#and so I realized how accidentally privileged in this aspect they were to have been conceived in the world of Paranoia

[blue-cat-shitposts]

Holy shit I have so much to say on the subject of gender and sexuality in Paranoia, you have no idea, and I hope maybe @dear-nyu can join me in that discussion.

When I first played Paranoia, I made a character that was nonbinary, and due to their Machine Empathy (a mutant power they were unaware of), they were attracted romantically (and to some degree, also sexually) to Friend Computer.

That rat bastard of a character was the most intense character I've ever played, because their simping made them go to any lengths to be noticed by their crush, and it was their chief motivation for why they wanted to move up in the social ranks - they didn't necessarily care as much for social prestige, as they cared for the rank being a direct representation of how close they could be to Friend Computer. That produced SO much drama and action in the game, and made their story truly unique and remarkable.

As to why they were nonbinary - even I as a player didn't know that, because that aspect was irrelevant to the gameplay! I never had to think about it in-game! And it was honestly incredibly freeing, to play in a setting where you can just exist as a nonbinary person and nobody will question it, it's just the norm, the standard. It was not rebellious or subversive for them to be nonbinary, and in fact it took me years post-game to come up with the explanation that the reason for it was that they left the default pronouns settings on their coretech untouched because they were afraid that changing what Friend Computer assigned to them would be treason, and it wasn't important enough for them to change it. Their bigger priority was getting Friend Computer to notice them.

Another character I played in that same campaign, I decided I wanted to be trans - and the reason for it was that she filled out some forms incorrectly and the system flagged her as female, so she decided "eh, why not, might as well be a woman", because she was too lazy to correct it. And that was that in terms of her gender, which to me personally was incredibly funny. In some other setting, I'd probably have to construct a bit more harrowing story of her transition, but in Alpha Complex, she's just allowed to exist, no questions asked. She was also a very fun character to play, even though I didn't get to play her for too long.

What I'm saying is that Paranoia gives you the freedom to play queer characters with as much drama or as much levity as you decide is fun for you, without the setting caring for you to explain their existence. Wanna play an ace character? Cool, it's basically the expected norm. Wanna play something spicy? Guess what, some batch of hormone suppressants was made sloppily, confused with the placebo, or was never delivered where it was supposed to go. Being queer or straight or whatever else can be, by design, either completely handwaved, or a conscious choice, depending on what you want. As meaningless or as meaningful as you want it to be. Paranoia gives you the freedom to have fun with queerness without the looming shackles of having to conform to realism. And that opens up your imaginations to play with scenarios that would be impossible or significantly more unlikely in other settings.

You know, on the topic of 'can you be meaningfully queer in this game', I'm going to say that the game doesn't have to be a romance-centric game (eg Monsterhearts) to meet that threshold.

I'm going to take a slightly left-field example: Paranoia. In this (black humour dystopia) game, everybody is a clone grown in a vat, and fed a steady diet of mood-altering pills to keep them complient that - among other things - suppresses your libedo, to ensure there won't be non-vat-grown humans, and further the society strongly discourages romance in general.

This isn't the focus of the game, but it still means that the game presents us with a hegemonic standard for sexuality and relationships (they don't happen), and ways to be non-normative, and the decision to do so is meaningful.

An entirely heterosexual couple holding hands in Paranoia is - because their relationship is so non-normative the the game's scope, and will have serious consequences for them - a more queer story than any gay tiefling found families in D&D.

In Paranoia, the decision to engage in a sexual or romantic relationship is a meaningful one, in a way it isn't in D&D.

(You will note that romance is not mechanised in Paranoia, nor is it going to be a common mode of play, but the game does mention 'forbidden romance' as a potential plot hook).

[mrs-gucci]

Spousal Privilege {Henry McHenry x Reader}

author’s notes: hello, hello! I deleted the original request accidentally, but essentially, it was the prompt written below, but instead of getting married for tax benefits, you get married because he needs you to help keep him out of jail/the courtroom for Ann’s murder. 

**just because I write it doesn’t mean I condone it. writing a fictional piece and condoning are two very different things. this is fanFICTION.**

original prompt (from @dailyau): “we got married for tax benefits, but you aren’t in love with me and I didn’t develop feelings for you until after we got married. in practice, we’re just roommates. However, we’re staying over with someone who knows that we’re married but not why we’re married so we were only provided with one bed for our stay.” (slightly modified) prompt: “we got married for [the benefit of spousal privilege], but but you aren’t in love with me and I didn’t develop feelings for you until after we got married. in practice, we’re just roommates. however, we’re staying over with someone who knows that we’re married but not why we’re married so we were only provided with one bed for our stay.”

warnings: angst & smut. not-so-mutual feelings. non-con elements (but they’re not unwelcomed). taking advantage of someone else’s feelings for you to benefit sexually. masturbation. (kind of) mutual masturbation.

tw’s: consumption/use of alcohol (briefly mentioned). !!non-con somnophilia. !!non-con voyerism.

word count: 2.4k

“Spousal Privilege”: if you’re married, your spouse cannot be forced to testify against you in a court of law.

my taglist peeps (slashed through means that the username didn’t tag): @frank-and-honey @shygirl268 @icarusinthesea​  @gildedstarlight​ @mrs-zimmerman @soldmysoulagain @roseepossee @pascalisfairyy @I-can’t-draw-faces (if you’d like to be added to or removed from my taglist, the link to the google form is HERE or on the top of my masterlist.)

“It’s just one weekend, Henry. One weekend. We have to at least pretend to be married.”

He sighs, reclining on the large lounger on the back deck, rolling an unlit cigarette between his thumb and forefinger. “Y/N...you know that I can’t come with you. I’ve got a show this weekend; I can’t just skip my own show to be your plus-one at a wedding.”

It feels like you’re the only one actually trying to appear as a couple, since your union is a sham. You made the grave mistake of visiting the McHenry residence on the night of Ann’s murder, finding a blood-spattered and disheveled Henry with his hand on the butchers knife impaling her chest.

And then, a few weeks later, your friendship became a marriage. You knew Henry was a good guy, and you’ve been friends with him a very long time, so...you helped him out by becoming the second Mrs. McHenry in order to protect him in case of a criminal trial. Spousal privilege is a powerful weapon in the judicial system, one that Henry successfully secured. 

Almost a year has passed since that fateful night, and the police investigation has all but stopped due to lack of evidence. The only living people who know what happened are you and him.

The worst part of it, though? You’ve fallen for him, hard. Sure, he’s been your friend since high school, but you never thought of him as partner material before. But, now that you live with him and spend lots of time together, you realize that he’s an amazing guy that you really feel connected to.

Unfortunately, he’s not in love with you, and probably never will be. But, you soldier on, putting your feelings on the backburner for the sake of the false union.

Henry sticks the cigarette between his teeth, the familiar flick of the lighter slicing the tension between you. He takes a long drag, exhaling loudly.

“Fine. But at least I’m actually trying to make this whole arrangement seem real. At this point, I’m the only one trying at all.” You huff, shaking your head as you walk back into the house.

-

You arrive at the large rented house for the bridal party, greeted by several of your closest friends as you walk through the door. Immediately, they ask about Henry, and you tell them that he won’t be joining you this weekend, that he has a show that he just can’t miss.

They’re understanding, of course, knowing of Henry’s blossoming career as a comedian. You spend the rest of the afternoon catching up with your friends, who seemed to be acting a bit strangely. They’re looking towards the lobby religiously, seemingly waiting for someone to arrive.

Probably just one of their boyfriends or husbands, you think, dismissing it with little thought as the waiter comes over with a tray of cocktails.

It’s nearly midnight when you finally head back up to your room, eyelids heavy as you fumble with the key and open the door. You’re startled when you see a large shadowy figure sitting on the queen bed. 

You quickly flip the lights on to reveal the mysterious figure’s identity.

“Henry? What are you doing here?”

He stands, grabbing a small bouquet of flowers before bringing them over to you.

“I’m sorry for being so unreasonable about this trip, Y/N. You’re right, I haven’t been trying as hard as I can to spend ‘couple’ time with you lately. And I know how important this trip is, so...I postponed my show to next weekend in order to be here with you.”

You’re unable to stop the grin that spreads across your face at this genuinely kind gesture that he’s done for you. You take the flowers from his outstretched hand.

“Wow, this is...thank you, Henry.” You meet his eyes. “I mean it, thank you. I’m, uh, I’m glad you’re here.”

His cheeks are dusted pink as he looks down at the carpeted floor, running a hand through his hair.  “It’ll be nice to spend some time together, I think. We’ve been a bit disconnected lately, off doing our own stuff without really connecting all that often.”

You nod in agreement, filling one of the hotel glasses with lukewarm water for the flowers. You set them on the desk, then look over at the bed. 

Bed, not beds. 

“I...I can ask for a different room. She just put us in here because she knows we’re married...”

He shakes his head. “No, no, it’s alright. We’ll make do.”

You’re a bit surprised by his mellow, chilled reaction to the situation. You thought surely he’d want to change rooms, since the two of you have never shared a bed before. 

Really, at home, you’re just roommates; each having your own separate living spaces. But of course, your friend Jen doesn’t know of the...unique aspects of your outwardly loving union, like the fact that it’s not genuine.

Both of you quietly unpack your things into the shared dresser. You keep your pajamas out and after you place your emptied duffle in the closet, you shed your top and bottoms, leaving you in just your undergarments. 

When you turn around to grab your pajamas, you catch Henry looking at you, a fact that brings a sheepish warmth to your cheeks. He was shirtless, standing in only his black jeans, which has you quite flustered. Henry’s very much in shape, you’re painfully aware of that in the moment, and you can’t help but let your gaze fall to his chiseled abdomen.

His eyes quickly dart away from you, as yours do from him, and his cheeks turn pink. He continues folding his clothes, putting them in the top two drawers of the dresser. You bite your lip as you grab your pajamas and head into the bathroom, locking the door behind you.

The mirror blurs with steam from the hot water as it emerges from the shower head. You’re quick to peel the panties from your hips and the bra from your chest, tossing both on the tiled floor before stepping under the steaming stream. 

You groan softly as the hot water massages your tired muscles. The ache between your thighs is anything but soothed by the water, though, and your mind is playing the sight of Henry’s sculpted body on a loop, only intensifying your arousal.

It’s gotten to the point where the need for a bit of relief is inevitable, despite your efforts to prevent it.

Your hand trails down and dips between your legs, fingertips sliding around your slickened folds, attempting to locate the special bundle of nerves nestled beneath.

Breath hitching, you sigh softly as you begin rubbing it in small, lazy circles. Small gasps and moans escape your lips as the flames of your arousal are flamed with each swipe of your fingertips.

Unbeknownst to you, Henry has abandoned his putting-away efforts in favor of standing outside the bathroom door. He’s heard a few soft, muffled noises coming from the room, so he decided to approach and make sure that nothing’s wrong.

His length twitches to life beneath his jeans as he realizes what exactly it is those noises mean, what you're likely doing in there. He wonders, as he reaches down to cup his swelling arousal, if this was brought on by the sight of his naked torso.

You exhale shakily, lining up and pushing two fingers into your wet heat, biting your lip to try and suppress the gasp that escapes your throat. 

Henry grunts softly upon hearing this slip-up, shaky hands fiddling with his belt buckle, then with the button and zipper on his pants. He pulls his cock out in a rushed manner, ear pressing against the door while his hand starts to move up and down his shaft.

He hears something come from behind the door, but it’s too muffled by the wood that he can’t make out exactly what you said, which is probably a good thing.

“F-Fuck...Henry.” You breathe quietly, moving your digits in and out of your entrance swiftly, curling them up sporadically in order to tease your g-spot. “Shit.”

A low growl slips out as his length hardens further with his hand’s movements, slit starting to drool semi-transparent beads of liquid. He slicks them down his shaft, allowing his calloused palm to glide easier.

Your release quickly builds up inside you, hips jerking and twitching instinctively each time your fingers stimulate the special spot on your inner walls. It’s not long before you’re cumming all over your fingers with a series of soft moans and whines.

These small noises meet his ears and, within a minute, Henry reaches his own climax. He covers his mouth, a long groan muffled by the skin of his palm as ropes of seed spill out all over his palm and some onto the doorframe.

He rushes to wipe the evidence of his release from the scene, scrambling to grab his dirty t-shirt in order to do so. He hears you stepping out of the shower and quickly tucks himself back into his pants, running over to sit on his bed.

You emerge from the bathroom a minute or so later with only a towel on. He avoids eye contact, gathering his own clothes and heading into the bathroom for a quick shower.

You’re already tucked into bed and reading when Henry comes out of the bathroom in his boxers, ruffling his hair with the towel once more time before hanging it back up on the bathroom hook. 

After finishing a chapter, you tuck your bookmark back between the pages before setting it down on your bedside table, turning the lamp off. You doze off soon after.

Henry waits patiently, very patiently, until he’s absolutely sure you’re fast asleep. His cock twitches and stirs in his boxers as he thinks about his plan of attack, how he’ll do this without waking you.

He knows this is wrong, but he just can’t help himself; it’s been too long and his hand simply isn’t doing this trick anymore. And you are his wife, after all.

His fingers reach under the covers, experimentally dragging his hand up your exposed thigh. You don’t seem to really mind, but an innocent-enough thigh touch and his cock inside you are two very different things.

So, he figures that he should probably try his fingers first. At least that’d be easier to explain in the event that you wake up and find him knuckle-deep in your cunt.

Sure, he thinks you’re physically attractive, objectively, but he doesn’t have any more than sexual feelings for you. You’re his best friend and he wants to keep it that way.

But...all that can wait until tomorrow. For now, he needs this from you; he desperately needs this.

You’re laying on your front, so he’s careful as he mounts you from behind, gently encouraging your legs apart with his knee. Once you’re spread apart enough, he slips his hand down to cup your crotch, biting his lip when he feels the natural heat already present. 

He smirks, slipping his fingers between your pussy lips, searching for the spot that’ll get you nice and wet for him. Your hips naturally surge upwards when he finds it, a small grunt escaping your lips, but you remain asleep.

A breath of relief slips through the gaps of his perfectly crooked teeth as he continues rubbing you. It’s not long before you become slick, providing the natural lubricant for his fingers to glide easier.

His fingers begin to tease your puckered entrance, and he slowly slides one of the thick digits in, groaning under his breath as you clench so tightly around him. 

“Little slut. Wants it even in her sleep.” He muses with a devious smirk, beginning to move his finger in and out with great care and caution.

You moan softly, subconsciously spreading your legs wider for him. He shudders with arousal at this simple movement, palming his hardened cock over the thin material of his boxers while a second finger joins the first inside of you.

He’s so hard, he almost can’t see straight, absolutely loving the way you react to his touch. You’re fast asleep, unaware of his touch; and yet, you’re still soaked and squirming for him. There’s something so deliciously wrong about this that makes him throb.

Soon, he can’t hold himself back anymore. He pulls his cock from beneath the airy fabric, stroking himself as he allows his hand to run over your backside. His jaw clenches, suppressing the moans that so desperately want to come out.

Finally, the moment of truth. Will you wake up when he slides in?

The buzz, the adrenaline rush he’s getting from this is practically unmatched by anything in his day-to-day life. Not even his shows, his performances bring him this much of a rush.

He lines himself up with your entrance, pushing in slowly, biting down on his lip hard as a soft groan slips out. You’re so tight, so wet, so hot, so perfect. 

You moan loudly, body and hips wriggling as your insides adjust to his length and thickness. It takes every ounce of his willpower to stay still, to let you adjust to the sudden intrusion. He wants nothing more than to pound you into the mattress and cum deep inside you, but he can’t do either of those things.

His hips roll softly, gently, cock dragging against your walls at an almost painfully slow pace. Your walls clench so tightly around him and he has to white-knuckle the headboard in order to keep himself centered and restrained.

You’re stirring a bit, but you’re still asleep, and Henry feels his climax already starting to build. Normally he’d be ashamed of this fact, but it’s probably best if he doesn’t drag this out.

The little noises escaping your lips only spur Henry on, each of your little grunts, groans, whimpers and moans are like music to his ears. 

With only a few more thrusts, combined with the sight of your ass jiggling each time his skin collides with yours, Henry’s cumming. He pulls out in the knick of time, shooting his seed all over your little pajama shorts, secretly hoping his cum stains them.

He strokes himself through orgasm, riding out his high to its fullest before re-adjusting your shorts and tucking himself back into his boxers, laying down next to you.

A soft sigh leaves his lips as he catches his breath, flipping over and sitting to grab the pack of cigarettes from the bedside table, heading out to the small balcony. 

Plumes of gray smoke linger in the still summer night as Henry looks out onto the lake, admiring the soft moonlight reflecting off the bouncing water. He comes back in after a few minutes and climbs back into bed, eyes fluttering shut.

Maybe being married to you wasn’t so bad, after all.

[qqueenofhades]

I really don’t want to start a discourse™, but I want you to know that I really appreciate how you write joe and Nicky in deo volente. So many of the fics I’ve read have placed yusef in the role of more sexually experienced and less devoted to god, while Nicky is depicted as an inexperienced and virginal priest/knight/monk and so forth and so on. Your narrative of joe out there rescuing people and being faithful, while Nicky looks back on his life of gambling and pleasures of the flesh ...(1/?)

Not to say that there’s anything wrong with either, obviously. I love guilty priest Nicky and repressed Nicky and p much every Nicky. But in the vast array of fics out there, it’s rare to see the opposite. Not that you’re working in a binary morally good/religious vs. not way. Your writing in the fic is really subtle and and your characterizations reveal a lot of depth. I just think it’s cool to see Nicky, average second son of a duke, drinking and gambling and feeling terribly guilty (2/?)

Guilty about the crusades and the fucking horror of crusade 1 without being excessively devout. Just an average dude. Not some paragon of virtue (btw, I’m on chapter 2 of the fic, so I don’t know how much your characterization changes moving forward. You have a lovely ability to combine your incredible knowledge of history, your beautiful writing, and these intimate details of the characters that make them fit— fit the canon and fit the history. (3/? Shit I’m sorry this had gotten way too long)

I enjoy the way you’ve really inserted us into the quotidian aspect of history. Aaaaaanyway— the discourse that I was afraid of: I think that a lot of fans of the movie that are generating fan content (tysfm to all of you beauties, btw 🙏🙏♥️) are westerners (which is a whole nother kettle of fish) and that carries a sort of ignorance about the Muslim world in the Middle Ages and this desire to simplify Europe as “Christian” “fighters for faith” etc. (4/? Fuuuuck. One(??) more)

And when we do that, we end up as characterizing the brown people as “not that”. The thing I love about this fandom is that people are definitely down on the crusades. I feel like all the fic I’ve read has been particularly negative about those wars, but the thing I love about your fic is that you don’t just say war is bad because people died and it was despicable and this pious white dude says so and this one brown person agrees. (5/6, I see the end in sight I swear it)

Instead you give us a larger cast of Muslims and Arabs and really flesh them out and give them opinions and different interpretations of faith, and I really appreciate that. The crusades were terrible, and we know this because these regular dudes who struggle with their different faiths and lives say so. And I just. I think that’s really great. Also, I fucking love yusef’s mom. I feel like more people would be accepting of the gift in this fashion and I think she’s lovely and (god damn it 6/7)

Aaaaaaaand. The bit where yusef returns and she’s already gone breaks my fucking heart. Also the moment where he’s like “I’m not sure about Abraham’s god, but my mothers god is worth my faith”?? Just really fucking great. So. Excellent fic. Excellent characters. Excellent not-being-accidentally-biased-towards-white-Christians. That is what I came here to say. Thank you so much for your amazing stories. I love them and I love history. Sorry about the rambling. idek how I wrote so much. (7/7)

Epilogue: tl;dr: you’re great.

Oh man! What a huge and thoughtful comment (which will in turn provoke a long-ass response from me, so…) I absolutely agree that no matter what fandom, I don’t do Discourse TM; I just sit in my bubble and stay in my lane and do my own thing and create content I enjoy. And I don’t even think this is that so much as just… general commentary on character and background? So obviously all of this should be read as my own personal experience and choices in writing DVLA, and that alone. I really appreciate you for saying that you love a wide range of fan creators/fanworks and you’re not placing one over another, you understand that fans have diverse ranges of backgrounds/experience with history and other cultures when they create content, and that’s not the same for everyone. So I just think that’s a great and respectful way to start things off.

First, as a professional historian who has written a literal PhD thesis on the crusades, I absolutely understand that many people (and regular fans) will not have the same privilege/education/perspective that I do, and that’s fine! They should not be expected to get multiple advanced degrees to enjoy a Netflix movie! But since I DO have that background, and since I’ve been working on the intellectual genealogy of the crusades (and the associated Christian/Muslim component, whether racially or religiously) since I was a master’s student, I have a lot of academic training and personal feelings that inform how I write these characters. Aside from my research on all this, my sister lives in an Islamic country and her boyfriend is a Muslim man; I’ve known a lot of Muslims and Middle Easterners; and especially with the current political climate of Islamophobia and the reckoning with racism whether in reality or fandom, I have been thinking about all this a lot, and my impact on such.

Basically: I love Nicky dearly, but I ADORE Joe, and as such, I’m protective of him and certainly very mindful of how I write him. Especially when the obvious default for westerners in general, fandom-related or otherwise, is to write what you are familiar with (i.e. the European Christian white character) and be either less comfortable or less confident or sometimes less thoughtful about his opposing number. I have at times tangentially stumbled across takes on Joe that turn me into the “eeeeeeeh” emoji or Dubious Chrissy Teigen, but I honestly couldn’t tell you anything else about them because I was like, “nope not for me” and went elsewhere rather than do Discourse (which is pretty much a waste of time everywhere and always makes people feel bad). This is why I’m always selective about my fan content, but especially so with this ship, because I have SO much field-specific knowledge that I just have to make what I like and which suits my personal tastes. So that is what I do.

Obviously, there’s a troublesome history with the trope of “sexually liberate brown person seduces virginal white character into a world of Fleshly Decadence,” whether from the medieval correlation of “sodomite” and “Saracen,” or the nineteenth-century Orientalist depictions of the East as a land variously childishly simplistic, societally backward, darkly mysterious and Exotic, or “decadent” (read: code for sexually unlike Western Europe, including the spectrum of queer acts). So when I was writing DVLA, I absolutely did not want to do that and it’s not to my taste, but I’m not going to whip out a red pen on someone else writing a story that broadly follows those parameters (because as I said, I stay in my lane and don’t see it anyway). Joe to me is just such an intensely complex and lovely Muslim character that that’s the only way I feel like I can honestly write him, and I absolutely love that about him. So yeah, any depiction of hypersexualizing him or making him only available for the sexual use and education of the white character(s) is just... mmm, not for me.

For example, I stressed over whether it was appropriate to move his origin from “somewhere in the Maghreb” to Cairo specifically, since Egypt, while it IS in North Africa, is not technically part of the Maghreb. I realize that Marwan Kenzari’s family is Tunisian and that’s probably why they chose it, to honor the actor’s heritage, but on the flip side… “al-Kaysani” is also a specifically Ismai’li Shia name (it’s the name of a branch of it) and the Fatimids (the ruling dynasty in Jerusalem at the time of the First Crusade) were well-known for being the only Ismai’li Shia caliphate. (This is why the Shi’ites still ancestrally dislike Saladin for overthrowing it in 1174, even if Saladin is a huge hero to the rest of the Islamic world.) Plus I really wanted to use medieval Cairo as Joe’s homeland, and it just made more sense for an Ismai’li Shia Fatimid from Cairo (i.e. the actual Muslim denomination and caliphate that controlled Jerusalem) to be defending the Holy City because it was personal for him, rather than a Sunni Zirid from Ifriqiya just kind of turning up there. Especially due to the intense fragmentation and disorganization in the Islamic world at the time of the First Crusade (which was a big part of the reason it succeeded) and since the Zirids were a breakaway group from the Fatimids and therefore not very likely to be militarily allied with them. As with my personal gripes about Nicky being a priest, I decided to make that change because I felt, as a historian, that it made more sense for the character. But I SUPER recognize it as my own choices and tweaks, and obviously I’m not about to complain at anyone for writing what’s in graphic novel/bonus content canon!

That ties, however, into the fact that Nicky has a clearly defined city/region of origin (Genoa, which has a distinct history, culture, and tradition of crusading) and Joe is just said to be from “the Maghreb” which…. is obviously huge. (I.e. anywhere in North Africa west of Egypt all the way to Morocco.) And this isn’t a fandom thing, but from the official creators/writers of the comics and the movie. And I’m over here like: okay, which country? Which city? Which denomination of Islam? You’ve given him a Shia name but then point him to an origin in Sunni Ifriqiya. If he’s from there, why has he gone thousands of miles to Jerusalem in the middle of a dangerous war to help his religious/political rivals defend their territory? Just because he’s nice? Because it was an accident? Why is his motivation or reason for being there any less defined or any less religious (inasmuch as DVLA Nicky’s motive for being on the First Crusade is religious at all, which is not very) than the white character’s? In a sense, the Christians are the ones who have to work a lot harder to justify their presence in the Middle East in the eleventh century at all: the First Crusade was a specifically military and offensive invasion launched at the direct behest of the leader of the Western Roman church (Pope Urban II.) So the idea that they’re “fighting for the faith” or defending it bravely is…

Eeeeh. (Insert Dubious Chrissy Teigen.)

But of course, nobody teaches medieval history to anyone in America (except for Bad Game of Thrones History Tee Em), and they sure as hell don’t teach about the crusades (except for the Religious Violence Bad highlight reel) so people don’t KNOW about these things, and I wish they DID know, and that’s why I’m over here trying to be an academic so I can help them LEARN it, and I get very passionate about it. So once again, I entirely don’t blame people who have acquired this distorted cultural impression of the crusades and don’t want to do a book’s worth of research to write a fic about a Netflix movie. I do hope that they take the initiative to learn more about it because they’re interested and want to know more, since by nature the pairing involves a lot of complex religious, racial, and cultural dynamics that need to be handled thoughtfully, even if you don’t know everything about it. So like, basically all I want is for the Muslim character(s) to be given the same level of respect, attention to detail, background story, family context, and religious diversity as any of the white characters, and Imma do it myself if I have to. Dammit.

(I’m really excited to hear your thoughts on the second half of the fic, especially chapter 3 and chapter 6, but definitely all of it, since I think the characters they’re established as in the early part of the fic do remain true to themselves and both grow and struggle and go through a realistic journey with their faith over their very long lives, and it’s one of my favorite themes about DVLA.)

Anyway, about Nicky. I also made the specific choice to have him be an average guy, the ordinary second son of a nobleman who doesn’t really know what he’s doing with his life and isn’t the mouthpiece of Moral Virtue in the story, since as he himself realizes pretty quick, the crusades and especially the sack/massacre of Jerusalem are actually horrific. I’ve written in various posts about my nitpicking gripes with him being a priest, so he’s not, and as I said, I’m definitely avoiding any scenario where he has to Learn About The World from Joe. That is because I want to make the point that the people on the crusades were people, and they went for a lot of different reasons, not all of which were intense personal religious belief. The crusades were an institution and operated institutionally. Even on the First Crusade, where there were a lot of ordinary people who went because of sincere religious belief, there was the usual bad behavior by soldiers and secular noblemen and people who just went because it was the thing to do. James Brundage has an article about prostitution and miscegenation and other sexual activity on the First Crusade; even at the height of this first and holy expedition, it was happening. So Nicky obviously isn’t going to be the moral exemplar because a) the crusades are horrific, he himself realizes that, and b) it’s just as historically accurate that he wouldn’t be anyway. Since the idea is that medieval crusaders were all just zealots and ergo Not Like Us is dangerous, I didn’t want to do that either. If we think they all went because they were all personally fervent Catholics and thus clearly we couldn’t do the same, then we miss a lot of our own behavior and our parallel (and troubling) decisions, and yeah.

As well, I made a deliberate choice to have Nicky’s kindness (which I LOVE about him, it’s one of my favorite things, god how refreshing to have that be one of the central tenets of a male warrior character) not to be something that was just… always there and he was Meek and Good because a priest or whatever else. Especially as I’ve gotten older and we’ve all been living through these ridiculous hellyears (2020 is the worst, but it’s all been general shit for a while), I’ve thought more and more about how kindness is an active CHOICE and it’s as transgressive as anything else you can do and a whole lot more brave than just cynicism and nihilism and despair. As you’ll see in the second half of the fic, Nicky (and Joe) have been through some truly devastating things and it might be understandable if they gave into despair, but they DON’T. They choose to continue to be good people and to try and to actively BE kind, rather than it being some passive default setting. They struggle with it and it’s raw and painful and they’re not always saints, but they always come down on the side of wanting to keep doing what they’re doing, and I… have feelings about that.

Anyway, this is already SUPER long, so I’ll call it quits for now. But thank you so much for this, because I love these characters and I love the story I created for them in DVLA, since all this is personal to me in a lot of ways, and I’m so glad you picked up on that.

[helpinghanikan]

Steve Rogers A-Z

Steve rogers NSFW A-Z head cannons 

A = Aftercare (What they’re like after sex)

Just like anyone it takes a second for the world to come back to him. As you are different levels of stamina he’s usually the first to start moving. The first to get some water, setting a glass next to your head and the first ask how you were doing. Chuckling at whatever you say or sound you make.

B = Body part (Their favorite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)

On You; your thighs. Something he can use as a pillow when sitting or to gently squeeze without thinking. They’re the first thing he thinks to grab when the hugging becomes something more. No matter how many times he reaches past your backside, he’d never get tired of your sounds at being lifted.

On himself; Has to be his hair. Whether it be his beard or the short blonde on his head, there are few things greater than having your fingers through it. Whether from tugging or pulling to just a causal run through after a shower. Feeling your nails on his scalp was the closest to a primal romantic gesture that could be done in public.

C = Cum (Anything to do with cum basically… I’m a disgusting person)

Being from a time where Birth control was in another playing field, he’s more careful then others might be. Cumming outside of you, even with condoms or anal. The only exception being oral, where it was all fair game.

D = Dirty Secret (Pretty self-explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

It’s those little bruises that decorate you randomly. Not exactly the hickeys (although they are in the category) but the faded marks on your arms and legs. He’s never directly pointed them out to you but watches them as you move. Even when covered with clothes he’s knows they are there. His own little secret he’d only share with you.

He’d never purposely mark you like that. But sometimes, more often than not, his strength gets away from him in the moment. Leaving almost hand prints on your hips, bite marks you’re your shoulders and breasts. Enjoying these marks was teetering into an area he had yet to explore. It was best to look into the abyss, but he wasn’t ready to jump in.

E = Experience (How experienced are they? Do they know what they’re doing?)

Definitely not the virgin the team mocks but isn’t the horn-dog the fans like to think. With a cautious hand you take the lead at first, smiling down at him until he gets that look. That I got this, look.

“How does it feel?” Has never been asked so much. No matter how many times, or ways he always asks some variation of the question. “Is this okay?” He asks, either waiting for a reply in your voice or the moan that comes with the movement.

F = Favorite Position 

Unless verbally stated you will always end up on your back. The build and build up putting his hands behind your knees. Pushing them up against your chest, blue eyes looking down as his strength holds you steady.

It’s a stretch on your body at first. Groans and moans coming more from the bending then from anything else. Settling you into a place where every bit of your feels pulled and knocked like an arrow. Feeling yourself being pulled and pulled until there’s a release.

G = Goofy (Are they more serious in the moment, or are they humorous, etc)

There’s humor only at the beginning, when he’s asking if it’s alright and you laugh at his manners. After it’s pretty straight forward, no laughing jokes and no real talking. He’s more of a silent force then one you joke around with.

H = Hair (How well-groomed are they, does the carpet match the drapes, etc.)

He keeps it tidy. Leaving enough hair but sticking to the grooming habits the war has taught him.

I = Intimacy (How are they during the moment, romantic aspect…) 

It’s a tender intimacy that controls the entire session. There’s no candles or roses (except for special occasion) but you can feel it, see it, in his actions. Kisses and touches start soft between compliments to butter you up. His forehead pressing against yours after that first, long, kiss.

After that it’s in his look. How he holds your gave and only shuts them away when he reaches his own brink.

J = Jack Off (Masturbation headcanon)

It’s more of a boredom thing then an actual need. When on long missions alone, or just when you’re busy and there’s nothing on TV, what’s the harm in rubbing one out?

K = Kink (One or more of their kinks)

His voice is something that’s been with him for his entire life. Even as a little guy he had a voice that made people listen. At least, until they realized who was speaking. With his upgraded body it took it to another level.

The command kink was something that developed quickly. Starting when you asked, “What do you want me to do?”. A slightly tilted head, almost looking down at you, he now tells you to get on your knees.

L = Location (Favourite places to do the do)

Steve hasn’t had a home since that Brooklyn apartment way back when. He’s lived places, many places but the closest to having his own space was with you. Whether it be a shared apartment, hotel room or anywhere that has a lock and you in it.

 M = Motivation (What turns them on, gets them going)

Either in the morning or at the end of the day. Where there’s no waiting messages, no emails or calls looking for attention. There’s nothing other than the two of you and a hard surface.

But, those moments are fragile. A ringing phone or the smallest charm can ruin the entire mood. Ensuring that, whoever was on the other end, was going to get the annoyed voice of either a captain or his woman.

N = NO (Something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)

Public. The farthest he would go with an audience was having you on his lap. And even then it was just for comfort, easier to keep a hand on those thighs, then for anything sexual. That you feel anything when sliding back into his lap is nothing more than accident.

O = Oral (Preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc)

He’d put a hand to your cheek when you’d start to slide down. Asking if you’d rather go first. Depending on your reaction he would take your place.

Old habits die hard, it would seem. Preferring to go down on you instead of receiving. It’s arguably where his real experience shines. With the use of his fingers all you hand do is grab the sheets or cover your mouth. These reactions making a smile come to his lips.  

P = Pace (Are they fats and rough? Slow and sensual? etc.)

It takes control on his part to keep from hurting you. More than once he’s gotten too into it. Leaving actual hand prints on your hips, each of the fast thrusts was like your insides were being punched. The first time you’ve ever had to use the safe word.

Since then he always starts slow. Only speeding up when it feels right and even then it’s done with control. It’s only when your safety isn’t at risk that he lets himself go loose.

Q = Quickie (Their opinions on quickies rather than proper sex, how often, etc.)

Sex, to Steve, was more of a reward then a simple physical reaction. That being said, when the opportunity shows itself, he has nothing against knocking one out. Easier to just go down on each other then penetration.  

R = Risk (Are they game to experiment, do they take risks, etc.)

After realizing his strength could be just as harmful as useful in a sexual situation he treads lightly. If anyone were to be tied up it would be him, if anyone was held down it’d be you (albeit gently) and the moment is likely to be ruined by needing a conversation before going any farther.

S = Stamina (How many rounds can they go for, how long do they last…)

Pressing over your worn-out body he’d kiss the side of your face, then your neck. Non-verbally asking for ‘just one more round’. Groaning but nodding your head he takes your hips. Pulling them back and up into position.

As a man with never ending stamina it shouldn’t be surprising that he can last longer than most. In the same vein he can go more rounds then those same other people. The real question is, can you keep up?

I can tell you for free that the answer is no.

T = Toy (Do they own toys? Do they use them? On a partner or themselves?)

Any toys would be things bought of curiosity or something you have brought in. More than once you’d find him googling things. His eyebrows knit together in the same manner they were when planning.

U = Unfair (how much they like to tease)

Steve was never one for teasing in bed. The moment a “please,” comes from your lips he’s put under your spell. Determined to do everything that would satisfy your brief begging.

On the other hand everything about Steve begged to be taught patience. There are few greater privileges then seeing Captain America in a state of babbling. Eyes rolling back and begs for you to keep going.

V = Volume (How loud they are, what sounds they make)

Growing up in apartments and spending time in tents teaches one be quiet. Most noises come from deep within his throat; whether clenching his teeth or from biting down on you.

You’d have to coax the sounds out of him. Going back into the teasing that can only be relieved by his sounds coming out more than they could. The sound of your name being chanted and praised like a prayer is something the world should hear. But it was only for you.

W = Wild Card (Get a random headcanon for the character of your choice)

It’s a secret that he take to his grave, but Steve will do everything to avoid any accidental pregnancies The serum altered him, cured his diseases and made more than a healthy human could ever be. But he never asked whether it would change his genetics.

It’d be too much of a gamble to pass any of his cured ailments onto the next generation. As much as he would love to see a little him, a little you, he couldn’t do that. He’s not that selfish.

X = X-Ray (Let’s see what’s going on in those pants)

Make as many jokes about steroids as you want but this didn’t affect that area. At eight inches it’s not the focus of these sexual encounters.

Y = Yearning (How high is their sex drive?)

It’s not something he’d focus on throughout the day. Instead focusing on seeing you again rather what would be done when he sees you.

It’s almost as if he remembers the possibilities after seeing you. Dropping little hints when your alone that he’s ready to go, only if you were, though. That his hand has been sliding up and up your thigh since getting home just happens to be a coincidence.

Z = ZZZ (… how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)

You’ll be out of it long before he does. A few times you’ve managed your eyes open as he settled down beside you. His chest would slow, and his breathing would deepen, but he’d still be awake enough to rub his fingers over your skin.

Watching his face and a small smile would appear, only pretending to sleep but wanting to give you the validation.

[prongsisabadger]

TWP Chapter 28

Wolffe and I spoke casually as we made our way towards the bridge. Not a lot had happened since I’d been gone, the Pack had mostly been assigned extractions, rescue missions and patrols among other things. The clone commander didn’t show his feelings on the lack of battlefront action, but then again, I was still his superior and it might have looked like he was complaining to some. He was glad I was back, I could tell that much. Wolffe might have looked like an emotionless steel blast wall, but the man was still a sentient, and sentients interacted with the Force. It was a quiet, tame feeling he allowed himself in the confines of his mind, but he would never allow it to show. Clone Commander Wolffe was many things, emotional was not one of them, even if he did feel things deeply in the privacy of his soul.

Like Obi-Wan, he felt safe because he was strong and reliable and fiercely loyal. But my Master at least allowed himself to show feelings to those he cared for and trusted the most. Wolffe was the kind of person that didn’t open up easily even to his closest friends, regardless of how deeply he felt about things. It was the kind of self control and discipline only extensive training and programming in a Kaminoan facility could grant. I was pretty sure Master Plo and I were the only ones that had an idea of how Wolffe felt about certain things, and it both felt like privilege and like I was intruding on something deeply personal. Those were things the Force told us about him, not things he had volunteered himself, so Master Plo and I had come to the silent agreement that we would not speak about them until he volunteered the information himself. It was both heartwarming and sad to have such a close, intimate look into a person such as him and not be able to share them because at the end of the day it would have been very intrusive.

That is how I knew it hadn’t been the 104th who had gifted me the vibroblade, it had been him. That is how I knew he was annoyed at the celebration the 212th wanted to throw for me. That is how I knew he liked my older armour best, because it didn’t have a wide, loud orange stripe. That is how I knew Art hadn’t been completely dishonest when he told me Wolffe was a little too protective of me.

And now, walking side by side, finally having a moment to ourselves in what seemed like years, I could feel how at ease he was. The Force around him flowed naturally, almost visible in how bright it felt, and yet, to the naked eye, he looked no different. His back straight and his pace leisurely, face relaxed as he spoke of his brothers’ shenanigans. He was so at peace, and for a moment there I didn’t realize that very peace was being reflected within me.

I was so lost in the feeling of the Force around him that I missed the question he asked me.

“Huh? I’m sorry, what was that?”

Wolffe cleared his throat and repeated the question, never taking his eyes off the corridor ahead.

“I was wondering about the new robes, Commander. They suit you.”

I looked down at myself. Right, the new robes. Last time he’d seen me I had been wearing a style that resembled Tusken robes. They had soon proved to be quite inefficient when I’d accidentally caught fire twice.

“Oh, right. I thought that since my armour represents who I fight for, who I fight with; then my robes should tell a story too. Where I came from, where I am, where I’m headed.” I answered truthfully.

“But, Commander, you don’t have the insignia of the Republic on your-” said Wolffe, confused for a second until his mind clicked. I could see the realization in his eyes. “Oh- don’t let anyone know that.” he added seriously, taking me by the arm and guiding me towards the wall for privacy. He looked in every direction before looking me dead in the eyes and saying the next words. “Some could call that treason, Commander.”

I smiled at him and put a hand on his bicep.

“You are not anyone, Wolffe. I trust you. You know I fight in this war because I have to, but I am not a soldier. I fight so that the Dark Side doesn’t win, I fight so that innocents don’t suffer, I fight because I can’t bear to see the Jedi commissioning an army of slaves and do nothing about it. I’m not blind, Wolffe, clones aren’t free, the war has hit you the hardest and until you are free to do your own will, the least I can do is keep you alive. This war cannot last forever.”

Wolffe was not one to show emotion, but I knew stoic when I saw it, and I had the Force. He wanted to disagree with me, he wanted to tell me he was a free man and that he fought because it was the right thing to do, but he knew that was not true. He wanted to tell me he was not a slave, he wanted to tell me that his brothers and him did not need protecting, that they did not need pity or saving, but he knew it wasn’t true.

He wanted to be angry, to contradict me, to defend the system, the very people that had created them, he wanted to say that without the war they would not exist. But existing to fulfil somebody else's purpose, to die for that cause that wasn’t his own, to know his life had no meaning of its own, that was not living. His eyes were conflicted, his soul tormented, his conscience raging because he wanted to fight, but he didn’t know how much of that will was his own.

In the end, all he could do was take a deep breath in to try and calm the storm raging inside of him and say:

“We will not betray your trust, Commander. I will not betray your trust.”

…

I had an entire week off with the Pack before our next deployment, and I spent every single moment of it catching up with the boys. After a disastrous night bar hopping in Coruscant, I promptly decided the Jedi had the right idea when they said alcohol was no good. One hangover was enough to last me a lifetime, thank you very much. I spent the day after napping on a cot while Art worked on my left shoulder blade, and only got up to sip on my water bottle -which Boost, Force bless him, refilled every time I emptied it- and to go to the refresher. At some point during noon, Twitch brough Art and I lunch from the mess hall and stayed to chat before going off to do some reading of his own. It was a very lazy day, and so were the ones that followed. Except for the evenings when Headfirst came to drag my ass to the training facility and made me do my lightsaber drills while he did his own thing. We would wrap up the day with a spar which, to be completely honest, wasn’t always a fair fight. Since I had the advantage of Jedi training, Headfirst had gotten into the habit of playing dirty. We had to agree on a new set of rules when he decided trying to get me angry with misogynistic comments was a perfectly good idea. He had a black eye for the next two days.

Once our week was over, briefings and preparations for our next mission to Khorm started. It was the first mission I would be in command of, Master Plo was being held up in Coruscant my Council duties and would not be coming with us. So the mission was technically in my hands -even if I did have Wolffe and Vero Zapal, our admiral. The situation in Khorm was unknown to us. Like in Orto Plutonia, the republic had lost contact with a clone division stationed there. The entire overview looked, at first glance, like a re-living of Orto Plutonia, since Khorm is also a frozen planet, but something felt terribly off to me. I told Wolffe and Zapal this, and that we would be going in to investigate with the utmost caution. Things never happened the same way twice, and I doubted the universe was going to go easy on me on my first command.

I was going to take every precaution and plan every last second of the mission, and prepare at least one contingency plan. I knew from experience that battles had a knack for throwing plans out the garbage shoot but it paid well to be prepared. Every maneuver, every flight route, every entrance, nook and cranny of the facility was taken into account; and every plan I made, I ran by both Wolffe and Admiral Zapal for their opinions.

It’s safe to say I didn’t really sleep well that week, not because of nightmares or resurfacing memories, but stress and anxiety does have a knack for making sleep restless. I meditated more during that week than I had before any battle I’d faught up until that point. I practiced mindfulness every morning as I woke up and tried my hardest to keep the Force as close to me as I could.

I tried to keep my appearance as neat and put together as I could, and tried to do the same to my quarters, but the amount of holomaps and  datapads on my desk were too many to keep in a neat pile. I didn’t want any aspect of my life to be neglected during that time, because neglect leads to darker places and I would not allow myself to be distracted in any way. Lives were at stake.

My friends helped in any way they could when they weren’t busy making their own preparations. Some sat with me during lunch, even when I was too busy reading to talk to them, others forced me to exercise or to take recreation breaks, others simply checked on me at night to make sure I wouldn’t stay up too late reading. It warmed my heart, even when I couldn’t tell them how thankful I was for taking care of me.

I also fell into the habit of performing my lightsaber drills every morning and every night. The funny feeling I had about the mission only grew as our departure date neared and something told me I needed to be ready. In any other situation, I would have considered the possibility that I was being paranoid, but we were at war against a very real enemy. It was only paranoia if they weren’t out to get you, and our enemy was.

It was almost time for lights out when Wolffe walked into the training facility. Only a section of it was lit up, the one that I was still using. I repeated form after form, one, two, ten, forty times until I was satisfied with it. I felt him approach me from the darkness, but I didn’t acknowledge him until he stood a few feet away from me, watching, waiting for me to stop. I didn’t.

“You should turn in for the night, Commander.” He said finally, never shifting his posture. Straight, solid, face and body language betraying nothing as he stood with his hands at his back.

“My forms aren’t as good as they should be, I’m staying for at least another 50 reps” I said, never stopping, my pace never dwindling. “Go to bed, Wolffe.”

He said nothing, but he also didn’t move. Wolffe just stood there, watching me move through the forms once, twice, three times. He wasn’t annoyed, I knew that much. He wasn’t pitying me either, he was simply there to make sure I didn’t work myself to exhaustion. He didn’t even feel resigned, it felt like he knew me well enough that he didn’t expect me to stop when he asked me to. He felt determined, like he knew the only way to get me to listen right then would be waiting for me to be done. There were times to insist and times to wait, he had known me long enough to identify each of those instances and react accordingly.

Wolffe knew I was nervous and doing my very best so that everything went smoothly. He knew the thing that stressed me out the most was the fact that his brothers’ lives, my friends’ lives might be in danger. He knew I would blame myself for each and every loss we suffered, and he knew this was my way of getting ready for that. Because we would lose men, we always did. But up until that point, I had never been the one in charge, I had never been responsible for the cones’ deaths, not really.

So Wolffe stood there, silent and strong and reassuring. Because he knew nothing he said would make me feel any less responsible, because he knew the best thing he could do was to be there for me.

[firelord-frowny]

I’ve talked a little bit about how at least one ~negative aspect~ of white supremacy/racism that impacts white people is that it can be SO DIFFICULT to avoid being Accidentally Racist over something that really shouldn’t have been that deep, and WOULDN’T have been that deep if not for the pervasiveness of white supremacy in america, and this bit about the lil country band Lady Antebellum and the controversy surrounding their name illustrates that pretty well, I think:

The band members have always said that the band's name was chosen arbitrarily, complaining about the difficulty of choosing a name. Inspired by the "country" style nostalgia of a photo shoot at a mansion from the Antebellum South, they said, "one of us said the word and we all kind of stopped and said, man, that could be a name"[40] and "Man that's a beautiful Antebellum house, and that's cool, maybe there's a haunted ghost or something in there like Lady Antebellum."[41] Haywood concluded, "[We] had a lady in the group, obviously, and threw Lady in the front of it for no reason. I wish we had a great resounding story to remember for the name, but it stuck ever since."[40] The name was always controversial, with a critic in Ms. Magazine writing in 2011 that the band's name "seems to me an example of the way we still — nearly 150 years after the end of the Civil War, nearly 50 years after the Civil Rights Act; and in a supposedly post-racial country led by a biracial president — glorify a culture that was based on the violent oppression of people of color".[41][42]

On June 11, 2020, joining widespread commercial response to the George Floyd protests,[41] the band announced it would abbreviate its name to its existing nickname "Lady A"[43] in an attempt to blunt the name's racist connotations.[1] The band members stated on social media that, never having previously sought the dictionary definition of the word "antebellum", they now consulted their "closest black friends and colleagues" so that their "eyes opened wide to the injustices, inequality and biases black women and men have always faced and continue to face every day. Now, blind spots we didn't even know existed have been revealed."[44] Fan response was mixed, with many decrying virtue signaling or even disparaging the protests.[41]American Songwriter said, "Given that the world knows what that A stands for, to many this change does little more than add extra insult to this ongoing injury."[45]

The next day, it was widely reported that the name "Lady A" had already been in use for more than 20 years by Seattle-based African American activist and blues, soul, funk, and gospel singer Anita White. The band again admitted ignorance of any prior use, which White called "pure privilege". Interviewed by Rolling Stone, White described the band's token acknowledgement of racism while blithely appropriating an African American artist's name: "They're using the name because of a Black Lives Matter incident that, for them, is just a moment in time. If it mattered, it would have mattered to them before. It shouldn't have taken George Floyd to die for them to realize that their name had a slave reference to it. It's an opportunity for them to pretend they're not racist". A veteran music industry lawyer observed that such name clashes are uncommon due to the existence of the Internet.[46][47] The band members contacted White the next week to apologize for having inadvertently co-opted and dominated her name,[48] saying that the Black Lives Matter movement had inspired them to a collaborative attitude. They nonetheless required retaining the same name, though she believed dual-naming is inherently impossible.[49]She said "We talked about attempting to co-exist but didn't discuss what that would look like"[48] because the band members would not directly respond to that explicit question three times during the conversation or in two contract drafts. She soon submitted a counteroffer that either the band would be renamed, or that her act would be renamed for a $5 million fee plus a $5 million donation to be split between Seattle charities, a nationwide legal defense fund for independent artists, and Black Lives Matter.[49]

On July 8, 2020, the band filed a lawsuit against White, asking a Nashville court to affirm its longstanding trademark of the name. The press release read: "Today we are sad to share that our sincere hope to join together with Anita White in unity and common purpose has ended. She and her team have demanded a $10 million payment, so reluctantly we have come to the conclusion that we need to ask a court to affirm our right to continue to use the name Lady A, a trademark we have held for many years."[50]

On September 15, 2020, White filed a counter-suit asserting her claim to the Lady A trademark and rejecting the notion that both artists could operate in the same industry under the same brand identity. She is seeking damages for lost sales and a weakened brand, along with royalties from any income the band receives under the Lady A moniker.[51][52]

Like????????? this REALLY didn’t need to be a thing. 

And one thing I think black folks and other poc need to chill out with is dismissing any white person’s attempt at Being Better in how they move through a white supremacist world in a way that seeks to undo or at least not exacerbate white supremacy. I can TOTALLY believe that, in their white ignorant bliss, this band really did choose their name without realizing for a moment that it might leave a fucked up taste in some people’s mouths. Honestly like... antebellum IS a cool sounding word lmfao and if it wasn’t so heavily associated with slavery-era america, i’d wanna name something antebellum, too! 

And like, yes, it’s true that it ~shouldn’t have taken george floyd’s death~ for anyone at all to suddenly decide that they want to go a little bit out of their way to denounce or at least not seem to promote racism in some small way. But it did. And it does. And every fucking time there’s a gross act of violence and injustice acted out on a person of color in front of the world, there’s always going to be a brand new white person out there who Sees The Light for the very first time. That doesn’t mean their new perspective isn’t genuine, and it doesn’t mean it happened All Of A Sudden. If anything, it was something they’d been thinking about for a long time, but didn’t know how to address it, or what to say, or who to say it to, or how to talk about it in their own community. OBVIOUSLY that problem is WAY LESS BAD than, ya know, actually experiencing racism, but it’s still a real thing that some white folks go through, and being mad about it isn’t going to make it NOT a real thing. it shouldn’t have taken george floyd’s death. it shouldn’t have taken trayvon martin’s death. it shouldn’t have taken the instatement of one of the most vile human beings to ever assault the face of the earth for This Person or That Person to finally want to make a positive and public change, BUT IT DID. It always does. That, unfortunately, is How It Works. 

And so, this band adjusts it’s name in an effort to not seem hostile. OBVIOUSLY it’s not a grand show of solidarity. OBVIOUSLY it’s not meant to convince anyone that they’re Super Amazing White People Who Will Stop At Nothing For Racial Equality. It was literally just a small, simple gesture. They’re just modifying their image, because they were no longer comfortable with knowing how that word makes a lot of people feel. Bc like... let’s be real: probably a solid ZERO of their fanbase would have given a shit if they’d just left the name as it was. Nobody who’s going to a Lady Antebellum concert was pouting about the name. And if anything, they prolly stood a better chance of LOSING fans for ~being politically correct~ than gaining fans for changing their name to something less annoying. 

And it JUST SO HAPPENS that the slight lil adjustment they made to their name steps on the toes of an existing artist, and it JUST SO HAPPENS that this artist is black, and is also an ACTIVIST in social and racial justice. 

Oops. 

And so, obviously people don’t interpret it as an honest mistake. Instead, it’s a result of white privilege. And I mean like??? ok, maybe it is. But I ALSO had never heard of Anita White until I read this fucking wiki page lmfao. So like... my ignorance isn’t due to no white privilege on my part. Maybe it’s a consequence of a white supremacist culture that wouldn’t glorify her and celebrate her and put her name everywhere... but that’s a different thing from privilege. 

So now not only are the bands efforts to adjust to a world that’s becoming more aware of racial injustice being dismissed as disingenuous or too-little-too-late, but now they’re ALSO being accused of Using Their White Privilege to trample all over an artist they’d never heard of. 

i DO think that after finding out the name was already taken, and after talking with her about it and determining that she wasn’t interested in sharing - as is her right - they should have just said “ok, sorry, thanks for talking with us about it” and picked something different. i think it’s kinda ridiculous that they think they should sue her and i think she’s HELLA right for suing their asses right back, and I hope she gets her damn money. 

But I’m also cognizant of how emotionally/psychologically upsetting it can feel to have to just Change Your Name after so many years of living with it. It makes sense that despite their desire to adapt and choose a new name that doesn’t make people cringe, they still want to try to hold on to the feeling that THEY associated with their own name. “Lady A” seemed like a happy medium: They can remain Who They Are while also showing that Who They Are is someone who’s not trying to glorify a disgusting era of history. But if “Lady A” isn’t an option... what’s left? What else could they call themselves that wouldn’t feel like a totally new, alien identity?? 

So, I understand how, on an emotional level, they want to fight to keep it. 

But uh. They really need to just Be Sad about it and let it go. Just consider it one of the small, upsetting sacrifices that white folks may sometimes have to make as we ALL struggle and stumble through this fuckin long-ass road of Making The World Less Terrible For People Of Color, and move on. 

But yeah, like. 

It’s fucking ridiculous that this was even an issue, and it was only an issue because of racism!!!!! If white supremacists didn’t manufacture a culture that oppresses people of color and glorifies the pre-civil-war era SPECIFICALLY for the good ol slavery, then perhaps people could wax poetic about the artistic and environmental aesthetic of that era without it being assumed that they Must Be Racist. Bc like??? idk if yall know this lmfao but i LOVE????? colonial american music. like, the kind of stuff with that Ashokan Farewell vibe. I think it sounds beautiful. And i really fuckin love the black spiritual music that was developed in that time. and i think so much of the architecture and fashion was so???? Nice. Just pleasant! But I can’t even get myself to fully enjoy it because of all the fuckin connotations that have been stuck to it. 

A band should be able to name theirself a name without it being such a goddamn fucking cultural crisis. 

But they can’t! And it is! 

Thanks, White Supremacy! 

[the-light-of-stars]

hi!!! I remember reading one of the tags on one of your posts about how white people are like always racist and that they need to constantly unlearn racism. That's a vague summary so sorry but in the tags you said there was something psychological to do with it? Can you explain that so I can use it to explain to others???

Hi anon!! First of all it’s great that you’re trying to learn more about stuff like this and want to help explain to others!!

Second: I am white, so I can’t draw the line at what is or isn’t racist and my opinion/ arguments shouldn’t be the focus here. Instead I’d suggest reading through some of the notes of the post you mentioned because some actual POC, who are affected by day to day racism, explained more about it there and I don’t won’t to speak over their voices. (Also the op isn’t by me I’ve just reblogged it, but idk if that’s what you meant).

However since you asked about a particular tag and I don’t want to leave you without an answer I’m going to explain what i meant with it - if I’m overstepping here though, please tell me cause I really don’t want that.

Ok so in the tag you’re talking about I mentioned that internalized racism , on a sociological basis (there’s probably psychological explanations about it as well but I’m not a psychologist) can be related to the term of the Habitus.

Habitus is an important term in sociology that in its most common understanding has been introduced by the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu.

To put it simply the Habitus is aspects of behavior that are 1. Usually unconscious and 2. Internalized through society and social standing. It’s not something someone was born with but something someone was born into.

Basically Bourdieu researched differences between social classes (and other social identifiers) and found out that members of specific groups didn’t just identify as members of their group because of objective criteria (for example wealth) but also because of their behavior - which, in many cases, the people didn’t even realize themselves - and that this is a phenomenon that happens not only in one aspect of societal structures but all of them (eg not just when it comes to class, but also to race, gender, orientation, etc etc.) and is something that is learned by exposure to the social circle you live in and also will stick with you your whole life, even if you can change parts of it.

(Because Bourdieu mainly researched different social classes and because I’ve only ever experienced xenophobic microaggressions but not racist ones in that sense, which means I lack the necessary understanding to talk about those in depth (also I’m white so it’s not my place to say what is and isn’t racism) I’ll use an example about classism instead)

For example: a rich person that has been born into wealth will never really know what it is like to be poor and what struggles poor people face. They can read all literature on class disparity in existence, and yet because they lack personal experience they will never truly know what it is like to be poor. So I’m all their actions, even if they try their best to not be classist, this lack of personal experience and the lack of understanding that comes with it will shine through in one way or another, usually unintentionally, because it is simply part of their ingrained behavioral structure. To them something can be completely innocuous and yet show their lack of understanding that’s been ingrained through growing up in the society they did in.

As an example: a rich person has a poor friend, who they care for dearly. One day when out and about together, the poor friend accidentally breaks their new phone and starts to panic about it. The rich friend tries to calm them down : “It’s ok please don’t cry, it’s just a phone - you can buy a new one!” . To them this statement shows their concern for their dear friend and is an attempt at calming them down by reassuring their friend and making them see the situation isn’t that bad and is fixable.

But instead of calming them down, this statement makes the friend cry even more. Because they can’t just buy a new phone, they don’t have the money. They’ve been saving up for this phone for months and now they have to cut edges all over again while also havibn to deal with not having a phone in a society where having one is pretty much a necessity. But the rich friend didn’t consider that - they couldn’t! Because in the life they live a 1000$ phone can be replaced at any moment, like you could replace a missing paper clip (I say, as if I haven’t panicked about this once as well cause I had to spend 2€ on a whole new pack of clips and couldn’t pay for my lunch that day because of that..). To the rich friend the situation registered only as a mild nuisance, but not as something worth crying or panicking over, because to them that’s what it is, which is why they acted accordingly.

They acted like they did because it’s the behavior and worldview they grew up with, and because it’s impossible for them to really understand the experience of someone who isn’t rich, because they’ve never had to experience it themselves and grew up in a society that was nothing but beneficial to them. So what they can do in the situation of the example, is apologizing for unintentionally upsetting their friend even more, educate themselves on why their friend reacted like that (eg learn about poor peoples situations through first hand accounts or scientific literature) ,work on themselves to ensure they won’t make the same mistake a second time, examine their behavior to see where it stems from and how to unlearn and help their friend , for example by offering to buy them a new phone (though they also have to accept it if the friend refuses their help or tells them it’s not their business.). And of course they also have to , at least try to, accept that what they did was wrong and that they aren’t exempt from making mistakes again in the future (because unlearning learnt behaviors takes a crap ton of work and won’t ever be fully possible, which is something that anyone who ever had a bad habit (-> which stems from the same root as the sociological term: the Latin word habitus , which has a lot of different meanings but literally translated to ‘something one has’) and tried to get rid of it knows.)

Bourdieu mainly focused his studies to the concept of Habitus on social class , but the concept is translatable to any other kind of socially learned behavior.

A straight person will always show homophobic behavior.

A cis person will always show transphobic behavior

A male person will always show misogynistic behavior. (Also before any terf tries to use this for their rhetoric: trans women face the same issues cis women face (as well as the added issues specific to trans people), because they are women and have to deal with misogyny as any other woman does. So don’t even try). (Edit: I first wrote ‘a cis male person will always show misogynistic behavior’ which is exactly the kind of unintentional mistake I’m talking about. Because writing it like this is already making a weird distinction between cis and trans men, and also implies trans men would be excempt from misogyny when they , just like any other men, aren’t either. Sorry for that!)

And, most importantly in the context of the op and your ask as well as the current situation, a white person will always show racist behavior.

No matter how hard a white person tries, no matter how much they educate themselves, listen to the voices of people in racial minorities (in this specific case black people), or how much they help - they can’t ever understand completely and can’t ever completely get rid of their internalized behavior , so with their Habitus they’ll always show their being privileged in a racist society.

Does this mean white people should just go ‘well if I can’t ever get rid of my internalized racism I don’t even have to try’ ? No. Because even if you always will keep making unintentional mistakes, it’s better to make those unintentional mistakes once, acknowledge them and try to avoid them in the future , than it is to make an unintentional mistake and then keep repeating it intentionally for the rest of your life simply because you couldn’t be bothered to try better.

Does this mean white people should be patting themselves on the back for trying to unlearn? Also no. Because for one like I said its impossible to ever truly unlearn every racist behavior, and two: trying to unlearn bad behavior isn’t some great feat, it’s basic decency. Just like in the example you wouldn’t call the rich friend a hero for trying not make their poor friend upset again, because that’s basic decency - of course they shouldn’t make their friend upset again that’s what being a friend is! So in a similar vein being an ally to Poc is trying your best to not harm anymore, and to acknowledge that even if you’re not doing it intentionally you’re hurting others with your behavior and help uphold a harmful system as long as you just ignore and profit from it.

As an example for this just read some of the replies on the op you mentioned: there’s dozens of white people applauding themselves for being ‘not at all racist’ or saying it’s impossible for them to be racist because their parents are voting for democrats or because they themselves are part of a different marginalized community (eg a woman, or part of the lgbt+ community). when that is just. Not the case. Because racism is a learnt behavior that can never get rid of completely. Because people don’t just learn behaviors from their parents but also from the rest of society (and even if they’d only learn from their parents they will also have internalised racist behaviors). Because being part of one marginalized group doesn’t mean you automatically have perfect understanding of the struggles of everyone else and this are now infallible (if that were the case then please explain how the leader of Germany’s most notorious right wing extremist party is a lesbian woman). Etc etc.

So, does this mean you should self flaggate over every little mistake? No of course not. You should realize your mistake, accept it and try to unlearn the behavior that led to it. Constant self punishment doesn’t help and might just make matters worse. And more than that by self flaggelating you will end up forcing others to pity you for being sad, instead of rightfully pointing out your mistake or investing energy to help or learn themselves - which is especially isnidious if the people that have to ‘cheer you up’ are poc themselves. It will also prevent people from pointing out your mistakes in the future because they’ll be worried you’d self hate for it again, making it even harder for yourself to unlearn bad behaviors. (also yes this point might be a bit hypocritical for me because I tend to apologize a dozen times to everyone for any small mistake no matter what the mistake was even about, but that’s something I try to work on bettering because oh wow is that a toxic behavior, no matter how understandable it might be)

So, lastly, what can you do? You can realize your mistake. Accept it. Learn what caused it and why it was harmful. Try your best to not make this or similar mistakes again. Understand and accept that you will inevitably make mistakes again. Understand that you’re not infallible. Understand that you live in and profit off of a harmful system. Listen to people from the affected communities and accept their opinions. Help where you can - even if it’s just by being a good friend. And don’t victimize yourself in the process.

I hope this made it a bit less vague and made my tag clear. Also again: I’m not infallible either and since I’m white i also might make hurtful mistakes, so if there’s anything wrong in this reply or if I’m overstepping with this please let me know so I can try to fix that. Also for the same reason take my opinions and explanations with a grain of salt and look up what people from the actually affected communities have said about this topic.

I hope this was coherent enough and I wish you (and everyone else who might still be reading at this point) a great day, Anon! (Also : if youre able to and want to help people who are actually affected by racism there’s many organizations and causes that currently need the help! )

[piperdelaprim]

Headcanon: If Piper made a coming out video (Piper x Tara)

[Yes lads, this is another Tiper piece, with a little bit of a different format. She won't mention her by name, but now you'll know who she's referring to.]

Also, to keep this shorter on the dash, I’ve added the “keep reading” cut after the intro! Sorry for not adding this before! Also this took me 2 months to finish it be like that sometimes tho

Piper: [mellow] Hi guys...

[After saying that shyly, she For about 10 seconds, Piper, while sitting down, stares at the camera and then shifts her focus to her laptop screen, examining how she looks with a rare casual outfit while contemplating on her next set of words.]

Piper: So I don't think anybody's ever gonna see this. I highly doubt in God's name that I'm ever gonna post this somewhere,

[Piper slightly chuckles at her own statement, but quickly shifts back to her serious tone]

Piper: ...but I have to say it. To somebody--er, somethin' rather.

[She chuckles once again]

Piper: As a lot of people know, I'm...well, not poor. I grew up very wealthy, and very fortunate.

Piper: [Her tone raises slightly] So damn fortunate that I got bored of it! [Yet another chuckle] Kiddin', kiddin', but I didn't feel like I had a life to live, uh, I didn't feel free, is a better way to say it. I kinda knew as a kid that I was missing a lil' somethin' in my life. Of course when I was a little child I didn't get this dang philosophical, but it was always there. And I know, I know. I pro'lly sound privileged as hell, but at the end of the day I'm grateful for everything I've endured thus far, but that's not the point here.

[Piper lets out a large sigh before continuing with her story]

Piper: My momma and poppa...though I love 'em to death, God bless their hearts, they wanted me to get married as soon as I can. I was...well...I ain't sure if this is how you say it but, conditioned to think that, that um...I was gonna get married...like a normal girl would! [Pause]

Piper: [Sarcastically] Well, I'm still not married!

[Piper pauses to drink the water cup beside her and then looks at the camera again for a couple moments before continuing]

Piper: And I really wasn't sure why I felt like nobody ever felt like they were...you know...the one! I mean, my life is already so dang crazy, I don't brawl for money or fame, but to, uh, release all the anger within me--to make up for all the times I couldn't resist what I was told to do. The funny thing is...I'm well over the adult age--and I still don't feel so free. I suppose I'm independent, but not exactly...free. If that makes sense.

[About to talk about the most serious part of her life, Piper lets out another big sigh]

Piper: I was set up with many different men by my family, and most of them were very kind and courteous toward me. They were all very good men, but fallin' in love with them was very hard for me to do--it ain't somethin' that came naturally. Well, I ain't been in love for a very very long time. Last time I was in love--it was many years ago--it didn't seem to work out, and lookin' back, it's hard for me to understand why things happened the way they did. Maybe it truly wasn't meant to be, I don't know, but the stars...didn't align. [quietly] They...uh...never did. But anyway, now it's a different time for the rest of the world; we're becomin' more open to each other and we're becomin' more accepting of things I couldn't have imagined being okay when I was growin' up. I'm talkin' about...being gay.

[Nervously, Piper laughs quietly to lighten the mood for herself]

Piper: Being gay, in my household and my family...was...unheard of. I'd like to say even forbidden. We're Christians and they said we can't be gay. I don't even know who the hell "they" is, but it was made sure of that I cannot be gay. It was even an insult I heard growin' up--and my, my, people thought it was a brutal word. Many of my classmates used to say it left n' right thinkin' that their dignities would be stripped for good! And frankly, because of the cruel world we live in, I thought bein' gay was weird, not normal, sinful even. 'Cause to everybody else it was, and I was predetermined to think the same.

[Piper suddenly starts smiling widely out of nowhere, and starts to chuckle, thinking fondly of the next thing she is about to say.]

Piper: Sorry! I get pretty damn giddy thinkin' about this part. I'm just...well I'll just tell you. So anyway, fast forward to present day. I brawled for the hell of it, just for fun. I thought I was straight but life didn't treat me very well.

[Piper suddenly remembers this aspect of her life and the mood shifts back to its original serious tone, but slightly more mellow.]

Piper: I got shit everyday. Sometimes just for breathin'. And it sucked for me. I didn't fit in because people were scared o' me. I was lonely, I was sad, I was...empty to the point where I thought disappearin' would be the answer. It wasn't great to be me at the time. There were such beautiful people havin' the time of their lives out in the battlefield--some o' them so madly in love with either each other or with life as a whole. And I was as jealous as a girl could be. I wanted that so darn badly that my anger built up too much to the point where I just shut everyone out. I also became too violent out in the battlefield and accidentally physically hurt too many people that didn't deserve a scratch. It began to all be too much.

[Piper then remembered the good part about her story, and she starts smiling brightly once again]

Piper: Anyway, this is what you’ve been waiting for, them little happy moments! It’s still a secret, sorta. But at least I can talk about it. So, um, I met this lovely lady in town one day, and I was feelin’ kinda hopeless so I went to talk to her about stuff, ‘cause I had no one. I thought I was a lil mad for just goin’ to some random stranger and ask ‘em about what I should do about my sad ol’ life. And to my surprise she read me like a book...with her cards! [laughs] It was crazy! She just clicked with me so fast, it was somethin’ I never felt before. You know, it made my heart race a lil. 

[She laughs again, except more nervously]

Piper: I’m actually a little nervous right now talkin' about her 'cause it's so scary but, obviously what we have was more than what meets the eye! [She laughs nervously again, but then continues to smile] I'm so nervous talkin' about this because it was against everythin' I knew. It didn't feel right at all, but my feelin's couldn't take it anymore. I was already so restricted in my normal life and everythin' prior to it, I couldn't let this opportunity to be happy go. Again, I thought I was a fool tellin' er how I felt. I mean, what if she wasn't...you know?! But like I said my own happiness was on the line. All the signs added up, for some odd reason I was confident enough that my chances were high. Ah, haha...my mom always taught me to shoot my shot...ahh she might be a lil' disappointed at me though! Well anyway, that new lovely lady with a mask told me she felt the same, and at that moment I never felt more free in my life. I was so scared to my stomach, I was scared of rejection, not only from her but from the rest of the world. Even though it felt so wrong to do, the feeling afterward felt so right.

[Piper takes a short breath and takes a sip of water.]

Piper: Well, I've been ramblin' and ramblin' but I will say this last thing. Love can fix a lot of things--not everythin', but a lot. I still got my issues, life ain't gonna be dandy forever just 'cause I found my lover, but consider this: do things because of love, doesn't gotta be that icky, cheesy type o' love that I was talkin' to you about, but it could be your family, your friends, whoever or whatever, alright! I realized I brawl 'cause I hated myself, not 'cause I loved the adrenaline or the glory. I also realized that I denied this part of me for so long cause I was scared, and I hated feelin' more outcasted than I usually had. I'm still tryin' my best to set myself free, but it's a process that became a little better for me to handle. Just don't do things outta hate or outta fear, it ain't good for you, it ain't good for nobody.

[Piper's cell phone rings, once she finishes her sentence, she picks it up]

Piper: [on the phone] Hey love! How much did you earn today? [She smiles as the person on the other end speaks] That's good. I would be more than happy help you if you wanted, it's what I should do for you, but you keep on sayin' no! [Inaudibly, the person on the other end speaks as she laughs happily]

Piper: [on the phone] I'll come by later for sure! I don't exactly need a readin' though, I'd just love to talk normally. Did you want to...

[Piper uses her cursor to stop the recording before she could finish her question to the person on the other side of the line.]

...

And scene. I hope you enjoyed it! This was a long time coming but I'm so happy I was able to finish it!

[khadij-al-kubra]

Thomas in Wonderland  (ch 3)

Characters: Thomas (fictional), Virgil, Roman, Patton, Logan, Remy, Emile, Joan, Talyn, Deceit, Nate, The Dragon Witch, fan adopted short vid characters

Word Count: 1739

Summary: Thomas gets trolled by flowers and has a good cry

Author’s Note: Hey everyone! So happy to see that people are having fun with this story so far. I know i’m having a lot of fun writing it! Also big news is that I now have an AO3 account! So you can check this and other stories out there if you’d like. As always I am open to any writing critiques or tips you may have, and any likes, comments or reblogs would be immensely appreciated! Also please let me know if you would like to be tagged in future chapters for this fanfic or any of my other future writings. So last time, we were just entering a lovely garden...  

Flowers & Floods

Thomas couldn’t say for sure how long he’d been walking for, since, he still couldn’t decipher the Black Rabbit’s watch, but at best guess probably a good 15-30 minutes. He wished there was more of that growing grape soda. Not only because it would’ve been nice to get back to his normal size (being so small got to be pretty disorienting after a while), but also he was really thirsty from walking so much.

“Maybe Talyn has a point about carrying a travel water bottle everywhere,” Thomas said to himself. “But carrying it around gets cumbersome. Plus it always bangs against your leg    and then you get a little bruise on my thigh. Then again, if you had some water on you then maybe you wouldn’t feel so dehydrate and cranky now.”

He sagged a bit at his own reasoning, knowing he had a point. Was it worse to lose an argument with yourself or better?

“Well, at least it’s a beautiful day.” he mused to himself, trying to keep up his moral.

And it truly was lovely beyond that tiny door into this larger than life garden. The sapphire sky was bright overhead above the canopy of big grass blades, and the sun shone through the broad green leaved making them look like sheets of emerald. The soil beneath his sneakers was slightly soft, not enough to sink into and get stuck but it felt like a vacation for his tired feet. Clear drops of dew still lingering on the stems shimmered like crystal bobbles. Sure there was the occasional beetle crossing, but hey, at least there weren’t any spiders.

But oh, the flowers were by far the most beautiful part. There were so many different kinds, some he recognized others he didn’t. And their natural perfume gave off a heady aroma that was present yet not overwhelming. Their colors were so vibrant they almost looked like candy, yet Thomas could tell they would no doubt be velvety to the touch. And they were HUGE! True, that was only because he was tiny, but still.

Thomas sighed. “It’d be a lot more enjoyable if I actually knew where I was going.”

He still wanted to find the Black Rabbit, but only knew he’d come through this giant garden. There was no way else he could have gone. If there was actually a path then Thomas was too small to see it. There was a chance he might’ve already been on it, but from way down to the ground he had no way of knowing for sure. Thomas had hoped that by keeping straight (heh) he’d eventually get somewhere, but there was nothing around that told him where anywhere was. No people. No signs. Nothing.

“It’s too bad I can’t just ask the flowers for directions,” Thomas said. “Bet they could tell me where I am. Not that flowers can talk.”

“Oi! Who says we can’t talk?”

“GAH!” Thomas jumped back, started by hearing a voice other than his own for the first time since the Black Rabbit. “Who said that?”

“Up here ya twat!”

“And over here.”

“And here.”

The voices had Thomas turning in circles. Finally he decided to follow the first one’s advice to look up and his jaw dropped. He was staring into the face of a petunia. As in the flower literally had a face with eyes and a mouth and all.

“Wha-was that…you?” Thomas asked.

“Well of course it was me, who else?” Judging by the pout and the way its petals bent to rest on its stem, it appeared to be a properly put out Petunia.

“And me!” said an Iris.

“And me,” said a Tiger Lily

“And me too,” said a Daisy.

“Me, me! Pay attention to me!” said a Rose.

Thomas could only gape as the flowers around drooped down around him, their eyes scrutinizing every inch of him harder than a live stream audience. One part of his brain told him to close his mouth and that it was rude to stare. Another part of his brain told him HOLY HECK! THESE FLOWERS CAN TALK!?!? He went with the latter thought.

“HOLY HECK, YOU FLOWERS CAN TALK!?”

“Well of course we can talk,” said the Iris. “What ever made you think we couldn’t? That’s pretty presumptuous of you.”

“Well it’s just, flowers don’t typically talk where I’m from.”

“Umm why does this little sprout assume we’re all flowers?” said a Dandelion. “You don’t think weeds should be proud of who they are?”

“Oh! Well of course you can,” said Thomas. “I didn’t mean to offend any plant.”

Of all the things that had happened so far to Thomas today, this was by far the most curious.  Who would’ve thought that a bunch of would flowers could be so, well, mean? Still, they were the only ones around who could possibly help him, so he took a breath to calm his growing headache and put on a friendly face.

“Actually, I was wondering if you lovely, uh, flora could help me. See, I’m looking for a Black Rabbit. He passed through here and I have—“

“So what sort of a plant are you anyway?” asked the Petunia.

“It doesn’t look like a flower,” said the Iris. “Where are its petals? It’s not a real flower if it doesn’t have colorful petals.”

“Its colors are so dull,” said the Daisy.

“Oh, uh, I’m not a plant. I’m a person. My name is Thomas and I—”

“Tho-mas,” said the Tiger Lily. “That’s a pretty stupid name for a plant species, don’t you think? Why not be creative and come up with something more original?”

“Well that’s my name and I happen to like it. And I’ll have you know that I can be very creative, at least I think—“

“Do you really need to brag so much?” asked the Petunia. “It just makes plants like you desperate, fishing for likes and compliments.”

Thomas huffed. “Listen, I just need to know where—“

“That’s the ugliest flower I’ve ever seen,” said the Rose.

“Oh my gosh, I’ll bet it doesn’t even get pruned,” said the Tiger Lily

These plants were really getting on his last nerve. “Look I’m kinda lost here! I-I had a hard day, am super small, and I’d really like to get back to my regular size—“

“Well not all of us have a choice of whether or not we can grow bigger,” said the Dandelion. “Or even grow prettier.”

“Could you just please—”

“Yeah, that’s pretty selfish of you dontcha think?”

“Is this even a real plant?”

“Maybe you should check your privilege.”

That was it! “GGNNHHAAAAAAAA!!!!”

Thomas ran away from the barrage of critical flowers as fast as he could. He didn’t pay attention to the direction, only knowing that he had to get away from all those harsh comments. He ran and ran through the garden until his aching calves screamed at him to stop. Finally he plopped down on a dirt mount in the middle of an open field to rest.

Well that’s just great. Thomas thought as he caught his breath. Now I’m tired, thirsty, I’ve got a headache, those flowers were NO help at all, and I’m STILL lost! It wasn’t like like Thomas couldn’t take a healthy dose of constructive criticism, but those plants were being just would not let up with their mean words. Like what did he ever do to them? He could feel the stress of his day so far, from the writers block to the fall to now, building up so much that there was only one thing he could do.

Thomas let himself have a good cry, because gosh darn it, men could cry too!

He cried and cried, felt the teardrops billow over down his cheeks. Perhaps it was because he wasn’t at normal size, but he could feel the salty tears taking up more space on his face, as though they were Studio Ghibli style tears. Once he started, Thomas just couldn’t seem to stop crying. He felt silly for making such a big fuss like this, letting all those hurtful comments get to him even though none of it was true. The embarrassment of this only made him cry even more. Thomas was so in the throes of letting out his pent up emotions that he didn’t realize he was creating a puddle around himself. Which turned into a small pond, which turned into a sizeable lake, until finally the water was up to his shoulders.

“Oh no!” Thomas cried out. “Oh great, now look at the mess I’ve made!”

Thomas still could not stop crying, but he was in enough possession of his faculties that he started to doggy paddle so as not to drown in his own river of tears he was making. At least it wasn’t the ocean, although the water was certainly salty enough to seem like one. Thomas never did well in open waters, and the fear seemed to kick in the fight aspect of his anxiety. Thomas mentally pulled himself together enough that he was only sniffling now, and he focused his body to keep swimming.

After ten or fifteen swimmers strokes he realized that there was really no need to swim so hard. The river of tears carried him along smoothly, and he could just let himself float. It was a big relief and frankly one of the few helpful things that had happened to him so far. It was a nice change to get his bearings.

“Boy, I really let myself get carried away with all that crying, huh?” Hehe. Dad joke. “I’ve gotta say though, I do feel better. I guess sometimes you’ve just gotta let it all out. And by the looks of it, I had a LOT to let out!

He only hoped that he hadn’t accidentally drowned out all those flowers back in the garden. Even if they probably deserved it, the thorny twigs. Last time he would let a bunch of attention seeking flowers get to him. And sure, he was still kind of lost and unsure of whether or not he was still heading towards the same direction as the Black Rabbit had been going. But at least he was still going in a direction. Thomas was optimistic that eventually he’d come across the furry fella again.

But I can’t keep floating along like this forever.

<=PREV

NEXT=>

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[braindamageforbeginners]

A New Doctor

Cycle 9, Day 10

So, I now have at least a half-dozen physicians on my case. If you believe the BMJ stat that “medical misadvenure” (which is a broad category that includes, but is not limited to, doctor error, nursing error, pharmacy screw-ups, misdiagnosis, accidental overdose/drug interactions, opportunistic infections - the list goes on) is the third-leading cause of death in America (according to the same study, heart disease is #1 and cancer is #2). So, for those for those of you setting odds on my life expectancy (and, frankly, I’d be disappointed if you didn’t), it’s been an odd, extended game of “Clue,” except I’m Mr. Body, to see if disease, side-effects, or my possibly-insane physicians will get to me first. I hate to say it, but I think I’ve finally figured the odds-on favorite in this one: my GP.

This isn’t a plea for help, or even a serious medical development on my part, it’s a warning for you, the readership, as insurance enrollment comes around. First of all, if you can’t pay, hospitals or physicians can throw you out on the street (this is something able-bodied people are so disbelieving of that took a poor black woman freezing to death on-camera in Baltimore). They are only required to treat you if you in an emergency situation, thanks to some federal laws called “EMTALA.”If you have a disease that drives you to the emergency room, the prognosis gets worse. People tend believe that just because it’s the healthcare industry, the health insurance industry isn’t a corrosive force that has a vested interest in denying care and killing you. Which is odd to me; you don’t get this anywhere else (or I haven’t experienced this sort of self-delusional attitude); you don’t see people defending McDonald’s or Nabisco or RJ Reynolds or Exxon as having their best interests at heart (and, to my friends who think they’re bullet-proof because of their health insurance, read the fine print, very, very carefully; you don’t want to get a nasty shock as you’re being rolled into the OR). So, thanks to my parent’s generosity/desire not to see me die, I rolled in last year with a very expensive PPO (there are a lot of acronyms to keep track of, but PPOs allow the patient to see anyone in a preferred provider network, which tend to be large and give the patient lots of choices, so you can directly get a referral to a neurologist if you hit your head). Unfortunately, because I have pre-existing conditions (and to my bullet-proof friends, read through the list of pre-existing conditions that’ll disqualify you, your jaw will drop)(also, it’s telling that Congressmen and Senators have the option to buy into a separate, federal employee health insurance option that’s not available to us serfs)(it’s also telling that the ACA required Congresscritters, for the first time ever, to tough it out and find health insurance like their constituents)(which is why I assume all the GOP higher-ups had melt-downs over the ACA - a slight removal of privilege to help sick constituents isn’t a part of Congressional ethos, let alone job description), my premiums went from “expensive” to “leasing a sports car” within a few months. I’m extraordinarily grateful to them for providing that financial backing, because it allowed me to continue getting treatment during the crucial 6-10 week GBM post-diagnosis period that might turn this from “Guaranteed doom” to “far too close for comfort.” So, this did give me some time to do my homework (in writing about this, I’m realizing I really should consider applying to law school, because I’ll know more about medical and insurance law and ethics than some lawyers before this is up)(Hell, I probably know more than some of them right now). Anyway, I found that all the specialists I see for cancer, do take medicaid (even the specialized pharmacy I use at the cancer center). Which is good for me, especially since being on disability in California is an automatic qualification for Medicaid. Now for the bad news; although all the specialists there take medicaid, the GPs don’t. AND the specialists only take medicaid if it’s done through an HMO carrier that the state sub-contracts with.

Great Kraken’s Balls.

There are a number of documentaries and documents (including an “Adam Ruins Everything” segment) on why HMO’s are unnecessary and lethally incompetent (like many other aspects of a for-profit medical system), but here’s the most basic deal: They act as a gate-keeper for the entire medical-industrial system. You can get your care at any of a dozen pre-approved hospitals, and nowhere else. Now, if an HMO or their doctors can’t treat you (or refuse to treat you - which is still the case for a lot of GBM patients), they are required to send you to a specialist who can. The economic incentive is to give less care, and keep all the patients in the system for as long as possible.

I suspect that delaying tactic is why heart disease and cancer are considered so deadly - you can’t sit long on either of those.

So, based on the financial folks at the cancer center, I picked one, and promptly forgot about it; because I’m already in the system there (the receptionists and pharmacy staff recognize me on sight)(which is comforting, until you realize it’s a cancer center, and then the panic briefly cuts in until you remember you’ve gone eight months without regowth or metastastis). I only remembered it when I got a call from the medicaid HMO telling me I should schedule an appointment with one of their physicians. This isn’t a big deal, I just need them to sign-off on any further black magic-based treatments with the Warlocks or Radiation Oncologist.

Now, before I go further, let’s talk about the people who go into medicine. Like anything in healthcare, we tend to give assume that an entire industry is moral, and just; when people go in for a variety reasons (as recently as 20 years ago, the vast majority of medical students said it was for money), and it’s worth noting that cuts across a vast majority of demographics and motives. And, for better or worse, that cuts across vast swathes of competence - for far too many folks, it’s a job - a rewarding job, but just a job. My father recently inquired about board exams and recertification as a way of guaranteeing some basic level of competence from everyone. He’s right, but the key word there is “basic.” Again, “basic” is fine for first aid and most major medical issues; it’s unacceptable if you have a disease with a 90% fiver-year mortality rate.

I bring this up because I think I chronicled my first appointment with my insurance-appointed GP five or six weeks ago and seemed perfectly satisfactory to my ongoing addiction to experimental chemotherapy. I’m certain it was within that time frame, because I had schedule a six-week follow-up. Which, sadly lands on my “week off” chemo. So, yesterday, after infusion #2 for this cycle (for those of you wondering what I’m doing to stay busy during infusions these days, well, rewriting Christmas carols for cancer patients)(”On the first day of chemo, the nurses gave to me, zofran in an IV”). I also convinced dear old Dad to take me out to lunch, because, again, when the Marizomib side effects hit, you do not fee like eating. This was in the neighborhood of the latest addition to my collection of medical people, so I thought I’d reschedule then. And was told by the receptionist to wait for everyone behind me to check in lest they be late for appointments. That would be fine, but it seems a fundamental misunderstanding of how queus work. And, any time post five-ish hours on infusion day, even though zofran might keep me from puking, it does give me an odd, oily, queasy sensation. I think I deserve some sort of gold star for not puking on this woman right away (again, if you have unconventional problems, feel free to start with an unconventional approach)(my next writing project will be titled, “Life Lessons from Necromancers”). I eventually - using the traditional method of looking down the reception counter, noticed someone not otherwise occupied, and manage to get an appointment more amenable to my schedule. For a physical.

Again, I’d love to use some four-letter words here, but even Finnish fails to meet the requirement. Now, it should be noted that, even though I’m well-aware that I’m physically Adonis-like; I am in chemo and recovering from radiation treatment, Radiation Oncologist implied a few months ago that, even though my scan was clean and looked good for someone with brain cancer, anyone unfamiliar with my case would probably freak out about them. Same thing with my abnormal, uh, “lab sample” I wrote about recently - the nurses agreed, a single abnormal test is hardly unexpected toward the end of chemo, especially since I’m now on a diet consisting mostly of protein, fiber, cafeine, and dangerous, experimental substances. However, I’d prefer not to have to point all that out to a new medical person who has the power to yank the plug on me (sadly, my original GP will be on vacation that week. (I’ll also be on Temodar, so there’s a solid chance my brains will be thoroughly scrambled and incapable of comprehension).

ANYWAY… WEIGHT: 198 lb CONCENTRATION: Pretty good, APPETITE: Normal (but this is 24 hours post-infusion. ACTIVITY LEVEL: Not great; the fatigue side effect definitely caught up with me and chewed me up last night. SLEEP QUALITY: Okay. although I’ve noticed that I definitely thrash around on chemo days. COORDINATION/DEXTERITY: Lousy. Thank Gods I don’t need the walker, and I don’t even think I need my magic ankle support, but my left leg is definitely unreliable today. MEMORY: Not bad, although I did forget my sheets were in the wash earlier today (although I recall stripping the bed and tossing them into the washer). PHYSICAL: Tired and kind of wobbly, but still a lot better than this time a year ago.. EMOTIONAL: Okay. It might just be that I spent yesterday next to my zofran-and-CDB salt-lick, but I’m starting to think I might make it through all this somewhat intact. Hang on. Am I really starting to believe my own bullshit? SIDE EFFECTS: Tired, somewhat sore (either chemo or increasing the difficulty of that stupid elliptical), and in the wrong time-zone, but, other than that, not much.  CURRENTLY READING (For Donna): Gonzo Girl, and The Explorer’s Guild (A Passage to Tshamballah)

[leefelixs]

boyfriend seo changbin • stray kids

genre: fluff

pairing: seo changbin & you

word count: 2341 words

summary: dating changbin and all the quirks/aspects of your relationship

note(s): everyone’s favorite dark loving kid i’m actually really excited to do this one haha (i’ve been excited for all of them of course but i feel like this one might vary a little)! this is the fourth part of my boyfriend series... as per usual it’s in bullet point format. <3

you had met changbin on the first day of high school as a freshman as your locker was placed next to his

as you tried to mentally prepare yourself for the long and exhausting school year ahead of you while putting away some extra supplies, a boy had walked next to you and began putting his stuff away

your palms had already been sweating at the thought of meeting new people so bumping into him only made them even more sweaty

“oh i’m sorry,” his eyes meet yours for a quick second as he bows his head politely and quickly focuses back on his things

although you really hate making judgement on people when you first meet them something about him seems really mysterious and cool

“it’s fine,” you smile as you continue putting away your things and take a deep sigh

the boy next to you seems to has turned and is walking down the hall but his locker is wide open

you lean over and wonder if you should say something or close it yourself and decide it will be easier to just close it until you notice something poking out of the locker

it’s a little munchlax plushie with a note on it that reads “have a good day changbin!” and a little heart

it’s actually really cute...just the slightest bit embarrassing but who are you to judge? actually it’s such a nice gesture and tells you a lot to see him carry it around...maybe you should tell him

you chase after the boy who you think is named changbin and politely tap his shoulder

“hi! sorry i don’t mean to bug you but you left your locker open and this was inside. i don’t think you meant to leave it there so i just wanted to bring it to you.”

his eyes go wide and he grabs the plushie quickly and stuffs it into his pocket and looks around for a moment to see if anyone else saw before giving you a small smile

“hey thanks, i don’t know what i would have done without him. i owe you.”

you’re pretty sure you’ll only see him every morning by your lockers but as you trudge to class you make quite a nice discovery

this kid is in most of your classes

his name is seo changbin and not only is he polite but he’s a funny character who is a lot kinder and goofier than he lets on, and ridiculously smart

he always has a headphone in while he does his work and seems very focused but you quickly catch on and realize he’s not really doing work, he’s writing a bunch of lyrics

“you’re the person that saved changbin’s little friend huh? he mentions you a lot.” the boy who sits next to you in your homeroom asks with a small smile as you shrink a little in your seat because why does he mention you...you’re just a stranger doing a nice thing for a probable nice person

it’s not until later in the school year that you deliver his forgotten lyrics book to his locker the next morning that you both form a friendship

he jokes that you’ve saved him too much and he’s really in debt to you

he has big dreams of being a rapper with his two friends, chan and jisung (and you quickly realize jisung was the boy next to you telling you about how changbin mentions you a lot)

the link to his soundcloud becomes on your bookmarks and you eagerly support his music because it’s just so good... he’s a good person and deserves any credit he can get

and as the school years progress you really get to know seo changbin at a more personal level. even with his strong aura and dark clothes he’s a good person with a kind heart and even bigger interest in making people around him happy

your senior year with him is the one you become closest to him and even rival chan and jisung (who always whine and complain you need to stop stealing their friend from them because they need him to work on music)

every big moment in your life is shared with changbin and the same goes for him

he practically lives in your home and your parents welcome him with open arms every time he’s there

from your first heartbreak, to your first time cheating on a test, to your first wild case of rebellion...all of it is shared with him

and in return changbin shares most of his important events with you and the biggest one is watching him and 3racha gain success and popularity

and even past high school that bond continues

you’re there with him when they go to buy their studio...the smile on his face is unbelievable and you’re so lucky to see it

the drive back is full of tears from the both of you because it’s just such a big deal and being in each other’s lives has been such a privilege

it’s always been on your mind how changbin has never chased after someone in terms of romance and you often wonder if he just doesn’t care or if he’s just too busy to care 

but for some reason knowing he hasn’t had anyone ever since you met him gives you great relief

because somewhere along the way in junior year you began to see him in a different light and even up until now you still feel the way

“he’s just not romantic material,” chan teases changbin while he sulks and nags that it’s not true and to ignore him

“i’m just waiting on someone who can understand the grind.” he mumbles and the four of you burst into laughter

one day changbin drags you to the studio with him (as he usually does) and calls you over to read some lyrics with him

it’s actually pretty different from most of his material...it’s a lot softer and more romantic than you had expected

“could it be binnie’s in love?” you tease and nudge him annoyingly as he laughs and shrugs while scribbling more to his work

“you’re a little late to notice.” and you just blink because what the heck he’s in love?

“well you’re supposed to tell me i’m not gonna be able to tell on my own. how come we haven’t met them?” there’s a bitter feeling of jealousy burning your throat and your voice is cracking with all the fake kindness you feel

changbin looks up at you with a quirked eyebrow and drops his pen

“you really haven’t noticed?” and for a moment your heart stops because oh my god is it...could it be chan or jisung? what the heck...it probably is and you’ve been too blind to notice

“not really?” changbin nods to himself and laughs

“oh, it’s you. i thought you knew.” and just goes back to writing

wait

what did he say

OH

in the spur of the moment you smash your hand down onto his back and he jumps in his seat and rubs the spot with a whine

“what the heck was that for?” WELL SEO CHANGBIN YOU JUST SAID YOU’RE IN LOVE WITH ME LIKE IT WAS NOTHING MAYBE THAT’S WHY? WHAT TYPE OF THING WAS THAT?

“you suck! you can’t just do and say that like nothing changbin, oh my gosh i thought you were going to tell me it was jisung or maybe chan or maybe even hyunjin and you just say it so nonchalantly as if it’s nothing big that the person i care for the most is in love with me, what is wrong with you? why are you like this??”

and he just smiles and holds your hands to calm you down and keeping you from flailing and breaking his back yet again

“because it’s not a big deal to me at this point. maybe in the past but i’ve gotten so used to it now. i’ve always treated you like it right? i’m not afraid to tell you something i show with my actions anyways even if...” he eyes his pen with discomfort “even if maybe you don’t feel the same. it’s what you do when you care about someone.”

“you’re wrong about that, you had me boiling in fear over the thought of you liking someone else. i like you. i love my best friend but i don’t love him as just my best friend.”

when chan comes in later in the night and sees you and changbin sleeping on the couch he smiles

“look at you bin, you finally did it. hey, make some space for me too. i feel lonely now.” but chan shuts up after dodging a flying pillow

truthfully being in a relationship with changbin is a delight, he really is the type of boyfriend to still be your best friend no matter what

it’s no secret that most people interpret him to be cold at first and he does carry himself like that at moments, but he’s always got a soft spot for you

whenever he takes you out at night and he sees you didn’t bring any outerwear without any hesitation he’ll just take off his jacket and put it on you

you look up at him with a big smile because it’s so cozy and smells like him and it’s so nice and he acts like it’s nothing but you look really happy and it makes him happy

*coincidentally* he “accidentally” ends up leaving most of his jackets for you at your house

“don’t you need it back?”

“no i have plenty of more...i’ll remember to get it one day and it’ll be a nice surprise then.”

always always gives you a headphone to listen to music with him because he loves sharing things he cares about with you and he just enjoys the closeness

after a while his playlist even has some more songs about love and you’re like hmm...interesting and changbin is like huh how did that get there i just don’t recall

“changbin you really look and sound like those stereotypical clout soundcloud rappers” he fights back a laugh every time you tease him about it and he just gently flicks your forehead and grabs your hand

“does that make you my goth clout girlfriend?” he won’t let you live it down ever you brought this onto yourself for being with him

he loves lying his head on your lap while he writes lyrics or works on beats 

at some point in time you start realizing he’s not writing lyrics...he’s writing little things he loves about you and key qualities about you

without a fail will send you good morning and good night texts and add little emojis every time

whenever he talks to you he looks you in the eye and even if it’s serious he starts smiling halfway through and resting his head on his hands because he just loves you that much

will always move hair your hair from your face or fix any lose strands

“out of curiosity if you had to chose between a teddy bear or couple rings what would you chose? asking for a friend”

“could you be any more obvious?”

“i said it’s for a friend”

whenever you sleep in the same bed he wraps his arms around you and has one leg nudged in between both of yours and it’s just enough for both of you to sleep in bliss

until it’s 1 am and you hear someone moving around and changbin isn’t next to you anymore

“babe?”

“gyu fell of the bed...i had to save him’

that thing is his life and you have to respect it gyu is king of the house and you’re just a guest living in it

when he’s feeling extra quirky and playful he calls you ‘baby’ but usually calls you ‘babe’

without a fail when it comes to 3racha you’re there for him always. you’re his #1 fan and always there to support him and you run the online merch store

when he gets shy or embarrassed he looks down and tries to hide his face from you

in moments of silence he’ll suddenly look up at you and try to be cute to get a reaction of out of you

sometimes when he really wants something he’ll act disgustingly cute...smh...but it always works

he’s really good at understanding your needs and doing what you need to be comfortable or happy

he loves showing you off in front of people which you never expected...the boys will tease him when you’re together and you tell him you love him because they don’t expect him to say it back, they think he’ll get flustered

but he just grabs your face and kisses you before telling you he loves you too and everyone is like OOOO WHAT THE HECK

he always introduces you to the rest of his friends with an arm around your waist “hey guys this is the light of my life”

he says it so nonchalantly and like it’s just a fact, he’s so confident in it and it makes your heart burst

at any events or shows 3racha has he constantly makes eye contact with you through out the night

eventually he points you out to the crowd too

“that’s my baby!” and you’re like uh who

arguments aren’t common because changbin is very calm when angry. he hates having issues and has no problem telling you the truth 100% and listening to your side too and things are usually solved like this

but when he does get angry he just takes some time to his self because he wants it to pass peacefully and texts you to remind you he loves you in case you fear his feelings have changed

puts his hats on you cause he thinks you look really good in them

he loves making playlists he thinks you’ll like or that remind him of you and sends them to you all the time

his kisses are usually a little hesitant at first and you can always taste his chapstick because he’s a good boyfriend who doesn’t want you to kiss gross lips

sometimes...if you’re okay with it his kisses can get a little more intense and he likes to bite your lip

he does that cheesy stuff like pretending to yawn before putting his hand around your shoulder but he does it in public and in a very exaggerated fashion to have you laugh

changbin has no problem with how the world sees him because at the end of the day he knows you see him as one of the most important things in your life and that’s all that matters to him

[wasabi-duck]

romeo - namjoon

idk how to label this because romeo and juliet is obviously Straight so like im just calling it romeo namjoon so i hope you enjoy!! again, it’s gender neutral so!!

hey people i submitted all my college apps so i think i can maybe try harder with this blog

okay so for this au!! you and namjoon are fated to be together

the kim family is really really prominent in society today

not so much political or social, but economically-speaking they’re one of the top players across the board

his family controls the shipping market, whether it be post, or air, or sea

they control it all

almost everything goes through the kim family shipping industry if it isn’t public post

and that’s just the domestic market, they also do a whole ton of international business too, and have a presence all across the globe- from china, to the usa, to germany

growing up, namjoon knew that he was going to inherit the business

his entire life his family prepped him for the business, whether it be training in how to be polite and diplomatic, to going to the most prestigious schools in the country to make sure that he was over and beyond when it came to areas like economics and maths

namjoon’s entire existence revolved around being the heir for the powerful kim business, and it was almost like he wasn’t allowed to exist

he was there for the money, the power, the glory

never for himself

he always lived in the shadow of his parents, or the business

as he got older, things got worse

because more expectations were pushed on him, and suddenly the 97 in differential equations wasn’t good enough, he needed 100

and days where he used to sit in his room, messing around with a music program on his computer… he now needs to force himself to meet anyone and everyone who might have some relation to his future in the business world, half of them who are over the age of like… seventy-two

and as he got older, things also got worse because of well…

you

well, not exactly you, but your family

your family runs the most well-known media outlet in the country

and that’s just a nice way to put it

you guys are basically the paparazzi, and although there are other, smaller groups around, none of them compare to your family

seeing as how the kims are the most influential people in the shipping business, and some of the most powerful people in the business playing field, so your basically always trailing them wherever they go

it’s never a role that you wanted to be a part of

you always wanted to be a normal kid, with a normal life

but you remember one of your first gifts being a camera, and not like a cute lil baby camera, but a nice, expensive one

and you were like anyway i was like five but…

so your entire life you’ve been told that the most important goal is to find the truth, no matter what the cost

but your family definitely stretched that a bit, and you can’t help but think they invade to many private lives just to get a story, just to find anything that will make the public go absolutely wild

because of this, you’ve run into namjoon more than a few times

never personally, and never to chit-chat, but simply because you were on the scene, your camera held in your shaking hands as you tried to snap pictures of him getting out of the airport

you kind of… think he’s cute…

but it’s not like you could ever approach him

you know his family hates your family’s guts…

and your family isn’t necessarily a fan of the kims either

your family just sticks with them for the money, there’s no idolization there, actually quite the opposite, they dislike the kims for their disillusion towards the general public

when you sit down and think about it, more of the stories your family has published have been scandalous

which you know is because the public likes that…

but also because your family wants to see them pay for their general disregard and mistreatment of the public

because the kims are notorious for having prices much too high for the average person to pay continually, and since they have a monopoly on the industry, there is no competition and no incentive to work better

and so to say that there’s some animosity between your families… would be right

but you’re drawn to namjoon

he seems different from his family

where they all appear stiff and cold, his smile could light up an entire room

you’ve never seen him speak rudely to any of the paparazzi, or the public

he handles himself so professionally, and when you have had the privilege to sit in on press conference or public business meetings… he always is polite and courteous, and always listens to what everyone else has to say

and you kinda have a lil crush on him

but you’re just the shy kid behind the camera…

so like, he’d never notice you anyway

but then…

an invitation to a party shows up on your doorstep one day

your crazy mother realizes that ah yes, a party for the most socially elite means that you can get so much dirt on people there, so she’s like haha… you gotta go

and you’re like can i not i would rather sit inside and marry leo off to selena because they are my otp,,,

and your mom is like anyway you better figure out what you’re wearing

you wanna know how the hell you got invited in the first place, but you guess because your family is socially prominent you were somehow invited too…

okay so party time

it’s at some nightclub??

your girl is underage as heck so idk what they’re about

anyway i imagine some great dance music would be playing, with the bass super boosted, like idk… everytime we touch by cascada

and the lights are all dark but they have strobe lights going i think that’s what they’re called at least

and it’s, like i said, super dark, so it’s not like you can see anyone, and you maybe forgot your camera

and like there are so many people!! no matter where you go, there are at least twenty people accidentally bumping into you and it’s all a little overwhelming, so you grab a drink (grape juice) and head over to the back corner of the club where it’s less noisy, and there are less people around to bother you,,,

finally, some peace and quiet…

you close your eyes and take a deep breath

your parents would flip if you came home early, and there’s no use being outside, alone, in the dark, when everything is closed…

so you stay put, instead rummaging around your bag to see if you can find your earbuds and phone so you can just chill by yourself

you grab onto what you assume is your earbuds, but before you can pull them out, someone bumps into you, with enough impact that you topple forward

the person, apparently startled just as much as you, loses their balances, and falls on the ground right beside you

you look up

and everything slows down

it’s the part of everytime we touch where she’s like your arms are my castle btw

you blink, your eyes unable to focus in the dim light, and when your vision finally clears, you recognize the person to be none other than kim namjoon…

you startle, quickly pulling away from him, your face red in embarrassment

namjoon frowns, clearly confused, but then a look of recognition spreads across his face and he smiles a little shyly

“i think i know you.”

you nod slowly, not taking your gaze off of him

“i think i know you too…”

he stands up, then offers you a hand, which you take gratefully

he coughs awkwardly and you put your hand on the back of your neck

“um… i’m namjoon.”

and you introduce yourself too, and you almost feel the need to apologize because you’re sure that you and your family have caused him so much trouble

but you don’t know what to say, but you stay silent, unsure of what you should do next

namjoon doesn’t say anything at first, but then he sees something on the floor, and bends over to pick it up

it’s your earbuds

he hands them over with a small smile “i had the same idea.”

“parties aren’t really my thing…” you laugh softly

“mine either.” he pauses, shoving his hands in his pockets before adding, “so if you want to… maybe head outside?”

your brows furrow

“god that probably sounded creepy, i meant, like get out of here, i know a cool little diner that’s open twenty-four hours, the coffee sucks, but the dessert is pretty great.”

you laugh and nod sheepishly “yah, that sounds nice.”

so you and namjoon dip out of the party, and head down to the cafe where you talk the entire night away

you exchange numbers too hehe

anyway, as the weeks progress, you two talk more and more, and things get a little flirtier and flirtier

and you’ve become glued to your phone, and your cousin, yoongi, is like, “anyway who’s the hot babe and do they have a brother”

and youre like “yoongi,,, plz,,, it is not like that, namjoon is just a- ooPS”

cause you had namjoon under a code name like “B)” or something awful like that and you thought that you had this all under wraps but now you just basically admitted everything to yoongi isn’t that just the greatest

“kim namjoon? like the guy our family is so intent on stalking and tarnishing his name and everything? the kim namjoon who wears beanie when it is obviously bucket hat season?? that kim namjoon?”

“um…”

“he totally has a hot cousin.”

you blink “so wait, you’re not… telling on me?”

yoongi shrugs “i don’t see why i should.”

and you smile and hug him and yoongi just laughs and ruffles your hair

yoongi is the one who covers for you when you sneak out to see namjoon

and boy howdy do you see namjoon a lot

like yoongi always drives you to meet up with him, whether it be the diner, or the park, or the city!!

and he always makes awful excuses when your family asks where you are

and namjoon’s cousin, jungkook, does the same thing for him, and the two of them often meet up and laugh about it over bitter coffee

you and namjoon are so in love though, and it’s a passionate affair, not for the cheating aspect, god no, but because everything must be done in secret

every time you press your lips to his, you’re afraid that suddenly your mother will walk around the corner and rip you away from his arms

and when you two are out and about, walking down the streets, your hold his hand so tightly, so fearful that you could be torn away from him at any second

every time you call him it’s late at night, because you’re scared that your father might accidentally stop and listen in when you’re least expecting it, and your entire world will crumble to pieces

namjoon is the same way though, extra careful, extra cautious, and he always says it, says he hates how you two have to hide your relationship just because your guys’ parents hate each other

but it’s something he’s willing to hide if it means seeing you every day, being with you every day

except that you two aren’t as careful as you should hope to be, because one day you leave your phone unlocked and it just so happens that your mother was cleaning up your room a little bit, and she picked up the phone and read the messages and realized that these gentle “i love yous” were all sent to none other than kim namjoon

and she hurries down the steps, your phone in her hand, cursing and shouting and asking you what in the hell you’re thinking

and your eyes widen in horror as you realize your mistake and you rush over to try and grab the phone from her hands, but in a fit of rage, she throws the phone down and it’s probably an awful iphone or something so the entire thing shatters in a million pieces

this of course is your breaking point, and you start to sob, begging your mother to change her mind, trying to tell her that there’s nothing wrong about this, but she doesn’t listen, instead storms off to go talk to your father

you kneel down and hold the broken phone in your hands, continuing to cry harder

yoongi, startled by the commotion, comes racing in, and when he sees you, sees the scene, everything clicks

he holds you in his arms and promising things will be okay but you know they will not

after that, your parents ban you from leaving the house

you are confined to your room, and if you want to leave your room, you have to stay within the house, even being limited to indoors, as in, like can’t even see the garden

at first, namjoon thinks you’re ignoring him or something and his heart breaks because it’s not like you to ignore him, ever

but yoongi texts jungkook who tells namjoon the situation, and from that moment on, he is planning a way to get you back

one night, it’s been like a week since the incident, you are sitting on your bed, watching psych

when you hear a faint knock

you think it must be a squirrel or something like that outside?

so you ignore it

but the noise continues

so you head over to your window, and step out into the balcony, and standing there, with a large bag slung over his shoulders, is namjoon

he waves, and you cup your hands over your mouth

“are you coming?”

“like hell i’m gonna trust you to catch me!”

you laugh, and the tears have already started to prick the corners of your eyes

he smiles softly “i love you”

“I love you too namjoon…”

and im saying the balcony isn’t super high so you’re like fxxk it and you jump and he catches you and you’re both safe and sound

and when you are safely on your feet, you lean up and kiss him and he wraps his arms around your waist and pulls you close

and it feels like you kiss him for an eternity, and you want to kiss him for an eternity, but he says there’s no time, and that you two need to hurry before someone realizes something is up

he says that his friend hoseok is offering up his place for you two to stay

and with that, you two vanish into the night

obviously both sets of parents find out, and it doesn’t take them long to realize where you two are hiding

but namjoon is like nah not coming home until you recognize our love,,,

and so both parents are like our children and their happiness are most important so they are willing to make amends

you and namjoon come back home but he was digging the cute apartment vibe so he asks if you two can move out together if he still decides to manage the business in the near future

and your parents are all !! about it at first but they agree because you two are most important

and you and namjoon are happily in love and you have a cute apartment where you two snuggle and kiss all the time mwah mwah

[iwanttobeabettterperson]

Today was a hard day, I’m trying not to think to much past three weeks from now. My body image issues flared up so much worse today then they have since last Summer. I really wanted to try doing a buckle fat removal myself at home but was thankfully lucid enough to realize what a bad idea that would be lol. I really feel like I’ve given up on my previous conception for how things were going to go and I don’t know how to imagine a life I’d like to have. I can’t stop thinking about suicidal except for when I’m eating or listening to music. I e been reading more Hofstader and he has a whimsy to him that makes his books really fun to read. I’m so grateful that I’ve had the privilege to have all this free time and not to work all the time just to survive. I don’t know how most people survive. Pukiri sent me a really nice message this morning. He’s such a sweet person. Not even for that but just in general. There’s always cool people you sort of know abit but aren’t exactly that close to that I wish I could have gotten to know better . I thought alt about Andrew and Angela and Alexandria and Tati and Henry today, Angela the most of all. I was thinking about maybe finally writing to her but I don’t know if that might insensitive during BLM making such huge strides since my apology inevitable puts some focus on my emotional problems and she’s probably so overloaded with stuff. Holly is dealing with a lot of stuff so I should visit her so we can do tarot soon. The weather was really nice today, I’m very grateful I live somewhere that has nice weather like this. A lady from Grand Canyon university callled today. She was so friendly and supportive, I think I’ll try to take the 7 week course that starts this June. She asked me about what I wanted to do and she was so understanding about all of my concerns. Zach also messaged me so I should try to respond to him. I really like it when Libi likes my tweets for some reason. I don’t think anyone as cool as her would be like that with me if we were the same age lol. She has the most fascinating dreams. They’re actually sequential and seem to even have a quasi narrative arc to them. She’s been having these dreams where she’s a vampire among a posey of other super natural bearings (I think this is very queer themed). She’s had an actually “final” dream which in of it self is amazing. Her mom shows up in it sort of and played a big kind role. Libis mom must have been such a cool person. Wish there was a way to help Libi have some kind of catharsis or talk about it more but it’s not something you should push. I really need to get back to Pinhead so we can finish reading the Bicameral mind.

Once I’m more organized I’ll be able to do this better. My face has bothered me so much today. I ended up accidentally seeing pictures of it I have saved and wasn’t able to stop looking through them hoping I could find anything that looked okay. It’s the most exhausting and unpleasant experience. It so strongly feels like looking at another person and not my self. I can even imagine the exact kind of personality that guy has. He’s the kind of guy I can actually see me self liking if we went to school together or something, I don’t think he’s the type of person I would end up being friends with but I wouldn’t mind them being around. I wanted to die so badly, it evaporates all the hope I have for the future every time this happens. Zoe has also messaged me and I need to get back to her. I don’t know how Hiatus is dealing with Pres. If he could just have a real positive and healthy relationship where the person gives him lots of attention and love, that would be so nice for him. It feels a bit awkward playing dnd with Gajo and the rest, they’re all very nice to me but I do feel abit if an outsider and I just can’t be as charismatic as Alex or others. I really wish I was more capable of being funny and making people laugh, I think maybe more people would want to spend time with me if that was the case. There was the cutest Gopher at the golf course. Lindsey thought it must be sad for them since they probably got used to having all the space to themselves during quanrtine and now it has to deal with all these scary people invading it’s space =( she’s so thoughtful that way.

I feel like someone as nice as my mom is wasted on me, I wish some other kid who had a bad upbringing could have been born into my family instead. They’d be able to better take adavtange of their kindness. I feel like I’m just sucking up the energy of my parents and that it’ll never amount to me getting better or anything. It’s really nice that my mom wants to include me with things. She bought me a set of clubs so I could play with her. It’s relaxing and fun even if it’s a bit stressful having people see me. I think I’ll cherish the memory of playing with her today foreve. Every time she does anything nice for me I feel immensely guilty. I don’t know how I could kill myself and leave her to deal with it but bringing myself to kill her too is so overwhelming just to think about. I really wonder how Abdul is doing. I imagine Eros is pretty much the same and maybe Will gets to see his new boy friend more often.

I downloaded this anime from the 70s and there’s something kind of charming about its aesthetic. I only found an English sub of the first episode but it’s easy enough to understand the Italian subs I got on a torrent. The show seems like a good example of density issues since it feels so impressive st first but they gets a little less so when you see how many of the cool elements are repeated every single episode with out gettignbuolt on. The best aspect of it is defiantly the soft beautiful aesthetics, I like how just one lady had purple hair and the crystal people were so pretty. The police are finally getting dissolved in some parts of the US. I think the activism black people have been doing had truly been effective and I’m planning in finally reading Angela Davis for the the first time. I feel like I’ve been having a prolonged 5 year mental breakdown and every time I try to explain it to anyone they’re just not able to quite appreciate how scared I am. I really don’t want to die and leave Lindsey to deal with things but I’m so overwhelmed by the prosepect of continuing things. I’ve only been going to bed by 11 the last four days which isn’t great. I think it makes me face even worse. I feel like it might be coming from a desire to take advantage of having free time before I commit to things I have planned tommorow, I need a healthier mindset about those things. I’m glad I was able to recognize my face issue for what it is today but I also feel much less hopefully that it will ever change. My hands also heavily disgusted me today and every day before it for st least 4 days now. Even shaving them doesn’t fix it. The skin and proportions and the nails are just so unsightly. I think once I’m dead I won’t be around to feel bad about anything so maybe I should try to focus on that to make it easier to get there idk. My hopes have proven to be very unfounded. I’m going to try to sleep now. Stay safe Richie.

[anothergirlrecovering]

Dietician day three

Yikes was I called out big time by the dietitian today. When I got there she weighed me and then asked how I was doing and I said good and asked how she was doing and she said she was OK and she has had a stressful week because of clients who are straddling the fence of recovery and she is worried about them but that they are OK as of today and so she’s doing better but she said she knows that something that I must understand with when your people aren’t doing so well and I said yeah I actually got one of those emails yesterday and she basically said how people with eating disorders often minimize things and think that they’re going to be fine and the reality is that it leads to treatment or death and then she basically asked me where I felt like I was in all of that and I said I completely understood and I think I also relate to that aspect of minimizing these I think on the one hand I’m like I mean I’m close enough to a healthy weight and I feel like I look fine So it’s like that part of me that’s like it’s not really a big deal but then there’s also the part of me that knows that my husband is may be worried/add a point I really can’t maintain this because I know that if I keep losing weight he’s going to eventually realize and be worried and I told her about the comments that he had made and she was like do you really think he doesn’t know that you’re struggling and I was like no I mean I don’t know and I explained how he has so much going on right now with his job and with his grandma that it was like I feel like it would be easy to kind of overlook me and she was like I don’t think so because usually I mean that’s your spouse that you live with your his number one priority and I think his comments show that he’s like babe I’m freaking out and I’m worried about you and maybe you are minimizing that but I think his actions and the things he is saying are pretty indicative of the fact that he’s worried and he knows and she was like honestly people can tell. She said that she could tell as soon as she saw me that I’ve been dropping more weight and I had said something about accountability and not wanting to talk to my husband because that would mean that I am struggling and not just accidentally missing meals and she was like well for one you are struggling and for two I think he knows and when I said that I don’t want to tell friends or ask for their support or accountability part of that is because I think people would question whether or not I should be working with eating disorders and I was like because I don’t think that I’m actually affecting them negatively right now and she was like well but you are because you had the one client with the comment and then she was like I mean visually speaking they’re going to know she was like I can tell just looking at you that you’re not healthy and she was like I’m sure they realize that you are under weight right now and in some ways that’s going to affect them. She asked me about exercise and then said that exercise is a privilege for those in recovery so I’m not allowed to do any right now other than some gentle stretching. She asked about sort of a timeline for things because she said she had talked to Lynn and they had kind of talked about how I’ve been doing well and then you know this is my third week in a row where she was like you’re not just dropping weight I mean you’re dropping several pounds between week so somethings not going OK and she said quite frankly I would call this a relapse. I think I was just kind of stunned and just stared at her for a minute and she was like I mean it is kind of what it is you’re dropping a lot and she said she want to help me get back on track. We talked about the sort of timeline for things but there isn’t really a very good timeline like I don’t know why I started to struggling more other than the fact that attention was brought to it but I explained my sort of history in the past year with initially my weight when I saw Lynn and then have it dropped a little bit at the beginning because I freaked out over her abandoning me and then it went back up a little bit but I never went all the way back up and how in the past few months it had dropped just a few pounds but then now it’s just continuing to drop even more. She was like maybe we need to do a very structured meal plan and I said that actually would be really helpful and she asked if I’ve had one before and I said I think it would been a long time. Also I thought was funny because she called me Amber again And she was like have you had a structured meal plan and I laughed and I was like honestly it’s just funny because when I relapsed and went to treatment the dietitian was supposed to give me one and she totally forgot Amber was the one who actually called her out and so I had to get one at the very end but she never really followed up with me and the first time I was in treatment I don’t remember I’m think I might have but I definitely wasn’t following it all I remember was that I would go into the appointments and the dietitian would be like you need to eat more and I would not in my head and walk out so I was like I think I mean I remember doing a lot with trying to make sure I had the right food groups and I had like to that and she was like OK so the macro nutrients which is good so she took out a paper and went through a very structured meal plan regarding which nutrients I need to be eating. She said I don’t really need to be eating lotta vegetables right now because the main focus needs to be some of that weight gain and they don’t really sustain you very well she asked me if I’d had breakfast at all this week and I said at least three days I think and I was like hang on I can check and she was like oh are using recovery record and I was like yeah so she was like hang on then we are going to link up right now so she took out her phone and we linked up on recovery record. I had no idea that peas were considered a starchy food. Not that I eat peas, but apparently that’s a thing. She was super sweet and supportive and talked about how her role is to help me stay on track so that I can do the deeper work that keeps me falling back into the same patterns. She’s just so sweet and supportive and it’s strange to me but it was helpful. There is still That anxiety around it being all or nothing like it feels like I need to completely do you all of the meal plan or none of it at all and I don’t really know why because that’s stupid. We talked about how if I don’t start gaining weight the only way that this path ends is in treatment again or death and she said that I’ve worked far too hard to go back to that. I agreed and she asked if it would be helpful to think about what I have worked hard and gained in recovery and I was like maybe and she said well it sounds like you’ve done a lot of rebuilding your marriage and I said yeah I think so and I explained how things have been so bad back then and there was a point in a fight that we had where he said something about how he wasn’t sure if I have a relapse if you would be able to stick out the relationship again and I think that gives me anxiety about talking to him about struggling and she was like well that makes sense. We also talked a little bit about how she said my believes about my weight are based off of my parents who have eating disorders and what they think is wrong and what they have thought and taught me was wrong. I told her about how when I was 14 I weighed 99 pounds and was 5 foot seven and she was like oh my God it’s a wonder that you even started your period and I was like yeah I don’t know I think I just thought it was natural but it’s hard to know what was ever truly my natural weight and what was a product of being restricted from eating and she was like I find it really impossible to believe that 99 pounds at 5 foot seven was natural and healthy and I was like yeah I don’t now. And she was like well I want you to hear me, what your parents taught you was wrong. She was like you were at a healthy weight and I explained the home at 149 pounds I got ripped apart for going to college and getting fat and so I actually showed her the picture that I used to always destroy myself with and I was like honestly there’s a part of me that looks back at it now and I’m like what the heck I was just an average weight and she looked at it and she looked so befuddled and she was like you look completely healthy like this is probably what your body wants to be and I was like no that was my body when I was eating a shit ton of pizza and cookie dough and she was like yeah you were eating and I was like but I was like not eating fruits and vegetables because I went to college and just ate whatever I wanted because I can suddenly eat white bread and chicken skin and pop tarts god for bed and she was like either way your body was healthy and you looked healthy and she pointed out that my standard for having not looked good was off of my parents and extended family and that wasn’t healthy and they weren’t right. I said the idea of going up to 149 terrifies me and she was like well don’t worry, it’s not my goal to make you’ll be sent it’s not my goal to make you 149. She said she lets get back up to that 132 and then we can see from there and talk about where we think your body needs to be but right now we need to really get you to a healthy weight. She said well at this point I would say that you’re in a relapse and I looked at her confused and she was like I mean let’s just call it what it is and I didn’t really say anything but she was like I can ask you if you’re restricting but I don’t have to because I know that you are based on the amount of weight that you have been losing. She said she thought that I needed to hear that and I think Innoway I did need to know that she is talking about it as a serious problem and she did ask what I heard her saying and all this and I was like I mean I’m hearing you say that you’re concerned and that this is a bad path if I don’t turn around and she was like exactly we need to turn the ship around now because you don’t want to lose everything you’ve worked hard for. She also said that she wants me to bring my breakfast next time and we will eat breakfast together. She was like did you eat breakfast before coming? I was like no I never eat before therapy or dietician apts because I have too much anxiety and I get worried I’ll throw up and she was like well you have to sit through that discomfort because you can’t just not eat and I was like well I never actually throw up but I get get so anxious I get nervous that I will and shewas like I’m sorry I make you anxious and I was like it’s not you it’s everything and she was like I know but it’s still something that gives a lot of people anxiety and it becomes habit and normal that we just eat together and she said to use whatever excuse I needed to to make myself eat. He was like I don’t care if it’s peggy said I can or should. She said a lot of clients use the peggy says I can. She wrote down my goals and made a copy and said to take care of myself this week and she would keep up on rr. She had smiled when she saw me texting and I explained that my husband and I were literally texting about how much we love our dog. She said she has a lab and said how he’s getting old and has hip issues and I was just like god never mention old age again lol. She said she’s allergic so the dog doesn’t sleep with her so I’m assuming that’s part of why she isn’t nearly as sad as I’d be talking about my dog getting old lol

[mhboroson]

“World Without Ghosts”

(An essay by Chinese sociologist Fei Xiaotong, written around 1943 or 44)

Accepting an invitation from the University of Chicago, I went there to work on my book “Earthbound China.” After I arrived, a secretary showed me to room 502 on the fifth floor of the Social Sciences Building and asked politely if it would do for an office. When I noticed the name “Robert Park” in the brass card-holder on the door, the alert secretary hurried to say, “I was waiting until you decided before putting your name up.”

“Don’t change the name. I like that one,” I told her. But she could hardly have understood why.

Robert Park had been my teacher. He came to Yenching University [in Peking in 1932] when I was an undergraduate there. Though I was just an ignorant student, I absolutely worshipped him—except for the old man’s perverse insistence on teach­ing at 7 a.m. and never missing a class or even coming late, which meant I had to skip breakfast to get there on time. For better or worse, his course determined the direc­tion my life has taken in the ten-odd years since, and to him should go the credit or the blame. The founding father of the Chicago school of sociology, he maintained that sociology should take as its subject understanding human nature. Perhaps I liked him because he wanted me to read novels and not sociology textbooks. More than reading novels, he urged going and personally experiencing different kinds of life. Ten years later I still follow this teaching. On this trip to the United States, I had hoped to go hear his classes again. But I was busy with other things, and it was half a year before I got to Chicago, and the old professor had already gone south to escape the Chicago cold. And so it happened that I was put in his office.

This arrangement, whether accidental or not, was full of meaning for me. I had been an unremarkable student in Professor Park’s class, a matter for some regret, and ten years later, though still without achievements, I remained eager for a word of praise from the teacher. I was secretly happy that, sitting in the chair he had used, I would surely absorb something of his spirit, and hoped to write a book that would compensate for my earlier failure to be worthy of the pains he had taken in rising so early all those mornings to teach us. There is here a sort of historical causal connection: because of a past memory the present takes on a significance greater than anything in the current situation. My strong desire to have the name left on the door arose out of a need for concrete, living, moving history. I felt that if the nameplate, the old books lining the walls, even the air in the room were not disturbed, then, surrounded by this lingering past, perhaps in a few months I would see a draft of “Earthbound China” on the table. But if these were disturbed, all might be lost.

This, in fact, is the “tradition” of which I have written in an earlier article. Tradi­tion need not be an obstacle to innovation. True, it has its bad side. When old peo­ple, with the various privileges and respect that have been accorded them in the past, prevent any change in the status quo, that is a bad aspect of tradition. But it is also undeniable that everything new is born out of that which is old. These ties of kinship should not be obliterated, and recognizing them gives to the connection between old and new the significance of succession and continuity. If we can develop this kind of feeling for history, I believe the world and mankind will be richer. When we go on a trip into the country, we can enjoy the scenery merely as a present phe­nomenon; if we have left there earlier memories worth recalling, this can bring on a pleasant nostalgia; and if this is a historical site, our feelings arc further enriched because of what others did there. People do not live only in the here and now; life is not just a string of moments. We need history, for it is a wellspring of inspiration. When we take tradition in this way, that is another aspect of it.

Sometimes I think the world is very strange. We in the Orient accept tradition, but what we seize on is its bad side. The West seems to want to disregard it, with the result that the good side is lost too.

Of course, it is not entirely true that Westerners purposely disregard tradition. For the most part, they all know much more about the history of their own coun­try than I do. Every child who goes to New York has to go gaze at the huge Statue of Liberty and then on the way back visit the church that George Washington fre­quented. In Washington, D.C., there are the hundred-foot-tall Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, and now the Jefferson Memorial. Buildings just a few hundred years old are preserved as historical monuments. On a personal level, Americans keep diaries and write autobiographies. I have elsewhere described how on Thanksgiving the year before last my host brought out a big pile of his fathers diaries. At Professor Redficlds house, Mrs. Park especially wanted me to see the pictures of Redfield ancestors in a corner of the living room. On Professor Ogburns staircase wall were neatly lined up generation after generation of ances­tor portraits. Perhaps because at a dinner party I had once expressed the view that Americans lack any feeling for history, all the friends I came into contact with were particularly anxious to correct my misapprehension by showing me their concern for their ancestors. All this is true, but still I feel their regard for tradition is to a greater or lesser extent conscious, intellectual, and artificial. It is not the same as ours. The reason I feel this way is that I have found Americans do not have ghosts.

When tradition is concrete, when it is a part of life, sacred, something to be feared and loved, then it takes the form of ghosts. This is equivalent to the state­ment by Durkheim that God is the representation of social cohesion. As I write this, I feel in my heart that Chinese culture in its essence is rather beautiful. To be able to live in a world that has ghosts is fortunate. Here let me relate some personal experiences.

When I was a boy, because the family was in decline ... we lived in a big old building of which at least half was closed off awaiting uncles who seldom came home, and in another part of which were dark rooms that had never seen sun­light. ... In these dark and desolate rooms, there were more places for ghosts than for people This environment was already sufficiently frightening, but in addi­tion not a day passed when people did not talk of ghosts to scare or amuse us children I am not exaggerating when I say that to a child like me brought up in a small town, people and ghosts were equally concrete and real....

Because I grew up half in a world of ghosts, I was particularly interested in them. Gradually my fear changed to curiosity and then to attraction, to the point that I even feel a little sorry for people raised in a world without ghosts. The thing that felt most strange to me during almost a year of living in America was that no one told me any stories of ghosts. I do not want to overpraise such a world, but I will admit that children who grow up in it are more comfortable than we and do not have to live with fear in their hearts all day long. But perhaps there is a heavy price for this, a price I would be unwilling to pay.

The beginning of my gradual change in attitude toward ghosts occurred the year my grandmother died. One day not long after her death, I was sitting in the front room looking toward her bedroom. It was almost noon. Normally at that time Grandmother would go to the kitchen to see how the lunch preparations were coming along, soon after which lunch would be served. This had been a familiar sight for me, and after her death the everyday pattern was not changed. Not a table or chair or bed or mat was moved. Every day close to noon I would feel hungry. To my subconscious mind the scene was not complete without Grand­mothers regular daily routine, and so that day I seemed to see her image come out of her bedroom once more and go into the kitchen.

If it was a ghost I saw, it was the first one in my life. At the time I felt nothing unusual, for the scene was so familiar and right. Only a little later when I remem­bered that Grandmother was dead did I feel upset—not frightened, but sad the way one feels at a loss that should not have occurred. I also seemed to realize that a beautiful scene, once it had existed, would always be. The present loss was just a matter of separation in time, and this separation I felt could be overcome. An inex­tinguishable revelation had struck; the universe showed a different structure. In this structure our lives do not just pass through time in such a way that a moment in time or a station in life once past is lost. Life in its creativity changes the absolute nature of time: it makes past into present—no, it melds past, present, and future into one inextinguishable, multilayered scene, a three-dimensional body. This is what ghosts are, and not only did I not fear them, I even began to yearn for them.

I cannot get used to people today who know only the present moment. To take this moment as [the sum of] existence is a delusion. Our every act contains within it all the accumulated history from the beginning of the universe right down to the present, and this every act will determine the destiny of endless future generations. If the present moment, fragmentary, abstract, false, is taken for life, this life will necessarily be shallow and base and even empty—since the moment cannot last, one might as well indulge oneself and revel, for when the instant is gone what is left?

American children hear no stories about ghosts. They spend a dime at the “drugstore” to buy a “Superman” comic book. This “Superman” is an all-knowing, resourceful, omnipotent hero who can overcome any difficulty. Let us leave aside the question of what kind of children this teaching produces; the point worth not­ing here is that Superman is not a ghost. Superman represents actual capabilities or future potential, while ghosts symbolize belief in and reverence for the accumu­lated past. As much as old Mrs. Park, trying to lessen the distance between East and West, might lead me over to the corner of the living room to look at faded photographs, it was the Redfields little boy who showed me the heart of American culture, and it lay in Superman, not ghosts.

How could ghosts gain a foothold in American cities? People move about like the tide, unable to form permanent ties with places, to say nothing of other people. I have written elsewhere of the gap between generations. It is an objective social fact that when children grow up they no longer need parental protection, and the reflection of this in the family is childrens demand for independence. Once when I was chatting at a friends house, his daughter sat with us chain-smoking. The father happened to remark that it was senseless to smoke like that, but she paid no heed and afterwards told me that she was eighteen, it was none of the old mans business, smoking was her own affair. Eighteen is an important age for a girl; after that her parents need not support her, but neither can they tell her what to do.

I also know an old professor whose son teaches in the same university as he but lives apart from him—which might be all right, but he seldom even visits. During the war they could not get a maid and it made my heart sick to see the professors wife, old and doddering, serving a guest coffee with shaking hands.

When I was staying at the Harvard Faculty Club, I noticed sitting at the same table every morning a white-haired old gentleman who lived upstairs and who from his looks was not long for this world. Whenever I saw him I felt outraged. He must have been a famous professor who had educated countless people and worked hard for society. Now old and failing, cast out of the world into this building, with­out relatives even to care for him much less give him pleasure, he might as well have been dead. One day he said softly to the waitress, “I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it down the stairs tomorrow.” Afterwards I asked her where his home was, but she did not know the answer and only shook her head. In America, when children grow up they have their own homes, where their parents are mere guests.

Outside the family there is certainly much social intercourse, but dealings with people are always in terms of appointments. On my office desk is an appointment calendar marked in fifteen-minute intervals with a space for a persons name beside each. Apart from business there are various kinds of gatherings, but if you go to one you will find it is no more than social pleasantries: a few words with this person, a few words with that one—it is hard even to remember their names. I cannot say all Americans pass their lives like this. But I once asked a fairly close acquaintance how many friends he had whom he could drop in on at any time without a previous engagement. Counting on his fingers, he did not fill one hand. In fact, unless they have business or an engagement they spend most of their time at home, where they don’t much like to be disturbed by guests. At any rate, friends warned me not to go barging in on people all the time.

With interpersonal ties like these, naturally they seldom see ghosts after death. Moreover their movements are so easy and they have contacts with so many peo­ple, that there seldom comes about the kind of relationship I had with my grand­mother, living interdependently for a long time, repeating the same scenes, so that these scenes came to seem an inalterable natural order. Always being on the move dilutes the ties between people and dissolves the ghosts.

As to attachments to places, that is another thing that made me uncomfortable in America. Not the beds and mattresses, for I believe there are none more com­fortable than those of the Americans, but the constant moving around that year was the cause of my discomfort. I visited many places, but when I think of them now it seems I went nowhere, for I felt no particular attachment to any place as all were alike, differing only a little in the height of the buildings. The cities are all more or less the same, at least for a traveler: you get off the train and your bags are taken by a black man who everywhere wears the same type of cap (you may not encounter this kind of man, but you will not encounter any other); you take a similar taxi to a similar hotel—no matter what hotel, if you have stayed anywhere once, you will not feel it unfamiliar. The hotel rooms are all comparable, some big­ger and some smaller, but none lacking a bathroom, a cold-water tap, a Simmons mattress, and nice stationery and envelopes. Since it is the same everywhere, you can never take away a particular impression from any hotel.

Hotels are not exceptions; it is basically the same with homes in American cit­ies. Moving house is no more difficult than changing hotels; a phone call is all it takes. Move here, move there—the houses are about the same. In New York I thought of renting a house and visited ten possibilities in succession. In the end I said to the friend who was accompanying me, “Why bother to see each one? Why not draw straws?” Moving here and there dilutes peoples ties with houses.

Whenever I return to my native place, I go to see the house I lived in as a child. I have lots of questions about the tung tree and the loquat tree; the tung tree still has my name carved on it. In London, where people do not move so frequently, I still remember where I lived on Lower Station Road and Ridge Avenue [?]; while I was in the United States I heard that the old buildings there had been bombed, and it made me feel bad for several days. In America, at least for me, no house has yet produced such a feeling.

I cannot get used to the way lights illuminate all the parts of a room either. Liv­ing in such rooms gives you a false sense of confidence that this is all of the world, that there is no more to reality than what appears clearly and brightly before your eyes. I feel the attitude of Westerners toward the unknown is very different from that of Orientals. They think of the unknown as static, waiting for people to mine it like an ore—not only not frightening, but a resource for improving life in the future. They are very self-assured. We Orientals feel some measure of reverence for the unknown; our reverence for fate makes us content with our lot, makes us aware of human limitations, and keeps our eyes fixed on the humanly attainable. I cannot assert that this attitude is ultimately due to the form of the houses we live in as children, but I believe that my own early feelings of uncertainty toward the big kitchen and the back garden and my fright toward the closed-off rooms have still not dissipated, but only expanded into my view of the universe. If many people in traditional China had similar experiences, then these experiences may have deter­mined the basic structure of our traditional attitudes toward people and things.

In a world without ghosts, life is free and easy. American eyes can gaze straight ahead. But still I think they lack something and I do not envy their lives.

 M. H. Boroson here. I don’t agree with everything in this piece, but I find it fascinating. I used a passage from it at the opening of The Girl with Ghost Eyes, and I wanted to share the rest of Dr. Fei’s brilliant essay.

[delsonbundrick97]

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