d hate him for some stupid reason like having natural urges like any other human being would.

He finally mustered up the courage to look you in the eye, his lips puffed out and expression meek and lacking confidence.

“...Can you finger me?”

You blinked a couple times, finally realizing what he had asked.

“You mean like, up your ass?”

He got irritated, easily pushing you back up, detaching himself from being pinned to the bed.

“Yeah! Like up my ass!” He shouted, not really concerned with how his tone of voice sounded. Then, it only came out as mumbles, “It’s not like I’ve been thinking about it for the past week or anything…”

Oh god, he was a giant idiot. Not subtle, Kageyama.

You started chuckling—hard to contain, really.

“Of course I’ll do it. What, did you think I’d laugh at you or something?” you asked.

Kageyama’s face turned sharp red.

“No.”

That was a yes. That was definitely a yes.

Well, you knew by now that Kageyama liked being on the receiving ends of things. A part of you wondered if he’d become a pillow-princess if you spoiled him too much.

“Alright, alright, get back down, let’s get you nice and comfy, shall we?” you said, waving your hands in the air for him to turn around. Reluctantly, he shifted his whole body weight, pulling his knees in and getting on all fours, face firmly against the pillow. A part of you wanted to grab his hair and force his neck up for air, but it wouldn’t be worth it at this point, considering you hadn’t even touched him. You’d get a better reaction if you did it later.

You bent around to the nightstand, fishing around for the stuff you’d need.

“Tobio, do you want me to use a condom, or are just my fingers fine?”

“Just fingers,” you heard, muffled by the pillow. It almost sounded like he was biting it. It was cute to see him preparing himself mentally for this. He seemed really eager and that was endearing.

Nails trimmed? Check. Lube? Check. One Kageyama with a huge ass waving in the air waiting for your fingers to fuck the shit out of him? Check.

Okay, okay, all good to go here.

You pulled yourself back onto the bed and flicked open the bottle’s cap, squirting out a little just to make sure you had enough. Snapping the thing shut again, you set your eyes back on sweet ass.

He was so cute on his hands and knees like this. It gave you a really good view of his calves and thighs, too. After years of jumping, years of running, they really developed into something that could only be described as perfect as a marble statue. When you wrapped your palms around them, you could feel the meat and bone, no trace of fat, each ligament and muscle tissue finely defined. He twitched slightly, muscles tensing as your fingers wrapped around the tissue.

Taking your other hand, you outstretched your index finger and poked hard on his ass, aiming for the spot where his asshole should be. It pushed the fabric into him, rubbing him through thick cloth aimlessly. It wasn’t a direct touch, it wasn’t close. You were just teasing him, suggesting that you were going to stick it up there, that you were really going to put it in him.

Kageyama got so antsy as you ground your finger into his ass. He shifted his hips, rubbing his dick against the waistband, absolutely desperate for some form of friction aside from this half-assed prodding at his shorts.

“Aren’t you gonna uh, like…Do something? Stop poking me….”

Ah, he was really cute when he got desperate, wasn’t he?

You slapped your hands on the sides of his hips and pulled the waistband of the gym shorts and his underwear in a slow motion, riding them gently down. When they got to his knees, you saw his dick spring out, still as hard and irritated as earlier. You arched his leg up in the air to pull the shorts off and flung them across the room, probably to settle near the flashcards on the ground.

There really was a different way asses looked when the guy really worked out. It wasn’t round and bubbly like how one might expect when you describe a great ass, but it retained all the springiness of tightly packed skin. It was clefted in a way, a little angular, a little flat, a little shaped like two rounded squares. It was so easy to wrap your hands around, to let your thumbs sink into the smooth skin, to feel each movement as he adjusted his knees to the pressure of his body weight on the bed.

He was shivering a little bit, as if the stress was lowering his body temperature, as if being nervous made his brain fire out shots of chills trying to understand that this was happening, that this was actually happening, and that he was lying here on your bed like this. You put a hand at the bottom of his tailbone, stabilizing him. You leaned in, using your other hand to gently rub his inner thigh, relaxing him, trailing soft kisses down the line of your thumb as it crossed his smooth skin.

Feeling his breathing slow down and the shaking slow, you leaned back up and grabbed the bottle, squirting a big glob of lube onto your fingers, running down to your palm. You used your other hand to get a firm grip on his ass, spreading one of his cheeks, leaving the small outline of a little hole, all shriveled up tight and twitching ever so slightly. You moved your hand toward him and as the tip of your finger traced the hairs on his asscrack, making him feel the echoes of the chills from before.

You could hear him muttering into the pillow, his face still planted into the thing, his hands clutching it tightly, as if it was the only thing keeping him bound to this world.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, it won’t hurt, I promise,” you said, making sure your words were gentle and comforting.

He started to calm again and you let your free hand run down the end of his back, slowly trickling up through the shirt to his spine, the soft tickle hopefully distracting the feeling of your finger up pressing on him.

It almost felt like the world was splitting when you let your first finger glide inside. You let your other hand grip on the middle of his back, supporting him, moving your finger further in, surrounded by heat and a warm grip.

“Mmmmngnh…” you heard him grumble into the pillow. A part of you wanted to see his expressions, but the other part of you knew that it was better like this. After all, it was his first time with anything inside, it was a little bit of a vulnerable position to be in.

“Is it in yet?” you heard from him more clearly, his head tilted to the side. Sweat covered his forehead, the thin strands of his bangs sticking to his skin.

“Hmm, only about halfway,” you said.

“Tch,” he responded with, face planted right back into soft cushion.

You couldn’t stop the soft smile on your lips, knowing that Kageyama was trying to act strong for you. He was trying to show that he could take it, even if it was really sensitive, even if it was embarrassing that he could possibly like something like this, even if he could never admit that it felt good to have a part of you inside him.

You pushed the rest of the finger in, feeling his groaning flush through the bed, humming slightly into the blankets. He took your first finger so well, all the way to the knuckle now. He squeezed a couple times around you, probably trying to get used to the sensation, even if relatively, one finger wasn’t very much.

Planning on thrusting your one finger into him a couple times, you moved your other hand to grab onto his thigh to make sure he wouldn’t thrash about the place. When you first started to pull out, you felt him clench around you, as if he couldn't bear with the thought of you leaving his ass. It was so slippery now, though, your finger accidentally popped out.

Kageyama gave a little groan like he was disappointed.

Holding back a snide comment, you just pushed right back into him, sliding in with little resistance this time. His torso leaned forward with your motion, as if his entire body was jelly against your pushes. After getting into a short rhythm with the one finger, you felt Kageyama start to get used to the sensation, pushing his hips back against you with each push. You were pretty sure you hadn’t found his prostate yet, but he seemed to just enjoy the feeling of having it inside, so that was good enough for you for now.

Gripping his thigh tighter to signal to him you were slowing down your pace, you bent your middle finger and pushed it into him, spreading him further. With the spark of greater tension, every hair on Kageyama’s back began to stand, pressure building inside of him, everything standing on edge. You pushed in and sweet sounds poured back, muffled and hoarse through the thick fabric. You pushed in deep, knuckles straining against the edge of his asshole, fingers pushing downwards, pressing gently against the inside of his belly.

“Haaaaargh,” you heard from him, lifting his head off the pillow for a breathy gasp of air.

You looked down and noticed that his dick had started dripping. It did feel like you were touching something a little harder in there. You poked again, rubbing your two fingers up and down like you were beckoning him to come over to you.

“Hnnnnnnng,” he moaned, this time the pitch riding low as it faded out. You could feel it as the pleasure swept through him like a wave, crashing hoarsely and crudely outside of his body and through his groin.

Yeah, that was definitely his prostate.

“How does that feel?” You asked.

“Goooood…” he mumbled.

You scissored your fingers apart to get a better look at his asshole, now red and twitching, shuddering with the rest of his body, taking in every sensation, every rubbing motion of his insides. His dick just felt so hot and tingly, he wanted to touch it, he wanted to reach down and start jacking himself off as you prodded around inside of him. His hand, torn and calloused from hours of work, finally moved down and he started to touch himself. Even with only a couple of strokes, you could feel him starting to come. That wouldn’t be fun. You hadn’t had your fill yet.

You pulled your fingers out and grabbed him strongly on the shoulder, flipping his entire body around, slamming him onto his back. He faced you now, pretty blue eyes with a confused look, concerned, almost frightened at the look you were giving him. It had been too hot with his face against the pillow, sweat was dripping down his forehead, his hair clinging tightly in bunches to his skin.

With great force, you slammed your hand down on his mouth. Covering his lips, you felt him thrash around, almost trying to get you off him, never for a second earnestly meaning to. He started whining, the vibrations of his throat reverberating through your hand and coming off as garbled garbage.

“You’re being too loud, you need to quiet down.”

You put your other hand by his ass and pushed three fingers in. If it wasn’t for your hand, he would have never been able to contain the moan. You pushed up, seeing his eyes go wide and roll back, feeling everything all the way up his spine into the very fiber of his body. His moans came out gagged, hoarse, and choked, begging for air. His saliva caked your fingers, unable to keep it all in, unable to force his mouth closed, unable to stop the sounds from coming out.

Kageyama started clutching his asshole around your fingers, desperately trying to get any sensation of friction as he could. His fingers were wrapped firmly around your shoulders, holding on for dear life, trying to stabilize himself in any way he could so his mind wouldn’t go crazy, so his mind wouldn’t get consumed by all these feelings going up his ass.

He moved a hand off your shoulder and started to touch himself, this time with less restraint. He seemed so desperate for any kind of attention there, any kind of feeling that would draw him over the edge, any tingling that would tip him into that wonderful feeling.

It wasn’t long before you felt his muscles start to clench. Before everything started to tense up and his mouth to start lolling against your hand, dragging his tongue aimlessly across your fingers. He came, sucking your fingers inside his ass as deep as he could, milking them for that sweet release as far as he could take it.

For a moment, everything seemed still. He started to relax around you and there was a sore tension around your fingers as you pulled them out of him. You took your hand off his mouth and he rolled away from you, covered in sweat and a lovely trail of semen up his shirt.

He really looked like he was going to fall asleep, but he was more just catching his breath.

“So…” you started, still kneeling in front of him. “How was it?”

He almost pouted.

“Could you hold me?” he asked.

“Of course,” you said, smiling.

You rolled onto the bed, trying not to get too much of the stickiness of the lube on your hands on the bed, but realizing that you’d probably have to wash everything anyways. You slipped your arm under his torso, his body weight sinking deeply into the mattress. You wrapped both arms around him tightly, resting your head against his neck, cradling him like a little spoon. He pulled his knees up to his chest, lying comfortably. You relaxed like that for what seemed like minutes, just feeling the body heat on your face slowly dissipate into a graceful warmth.

[baeddel]

Actually out of curiosity wrt like the stuff you've talked about recently, what are your particular thoughts on things like spiritual ecology and our consciousness in relation to our environment?

This is something that I’m like, pretty much at the beginning of figuring out lol but yeah thats something I’m really interested in... I kinda joke that I’m a ‘secular animist’. My big inspiration is Boris Arvatov who talked about the need to make inanimate objects that could act as ‘co-constructors of socialist life.’ His idea is a little different to the kind of animism in House where Houses have essentially always been sentient but their sentience has been disavowed, and they were able to stage a sort of epistemic revolution that rendered their sentience visible; they join the socius or the moral community. For Arvatov (and Rodchenko) it is rather the case that the objects that we have around us are made to be slaves, completely passive, and we have to make objects which are active, which he called the New Industrial Object. This new object “metaphorizes and organizes the body” (Christina Kiaer, 2009), where the human and the inanimate become entangled by a total interactivity. I do not just manipulate the object, the object manipulates me, it transforms me and my consciousness.

I think there are already such objects; the best example is the wheelchair. If I lose the use of my legs, I can no longer walk. When I get in the wheelchair, it’s not that everything goes back to normal and I go back to walking. It reorganizes everything about me. I encounter new alien pleasures, I make room for an alien desire; the feeling of cobbles under my wheels or of soft grass, the exchange of trust and intimacy when I let my partner push. At the same time, all of society in turn is reorganized by the wheelchair: steps become ramps, stairs become elevators, hinges become motors.

But while Arvatov had a good imagination, it didn’t go far enough, because if you think about this for long enough you begin to realize that every object is such an object. You see, Heidegger has this famous line of argument about the hammer. For him, an object like a hammer has a special kind of being which he calls ‘readiness-to-hand’. I think he’s operating on an Aristotlean metaphysics where being can be passive or active (ie. a leaf has passive being, to use Sachs’ example, but a plant has active being, because it actively photosynthesizes). For Heidegger, we can begin to encounter the active being of the hammer by hammering, “hammering itself uncovers the specific ‘manipulability’ of the hammer”, in a way that only contemplating the hammer wouldn’t. He calls the being of the hammer ‘readiness-to-hand’, a being which can be picked up and used.

But it isn’t just hammers that are ready-to-hand; we are ready-to-hand. I talked before about how trained dogs who try to solve problems will eventually give up and look at their owners. To this extent, I am actually an expression of the dog’s phenotype (this is called an ‘extended phenotype’). So my dog, when trying to reach a toy that’s on the desk will first try reaching with his jaws, then try reaching with his paws, and when he still cannot reach, will look at me and I will get it for him; the dog manipulates me and discovers my readiness-to-hand. Not only dogs do this; in our bodies there is alien dna which we inherit from our ancestors, viruses which are inseparable from the human genome, etc., and all of these have a measurable effect on the decisions we make even though they aren’t, in contemplation, transparent to us. We encounter them only when actually coming under the influence, however slight that influence is. The extreme form of this is toxoplasma, a brain parasite that infects rats and reorganizes their desires; it makes them insatiably attracted to cat piss, which they actively seek out; thus obsessed, cats easily find and prey on it, and the parasite can transfer to the cat where it is able to reproduce.

But when I was talking about this before, @wrong-shaped pointed out that I was making an arbitrary distinction between things which are inside the body and things which are outside the body. A table does much more to organize my desire than any virus. How much time do I spend putting things on tables, leaning on tables, and so on? The table cannot be a sufficient cause of my leaning on the table, but it is a necessary cause. In this way the table acts to organize my desire around itself; it encounters my readiness-to-hand.

An inanimate object’s activity can be more or less. A painting wrapped up in an attic somewhere gets very little opportunity to express its being; and it expresses its being differently to a human, who likes to gaze on the pigmentation, than it does to a dog, who likes to smell the linseed oil. Here we return to Arvatov and the call to make new objects. Isn’t it really the case that most objects are straw dogs, which we use and discard? Though they express themselves, they organize our desire, we encounter them, the extent to which we are really co-creating life with them is minimal. At the same time, the commodity-form, which these objects express, treats us like straw dogs; though we express ourselves through it, it uses us and discards us. So we encounter each other in a confusing soup of subjugation. The exit will be, as in House, both a communist revolution and an epistemic revolution.

[margridarnauds]

a@fallenidol-453 and @any59

YOU ASKED FOR IT. 

So, first off: Let’s start off with a story. I’m in my flat in Ireland, doing....Celtic Studies things. Namely, looking at Quinn’s workbook, flipping between it and Strachan’s paradigms, crying. Okay, not really crying, more “knitting my brows and scribbling furiously, because WHY is this language like this?” 

My housemate comes in with a friend of hers. We have the usual smalltalk, you know “What do you do here?”  “Oh, Celtic Studies.”  “Celtic Studies!” *I tense as I prepare for the inevitable “So, do you have any family.........” question* “Well, we just so happen to be fluent in Irish!”

Now, this is much rarer than a lot of people would think in Ireland, because the Irish education system is.........shit when it comes to teaching Irish. I literally never had someone in Ireland tell me, “Oh, I LOVED studying Irish! It was my favorite class!” And the more someone loves the Irish language, the more that they generally hate how it’s taught. So, I’m like “Oh, cool! Here’s what it looked like a thousand years ago!” and I show off my paradigms, going to the first page, which is the section on definite articles. 

There’s this moment of silence as she looks at it, HER eyebrows knitting just like mine were a few minutes ago. “Is that....Latin? It looks like Latin.” 

Now, there are two options with this story: One is that she was lying through her teeth about knowing Irish fluently in order to impress the naive American. Problem with that is that, of course, you risk being called on it. BUT the second is what I’m going with, namely that the language has changed a lot more than people generally think it has. (There’s about the same period of time between Old Irish and Modern Irish as there is between the creation of Beowulf and the present day. Imagine trying to read Beowulf without knowing ANY Old English and you’ll see the problem straight away.) This is actually a problem, because a lot of the time, people will see foreign-born Celticists writing in Old Irish/Middle Welsh/etc. and instead of thinking of us as professional scholars who are taking advantage of a dead language in order to send what are essentially very niche memes (not necessarily even “meme” in the sense of joke), they think “Oh! The dumb foreigner’s mangling the language! So funny!” 

...and yes. This has happened to multiple people I know, including myself. It’s annoying. 

So, how much has the language changed? There are essentially five stages of the language that we are able to trace: Primitive Irish, Old Irish, Middle Irish, Early Modern Irish, and Gaeilge/Modern Irish + Proto-Celtic which is the sort of shared ancestor between all the Celtic languages and the reason why some of these words are confusingly familiar and my brain needs about twenty minutes to reboot when I’m going in-between Middle Welsh and Old Irish. 

Going back to our friend, the definite article: In the modern language, there are two forms of the definite article, as you’ll learn in your very first lesson on Duolingo: An (singular) and Na (plural). You can see this reflected all over the place, probably most obviously in the names for instutions like “An Post” (the post office) and An Garda Síochána (The Guard of the Peace, the police force). 

In Old Irish? There were multiple forms of the definite article, and they had to agree with the gender, person, and case. In the Middle Irish period, those distinctions gradually fall away, becoming even pronouned in the Early Modern Irish period, leading to the language as we have it in the modern day. 

Some other changes: 

- Loss of deponents. Old Irish used to have a system that was like the deponent verbs of Latin, where you had words that LOOKED passive, but were active in meaning. As time went on, they totally dropped those, taking different approaches to how to deal with the old deponent verbs. (Sometimes they’d use, say, the verbal noun form AS the verb, sometimes they’d apply deponent endings to verbs that hadn’t been deponents before.....it’s a mess.)

-Loss of the neuter gender. Gone entirely, save for a few fossilized examples, though with some efforts to bring it back in some form in the interest of non-binary people. In the time of Old Irish, however, there was a full neuter gender, complete with a neuter article. 

- The loss of declensions. “BUT,” you might say, if you’ve studied Modern Irish, “Modern Irish HAS declensions!” And you’d be right! It does! Five, in fact.  .......Old Irish had thirteen. 

What happens over time is that people look at all those declensions and are like “That is an ASSLOAD of declensions, let’s simplify!” And so they start treating some declensions like they’re another declension, so the number of declensions goes down over time as the others all get sorted into new categories. 

Also, the categorization is different. In the modern language, you just hear that the declensions are decided by the endings, which.....is probably one of the reasons why so many people hate learning Irish, because it seems arbitrary, when, in reality, it isn’t. In Old Irish, we actually go back even FURTHER in time, to Primitive Irish (which ended around the 7th century) and, even further back in time, Proto-Celtic, because that is where the declensions actually come from. Irish used to look quite like Gaulish or Latin, with similar endings - “Fer” was “viros”, which became “viras”, “ingen” was “enigenā”, which became “inigena”, “rígain” was “rígainí” in the Proto-Celtic, “athair” was “ɸatīr” in the PC, “túath” was “toutā”, “Día” was “Dewos”........etc.

That’s why “fer” and “Día” are both o-stems, despite looking almost nothing alike, it’s why they behave the same way - They shared the same endings back in the day. That’s why we call them o-stems in the first place, it isn’t because of what’s IN them, it’s what used to be in them. 

“Ingen” is an a-stem for the same reason. 

“Rígain” is an i-stem. 

“Athair” is a r-stem. 

There’s METHOD to the madness, I promise. 

- There’s a loss of distinction of sounds - Old Irish was very strict on “This is spelled with an A and THIS is spelled with an O and those are TWO DIFFERENT SOUNDS.” Middle Irish was like “Eh? Let’s make it a general “schwa” sound.” So the spellings vary a lot starting in that period, Early Modern Irish only adds to the confusion (a favorite Celticist Hobby is pointing out the sometimes flat-out *weird* Early Modern Irish spellings of Old Irish names because *oh, boy*), and by the time you get to the modern language, a lot of things are spelled quite differently from what you’d think. Some consonants also soften in their sounds - the preposition “Co”, for example, becomes “Go”, “ocus” becomes “agus”, etc. 

- Univerbation. Essentially, Old Irish had a LOT of compound verbs like do-beir, do-gni, at-tá, ad-cí, ro-cluineathar etc. And, in the modern language, “do-beir” becomes “tabhair”, “do´gní” becomes -“á dhéanamh”, etc. Essentially, they took what’s known as the protonic form of the verb, which is the version we would use following a conjunct particle like “ní”, which expresses a negative form of an action, and they made that the regular form of the verb. They were like “Nope, don’t want to handle it, not today, Satan.” And sometimes, those forms would evolve as well, so I could be looking at a verb in Early Modern Irish, go “that looks vaguely familiar” and then realize that it’s a VERY mutated form of an Old Irish word. 

- The ~copula~. So, the copula is....an alternative to the substantive verb used in certain circumstances, indicating a state of being. Which seems really....grammar-y, but all that really means is that it translates out to “is, am, are” in English. If you ever read any medieval Irish texts, you’ll notice a lot of syntax that’s like “Cold is the wind from Norway”, “It is not a good thing you have done”, etc. The reason is because, in the actual Irish, all this would have begun with a form of the copula. It was a VERY popular way of starting off a sentence, instead of the usual Verb-Subject-Object form. In the Old Irish period, the copula was inflected, meaning that, like the definite article, it changed depending on certain factors, namely person, number, and tense. “Am” would be “I am” (”Am rí” - “I am a king”) “At” would be you (sing.) are (“At gataige” - “You are a thief), “Is” would be “he/she/it is” (”Is lóech” - “He/She/It is a warrior”), “ammi” would be “we are” (”Ammi druíd” - “We are druids/magicians”).....etc. Now, once again, starting in the Middle Irish period, you have people going “............that is an ass-load of work, let’s just use the third singular and call it a day.” This is why, in Duolingo, you have to say “Is cailín mé” a thousand times. In the Old Irish period, you would just say “Am ingen”, but, with that loss of distinction of the copula, pronouns become increasingly important to the Irish language. Some of this was already present in Old Irish, with the 3rd sing. copula being used for the sake of emphasis, “It is I who takes Bres to the trash fire, where he belongs”, sometimes with an emphasizing pronoun for added drama, but it eventually gets to the point where the others are consumed entirely. 

- Independent pronouns also come into their own, being uniformly used after the copula, with the infixed pronouns that had been uniform going away. So, for example, if I wanted to say “I kill him” in Modern Irish, I would say “Maráim é” - if I wanted to say it in Old Irish, I would say “Nan-Marbu”, with the no being what’s known as a meaningless conjunct particle (it’s there to say “LOOK! AN INFIXED PARTICLE!”).

- A lot of the verb forms, like the nouns, get smushed together - There were at least three different forms of the preterite (in Modern Irish, known as the “Simple Past”) in Old Irish, in Middle Irish, the S-preterite gradually grows to dominate, to the point where now, there is only the simple past, with endings varying depending on if you’re talking first or second conjugation verbs. Likewise, the future tense goes from having five different categories of future tenses to being divided into first or second conjugation verbs in the present day. 

Overall, there’s more, there’s a lot more, but I think that you can get the gist. When I see primitive Irish, I’m like “Okay, it’s Old Irish - The Latin edition”. It looks WEIRD, but it looks OLD and, for the most part, fairly recognizable. We don’t see it that often, outside of an ogham stone, that’s why we make such a big deal when we do. Old Irish, I’m like “FRIEND....who sometimes scares me”, Middle Irish, I’m like “Okay, this is a bit weird, but I can understand most of it, especially if I’m reading an edition where the editor explains things”, Early Modern Irish looks, to me, like everything’s been tossed into a blender. I KNOW that some of the words look familiar, but it’s HARD and it kind of hurts my brain to stare at it for too long. Modern Irish actually looks better, because it’s streamlined, the spellings are consistent, etc., but it still looks......almost eerie, actually. It also shows in how these things are taught - If you’re in an Old Irish program, you’re taught Old Irish and Middle Irish; if you’re in a Modern Irish program, you’re taught Early Modern Irish and Gaeilge (or you’re expected to know Gaeilge off the bat.) And what should probably be mentioned is that, actually, there was likely only ever a brief period where “Old Irish” was actually spoken or written - Kim McCone pointed out in an article that, actually, in some of our oldest, most sanctified sources for Old Irish, the Wurtzburg Gospels, we’re already seeing traces of Middle Irishicisms. It’s likely that, among the general populace, they were already simplifying their speech, but that the scribes who wrote this stuff down, that literary elite, took a conservative approach to the language, essentially a medieval Irish Academie Francaise, and they tried to preserve the “pure” form, only to lose the battle as time went on and even they started using these forms of the language. It’s also why we put SUCH a massive emphasis on dating....(besides the fact that it’s the closest thing we can come to dating anything, *badum tss*): Scribes, along with copying old texts, would actually sometimes put older forms of the words in newer texts in the hopes of it looking older or more authoritative. There are some bardic poems in the 16th century that are actually EERILY good. Likewise, you have some scribes looking at an older text and being like “Oh, that doesn’t look how it should! I should fix it!”, only to drop a Middle Irishicism on an Old Irish verb. And sometimes a scribe will try to correct the correction and makes it even worse. We have to analyze the whole text, weighing all of it together to see when a text might have actually been composed. 

We talk a lot about how Irish has survived over the years in spite of everything, and that’s IMPORTANT, but I feel like it’s also important to say that it’s changed, it’s reinvented itself. It isn’t static and it’s never really BEEN static, and I think, my ongoing confusion aside, that that’s really important. I can’t translate an 18th century Irish text, at least not EASILY (even though I want to do my PhD on an Early Modern text so RIP me), but someone who got their PhD in 19th century Gaelic Literature also can’t translate Old Irish (and yes.....it has happened where people act like studying Irish literature = being able to “explain” Old Irish materials to me. Because, again, Dumb Foreigners Can’t Know What We’re Talking About) We’ve got to work together to get the fullest possible picture. The language had a past, it has a future. 

[thorne93]

The Stars Made Us (Part 7)

Prompt: In this world, you’re one of the “lucky” ones who got a soulmate, but what if the universe gives you more than you bargained for?

(Prompt challenge – You live in a world where your soulmate can write on their skin and you will get the writing on your own and vice versa. Where they can wash away the ink on their own skin, however, the writing is forever scarred onto your skin until you meet face to face)

Word Count: 2438

Warnings: angst and language throughout

Notes: This was supposed to be for @sorryimacrapwriter​​​​  and their challenge like a year ago, I think? I still loved the prompt though and have been working on this story for quite some time. This aesthetic was made by @dontshootmespence​​​​, thank you so much! Beta’d by @like-a-bag-of-potatoes​​​​, couldn’t have done it without you, as well as @carryonmyswansong​​​​ and @arrow-guy​​​​ and @mrs-dragneel-stark-solo​​​​

~~~~~~~~~~~

Also, I’ve never really liked the whole soulmate AU thing idea, but this felt so right and it was amazing to write. I hope y’all love it too!!

The next morning, you were about to meet Hank after the routine you’d set up when you saw Charles make his way towards the alcohol in the study. 

“No,” you said sternly, following him in and taking the bottle from him. “No alcohol before noon.” 

“I beg your pardon? This is my house. You are a guest here, and if I want to drink from sun up to sun down I bloody will,” he said, anger clear in his tone and frown as his eyes raked your form.

“Just until noon,” you repeated calmly. “Surely your serum will hold out until then? Why don’t you go set up a game of chess and I’ll be in the library to meet you shortly.” 

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were trying to distract me,” he noted, his face a mask of humor. 

“Good thing you don’t know any better,” you teased with a tight smile. “Please? I know it’s a passion of yours and I’ve always wanted to play.”

“Wait, you’ve never played chess?”

You shook your head, innocence wrapping your face and gesture. “No.”

“Why not? Hasn’t everyone?” 

“I was much more of a gin rummy kind of girl,” you explained. 

“Ah, I see. Not in my wheelhouse but I could give that a go,” he offered. 

“I’d love to show you… So, uh, off to the library then?” you asked. 

He smiled and laughed. “Yes, I suppose we are meeting in there. Five minutes?” 

“Sounds perfect,” you said with a smile. 

He swept around you and as soon as he was out of sight you broke out into a sprint to find Hank.

“Hey, where’d you disappear to? I’ve started on extracting the--”

“I can’t help. Not this morning.”

“What? Why not?” 

“Charles was going to start drinking and the only thing I could think of to divert his attention was a game of chess so… we’re playing chess.” 

His eyebrows shot up. “So while I’m in here, you’re going to be playing a game?” 

“I know, I’m sorry, but you want him to get better right? Maybe it’s best he has some company with humans rather than with a glass and a needle.”

Hank’s face fell. 

“I’m sorry, Hank, I know you’re doing the best you can. I just… We need to keep him focused and away from the alcohol. Think you can work on this without me?” 

“Yeah, I’ll do my best,” he said, a touch of disappointment in his tone. 

“Thanks, you’re the best. I’ll try to be back as fast as I can.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he sadly replied. “Just… go keep him company.” 

An expression of sad sympathy colored your face. All you did was nod before dashing off to the library. Charles was sitting on the right side, a small table set up with chess as he sat there staring at the board. 

You were surprised at how your heart felt every time you laid eyes on him. Even in his worst state, this man made you feel… grounded. It was as if you were walking around half-empty, then you got close to him and everything felt right with the world. Even if he was drug and alcohol dependent and a bit of an asshole, just being in his presence, everything was okay.

You walked in and sat down across from him, honestly a little nervous. Knowing this man through a screen was one thing, but sitting down across from him, it was an entirely different feeling. A different dynamic, especially since it had been a year since you’d even spoken. 

How much had he changed? How had you changed? Talking every day with one person, you knew what to expect. He was in grad school, you were in residency. He was working towards teaching, you were dealing with patients. It was a no brainer. You swapped stories of graduations, accolades, promotions, and victories. What stories would you swap now? How his adopted sibling had abandoned him, his spine neglecting his ability to walk, his school ripped away from him, not a friend in the world except the two people in this mansion with him. What kind of stories would those be?

“Alright,” you started cheerily, “how do we play?”

“So you’ve really never played?” he asked with a bemused grin. 

“No. I started to learn the rules once, from my uncle, but the idea of losing pieces just to win an endgame... “You shook your head. “It seems barbaric.” 

He laughed gently. “There’s nothing barbaric about it. It’s a highly intellectual game that involves strategy and knowing your opponent.” 

You looked up through your lashes as you glanced down at the board. “And you think you know me?” 

“I’d like to think I do, after ten years.” 

You made a noise of contemplation. “Hmm, I was under the impression you didn’t remember a thing about me.” 

“Wanting to forget you and forgetting you are two vastly different things, Y/N.” 

You smiled. 

“You’ve never said my name before,” you noted quietly, your heart fluttering and warming. He might not think it was important, or nice at all, but you’d waited a very long time to hear this. 

You were on a very different side of this romance. It appeared Charles wasn’t ready for it, but you were very much prepared to jump right in. Every little sentimental action he did, every little way he tilted his mouth, the way his eyes penetrated your very soul, the way his accent fell off his lips -- it was practically intoxicating. Here you were, swimming like a school girl like the night you found out you had a soulmate; yet it seemed for Charles you were just a guest to interact with, to mildly entertain. 

It tore your heart asunder. 

“I’m slowly learning to right some of my wrongs,” he said in a soft voice. “Alright, let’s see, so you have the pawn and the pawn can move like this, see?” he began and he took about ten minutes explaining the game to you, being very patient. 

“You ready to begin?” 

“Sure.”

So the two of you sat, playing chess, not saying a word for about twenty minutes, only halfway through the game. 

“So, did you play this when you had your powers?” you inquired cautiously. 

“Actually,” he began, making his move, taking your rook, “I did.” 

“Did you use them?” 

“I tried not to,” he explained, “but it’s like music playing in the background. You can pick up on things people are thinking if it’s loud, distinct, or stands out. So sometimes I would hear what they were thinking, sometimes I didn’t. I tried to ignore it.” 

“How did you learn to control them?”

“Practice. Quieting them was...is… the hardest part. Once that’s done, I can do the rest easily.” 

“And all the other… facets, like accessing memories, how did you learn how to do that? On a girlfriend or?” 

He laughed, his eyes never leaving the board as you studied your moves as well. “Are you trying to probe to see if I had a girlfriend previous to our… relationship?” 

You gave a quick half smile, filled with amusement. “I wasn’t consciously, but I suppose it slipped out. You’re avoiding the question, should I assume I’m right?” 

“You know, Dr. Y/L/N, not everything or everyone has to be psychoanalyzed,” he countered teasingly. 

“I know, I know. I just… I’m curious about that part of your life, that’s all.” 

“For your information, I didn’t test on my girlfriend. I actually used my step-brother. When he bullied me, afterwards, I’d probe his mind. I realized I could access memories, get into his head, and learned in there. At first, it was an accident, and I couldn’t break the link… but then when we went to sleep, it broke. Later, I purposely tried to connect, disconnect, and read thoughts. Until his father died, and they moved out that is…” 

“Did Raven ever meet Cain?”

“No. No, Raven came to us a few months after Cain’s father died and he moved away to live with his aunt.” 

“I see. So you practiced on your abusive step brother?” 

“It was all I had. Doing that to my mother felt wrong, Raven asked that I never do it to her, and with the kids at school I couldn’t tell if I was reading memories or fantasies. Your move by the way.”

“Oh, yes, right,” you said, snapping out of your sympathy induced trance. You made an arbitrary move before getting back to the conversation. “So no girlfriend?” 

“Like a dog with a bone,” he muttered.

“I prefer the term persistent.”

“No, no girlfriend in the picture. Not for some time. I dated briefly, just after Harvard.” 

“So… when you were seventeen?” 

“Mhm. She was an undergrad. She wasn’t very mature though, so it was over before it began. I knew I wouldn’t find anyone on my level. I couldn’t even legally buy cigarettes but I had graduated college, so… the odds of me finding anyone worthy of my time were slim. Of course, that was before your scribbling showed up on my arm.” 

“That wasn’t scribbling,” you accused with a laugh, fake offense in your tone. “I put a lot of time, thought, and effort into that, thank you.” 

“If that’s your example of a lot of time and effort then maybe I still haven’t met my intellectual match, hmm?” he joked. 

You narrowed your eyes before taking his bishop. 

“Maybe you spoke too soon,” you challenged as he glanced up at you and you raised an eyebrow. 

“Perhaps I did. And you?” 

“What about me?” 

“Did you have a highschool sweetheart before you knew about me?” 

“Oh, well… I don’t really see how it’s relevant--”

“Double standard, Y/N. That isn’t very nice. I was probed about my entire romantic career but I can’t get so much as a--”

“Fine. Yes. I dated. Two guys in high school. One lasted about eight months from January of sophomore year to the beginning of junior year.”

“And the second?” 

“Four months of junior year.”

“No one dazzled you senior year?” 

“Just you,” you hummed, not thinking before you answered. 

“Oh, just me?” he asked, catching your little slip up. 

Your cheeks heated before you smiled. “Yes, if I’m being totally honest.”

He was looking at you, curiosity and merriment burning in his face. He’d only glanced at you three times during this whole game. In a way, you were thankful. When he gave you a direct look you felt like you always had to overshare. When he was looking down at the board you could focus on answering carefully, filtering. When he was staring at you, it was like truth serum. 

“So what happened with the other two?” he questioned as his attention drifted back down to the board. 

“One was determined that I follow him, you know, go to the college he had his eye on, despite what I wanted. So we parted ways.” You made a move. “And the other liked a friend of mine more so we mutually ended things.” 

“Sounds like you haven’t had any bad luck with men, so that’s good.” 

“Sounds like you haven't had any luck with women. One woman throughout your whole life? You’re thirty-two.” 

“Yes, so?” 

“Well, if you only dated at seventeen--”

“Y/N, I met you, my soulmate, at twenty-one. I didn’t date after that, so, most of my life, has been with you… Romantically, that is, if that’s what you want to call this.”

“You swore off dating for me?” 

“Of course,” he said as if it were obvious, “didn’t you do the same for me?” 

“Yeah without question.”

“So why do you find it odd that I did the same?” 

“Well,” you started, nervously wringing your hands, “you’re you, you know? Handsome, accomplished, driven, confident.” 

“And you’re just a wet rag? Or what am I missing? You’re all those things as well, except handsome. I’d choose a different word.” 

“And what word might that be?” 

“Nothing short of stunning.”

His words made you blush quickly and smile to yourself. 

“So tell me, why did you commit to us but were worried I didn’t?” he wondered.

“You just have so much more going for you than I do.” 

“That’s not true. I know quite a bit about you and you’re quite the catch. Not to mention, I’m not like that. I was dedicated to you the moment we encountered each other.” 

“I’m glad to know you felt the same about this.” 

“Of course,” he concurred before the two of you finished the game, with him beating you easily. 

“Ugh, see that’s why I don’t like that vile game.” 

He chuckled. “It’s a fantastic game. You did quite well for your first time. I bet you’ll beat me next time.” 

You couldn’t help but laugh, loudly. “Not likely.”

“You should believe in yourself more.” 

“I believe in myself plenty, except when it comes to strategy games.”

“But you play gin rummy?” 

“Well that’s entirely different,” you assured with a smile as the two of you cleared the chess game. 

“Is it now? Well let’s just see. I’ve got some cards in my desk drawer there. Show me how to play  and we’ll see if it’s all that different.” 

“Okay, sure. You got to show your prowess, I’ll show you mine.” 

“There’s that feistiness I missed,” he cheered as you got up and got the cards, his words making you stop for half a second. 

So he did miss you...

“Okay, so the game is easy, especially compared to that mini war game we just played,” you joked and he smiled. Knowing you could do that to him lit you up inside. 

You explained the game, all the rules and played. He caught on quickly, which didn’t surprise you - he was practically a genius. What did surprise you however, was that he beat you at your own game. 

“How the hell did you--?” you started, flabbergasted, staring down at the table. 

“All strategy games are the same, Y/N. I’ve been playing them for a while.” 

“But this is my game and you, you just beat me.” 

“Oh, don’t be a sore loser. You’ll do fine next time.” 

“I should’ve done fine this time,” you mumbled. “Well I need to get dinner made, so I’ll be off. See you for dinner?” 

He nodded and smiled and you left, reflecting on the good bit of information you’d learned that day. And focusing on how this might not be as bad as you thought.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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[dreamwithoutreason]

Really need people to understand that there is a difference between your diagnosis being stigmatized (what usually happens with mental illness) and your diagnosis resulting in you being subjected to ableism (disability) because those two things are a bit different and the distinction is important.

I want to start by saying that I am in no way attempting to minimize the struggles that mentally ill people face. I am mentally ill and have depression, anxiety, and ADHD as well as a physical disability, Cerebral Palsy. The line between the struggles of people with mental illnesses and the struggles of disabled people is thin but there is still a line. I just want to highlight some of the ways that disabled people are especially discriminated against in a world built and run by abled people and how that can be different from how mental ill people experience alienation or stigmatization. These differences are also why I think that comparing a mental illness to a disability can be problematic. I am, however, also aware that there is overlap and that some diagnoses can be considered to have a foot in both arenas, this is in no way meant to be a hard and fast rule. I also don't claim to speak for the entire disabled community but a lot of the things under the ableism list are things that I've experienced myself which is the place that this post is coming from. I want people to realize that ableism is more than stigmatization and that it is engrained in the world that we live in.

Stigmatization comes from people misunderstanding your illness and how seriously it can impact you and your life. I would consider stigmatization to be things like:

People using your diagnosis as an insult or joke, further stigmatizing it. Ex: When ppl say things like "I'm so ocd" or "I'm so bipolar"

People ignoring your symptoms or attributing your symptoms to your character. For example, instead of recognizing the symptoms of your illness like executive dysfunction, someone might just call you lazy.

General lack of understanding or sympathy towards mentally ill people

Lack of accurate representations of mental illnesses in media. Most of the time the character with the mental illness is made to be the villain or antagonist. Once again, very stigmatizing and gross.

Also, for both mentally ill and disabled people it can sometimes be difficult or expensive to get the right medications you need.

Examples of everyday ableism and systematic ableism that's ingrained in our society which particularly affects disabled people include:

Someone using derogatory language to belittle and degrade your existence as a person. It positions you as less than. Can often be a targetted, direct attack at a disabled person. Ex: the r slur, words like "cripple", and using "deaf", "blind", or "disabled" as insults.

Mocking the way someone walks, moves, speaks, or exists as a disabled person.

No one taking you seriously because you are disabled/being subjected to infantilization. People assuming that you can't do anything for yourself.

Able-bodied people assuming the needs of a disabled person without asking them. Often this comes from a place of trying to be helpful but make sure you always ask what you can do to accommodate someone before assuming what they might need help with because it can be infantilizing

Example: I've had a lot of people assume that I need help putting on a jacket or getting my shoes on so they automatically start helping me with it and they basically end up treating me like a child because they assume that I can't do something.

People touching you or your equipment or mobility aids without your consent. Mobility aids can be like extensions of our body so do not touch them without our permission. This urge to violate a disabled person's space comes from the subconscious assumption that disabled people don't have their own autonomy.

Example: many times when I was a full-time wheelchair user people would come up behind me and just start pushing my wheelchair without asking or saying anything. Their intention was to help me get where I was going but it was very jarring to suddenly start being pushed without asking.

Being denied a job because you are disabled.

Job applications including physical ability requirements for non-physical or desk jobs to discourage disabled people from applying. Ex: "must be able to lift [x amount] of pounds"

Being denied the accommodations you need to be able to function in a school/work/home/other environment.

Lack of captions or audio descriptions

Being expected to work and move at the same pace as your peers all of the time.

Constantly feeling the need to "prove" yourself to the abled majority.

The idea that being abled is the ideal and that you need to do everything in your power to try to be as close to abled as possible. The idea that you shouldn't be comfortable with your disability. The notion that being disabled cannot be a whole or fulfilling identity.

A good example of this that people don't often think about are the viral videos that are like "Sally worked for months so that she could [struggle] to walk down the aisle at her wedding! Isn't that sweet?" Or the videos of kids feeling pressured to walk across the stage at graduation. These videos imply that struggling to perform ability is somehow better than being comfortably disabled.

The idea that disabled people can't be desirable, attractive, or sexy. The idea that they don't make good romantic partners.

Using disabled people as inspiration porn. This happens a lot with viral videos of disabled people where the comments amount to "if they can live with a disability, then you have no reason to complain about your life!" Disabled people do not exist to inspire you.

Also another personal example but one time in gym class I did more push ups than a girl who was able-bodied so she got all defensive and said "well if she can do that many then I'm gonna do more!" Like girl.... anyways...

Having to jump through a million hoops to get disability benefits. Or being denied disability benefits for arbitrary reasons.

Also once you get disability benefits it's barely anything. Also when you're on benefits you're not allowed to save up money and if you get married you lose benefits. I could make a whole other post about how disabled people are expected to live off of nothing but...

MOBILITY AIDS ARE SO EXPENSIVE HOLY SHIT

The world was built by and for able-bodied people. Architectural/environmental ableism occurs when there are no ramps, no accessible bathroom stalls, no elevators, no disability parking spaces, and/or no space for wheelchairs/mobility aids in public places.

This also happens a lot with public transportation. When I tried using the metro with my friends in DC, I had to have a security guard help me get down the escalator because there wasn't an elevator nearby. Right before I got on it, I saw a man force his wheelchair onto the escalator.

A smaller example but it can be as small as there not being a sidewalk ramp. One time I couldn't even cross the street because there was no sidewalk ramp and I was in a wheelchair. Once again, the world was built by able-bodied people.

Eco-ableism. It's when disabled people aren't considered when it comes to environmental activism. The best example of this is the straw debacle that happened last year. Every abled person and their mama wanted to complete ban plastic straws without acknowledging that a lot of disabled people need to use blendable, flexible plastic straws.

Another example that I've witnessed myself has been with automatic doors. I've had to tear down signs at my university that were put on automatic doors that said "save a polar bear, use the other door". Stop blaming disabled people's survival for environmental issues and blame big corporations.

Almost a complete lack of disability representation in media. Disabled kids don't have many people who they can look up to. I know I didn't have any.

The ableism that comes from abled parents of a disabled child.

For years I was told inaccurate information about my disability by able-bodied people, including my mother. It was only when I started researching my disability myself that I actually began to understand it.

Related to the previous point, lack of information or knowledge about certain disabilities

People assuming that just because someone is in a wheelchair that they can't move their legs or walk. This feeds into the idea that disabled people are "faking" their disability. The idea that someone is "faking" can lead people to be attacked or have people tell them that they don't "deserve" things like benefits or parking spaces.

People who straight up pretend they don't see us. I've had so many people try to cut me in line over the years just because they didn't think I would say anything or wanted to pretend they didn't see me.

I have friends who have delayed speech as part of their disability. If you know someone who has delayed speech or a stutter, don't fucking cut them off or try to finish their sentences for them. It's super rude and disrespectful.

DON'T FUCKING SAY THE R WORD. DON'T SAY IT! DON'T SAY IT EVEN IF YOU ARE DISABLED! THE R WORD IS SO ABLEIST AND STIGMATIZING STOP SAYING IT! DON'T PUT IT IN YOUR WRITING EITHER!

Lastly, about half of people killed by police have some sort of disability or mental illness. Disability is intersectional and it's important when talking about things like the BLM movement, women's rights, lgbtq+ rights, etc.

Hope this helped you learn something about ableism and how prevalent it is!

[sou-ver-2-0]

You haven't talked much about the floor masters (except Midori). What are your thoughts on them? Any theories?

This is a great question!! Thanks for asking me. I am a villain stan, after all.

I think YTTD's Floor Masters are worthy villains! They're deliciously evil and they contribute a lot to the setting. I love how their absurd designs make the Death Game look like a bizarre, even magical place. They help me feel like I've been transported to another dimension where our normal rules don't matter. 

What I appreciate most about the writing for the Floor Masters is how Nankidai gives them distinct personalities. Each Floor Master we meet sets a different tone for a new level. That's a satisfying feeling since the variety gives the story depth. The Floor Masters in Chapter 2 had especially compelling arcs. And I expect that we'll get more development for the surviving villains in Chapter 3.

As for theories? I'm on board with the theory that Sue Miley, Tia Safalin, and Gashu Satou are likely humans instead of dolls, since they all bleed. However, I don't understand why they would need to pretend to be dolls. Is it just to unsettle the participants? What meaning could there be to having a mix of human and doll Floor Masters? I really don't know. Metaphorically, maybe the significance of showing the Floor Masters bleed is to remind the player that we're in the real world after all, in spite of the Death Game's otherworldly appearance? I can't even fathom what the literal reason could be.

I'll share some brief thoughts about each non-Midori villain beneath the cut!

Sue Miley: She's the most simplistic villain, and I respect that. Sue Miley has no pretenses about being a bad guy. She's simply sadistic. That works perfectly for Chapter 1, when we're just learning about what our heroes are up against. Sue Miley immediately sets the stakes high with her powerful presence.

I vaguely recall that she was up to mysterious work behind the scenes in Chapter 2, but I honestly don't remember that part well. (Sorry!) I just started playing the game with my sister over the weekend, so hopefully I'll get a better grasp on the details when we reach that part! I do think it's really interesting how Sue Miley has a conflict with Gashu Satou in Chapter 2, though I'm unclear on why she didn't trust him. Perhaps Sue Miley didn't realize that Gashu would be willing to die for his beliefs? And she was worried that he would let the participants escape? Is that all there is to it? That sounds like the simplest answer, but I'd like to see Sue Miley's reaction for confirmation.

In any case, I'm sure that we'll see more of Sue Miley in Chapter 3! She might get a layer to her personality, or she might continue to be her good old sadistic self.

Rio Ranger: Aahh, I admit that Rio Ranger is the villain who disturbs me the most. Probably because he's more sympathetic than Sue Miley, so it's easier to understand where his sadism comes from. And that gets under my skin! To see a doll so jealous of humans that he would torture them so cruelly. The way he treats the dead also horrifies me. He seems so childish--it's clear that he just needed to be treated better and he wouldn't have turned out so bad.

My impression is that Rio Ranger is a popular character, which kinda surprised me haha, but you must understand I'm sensitive! Lol. Maybe I'll enjoy him more for "fun" reasons the second time around? To be clear, I think the writing for him is great. I think the writing for all the villains in Chapter 2 is fantastic. He just...makes me upset haha.

I do have a wild theory related to Rio Ranger, which is that his father-son relationship with Gashu could be foreshadowing for Midori's relationship with Meister. But that's a topic for a Midori-centric post! 

Tia Safalin: Ohoho, she's definitely my favorite!! I love this sad wicked woman. 

What's ironic about my arbitrary feelings is that she's also very disturbing, much like Rio Ranger. She's more sympathetic than Sue Miley because she seems to have a conscience of sorts. We feel as though she ought to know better. At times, she is more sympathetic than Rio Ranger, because we don't want to believe that she would be capable of being as cruel as him. And this makes Safalin's cruelty the worst of them all, because it's tinged with betrayal. 

Safalin is evil in a realistic way. There are plenty of people, especially women, who use their tears to shield them from culpability. She also has a delightful motivation; she's in this for science! If I were a Floor Master--with my timid personality and curious nature--I'd probably be most like Safalin. She's like a dark mirror. I love that about her.

Gashu Satou: Fascinating man, wow. That plot twist broke me. What I like most about Gashu is that he seems to give us the clearest hint of what the meaning behind Asu-Naro is. As Kai wrote, "This Death Game is not for pleasure nor revenge. To the organization, it is an inevitable mission. ...That is what my father believed. The organization drove my father mad."

What is the true mission of Asu-Naro? We don't know, but Gashu certainly embodies the feelings in Kai's words. Gashu is not here for "sadistic pleasure" like Sue Miley, or "revenge against humans" like Rio Ranger. To Gashu, the Death Game is like religion. He is willing to die for its mysterious goal.

There are real people like Gashu too--folks who are brainwashed to support horrible causes. He's absolutely the villain who hurt my heart the most by shutting out the last thread of hope for our heroes. Gashu's spiteful suicide has the opposite effect of his son's Kai inspiring suicide. While Gashu gave his life in support of a death cult, Kai gave his life to resist a death cult. I think that the writing for Gashu is incredible.

Maple: I realize that she's not technically a Floor Master--she's an Obstructer--but I thought I'd still mention her. I like that Nankidai came up with another unique personality for her. She's very affable. Midori is also friendly, but his cruel streak is more obvious. Maple doesn't look sadistic or scientific... Why is she here? Is she simply the most robotic of these villains? I'm curious how Nankidai will develop Maple as a villain, but since we don't have much to go on, I don't feel that strongly about her yet.

...

Getting the chance to write about these characters made me appreciate them more! Thanks again for asking!

[fairfieldthinkspace]

2021 MLK Keynote Address to Fairfield Prep

Kris F. Sealey Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy Director, Black Studies Program

I want to begin by acknowledging where we are right now, in our 2021 commemorations of Dr. King’s life and legacy. Our country’s capital is under a lockdown (at this point). We’ve seen the footage of National Guard troops over-running the hallways of the Capitol building (the seat of American government). Some of our own National Guard troops from Connecticut are either on their way to join this security detail, or are already there. I think it’s important for us to be cognizant of the fact that we’re recalling Dr. King’s legacy in a moment such as this, a moment in which (for this first time in its history as a Democratic Republic) our country is not witnessing a peaceful transfer of power. It’s important that we face this, head on, particularly when it comes to doing the kind of self-reflection that the occasion of Dr. King’s birthday invites us to do. Where are we? And how do we move—as we must—from here?

Alongside this question is another equally important one: What would Dr. King’s assessments be —his overall mood, perhaps—were he to visit with us today (not just here at Prep, but here, in our current political moment)? I think that, as he was toward the end of his life, he would be somewhat frustrated. He would be frustrated with what was already weighing heavily on him in 1968 (the year of his assassination), with what he described as America’s persistent dodging of the “real material costs” of democracy. In a collection of essays and speeches1 from that year, Dr. King said that it felt as though, in 1968 (some 3 years after the historic passage of the Voting Rights Bill), it felt as though America believed that “democracy [wasn’t] worth having if it involved equality.”

It might be worth pausing on this point of frustration for Dr. King, a frustration that I do believe would engulf him today. Why did he feel like America felt like the price of true democracy was too expensive? Why did he feel as though the civil rights wins of his nonviolent campaign weren’t enough, even though they expanded the protection of freedom for, well, all Americans?

I think that, if King were here with us today, it would be clear to him that access to real freedom (freedom when it comes to the real lives of real people) is still quite “spotty” across our social and political landscape. By way of analogy, here – We’re now acutely familiar with that frustration of supposedly having Wi-Fi access, and yet not being able to plan around actually being able to use said Wi-Fi to support our daily tasks. This is the now all-too-familiar frustration with “spotty” access to Wi-Fi.

That’s frustrating, as it should be. In a similar vein, in a hypothetical 2021 visit to America, Dr. King, I believe, would be frustrated.

Thanks to the Civil Rights movement that he led, a substantial ‘freedom’ grid was set up for all of us – in the form of civil rights protections that we should all have access to, so as to support our life and pursuits of happiness. But, as it now exists, this grid is spotty, and so access to freedom is spotty. This grid contains dead zones (so to speak), where the difference between life and death comes down to something as arbitrary as the color of your skin, or the numbers in your zip code, or to who and how you happen to love. By now, we’ve seen what encounters with law enforcement can look like in those dead zones, where access to civil rights and freedoms is not guaranteed. Where one’s access to civil rights protections is, well, spotty.

In the middle of the deadliest pandemic in a century, we’re seeing how being in those dead zones affects one’s chances of fighting and surviving a Coronavirus infection. The racial data dashboard from the Covid19 Tracking Project2 reports that nationwide, black people have died at a rate of 1.6 times the rate of white people. There’s a long and complex story behind why that’s the case, and why, for many scholars and activists working in the wake of Dr. King’s activism, none of this comes as a surprise.

All to say, I think King would be frustrated with our current spotty access to freedom. He’d be frustrated by the ways in which that spotty access is still, in 2021, more likely if you were black, or poor or both. (To this point: We’d miss so much of Martin Luther King’s legacy if we forget that, by the time of his assassination in 1968, his was a fight against poverty and all forms of economic oppression, here in the United States and globally.) As inheritors of a Jesuit education, we too should be frustrated by this spotty access to freedom, which continues to stand in the way of achieving real, material equality, and real democracy.

I’d imagine that many of us know fairly well Dr. King’s “I have a dream” speech, which he gave in August of 1963.3 Though iconic and significant in its own right, King’s philosophy and political commitment to radical equality far exceeds what he says in that one speech. Particularly when it comes to this question of racial and economic equality (its costs, and its place in a Democratic Republic), we really need to pay close attention to what he penned later in life, especially post-1965.

A lot of these later writings are collected in the volume, Chaos or Community. More importantly, they all capture Dr. King’s ruminations on the question, “Where do we go from here?” He’s asking this question from the other side of the passage of the Civil Rights Act. And, like him, I think we’re also faced with this question. Where, exactly, do we go from our ‘here’?

Where do we go, and what do we do, given our current choice between (a) working together toward an actual democracy, in which it is, indeed true that the value of all human life is equal, and access to freedom is equally reliable/not spotty, no matter where we live or what skin we live in, or (b) a society that falls short of that actual democracy because of its commitment to a certain “value gap,” 4 which says some lives are worth more than others? Dr. King knew that this value gap was incompatible with genuine democracy, with real equality. He died knowing that we couldn’t have both, that American had to choose. He died with the frustration of knowing that that choice hadn’t yet been made.

Allow me to share a passage from one of Dr. King’s later essays, where he writes in a kind of frustration about this dodged choice:

“With Selma and the Voting Rights Act one phase of development in the civil rights revolution came to an end. A new phase opened, but few observers realized it or were prepared for its implications. For the vast majority of white Americans, the past decade— the first phase—had been a struggle to treat the Negro with a degree of decency, not of equality. White America was ready to demand that the Negro should be spared the lash of brutality and coarse degradation, but it had never been truly committed to helping him out of poverty, exploitation or all forms of discrimination. The outraged white citizen had been sincere when he snatched the whips from the Southern sheriffs and forbade them more cruelties. But when this was to a degree accomplished, the emotions that had momentarily inflamed him melted away. White Americans left the Negro on the ground and in devastating numbers walked off with the aggressor. It appeared that the white segregationist and the ordinary white citizen had more in common with one another than either had with the Negro.”5

The distinction that Dr. King offers here — between fighting for decency and fighting for equality — was central to his own understanding of what felt like the failed promises of monumental civil rights advances of the 1960’s. I offer it here because I think it might also be central in our own moment, as we figure out what real commitment to equality (racial equality, economic equality, and gender equality to name but a few) looks like for us, not only as individual persons, but as a collective community too. What does a community built in and around real equality look like? And how badly are we willing to work for that possibility?

To maybe pose these questions in a way that’s closer to home --- How should this commitment to equality shape our commitment to service, and to being good stewards of the Jesuit mission? How might our service to others — those without access to quality education, without access to good, affordable healthcare, without access to a living wage, or safe, affordable housing, or food security — fulfill our obligations to be decent human beings, but perhaps not on its own satisfy the kind of commitment to equality at the heart of Dr. King’s philosophy? How do we animate this service so that it’s both committed to helping others and to changing the very inequities that make our service necessary in the first place?

As young people shaped by the Jesuit mission of social justice, we should be well-equipped to grapple with such questions. We should be well-equipped to see that, as we respond to the urgent call for service, we also must keep close to our heart King’s own vision for much larger systemic and structural changes, for much larger shifts in cultural perceptions and values, which might actually transform the world into one in which freedom is equally distributed (and reliably so). Interestingly enough, in that world, we’d all have access to quality education. We’d all have access to food security and affordable housing, because as human beings, it would be our right. But to the question of how we use our individual talents and collective strength to build that world – that, I believe, is the question that Dr. King would have for us, were he to pop in for a little visit.

That much more difficult work of building equitable systems is the longer, enduring, life-time kind of work that – to be quite frank – you’re only beginning as students of Fairfield Prep. It is work that demands that we be students of history, lest we allow ourselves to be duped by its repetition. It is work that demands the emotional and psychological costs of courageous and earnest looks in the mirror, so that we might reckon with how we ourselves benefit from systems that give others mere ‘spotty access’ to freedom. It is work that asks us to acknowledge progress always in this spirit of frustration, lest we lull ourselves into a premature satisfaction that the much-needed work toward equality is done. This work of building equality of access is frustrating work, because it’s always ‘in progress’, always incomplete, always demanding of us better ways of being human.

That, I think, is what Dr. King might ask of us today. He would ask us to keep that frustration close to our heart – as we engage in service, as we learn from each other’s diverse and multiple experiences. He’d be ready to sit with us and help us think through the long way we still have to go, and how we might deploy our collective strengths to move this work toward real equality a little further along.

Dr. King would ask us to stay in this place of frustration because a freedom grid with spotty access to civil rights protections is, quite objectively, a frustrating thing. The disparities that this spotty access translates to, and the patterns of those disparities are, quite objectively, things about which we should be frustrated. Interestingly enough, finding us sitting in the honesty of this frustration, and actively using it to imagine, want and demand a more equitable world for ourselves is the thing that would (possibly) make Dr. King smile. Would make him proud. Would make him feel like his untimely death was not for naught. It’s this frustration that animated his own ever-changing vision of social justice, activism and service. I’d like to make a call to the teachers and mentors in our community (including myself), and ask that we figure out how to sustain our students in that frustration, and to help them see it as productive and necessary for this kind of life-long work.

I want to end with something that James Baldwin said in 1969, only because I think we might use his words as we try to figure out how to answer Dr. King’s question, “Where do we go from here?” In 1969, Baldwin said, “I don’t want anyone working with me because they are doing something for me.” 6 As a black man, at the time speaking to a predominantly white audience, Baldwin was conveying, here, an invitation to others with different experiences from his own, to join him in a project of building a better, more equitable world. But as a condition to accepting that invitation, you needed to see that this project was just as much for you as it was for him, just as much for white Americans as it was for black Americans like him.

I think that this is vital for us to remember today, as we animate our service projects with a commitment to equality, and as we do all this in the midst of witnessing the first non-peaceful transfer of power in U.S. history. We have to remember that, though we have different life- experiences, different views of the world, and are inheritors of different histories, there is, in fact, one thing that should unite us — Spotty access to civil rights protection, spotty access to freedom is good for no one. And until that disparity of access is a thing of the past, none of us are living in the world we actually deserve.

So we respond to Dr. King’s call, face the responsibility of carrying on his work, not only for others, but for all of us, regardless of our race or gender or sexual orientation or station in life. Until we rid ourselves of the value gap — until our democracy actually operates as though all lives matter — human dignity itself is up for referendum. Dr. King knew all too well that this a dangerous situation for everyone. A world in which the value of human dignity can be up for referendum is a world that is good for no one.

If Dr. King were here with us today, we should be able to make it clear to him that we get that too. We should be ready to make that clear not only with our words, but with our individual practices and collective commitments as well.

1 Martin Luther King, Jr. Where do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?, Beacon Press, January 2010 2 https://covidtracking.com/race 3 https://www.history.com/topics/civil-rights-movement/i-have-a-dream- speech#:~:text=The%20%E2%80%9CI%20Have%20a%20Dream%E2%80%9D%20speech%2C%20delivered%20 by,King%20used%20universal%20themes%20to%20depict%20the%20struggles 4 Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Current Lessons for Our Own, Crown, New York, 2020 5 King, Where Do We Go From Here?, 3 - 4 6 Quoted in Glaude, Begin Again, 97

[charles195]

April 28th, 2017

Approximate date of when I lost my virginity. I was a senior in high school. I felt so consumed, like the Edible Woman. My mom yelled at me and said she wouldn’t pay for my college. Why the fuck did she say that? She didn’t even mean it and it was the start of the multiple panic attacks I had every day.

I asked for help. My therapist told me it was good I didn’t actually want to commit. I had a loose plan. I went to the doctor for antidepressants. Mistake. I said I had thoughts. Why would I ever think it was okay to tell someone my thoughts? I was locked away. It was “voluntary” until I wanted to leave and they put a 72 hour hold on me.

We had to do group therapy sessions and recreational activities for “points”. Of course I thought it was stupid. One of them was the thing where you put little colored hexagonal beads together to make a picture. “It’s a metaphor for taking small steps and creating something big and meaningful!” You wanna talk about metaphors? Let’s talk about this stupid mandatory activity is a metaphor for the system assigning arbitrary value to stupid shit to measure our compliance. Fuck it. I just made a dick. I love the ugly little distinct shape of a dick. I loved how inherently offensive it was.

I just wanted to draw or some shit. I had a headache. They wouldn’t give me painkillers. I was stuck in a mental hospital and they couldn’t give me painkillers, but they were okay with putting me on Zoloft and me asking for sleeping pills. They seemed to put everyone on Zoloft.

They actually did listen that time and gave us all pencils and paper to draw. How hard was that? Of course the other patients loved drawing. We couldn’t draw for shit of course.

I actually loved the Zoloft. The first time I took it, I was sitting on the floor outside of a door while we were waiting for some other activity and totally euphoric. Everything felt so good. Why did I have to be locked up just for some pills? My other friend mentioned afterwards that she was able to get medication for her bipolar disorder without getting locked up. It was definitely just because I had thoughts. Don’t trust dumbasses with your thoughts.

Masturbation got me through those three days. My first roommate asked me if I was okay when she noticed I was in the bathroom for a while. We were the same age, 17, and the oldest ones. She seemed so innocent. Her eyeliner was bad but I appreciated the effort she put in. We were all dressed in pajamas with the drawstrings taken out and uglyass blue socks with rubber anti-slip spots on the soles. I hate socks. I just want my feet to be free, man.

I fingered myself as much as I could when we had time to ourselves in our rooms. On the third day I couldn’t orgasm anymore. That’s when I hated Zoloft.

My first roommate was a stressed out top 10 student just like me. She was taking a shitton of IB classes. She applied for Cal Poly Pomona because she messed up on the UC application. She got in there. This year she announced she was transferring to UCLA. I loved her, she was so nice and kind hearted and she was the only one who I felt actually understood me. She was on Zoloft, too, and something else. She told me that Johnny Depp stayed in the same ward as us, too, back when it was a drug rehab center. Later I found a note int notebook from her written in secret code. We weren’t allowed to tell our names and addresses to each other in case one of us was too whack and was a murderer and liability issues. She left me her social media accounts in code. I still have her on Snapchat.

I was sad when she left but kinda excited to have the room to myself. Except we never exactly had privacy. A nurse would walk up and down the hallway periodically at night for checks. It was annoying as hell with their flashlight. I didn’t have the room to myself. My second roommate came during my huge mental breakdown.

She was a lot younger than me, but mature for her age. In a bad way. She was like 14 and said she had sex with her boyfriend. Like damn. Okay. She said she could see dead people but I wasn’t sure if she meant it or if she was just referencing The Sixth Sense. She told me she was taken forcefully and arrested by a police officer. She was a tiny 14 year old blonde girl and she was taken with force. What the hell.

She told me I wouldn’t get out if I was crying like that. She’s been in the mental hospital multiple times. She told me I had to fake progress. I told her she’s right. My first roommate mentioned the same thing.

One morning we sat together on the little seat thing at the window, and just stared out at the sky together. We weren’t allowed to go outside. Their excuse was that it was a temporary facility. That was why everything was so shitty.

When we were allowed to the actual hospital cafeteria “as a treat” instead of eating powdered eggs and other shit in the day room, she swore one of the boys from the other table was flirting with her. I couldn’t tell my eyesight wasn’t good enough. And didn’t she already have a boyfriend? What the hell?

We had “school”. We were watching a hockey movie while some lady paused occasionally and explained the significance of some scenes. Boring as hell. I don’t give a shit about sports. I had real school to return to, which I wouldn’t be able to return to for an entire month. I had AP exams to study for but I missed the AP government exam during those three days. I didn’t make it up. Studying was impossible with just textbooks. I needed my teachers to tell me what the hell the class was actually about. The month before the AP exam was the most important month in the entire school year. My learning was fucked but because I was a senior with panic attacks every single day, I was able given a passing grade. Reparation for the anxiety and depression that high school gave me. I had already been accepted into UCI.

On the third day I asked for the sleeping pills and knocked the fuck out. That was the start of my sleeping pill addiction. You can’t have panic attacks if you’re knocked the fuck out.

I was in the middle of fingering myself when I was told I could finally leave.

Some time later I finally stopped taking sleeping pills. Zzzquil was my shit. I had built up too much immunity. I was taking four at a time when two was supposed to be the max dosage.

As soon I turned 18, I had sex every day. Thanks Tinder. I couldn’t actually orgasm because of the Zoloft. But it just felt good to be penetrated really deep.

Timeline is bad, sorry. After I got out of the LLBMC, I fucked Andrew Mane. Actually that wasn’t his real name and I didn’t even realize that until much later when I looked in the yearbook. Oh my god I loved his big dick. I couldn’t cum so I faked it. It felt good. I thought I loved him. Silly me, I just loved dick. We only got to fuck a couple more time before he moved. What a guy. He was pretty whacky.

On the second day of LLBMC, I asked for my friend to visit. I chose him specifically because we marched together. We hummed the corps song together. It gave me hope. We were the last ones in the visitation room before hours ended and he had to go. He said he didn’t judge me. I believed him. I wasn’t a good friend to him. I regret that.

And then later I got into some sugar daddy stuff.

[livingmybestfictionallife]

Kintsugi

Reader Request: I’ve gotten a few about where the reader is depressed/self-harms and “Klaus finds out and tries to help the reader” ... “Klaus x reader where the reader suffers from self harm and or depression and Klaus finds out. And since they both suffer from mental health issues he understands and tries to support them.”

A/N: this takes place after Reginald’s death, but in an AU where the apocalypse was stopped.

Warnings: depression, depressive episodes, mental health

Two years. Two years had gone by since Klaus had entered the longest relationship of his life. He’d never expected to get over Dave, but he’d managed to find a solace and acceptance in someone who seemed like a ghost of his past. How he’d managed to run into her during the end of times was beyond him, but now, as he sat in the kitchen of the Academy planning how to celebrate her returning to him and all they had endured together, he was glad they crossed paths again.

“(Y/N),” a young woman groaned to her friend as she straightened her skirt and slipped her arms into a skin-tight crop-top. “You said you’d go to at least one this semester. It’s your last semester in college. You have to!” The woman who was being groaned at shrugged her shoulders and tried to drown out her roommate’s incessant insistence by turning up the volume on her laptop. “That’s not going to make me stop bugging you,” her friend groaned even more loudly. Again, (Y/N) tried to turn her music up as far as it could go, only to have the girl across from her quickly perch herself on the edge of (Y/N)’s bed and scream over the sounds being emitted from (Y/N)’s computer. “YOU KNOW YOU WILL NEVER BE LOUDER THAN ME!” she yelled as (Y/N) closed her laptop.

“Fine,” she laughed while rolling her eyes. It was true that (Y/N) had promised her roommate to go to at least one college party before graduating. She’d wanted to, to at least say she’d had the experience, but was always to timid to arrive at a place she knew no one and more than likely knew she would hate almost everyone there. (Y/N) was a very particular person, and she only liked a few, particular people. She was bullied throughout middle and high school and still clashed with certain people at her college despite never making any effort to interact with any of them--which her roommate said was probably why they didn’t like her. “It’s not my fault they took my introversion and shyness as being bitchy,” she’d remember saying.

“So you’ll come?” she asked in a perky voice while bouncing herself off (Y/N)’s bed and looking her roommate in the eyes.

“I suppose I have no choice,” she said with a faux reluctant tone. Deep down she knew she wanted to go, but even deeper down, she knew she’d regret it. Maybe it was snooty or bitchy of her to assume she was better than everyone who went to those arbitrary and pointless parties, but she was weeks away from graduating and frankly, didn’t give a damn.

The rest of the night had gone as (Y/N) had expected. Nothing was too different from the romanticized dramatics movies portrayed college parties to be, and it served to be a waste of (Y/N)’s time. Growing uninterested in the ridiculous antics being performed, such as the forced “meet cutes” she’d seen repeated time and time again within a single five minute window--ones that she swore girls and guys had purposefully tried to reenact from any movie that has a party scene in it--(Y/N) decided it was time to go. She’d made her way down stairs, away from a billiards table that seemed to be her only solace from the persistent pestering of people, only to find a gathering of people in the kitchen, blocking the nearest exit. Not wanting to have any attention brought to her, or to be caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, (Y/N) quickly turned to leave, only to be forced back into the kitchen as a swarm of individuals in their late teens and early twenties barreled through the house and toward the source of the most immediate commotion.

“Get out, man!” someone wearing a t-shirt with his frat’s Greek letters plastered on it had shouted at someone hidden from (Y/N)’s view. She was still trying to leave through any other exit in the house, however found herself completely unable to leave the kitchen.

“Just kick his ass out,” another guy yelled while joining the first frat brother in the center of the kitchen. Thinking it was nothing more than a few guys and their rivals threatening one another, (Y/N) continued to attempt and push her way through, desperate to avoid being caught between some stupid fight between fraternities.

“You don’t think I’ve fucking tried?! He’s not listening! He doesn’t give a shit.” She could hear the conversation behind her begin to escalate and felt a few more people shove against her and press her further into the kitchen, closer toward the fight she knew was about to breakout. Realizing she had no other option but to turn around and walk toward her initial exit point, (Y/N) tuned herself into the situation before her. A tall man who appeared to be a few years older than herself, dressed in all black with dark curly hair and what appeared to be smudged eyeliner around his pale eyes, laid sprawled out across the kitchen floor clutching a bottle of vodka in one hand and a fifth of whiskey in the other.

Shit, she thought to herself upon seeing the man and the now three guys surrounding him. They’re not really about to jump this guy for having their alcohol, are they? (Y/N) personally knew one of the guys who had joined the ringleader in closing in on the man who had crashed their party, and she knew he was an entitled brat who would never suffer the consequences of his actions. Meanwhile, the man on the ground looked like he had been suffering the consequences of his actions for years. Two of the three closing in on the essentially passed out drunkard she knew to be ruthless. They’d been put on academic probation so many times for hazing, (Y/N) had lost count, but no punishment came to them due to how much money their families donated to the school.

She didn’t want to help the man; all (Y/N) wanted to do was leave that house and go home to get a good night’s sleep, but that was impossible due to a little someone she would eventually come to learn about named Ben Hargreeves. He came in the form a breeze, a simple gust of cold air in a humid, sweat radiated house that grazed her cheek and lead her eyes in the direction of the helpless man on the ground before her. Maybe then, even though his ability to appear to Klaus was hindered, he was still able to sense a pure heart in the crowd, one that didn’t believe in violence for the sake of violence; one that, like him, never signed up to be in the situation she had found herself in. Ben knew he couldn’t physically connect with the girl that seemed to be looking down at his brother’s situation with fear and pity, but he could make his presence known in other ways, and in that desperate moment to save Klaus from being in the center of a brawl, he did all he could to gain the girl’s attention.

“Back off, dick for brains,” (Y/N) had growled as she stepped into the scene. As soon as she looked into the eyes of the guy who had initiated the fight with the defenseless individual before her, she knew she had defined herself in this equation. She’d gone from a passive observer to a performer in whatever fantastical portrayal of collegiate endeavors these guys were trying to carry out. Standing out in a crowd had always been something (Y/N) avoided. Being noticed for her was worse than having a plague, and she’d never found herself in her current situation before. If they want to make a scene, then I’ll give them a scene, she thought to herself as she planned a defense incase things blew up in her face.

(Y/N) knelt down to help the man to his feet and made sure he could at least hold up some of his weight on his own. As soon as the man’s arm was draped across her shoulders for support, one of the guys (Y/N) had recognized turned to her with disgust on his face and venomous judgment in his voice.

“You would know this piece of shit,” he hissed to gain the appreciation of the people around him.

“I’m just choosing to not be a fucking asshat toward someone I don’t know,” she shouted back over the roar the crowd was beginning to make.

“He stole our liquor,” one of the others protested.

“He stole your liquor?” (Y/N) asked in a condescending voice while rolling her eyes at the boys before her. “You’re about to beat the shit out of some guy in front of all these people for a couple bottles of liquor?” She could tell her ability to deal with the petty bullshit of the people around her was wearing thin when she reached across the man she’d been supporting, slipped her hand around the neck of the whiskey bottle and pulled it into the frat brothers’ line of sight. “Take your fucking liquor!” she sharply stated before hurling the bottle above her head and allowing her arm to bring it down in a distinct swoop, careful to make the side of the bottle come crashing down against the kitchen countertop beside her.

“Shit!” the man beside her yelled upon hearing the shattering glass and immediately sobering up enough to take off in a sprint out of the house with (Y/N) in tow simply because being shocked into consciousness so quickly kept him from acknowledging every detail about his surroundings; this included the fact that she stood under his arm and, in tern, caused her to be swooped away into the night with him.

Klaus and (Y/N) had spoken off and on for about two weeks or a month after that moment, but eventually, he faded away. It didn’t shock (Y/N) when she stopped hearing from him. He was a stranger and they hadn’t spoken very intimately about themselves--hopes, dreams, fears, life ambitions--rather their conversations were always light and making sure that the other was still alive. Besides that, Klaus seemed like a transient type: a drifter with no real home who preferred it that way. It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that they even remembered the other’s presence. Life had progressed and each of their lives turned into various forms of chaotic messes--hers developing in relation to her career and his due to his addiction and then the end of the world--and their minds were too preoccupied with other endeavors besides keeping track on the stranger they’d met by a stroke of luck.

Two years later, when (Y/N) decided to take a relaxing night out by herself at a local bowling alley, she didn’t expect a number of things to happen that night. One, she didn’t expect to have the place shot up by countless masked individuals, and two, she didn’t expect that the man she saved from a beating two years before at some stupid college party would be there to save her life from the hail of bullets. It wasn’t too much longer after that that the pair became closer than before, having instantly remembered the other after their eyes met as they huddled under the main desk, and eventually embarked into a non-labeled monogamous connection with the other.

Klaus had wanted everything to be perfect. He’d shunned himself from true happiness his whole life due to never believing he was worth it, and after Dave, even though he’d lost his first true love, he at least knew he could be valued and wanted in more ways than just a comic relief that no one takes seriously. He didn’t expect to find that in (Y/N), the girl he remembered as brave and feisty for saving his ass four years ago, and he didn’t expect it to overwhelm him so completely in a sense of self-worth and admiration, but when had anything in Klaus’s life been expected? Initially, all those years ago, he’d expected (Y/N) to be brash and feisty and be the type to force herself into situations she deemed herself worthy to be in. He expected her to be bold in knowing her worth and only want to be seen with him for charity, but he was wrong. He grew to understand that she was broken and scared and didn’t know what she was doing half the time. He learned that her impromptu smashing of the whiskey bottle was to put on a show when in reality she just wanted to run the hell away and shrink back into the safety of her apartment. 

Klaus realized about six or seven months after reconnecting with (Y/N) that he loved her, but not for the same reasons that he loved Dave. Dave was strong and believed in justice and truth. He believed that if you had the ability to do something, it was your responsibility to do it. The confidence Dave emitted in his sense of self was alluring to Klaus, mainly because he didn’t have confidence in his own self and was entranced in Dave’s ability to appear so sure of his convictions. 

With (Y/N)...well, it didn’t take Klaus very long to recognize the familiar broken and pained expressions that often crossed her gentle face. He’d seen them all to many times looking back at him in a mirror. She tried to hide it with a cold exterior and an off putting aura, but the empty and calculated look on her face when she was in public was her defense mechanism just as much as drugs was Klaus’s. It wasn’t truly who she was. She was charming and funny and kind. She loved to take baths so hot she started sweat. She loved baking and could make amazing cobblers and pies, but fuck up something as simple as chocolate chip cookies. She could belt out every word of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” but also could match Shaggy word for word in “It Wasn’t Me.” She loved to laugh and smile and was a fool for Klaus’s curly hair whenever he let it grow longer. Above all though, he loved (Y/N) because he could see in her what Dave must have seen in him.

There’s a certain beauty in the damaged, that was both disconcerting and admirable. There’s a fine line between romanticizing the broken hearted and being wholly empathetic to the sonder that overcomes someone who is trusted by those who are damaged. Finding the beauty in (Y/N) to be so immense despite her own ability to see it, was Klaus’s favorite past-time. It was early on in their relationship that he realized (Y/N) made it a point to do at least one thing a day that she knew Klaus would enjoy: speak softly to him, remind him how much she believed in him, make a face or do a dorky dance, have a full on, improvisational, one-sided conversation with Ben, anything. These little things quickly became something Klaus began looking forward to each day.

After a recent depressive episode that led (Y/N) into an empty, apathetic abyss, Klaus made it his mission to do all he could to remind her of the beauty within her rather than allowing her to focus solely on the dark. He’d draw little pictures on sticky notes or on a napkin and slip them in her lunch before she went to work, he’d dance around whatever room they were in and swing her arms with his movements until she agreed to be whisked away--all with a hopeless grin on her face, he’d relay messages from her deceased grandmother that stood over her like a guardian angel, and he’d journal with her, disproving every negative thought she wrote down about six or seven times over just to “make sure the message sank in.”

But today was their two year anniversary of becoming a “together.” Terms like boyfriend and girlfriend seemed arbitrary after a certain age and, despite (Y/N) being seven years younger than Klaus, neither wanted to label one another as that. “Together” was a better fit. It mean that through everything, through the hauntings, the dark nights, and their individual heaping platters of mental baggage they bring to the table, they were in it together. No longer would they suffer alone, so long as the other was alive to shoulder some of the weight.

Klaus sat on the couch in the parlor of the Academy. (Y/N) was resting beside him, leaning against his chest with one of his arms dangled around her and her fingers intertwined with his. “Have I ever told you about Takashima?” Klaus asked softly.

“No,” (Y/N) replied curiously. It wasn’t often that Klaus talked about Vietnam and she knew better than to force it; she’d seen what happened when her mother had forced her grandfather to speak of his experience and didn’t wish to be on the receiving end of a similar situation. Instead, she knew it was best to wait it out and let him bring it up as he feel safe and comfortable to do so.

“Takashima was a guy in my unit,” he said while craning his neck to look down at the woman in his arms. “His family were immigrants from Japan, but he was born in the US in a fucking internment camp. Anyways, he would always talk about art. His mother was an artist and art seemed to be the only thing that grounded him during the long days and longer nights.” (Y/N) curled tighter into Klaus’s side as he tightened his grasp on her fingers. She loved listening to Klaus. His voice was a comforting sound that grounded her in times of anxiety and depression. She loved more than anything when he would just start talking about something and find his thoughts along the way as his sentence dragged him along, which is what she thought was happening.“Anyways, do you want to know my favorite piece of Japanese artwork?” he asked her.

“Tell me,” she sighed gently against his side. At her words, Klaus adjusted himself briefly to an upright position and leaned toward (Y/N) as her head laid in his lap.

“It’s called kintsugi,” he said, doing his best to pronounce the foreign word flawlessly. “Takashima said he had tons of it surrounding him as a kid. Growing up his house was filled with this type of art. Basically, you take something that’s been smashed, shattered, broken, whatever, and meld it together again with this like, gold or silver lacquer. Thinking of the kintsugi kept him going like Dave and I kept each other alive. He kept seeing the war as the break in a pot or vase or whatever, and kept looking at the bright side of things--the gold or silver rivers flowing through the damage.” Klaus paused for a moment and felt his throat constrict. He wasn’t very good in relaying his emotions verbally. He was a physical person whose emotions came out in expressions and movement rather than words, but he was trying. “I hadn’t thought about Takashima or his story about kintsugi in a while, but...well...here,” he said while pulling off one of the thin chained necklaces dangling beneath his shirt and gently clasping it in his hand. Slowly his fingers unfolded around what appeared to (Y/N) to be treated pieces of glass, bound together by shimmering golden veins. “The whole point of kintsugi is to treat the broken parts of the object as part of its history, rather than as a disguise from the fact that it was broken in the first place.”

“Klaus,” (Y/N) tried to say, but upon looking at a single tear tracing down his cheek, she couldn’t fully get the world out.

“We’re both a bit messed up, but, as Takashima would have put it, we’re two parts of a broken whole. You’ve helped me realize I don’t have to hide from who I am or what I can do, and for that I am so grateful; but you try so hard to disguise the true beauty you have.” He gently took the pendent from her hands and fastened the necklace around her neck. “Your heart may feel heavy, (Y/N), it may feel torn to shreds or shattered into hopeless pieces, or maybe it just feels empty, but I know there are streams of gold flowing through you. I can see them everyday in the way you love someone as messed up as me.” Klaus quickly slipped his arms around (Y/N)’s waist and pulled her back down to their resting position on the couch. He could tell (Y/N) was touched due to her inability to respond. She was a verbal lover--she showed her affection and appreciation through words and notes and letters, and rendering her speechless was Klaus’s way of knowing she was more than moved by his gift. “Takashima always said kintsugi was the most beautiful thing in the world, and looking at you, I’d be a damned fool to argue with him.”

Tags: @helena-way07, @multifandom-ramblings, @ne0n-gh0st, @bisexual-with-adhd