#and you questioned your sexuality over it? you owe her $200.

[radioconstructed]

⌖ If I've ever made you question your sexuality, you owe me $200!

[moontheoretist]

E - X - A - C - T - L - Y!

Fandom in majority skims over his sexual trauma because of seeing him as "sexy". And don't even notice that Astarion doesn't solely drink Tav's blood. Blood LET'S Astarion drink their blood when the mood strikes them, while other times you can just use bite on enemies and Astarion will be fed and happy without Tav's input. I literally went days without telling him he can drink my Tav's blood and only do it occasionally because I established at the start of their arrangement that Astarion can drink enemies blood, and mine if I'm ok with it at the time. Even though I romance him, I don't go out of my way to let him drink blood every night. It creates codependency if he can't rely on anything else and only can rely on Tav.

And it's galling that people who love Astarion can turn around and hate Gale, when Gale and Astarion are thematically the same. They are different people but go through similar arcs and deal with their respective trauma in ways that pushes them to seek to become more than they were before and perpetuate the cycle of abuse while degrading who they are now. Gale thinks people only want him for his magic and not for him. He sees himself as inadequate as a human, but not as a wizard because Mystra took interest in him and that meant that he was good enough at magic to catch her eye. During his romantic scene you can pick if you want weave sex or normal sex with him, and as long as the weave sex is beautiful and feels like souls connecting on a spiritual level, Gale may misconstrue your awe in his magic and your love for him and his magic, as you loving only his magic. Some people picked the regular sex option exactly for that reason. Not because game makes one option better than the other, but because of how the player understood the situation with Gale.

Astarion is similar to Gale but the opposite, he thinks that people only want his body and not him. That's part of the cycle of abuse he suffered and he falls back on this habit when not knowing what to do and not feeling safe. He picks Tav to be the partner because he is skilled in manipulating people via sex even though it doesn't really work for him well, he doesn't like sexual intimacy because of the trauma that tainted it for him, and he needs time to heal in order to maybe be able to see sexual intimacy as something else than what it was before. When I learned that I can tell him to be together non-sexually I was interested. I didn't know at the time how it will look like and only heard that "he lied to Tav", but even not knowing the details I never felt bad that the intimacy was faked. Even before I got to that moment in my romance with Astarion when I learned that he was in survival mode all this time and was kinda “fake it till you make it” and then “opsies I caught feelings”, I was already prepared to support my Drow’s boyfriend to the hell and back. I guess most people would react with anger to being told that their intimacy was faked. Me, on the other hand? I didn’t even feel offended before I got to that moment, and didn't feel offended after I saw it for myself. I didn't have any right to be. My first reaction to learning it was just sadness. Because this is so fucking sad. Astarion didn’t deserve to be treated like this for 200 years, to the point that the first thing he does when he is free is to fall back on his survival instincts from the abuse inflicted on him. He deserves a lover that respects his boundaries when he finally is able to draw them, instead of treating him the same as Cazador did. My second reaction was anger at Cazador for being a piece of shit. I can relate so much to Astarion, even though he is not asexual, and I have no sex-related trauma. Still, learning that he was faking only to actually fall in love fills me with so much empathy I can’t even express. If he wished to never have sex again and just go around holding hands, I'd be down for it, no questions asked. He doesn’t owe Tav intimacy simply because they thought it was real. And it was incredibly brave of him to even say anything and tell the player it’s like this. This man is literally pouring his soul to them, and they’re ignoring it, too busy thirsting after him to read the room and see they are hurting a traumatized man all over again.

And coming back to Gale, you won't probably be surprised after what I said before when I say that he is fundamentally broken inside. He is charming and witty, so you don't see it at first, but the very fact that he was considering blowing himself up for the good of the cause and insisted it was a better option than blowing up in some other place one day and dying without purpose, speaks volumes about his trauma. You can tell that he is both angry at Mystra and fond of Mystra all the time, and that he juggles those two feelings. A lot of people forget that Mystra chooses her chosen when they’re very young. It basically counts as grooming at this point. Did Gale cross Mystra’s boundaries? Yes, but those boundaries were not the boundaries' a woman would put out with a man. Those were boundaries of magic, which basically means that she created a law and he broke that law. He was aware that what he did was wrong, even though he can lapse into desiring to go above Mystra and do it all better. Which is completely understandable. If you see something broken you want to fix it, and if you are good at something you will think that YOU need to fix it, because you assume you will be better at it than the others. There is some ego and hubris here but born from the fact that the person is aware of their capabilities and what they can do if they had a chance. It doesn't make them evil. So I can’t really blame Gale for wanting to show Mystra he can do better than her. TBH It’s mind-boggling that one single goddess can just choose what is a law and what isn’t when it comes to magic. And I can see how that could drive someone who is very much a perfectionist at heart to want to do it all better as a new god. (I’m however not sure if this is a constant for his story, or it’s some sort of bad route, like with Astarion the revenge route is the bad end). Anyway, Gale suffers because he wanted to prove himself to a goddess like a person would want to a judge jury and executioner in order to show them they’re not right. And he saw it as a mistake. He knew he desired too much. And he is traumatized by what happened and by the fact that he is a living bomb. In the game, the artifacts suddenly stop having effect on him. How must he have felt when he realized his sickness is no longer treatable? He tells you that when he learned, he isolated himself in his tower for a year and if not for Tara he'd not get any hope at all. It was Tara who supported him and tried to find a way to help him. And now even that was gone. What else does he have to lose if he goes for becoming a god? He already lost so much.

Astarion mirrors Gale in the fact that he wants revenge on Cazador and to do so he is willing to do the ritual that will fundamentally change him, but also give him power that will ensure he will never suffer like he did before. Nobody will be able to hurt him after he does so. The only issue is that he will hurt himself by doing it. He will destroy Astarion that is here now and create a twisted version of himself that is not Astarion, but just Cazador repacked. And Gale does the exact same thing. He hurts himself by trying to become a god, because he wants to be more than the inadequate man that the goddess liked only for his magic. So he wants to, for a lack of a better comparison, become magic and reject his humanity. Both of those characters tell themselves that they do it for a good cause. Astarion does it for himself and also to destroy all the spawns that Cazador created, so they wouldn't go around killing (albeit you can debate how much the first reason outweighs the other in his case), while Gale tells himself that he does it for the sake of everybody, to fix the system but also does it for himself too, because gaining such power will in his head solve all the problems with him and give him value.

Astarion and Gale are both nuanced and complex characters. Both traumatized and going through the motions in the game. And you as the player are there to help both of them find their autonomy back. Grasp their life back. To help them see they are more than the idea they have of themselves born from the abuse they suffered. It’s not their fault they were abused by powerful beings who threw them away the first occasion they got. It's not Astarion’s fault that he has fucked up way to survive because ha had no other choice. It’s also not Gale’s fault that he sees the only way out of his problems in the power that he shouldn't crave or that his romance was bugged, and he can come off as a man who doesn’t understand the word “no”.

You as the player are there to show them how to live again.

You are there to help them heal from their trauma.

actually i'm crazy about this now. astarion and gale are perceived by the fandom in a lot of different ways solely because astarion has been clocked as "the sexy one" and gale has been clocked as "the incel" and it is sooo fucking annoying to read about half of the time.

like people are willing to stomach the idea of astarion being rude and willing to do bad things as a survival tactic, because those things don't stop them from degrading him to the descriptor "sexy" and nothing else. people talk about his addiction to blood positively because the way you sate it is by doing something perceived as intimate. so they believe sexy elf man is sexy and nothing else and then whine when he perpetuates the cycle of abuse and doesn't actually care about them.

and then meanwhile gale, who is arrogant and a little too ambitious for his own good (but still has the common decency of "hey bad thing bad"), is treated more poorly because how are you supposed to degrade him to being attractive/sexy and nothing else when his suffering is much more impersonal?? HIS addiction is now a haha funny crack joke because it's not "sexy". HIS relationship is "haha he fumbled a goddess" because he constantly talks about his ex. because he has issues. and mystra is, while not the person who put it there directly, the reason he's got a bomb in his chest

so you have this issue where people are sooo determined to mischaracterize people to the point where they make astarion the "hot twink" or whatever (COMPLETELY ignoring that's the entire point, he wants you to think that because that's what he's been forced to behave as for survival) and gale the "annoying incel man" because there's such a difference of what they can and can't sexualize about the two of them.

this isn't a real genuine issue or anything but it makes traversing this fandom SUPER annoying when people hate one of my favorite little dudes for something they mistakenly love astarion for. like i'm sorry astarion is not your flirty little meow meow he IS putting up an act he IS dissociating throughout half of his romance scenes i hope you know that. and also gale is traumatized and not the "nice guy complex" man for wanting to win back mystra's favor. hope that helps

[kookiecrumb]

jjk|| Summer Romaince 🍔🥬- Ch.2 (T)

gif is not mine, pm for credit

word count: ~2.5k (guesstimate)

Ch.1

summary: Jungkook and Y/N work at a PopBurger together. It's written in the fast-food worker manual that coworkers shouldn't date, so why does it cross his mind whenever you look his way? :v

*Ch.2: Y/N gets caught in the middle of a stick up! Jungkook breaks it up by violent means...What will the consequences be?

warnings: threat via firearm, knife fight, explict language, consumption of alcohol, jk gets cheated on (not by y/n), sexual themes o.O

tags: fem!reader x coworker!jk coworkers fic, strangers to lovers, reader is a little bit of a bully, eventual smut, eventual tooth-rotting fluff, angst if you squint, crack

-

It's always cold as balls in the walk-in. You peel off every single past-due label in the walk in and stick it to your arm, frantically. Nothing can be labeled before 4 o'clock the next day.

You mouth the names of the ingredients as you flick at them with your fingernail. The walk-in opens, and the man himself leans on the door as he waits for you to notice. You have one earbud in so, naturally, you don't.

"y/n," Jungkook voices. A label rips, causing you to curse under your breath. You carefully try to piece it back together on your arm, humming along to the pre-closing playlist you added to your library the night before.

'That's my playlist, and she's listening to it,' A toothy smile pulls at his lips. He knows exactly what part is playing, too. It's the part that goes--

You start singing:

You think you've got it

Oh, you think you've got it

But got it just don't get it when there's nothin' at all

We get together

Oh, we get together

But separate's always better when there's feelings involved--

Jungkook thinks you're pretty good, bobbing his head to the little groove you got going on. He straightens up, though, when the manager flickers the walk-in light on and off to get your eyes on her. You yank out your earbud and whip your head back to watch her lips.

"Don't listen to music. Go walk in those orders, we close at 10," her voice booms. You nod subserviently, and then jump at the sight of Jungkook.

"No, no...sorry. I came in to put away the 'cheese product,'" He reads a label on the block of American cheese he's cradling. "For legal reasons, they can't call it cheese."

"That's American food for ya!" You roll your eyes, counting up how many of each label you need to make.

As you're stepping out, Jungkook says, this time clear as day: "Why someone with a voice like that sticks around a place like this beats me, you know?"

Your heart does a flip. "Cause you keep making me nervous about it..." You grumble with a pout and speed walk to Assembly.

-°•○•°•○•°•○•°•○•°•○•°•○•°•○•°-

The next day, you're covering for Hansoo, who decided to not show up for work today. You traditionally worked the back of the house, but you were trained to work the front of the house if needed, so it's not that much of a big deal to you.

You cast your frustrations aside as you took the guests' orders, ignoring any redundant requests and asking the appropriate questions in order to achieve a certain level of accuracy you're sure the back of the house would appreciate during a rush.

Out of the corner of your eye, though, you take note of a man, about 200 pounds and 1.9 meters or 6'3", a man with a winter jacket despite it being the middle of July. Your mental alarms go off, but the last thing you want to do is cause a scene, so you keep your cool and gesture for the next customer to step forward with a welcoming smile.

Jungkook is working the custard machine behind you, being a nosy bitch. He's staring the mystery dude down so hard that he gets vanilla ice cream all over his fingers, disregarding the amount of pressure he put on the machine. "Ow, fuck!" He exclaims, pulling his fingers away and sticking them in his mouth.

As the large man approaches, you tilt your head up to meet his eyes-- well, the hat that covers his eyes. "Hello, sir, welcome to PopBurger! What can I get for you today?" You manage, sucking in a breath.

Through his teeth, the man utters something you can't quite hear through the ringing of your ears. With both hands in his pockets, he lifts up the left side of his jacket and flashes you a gun.

Your heart in your throat, tears swell as you search for mercy somewhere in his face. "Sir, how can I help you today?" You warble, woefully.

"Give me the cash or I'll pump you full of lead, girl." He did not stutter; he did not ramble. He did not waver; he stood there, stable.

'Heavens above, I'm about to die...' You short-circut, your hands quivering, moving towards the manager card to open the register as fat tears roll down your cheeks and splatter on the counter beneath you.

Meanwhile, Jungkook is in the kitchen sliding his work shoes off as he bearcrawls to the prep table, where the knives are hanging against a magnet. His slender fingers snake beneath the serrated knife's handle. He holds it against his chest as he slithers across the tile floor, his eyes calculating his attack.

You're rubber-banding the 20 dollar bills underneath the register when Jungkook barges in from the kitchen and shoves you to the ground, jumping up on the counter. He launches his leg out, kicking the firearm to the ground and twists his core, using his other leg to step on the man's wrist, pinning him to the ground. He points the knife down to the man's throat.

"Motherfucker! Go hit up a bank or something, smartass." He pants, a successful sigh of relief washing over him.

You crawl to the edge of the counter to watch what happened. So that's what all those jujitsu trophies were for! Damn, if he could do that to a bum...

Jungkook snapped his head back to catch you peeking at him. "Go call 911, go!"

You always were a little slow, so it took you a moment to process what his order was before you stumbled your way into the kitchen, darted to the office and snatched the nearest coworkers' phone.

"911, what's your emergency..."

-°•○•°•○•°•○•°•○•°•○•°•○•°•○•°-

"So you ever see 'Enter the Dragon'? I went Bruce Lee on his ass!" Jungkook punches the air as you both walk out of the kitchen. Even if you both are beat from closing the back, you find comfort in the exhaust-drunken musings of your hero.

"You literally brought a knife to a gun fight and won. I'd say that's raise-worthy, Mister." You walk beside each other. Little do you know half of your coworkers are making kissy faces behind you, the other half wondering what the hell happened over the weekend.

Staring at the glow stars you stuck on your ceiling when you were 12, your mind twisted their twinkle into the shimmering display that Jungkook's black eyes showcased that night. The comfort of your blanket warped into the glowing warmth of hot ramen down your throat, and fantasies of Sleepless in Seattle with Jungkook remedied your insomnia. Hopeless!

Fucking hell, when you did your laundry on Sunday, you didn't gag at the smell of your uniform t-shirt because it reminded you of him! And look at you now.

You reach your car, and wrap your fingers around the door handle. "Jungkook, you saved me."

He scrunches up his face. "Wait a minute, don't get sappy on me now! What the fuck is this shit, 'Jungkook, you saved me,' I..." He dismissed, light-heartedly.

It took him a minute, but he came around to saying: "You're welcome, Y/N."

-°•○•°•○•°•○•°•○•°•○•°•○•°•○•°-

Jungkook wakes up to his phone vibrating against his stomach. Cracking one eye open, he realizes his boss is calling him. That's odd, they usually just text.

He clears his throat and practices a few times answering "Hello?" before he accepts the call.

"Hello?!" Fuck, that was too deep. Oh well. She sounds maaad. She sounds really...really mad. "Well, what was I supposed to do? Not kick his ass? He had a gun!" Jungkook got out from under the covers, his legs hanging off the side of the bed.

"Well, company policy can suck my sweaty balls!" He jabs the red button, throws his phone, and faceplants on the bed.

"Fired." A single message notif on his lockscreen reads, as Jungkook tries to pick up where his dream left off.

-°•○•°•○•°•○•°•○•°•○•°•○•°•○•°-

"Well, shit. Did they even send you your last paycheck yet?" You're hanging upside down on the sofa, listening to Jungkook vent about how shitty it was of them to fire him for putting the company at risk of a lawsuit.

"I don't care about that. Honestly? I wanna go out." Jungkook closes the fridge. "I know the ice cream shop next door is in need of a cute-faced boy to help with sales, and they've had their eye on me for about a month, so I'm shooting my shot over there." His phone is wedged between his shoulder and his ear as he shakes a can of whipped cream one-handedly, spurting some in his mouth and carrying a bowl of cut strawberries to his couch.

"I heard they get paid 11 dollars an hour compared to 10," you try and sound enthusiastic about losing your favorite coworker. "That's a plus..."

Jungkook licks the cream off his lips. "Mn. Yeah, but now I need a roommate and roommate hunting sucks aaaass." He whines.

You can't live with your parents forever, right? Would it be too awkward to self-reccomend? Are you really comfortable with your living situation, as an adult?

"Hey, y/n. Wouldn't it be cool if we just lived together?" Jungkook, once again, answers your question before you've even had the chance to ask. "Whooooa, what's this weird silence you've got going on? Is it really that deep of a question?" He wonders if being straightforward was truly the best method.

"And sleep on that couch?!" You grimaced in fake disgust. "The things I do for you..."

"Awh thanks, y/nnn. You won't have to do dishes or sweep, I swear." Jungkook holds a little bunny stuffie in his lap, petting it while he talks to you.

"Just make sure to put my name on the lease. And!" You pause for dramatic effect. "You have to bring me ice-cream every day."

So, he did.

-°•○•°•○•°•○•°•○•°•○•°•○•°•○•°-

Jungkook mains Widowmaker on Overwatch, and he's not too bad for a non-career player. The game had exciting graphics and it was how he kept in touch with the Back of the House crew outside of work.

"Okay, okay, guys, guys--" Taehyung chimes in between rounds. "We all know that Jay-Kay getting fired was a major F, but boys--"

A chorus of groans spam the voice chat. When it dies down, Taehyung continues.

"But! But. Y/N's finally moving in with him, and I reckon that is a W." An uproar of celebratory cheers punctuate the announcement.

"What do you mean finally? We aren't together, this is just...It's purely a mutual housing agreement!" Jungkook tries to justify himself before Yoongi gets on his soap box and corrects him.

"Nah, if it were a mutual housing agreement, you wouldn't be making out in the walk-in on break," Yoongi takes a sip of his beer on call. "C'mon, Jungkook, c'mon, she's a cutie."

He was right. You were absolutely adorable to Kookie. He couldn't help it, even if he tried to ignore the way you always asked for his help to do trivial one-person jobs, the little pout on your lip when you heard him accidentally burn himself with a spatula, and the Sanrio pins you used to hold your work hat in place, you were on his mind.

Picking up his chocolate milk bottle and taking a last swig at it, Jungkook muted his mic and, after a few stubborn comments poking fun at Jay-Kay's crush, another topic moved the conversation along.

Something that Namjoon said had stuck in his head, though, even after he went offline.

"I mean, he did get fired. He doesn't work at PopBurger anymore, so dating y/n probably wouldn't end in a dumpsterfire now."

-°•○•°•○•°•○•°•○•°•○•°•○•°•○•°-

You weren't trying to be weird or anything, but you liked the way Jungkook's bodywash smelled. It was the first thing you noticed the first night in your newly-shared apartment.

It was an earthy sandalwood with a citrus undertone, and it clouded the hallway in pillowy puffs as he stepped out of the bathroom.

In fact, Jungkook unintentionally introduced you to plenty of new aromas during the first week of your cohabitation. He had a little humidifier which diffused blooming lavender which he said alleviated anxiety, was weirdly a decent chef? He even taught you what scent boosters were so that the lingering smell of drain bleach on your own work tshirts finally went away.

You were a reason to ask his mom for extra kongbiji jigae when she came over to check up on him, and a reason for his dad to stop bugging him about a girlfriend...at least for now.

But you weren't his girlfriend. No, you weren't.

You weren't because when he came home with his button up stained with pink lip gloss and 5 hickies on his neck, he walked past you staring down at his phone and smiling like the idiot he was for ignoring you.

When he would already be out in the morning, with no explanation but the scent of that same bodywash you liked lingering in the bathroom and his date shoes gone by the door, replaced with his indoor shoes.

And when you asked it was always just this girl work, with the pretty blue eyes and the darling brown hair and a disregard for personal boundaries.

-°•○•°•○•°•○•°•○•°•○•°•○•°•○•°-

Sure enough, Jungkook comes home one day and he's all patched up from hitting a guy twice his size to get off his girl...But once he realized it was her hands sliding down his pants, he ran like the wind home.

"Did someone forget what they told me back in the parking lot that day?" You bring over a box of tissues, sitting down next to him against the front door. As much as you hated that girl, you hated seeing Jungkook upset even more.

"Yeah," He sobs, pulling two, three tissues out of the box and drying his tears. "I did, y/n...and look what happened..." He was such a baby.

"Some people live to break people's hearts. They take pleasure in the pain they give others." You take his hand and rub his palm with your thumb.

"That's," he sniffs, "some kinky shit right there!" Jungkook laughs, even through bloody tears. It kind of amazes you, that his spirits remain high despite such a travesty.

"I guess they're just super sadists..." You muddle.

"Super sayans?!" He repeats in a teary yet hopeful voice. Shit, his pout was too cute.

"No!" You giggle. "Jungkook, why would they be super sayans?!" You both yuk it out on the kitchen floor.

After the laughter dies down, though, Jungkook's looking at you that way again, and that's when he says: "y/n, can you kiss it better?"

And you close the space between you, tenderly kissing his lips until you feel him start to smile.

-

a/n: holding off on this one for a while

[cecilspeaks]

164 - The Faceless Old Woman (Live)

[applause]

Jeffrey Cranor: I’m really excited, we wrote this script recently coming up in this last performance for tonight. And I got real excited for writing it, cause we haven’t written like a, to do a live show full length in a new voice. And it was a lot of fun to do.

Joseph Fink: Yeah so tonight we are presenting the first Welcome to Night Vale show that is entirely from the point of view of someone who is not Cecil, this is the time when the Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives In Your Home gets to step out from her secret.. place in your home. [laughter] And tell you a little bit about herself.

Jeffrey: One of my favorite things about writing the Faceless Old Woman stuff is cause the way Joseph and I work is that we’ll write episodes or write parts of episodes and pass it to the other and that person will, sometimes have questions but oftentimes just maybe like add something to it. So a lot of times it’s either, when I get stuff back from Joseph and I dunno if he feels the same way getting stuff back form me, with the Faceless Old Woman script it was always either something really hilarious for something really upsetting. [laughter] And I really love that a lot.

Joseph: This is maybe the most upsetting thing we’ve ever written, I hope you guys enjoy it. [laughter]

Jeffrey: Have fun, good night! [applause]

Joseph: I guess we should start that show we talked about.

Jeffrey: Let’s do it. You guys, let’s welcome to the stage your friend and ours, Mara Wilson!

[applause] [long silence]

Mara Wilson: I am the Faceless Old Woman who secretly lives in your home. Hello. You don’t know me, but I know you. I know you very well. I’ve been going through your medicine cabinet. You take too much Advil. Do you realize how hard that is on your digestion? I know a couple gelcaps and a glass of water before bed can alleviate a morning hangover, but it also puts you in a bad mood, because you don’t get good sleep with all that extra stress you put on your guts. You know what’s a better hangover cure? Not drinking like it’s the last day of community college. I replaced your vodka with clear Windex, and your Advil with Ipecac. This won’t help your hangovers, but it certainly will be more entertaining for me. I don’t sleep, so I need better late night entertainment than Netflix. I’ve already watched every episode of “Money Heist” and “Criminal Man” and “Planet documentary”, I have to spice it up a little bit.

Which reminds me, sorry about the tarantula incident last week. And here I’m speaking specifically to you, Tony. Yes you, in the shirt. The one hoping I’m not talking about you. I’m not sorry you woke up with a tarantula covering your face, nor that it bit you, causing your eyelids to swell up like Kinder eggs filled with purulent discharge instead of toys. I am sorry that I forgot to turn the flash off of my camera, which alarmed both you and the spider, and I never got a good photo. I’ve been building up my portfolio for an art exhibit I call “Gross Things on a Sleeping Tony”. It’s going up June 1, exclusively in your living room.  I’ve already gotten “Open-mouthed Centipede Bouquet” framed. You’re gonna find this show absolutely terrific.  Wait no, not terrific, what’s the word? Terrifying.

Tony, you’re one of my favorites in Night Vale. I know you hate your direct marketing job selling high interest credit cards to twenty-somethings, but the benefits are great. You have health care, a 401k, and you get to take advantage of people less fortunate than you. Everything is its own reward. But I’ve read your poetry, you love poetry. To be fair, there isn’t a big job market for poets, but you need to explore what makes you happy. I tattooed one of my favorite lines of poetry on you last month. It’s by Mary Oliver. “Instructions for living a life. Close your eyes. Be scared. Good luck.” And then I drew a little butterfly next to the words. I’m not the best artists, though, so it kind of looks like a radish or a sarcoma. Doesn’t matter, you still haven’t noticed. It’s just right below your right shoulder blade, don’t try to find it now, it’s still healing and given that I used the metal rod from that fondue set in your closet as the needle, it’s possible it’s infected. Better to leave it alone.

Tony, look at me. Imagine where my eyes would be. You have a lot to work through. I’m here to help you, I really am. I’ll prove it by giving you some advice. If a venomous arthropod is on your face, don’t scream.

Anyway, it’s not you Tony who’s bothering me, it’s the new people. They are elderly, like me, and they just moved into a house in the center of Night Vale. Or maybe this is decades from now, time is a little hazy for me. I’ve never been in this house nor noticed it before they moved in. it’s a one bedroom and there are three of them. I thought polyamory, but they have three separate beds and they never speak to each other, rarely look at each other, and never leave the home. The first night I secretly lived in their home, I realized they never slept either. They brushed their teeth, put on pajamas and get into bed. But they all lie there, eyes open, through silent hours of darkness.

I tried whispering to them but got no response. Usually when I reveal myself in the dark, I get the thrill of witnessing horror dawn across a person’s distorted mouth and bulging eyes as they see my faceless face pressed up against their own. One of the best parts of visiting new residents. But not these three. For once, I’m the frightened one.

Speaking of frightening, did you get your taxes (-) [0:08:20] on time Alex? You, you’re Alex. You with the shoes. I had to file for an extension. I don’t owe any money because I have no income, but I’m over 200 years old, never got a social security number, have no permanent address and I wasn’t born in this country, it’s a lot of paperwork. And Alex, you know your Wi-Fi is terrible and I was having a hard time downloading the forms I needed, so I just wrote my name on some yellowish-black Boston lettuce you’ve left in the crisper for the last three weeks. But the leaves kept falling apart, I think more like melting. After about 20 minutes, I got frustrated and just made myself a salad. Also, I used the last of your parmesan cheese, but don’t worry, I replaced it with dried skin I’ve been collecting from your bed sheets. Don’t be grossed out, Alex. Same texture and nutritional value, you won’t know the difference. I got the idea from a Food Network’s “Beat Bobby Flay”, where this one winner tied up Bobby and ran a (micro-) [0:09:17] across his forehead to make a chimichurri sauce.

I love that show, but I’m a bigger fan of HGTV’s “House Hunters”, the desert dystopian version. That’s where I met you, Addie. Yes you, with the face. You were shopping for a new home here in Night Vale. You told the realtor - who was inside of a living deer, its belly horrifically distended and quivering with every one of the agent’s words and gesticulation – that you wanted three bedrooms, a back yard, and something close to an outdoor community space. The first home, the yard was not in good shape, lots of (- remains) [0:09:55] and the lawn was glowing, perhaps from underground radiation testing. It was well under your budget, but you would have had to spend your savings on fixing it up. Also, in the bathroom mirror you saw, crawling across the ceiling, a faceless old woman devouring what looked like a rat. You didn’t need to worry about a rat infestation, Addie. It was a chipmunk. The second home was a condo right in the heart of the arts district. You loved the design: a simple large black cube, no doors, no windows, no interior. A true closed floor plan, so popular these days. But you weren’t sure there was enough room for entertaining, or anything else at all. The house you selected was perfect. Three bedrooms, a Jacuzzi en suite, and a large patio backyard. Plus it was right in the middle of town next to a community dog park. Although you would be disappointed later to learn that your dog had been arrested for domestic espionage after peeing inside the park’s forbidden walls. I think you made the right choice, Addie, but I can’t help wondering every time I watch “House Hunters”, who is this person running away from? You left Queens to move to Night Vale. Queens is where your family lives, where your best friend lives, and your girlfriend of two years. Are you afraid of stasis, Addie? Of being loved, of commitment? You might be afraid of that pinkish ooze coming out of your ear, might wanna see an ENT about that. Or if not an ENT, an entomologist.

Speaking of putting woodboring beetles inside orifices, I tried a similar thing with the elderly room mates who recently moved to town, or will move to town many years from now, again time is strange to me. But these room mates are also so strange. When I went to put a beetle into one of their ears, I noticed a lot of scar tissue there, making the hole too small. In my haste, the beetle scurried away and I got kind of desperate and just made a bunch of spooky moans and hisses like this: [moans, hisses] but not one of the three responded to me. They continued their meaningless pantomime of sleeping, and in the morning they got up and each went quietly about their days. One of them made coffee, but did not drink it. They then went to the window and waved at their neighbor, Susan Willman, who was on her porch stretching before her morning run. Susan looked at the figure in the window next to her and froze. She stared in terror, then darted back into her home and locked the door. Susan has always been unfriendly. I ran her bed sheets through her office shredder as a reminder to be more open and loving toward the world.

The other two room mates climbed into the shower at the same time. I’m not one to get off on others’ sexual activities, I just thought I might see something new, something human here. But no, they stood side by side, cleaning their cold gravity-defeated bodies, not once looking at each other let alone speaking. A squelch and a squish and grey water falling around yellow toenails. They toweled off, but when they hung the towels up, those towels were completely dry.

I’m used to being the one who does inexplicable and disturbing things. Last year during the community players’ production of “Romeo and Juliet”, I decided it would be more fun if they used actual poison. But it was a last minute idea, so the only poison I could find was Borax. Which just gave the two kids playing the leads several unhappy hours in the bathroom on the night after the show ended, so I don’t know. I could have made a stronger directorial choice. But so could the actual director, I get that Shakespeare plays are long, but he cut out all the best parts like the train robbery, and also Tybalt winning his bowling league. Although I did appreciate that they left in Juliet’s famous line: “Good night, good night, your blood and guts and marrow, which worms shall eat inside your grave so narrow.” It’s a classic story. Kids these days just don’t try to fake their own deaths anymore.

Oh. And Morgan. Yes Morgan, I’m talking to you, you with the fingernail sand the teeth. I need to explain something to you. You tip 20 per cent. You can afford it, stop using it as a measure of how much you approve of the restaurant service. A 20 per cent tip is not  bonus, it’s a fee. Restaurant owners don’t pay their staffs, instead they make the diners pay their employees through this idiotic notion of capitalist meritocracy. I don’t care how bad the service, tip them. You have money, Morgan. I would also tell you to stop asking to speak to a manager every time your Long Island Ice Tea is a bit like, but I got out your tongue last month, so they wouldn’t understand you anymore anyway. Do you know what a cut human tongue tastes like, Morgan? Yes you do. You just don’t know that you do. Remember Applebee’s last week? You ordered soup. It was a beef base with  little onions and little perfectly sautéed flecks of your own tongue that you had used to lash out at a manager the last time you ate there. You could blame them for poorly expediting your orders, but really the onus is on you for going to Applebee’s. Which serves neither of the items its name promises. It’s false advertising. It’s like an egg cream soda, or Taco Bell.

Speaking of eating, the elderly room mates made lunch together, but not for each other. They were all in the kitchen at the same time making separate meals in silence. They sat around the dining room table together and ate. They carved and stabbed and pushed foods quickly into their mouths, but their eyes were empty. One of them began to spit out their food. No one seemed to care or notice. They all began to vomit, but not with muscular heaves of shoulders and necks, the vomit spurted out like water from a hand pump, their torsos and heads perfectly still. After each bodily rejection of food, they would start shoveling it back to their mouths, repeating the same process. Eventually one of them stood up and threw their plate into the kitchen window, glass bursting everywhere. That person leaned into the hole and began punching the jagged shards out with their clenched fists as blood poured out of their forearms and wrists. They screamed mournfully into the suburban street. Neighbors and passers-by passed only briefly, as if they had barely heard the sad howls spreading across the valley. Susan’s lemon tree next door died instantly and all the lemons fell with wet plops to the ground. The fruit pealed open and inside of each was a fleshy crimson pulp, like meat that has been ground for too long. The other two room mates kept eating and vomiting, not even noticing the shattered glass being subsumed by the growing pool of blood on the floor.

You know, I wasn’t always like this, faceless or old. Secretly living anywhere. Once I was born upon warm water. The smell I remember is sharp citrus and the peppery sting of grass. The salt funk of ocean. I was once a child. I grieved once. I smelled blood. Once I was a thief. I lived among thieves, I saw empires rise and fall, centuries cast themselves upon infinity as fruitlessly as waves upon cliffs. Once I was a recluse. I lived amongst bandits and farmers, I spoke a different language then. I’ve spoken many languages.

Once I was under the sea. That was a quiet time. I lived amongst the coral and dead-eyed fish. Once I was a wanderer. I’ve seen the (head) [0:18:14] waters of the Mississippi and I’ve seen the cobbled streets of Paris and I’ve seen the empty arches of Franchia. But I’ve never seen anything like those three room mates. Of all the things I've been – child, thief, recluse, wandered, faceless old woman who secretly lives in your home, I’ll tell you this: I’ve never been more scared.

Fear is in the unknowing and the mystery. Fear is seeing everything about an old woman except her face. Fear is the uncertainty of her secretly living in your home. Fear is not the spider you see on the wall. It’s the spider you no longer see on the wall when you look back again.

In the unnerving din of shattered glass and mournful howls of that house, I found the loose thread that unraveled this mystery. The room mate who screamed had no tongue. And one of the others had an ear swollen shut from a previous surgery. And the other had a red mark, like a radish or sarcoma adorned with poetry drawn upon their shoulder blade. I realized I knew these three strange room mates. They are you, Tony, the special tattoo I gave you. And they are you, Addie, with your oral scar tissue from the beetle I jammed in there. And you, Morgan, with your tongue removed and digested. The three of you do not exactly live together in that home, not at the same time. You are living three different lifetimes in that same space. You do not speak or respond, because you are dead. Each of you alone in that house together, or you will be, time is confusing for me. Decades from now after you die, your souls will be trapped in the house, because something in this world is unresolved for you. You know this, paranormal neuroscience is required for all high school freshmen. But what they don’t teach you is how to resolve it. I know how and when each one of you die. I wrote it down on the back pages of your journals. Iv’e done this for everybody, but nobody ever reads it, because while people always think they’ll write every day, after a few pages they fall off the wagon and never see the lsat pages of their journals. Except Jonathan Franzen. He didn’t seem bothered by what he read. But he did cross out all my adverbs and added some Oxford commas. In case you’re wondering how Jonathan Franzen dies, here’s the answer: he doesn’t.

I am the faceless old woman who secretly lives in your home. You might find this ambiguous, after all the word “home” is singular. So whose home is it that I secretly live in? Listen, some things in this tangled world are simple. I live in your home, and your home, and your home, I live in all of your homes simultaneously. I am many. [echo] I am many. I am one. [echo] I am one. You all live such different lives, teeming, that’s what you are: teeming. And I am there watching you.

You, Tony, you dream of being a poet. Resolve the unresolved. The worst that can happen is crushing disappointment and public mockery, and eviction when you can’t pay your rent. Many more awful things after that, get to it!

And you, Addie, you fled your previous city to escape a murder charge. Strangely, you didn’t commit the murder you were charged with, but you have committed murder. Weird choice to go on “House Hunters” as a wanted fugitive, but maybe it was a good first step to healing your soul.

And you, Morgan. You have an idea that could save us all, an epic defining idea, one of the greats, but you don’t know which one. You have so many ideas. I can tell you this: most of them are not important. One of them is vitally important. Good luck. Also, tip 20 per cent.

And you, I forgot your name, you tweet too much. We all tweet too much, but that doesn’t let you off the hook. That’s why I ate your phone. You can thank me later. You can all thank me later. Because you all will be seeing me soon. I think that tonight is the night to let slip my secret. You’ll soon see me fumbling wet and gray from out of the bathroom mirror, or folded up strangely loose skin and mashed bones in the bottom drawer of your dresser. Or you will see me scuttle on your walls, the hair hanging down from my faceless face. Or you will look out your kitchen window and there will be someone standing in your driveway, and it will be me, and there will be no one in the driveway and instead, I will be next to you in the kitchen. Faceless and so very very old. Won’t that be nice?

I’m the Faceless Old Woman who secretly lives in your home. And your home. And your home. And every home. And I will be seeing you very, very soon.

[music, applause]

Today’s proverb: Never judge a book by its cover. Judge it by the title page instead.

[shaekingshitup]

unintended part two

A/N: ALRIGHTY FOLKS! WE ARE BACK WITH SOME MORE ACTION FOR MR. JACKSON! As of now, the face claim for the reader is going to be Keke Palmer

But, if you’re anything like me. All I did was just post a picture of someone who wishes they were you and in this fic with you and Trevor Jackson haha. Whatever floats your boats friends. Please note that echoic memory is a real thing. It just doesn’t work how I described it haha. More like echoic and As always thanks to @glittermakesmesmile​ for giving me the first feedback and confidence to even post these things. Also big shout out to @twistedcharismaaa​ who helped me challenge myself to write more even if I don’t feel like it. So, this series will hopefully get some more chapters coming soon!

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

Pairing: Trevor Jackson x Black OC

Warnings: NONE

Word Count: approx 2500

HERE WE GO!

^ Jayden’s Song Association Fit

-----------------------------------------------

“Let me take my Black ass to the restroom while we got ourselfs a break. ROCKSY, what’s that cam’ra lookin’ like? We need another battery?”

“We’re good. Jayden, you want a snack?” Roxy redirected at their latest arrival. Jayden tried to sneak a look at the biggest one in the room and failed. He smiled at her. Her glance had caught both of them off guard and it made him feel giddy. It was the most beautiful and natural response she'd received from him-or anyone for that matter- in a while.

“I’m good.” she said hiding her own bashfulness behind her steely exterior. She maintained eye contact with Trevor. Roxy opened up a cabinet to pull out an assortment of Lays and refill the chip bowls that Trevor had demolished when he’d shown up 

“ Imma keep tryin. Venmo? Paypal? Zelle? CashApp? Damn, I can get it to you in Bitcoin if that’s what you prefer.”

“How have you done on the game so far?” Jayden again completely ignored his attempts to repay her. She wasn’t concerned about a few extra dollars. 

“I’m doin alright so far." He also refused to break contact first "So far Song Association has been the easiest game for me to navigate today.” Jayden blinked and conceded for now. Motivated by his win Trevor strolled over to the living room where she was admiring some of Terrell’s music selection.

“Clever.” she tossed over her shoulder as she reached for a vinyl. In one swift motion, Trevor had taken it from her mid-review. 

“Al Green?” He smirked. “ You’ve got taste J. Let me guess.. uh, track 5?”

“What?”

“That’s your single. I see it. No worries though. We can work on that.” he said just as he caught a glimpse of Terrell returning back into the room. Trevor placed the album back in her hands and returned to his stool, readjusting his mic. 

“Alright, Mr. Jackson. YA READY?! No more stoppin’ this midnight train to Georgia.” Terrell hollered. Jayden giggled at his silliness as she glanced at the tracklist for Al Green’s Greatest Hits. 

Track 5: Tired of Being Alone

Damn he cocky. Jayden thought. At least it wasn’t in an overbearing manner. It was a little endearing. He seems a little goofy. That smile was very telling.  But she wouldn’t show that just yet. Sitting back in her audience of one, Jayden watched them continue to play.

 “If I gave you the word “Never” what hits your mind?” Terrell asked the singer. Trevor starts going into a Jackson 5 single that Jayden honestly didn’t know. But, she knows that he is DOING IT. Her eyes go wide as his Michael impression is spot on and before she can even register her own body's movements, she's vibing with it. Music always had a way of helping her with her emotions and channeling a less.. “feisty”,as it had been put earlier, connection with herself and the rest of the world. She was moving around in her seat and doing her best not to spill her coffee over herself or her new friend’s floor.

"Oh shit!" she said clamping her hand over her mouth immediately. That was louder than she expected. Especially since it hadn't meant to leave her head at all. "I'm sorry," she whispered. 

"AHA HA" Roxy guffawed. "I tried to warn you. Don't worry Jayden.  We'll fix it in post anyways"

"Jayden you good girl. I had the same reACTion the first time I laid my eyes- I meant my ears on Trevor" Terrell stated taking a very pointed sip from his mug. Everyone knew he'd meant what he'd said the first time and it was causing them all to try not to break into laughter so they could push forward. 

"Yeah. Very natural response J. Hakuna matata" Trevor confirmed. Jayden playfully rolled her eyes. 

"What's the next word? He's a lil too comfortable" she spoke up.

Terrell nodded at Jayden and refocused on Trevor. "WAY. w-a-y" 

Without hesitation, he bursted into song. It was another that Jayden was sadly unfamiliar with. 

What is in this man's repertoire?

Soon enough Terrell explained that it was an original off of a project called Rough Drafts 2. At once Jayden grabbed her phone and opened her Spotify app. Creating a new playlist, she glanced up at the boys and locking in on Trevor she came up with an idea. "Thotful n Tired 💭" she titled it. She was adding damn near his whole discography when her ears perked up at the fact that he had an additional 200 unreleased singles on his computer at home. The more time spent in his presence the more the question of "Who the hell is this nigga?" rose in Jayden's mind. 

Trevor responded to Terrell all the while staring at Jayden and answering her unspoken question as well.

"So any fans that live in L.A. and you wanna just come and listen to new music not recorded.." he trailed off leaving an open invitation for Jayden and the rest of LA.

He really just said: Come find out

------------------

Jayden was both relieved and saddened when Trevor was finished with his Song Association. In a very short time, she'd learned a lot about this person she'd never even heard of until that afternoon. As his song had promised, he truly had her beggin for more.  The way they interacted and the feelings she felt towards him had grown quickly but it was familiar. It seemed as if they'd already done this dance before. Jayden was trying to figure out how to rationalize this to herself but she couldn't. It was the way that she and Trevor had silently held private conversations  in a room with others.  Even as they were learning one another, a lot of the pieces already seemed to be connected. 

Trevor was filming his spot for Terrell’s outro. It took every ounce of restraint in Jayden not to cackle out loud when he said “I think we’re gonna queue the rain right now. Mm hmm. You feel that? This is not a joke. It’s a motion in your ocean.” 

Trevor had made her feel a range of emotions in their time together. Jayden had laughed, she’d pondered a topic or two she’d never fully considered, she’d felt sexy and above all else- she felt noticed. Truly seen.  It was a lot. But, the girl was a hustler by nature. So, she was keeping up with each curveball that day had thrown at her. 

“Imma run to the restroom” Jayden announced. She wasn’t certain why she felt the need to do so. But it seemed far more courteous than roaming through Terrell’s halls. 

“Alright we gotta get ready for you when ya done Miss Jayden!” Terrell called out. 

When she returned, there was no Trevor in sight. Just Roxy and Terrell. Jayden wasn’t disappointed for them being there. Although she was a little put off that Trevor had exited so quickly and without saying goodbye?  She wasn’t about to let that show though. Sure, she really thought she’d felt a connection with him. But, she wasn’t going to let it get in the way of the single calendar event of her year- outside of her birthweek of course. 

“My turn?” Jayden asked as she returned back into the kitchen where the green screen was.  

“Mmmhhmm” Terrell affirmed “I just gotta follow you to this res’room. I dun broke my damn seal. Plus,  we waitin on Trevuh to finish his call.” As if he heard his queue, the front door opened and Trevor came back in. 

“Oh.” Jayden let out. Trevor studied her as Terrell turned towards his restroom. Roxy was on the balcony getting some air and making a call of her own. 

She was feening her cool, unbothered mask. But that one syllable had given her away. “What? You thought I left?” he asked. 

“I mean you were gone. So, yeah.” Jayden said shrugging her shoulders and throwing her wrist back dismissively.

  “Huh.” Trevor stared back quizzically. “I can’t do that just yet. One: I don’t think it’s fair that you got to see mine and I don’t get to see yours and two: I still need to figure out a way to make sure we’re even.”

“Ahh. So you’re stayin?”

“I got a little extra time. Plus, this is definitely worth it. But look, promise me something real quick.”

“Yeah, what’s that?”

“Since you’re so gung-ho on not taking back the money which is owed to you. Let me pay my debt another way.”

“What if I like the notion of Trevor Jackson being forever indebted to me?” The smolder he returned to her made her feel that someone had pressed play on Puddles again. But she simply crossed her arms and cocked her head at him. They were in yet another staring contest. 

Trevor let a beat pass as he wound up his pitch in his mind. “Aight, how about-

“Okay. I hope ya’ll enjoyed.. Ya break,” Terrell trailed off as he walked in on the tension that occupied the room. Jayden took a small step back from Trevor. She hadn’t realized that they were all in each other's personal space. 

“Yup. I’m ready.” Roxy re-entered from the balcony and grabbed the mic Trevor had used earlier that day to affix to Jayden. “Feel okay?”

“It does.” Jayden said. All of a sudden all of that calm she’d felt left her. She was getting the nerves again. She wasn’t certain if it was because of the game she was going to play or the one she’d been entangled in since she’d laid eyes on Trevor. He himself was still trying to figure out this woman. She had a hard exterior and a beguiling sexual energy that he couldn’t detach himself from. When she sat on that stool allowing Terrell to compliment her outfit and introduce herself a little bit, she radiated. She also had a pretty good voice too for a Shits and Giggles winner. 

“I’m mad at you” Terrell said. 

“Why?” Jayden

“I hear it. I hear that there in ya throat box. You got them vocals.” Terrell said. “Why you hidin?”

“Ohmygod. Hush. I can hold a tune here and there. But I don’t know about them vocals. I don’t know how to control it.” 

Terrell squinted his eyes. “I don’t believe it. Sing that song again. Because you got the emotion. I can tell you feel these songs here. You haf’way there but you too worried about sounded perfect. Let that go.” 

Jayden was quick to adapt. She took that advice from Terrell and moments later you could hear the difference. Closing her eyes she tried again

Have you ever found the one

You've dreamed of all of your life

Do just about anything to look into their eyes

Have you finally found the one you've given your heart to

Jayden tried her best not to get into her head about fucking up and pushed the nervousness down within her. Because when she became tense it would lock up her voice and she would miss her mark altogether

Only to find that one won't give their heart to you

She exhaled from her nose and smiled because she’d clearly sounded better than the first time 

Have you ever closed your eyes and

Dreamed that they were there

Jayden opened her eyes and stopped. She may not have control; but, she knew her limit 

“Now I know you didn’t stop.” Jayden picked up some of the liquid courage Terrell had fixed her. Her coffee was long gone by this point. She couldn’t keep the fear at bay. She didn’t want to make that big of a fool of herself today and have her voice crack like a pre-pubescent teen. 

Trevor was taking it all in.  She was a whole party when put on the spot and she easily gave off a coolness that made you certain to never cross her. She was not one to be played with.  But it was obvious that music opened up another avenue to Jayden. Trevor had seen it when their roles were reversed. She was empathetic to the emotions of  whichever song he sang. 

Her music taste was eclectic as well. She’d come through with country, gospel, r&b, showtunes and she seemed to have every Chicago rapper’s discography down pat. Trevor was genuinely impressed by her ability to copy and paste an artist’s essence into her own. She was fucking up the game and had songs for every word Terrell threw her way. 

“RIGHT R-I-G-H-T” Terrell announced. Jayden glanced a look at Trevor and then she gave her undivided attention to Terrell. 

Just stand right here

Let me show you what I'm about

To do to that body

And come down here

Let me show you where to touch my body

Let the foreplay begiiiin

Bet you never had this before

Cause once I go iiiiiiin

I'm gone have you begging for more

Boy, I'm talking right now, right now, right now, yeah

Right now, oh

Can we make some love right now? 

Jayden laughed and when she’d finished, there was silence. It was like someone had pressed the mute button in real life. Then the room erupted with noise at once 

“UH UH”

“hOw?” 

“Whoa whoa whoa”  all crashed on top of each other. 

“What?” Jayden asked. 

“WHAT?! This heffa really just said WHAT? TUH!” Terrell hollered.

“Wait. You said you’d never heard of Trevor before,” said a very baffled Roxy.

“Before a few hours ago, no. I hadn’t.” Roxy said. Jayden gave a shrug in Trevor’s direction. 

“But you just sang his song?” Roxy asked

“Yeah. Because I heard him sing it earlier. 

“You mean to tell me, that you heard this negro sang that song one time half an hour ago and you committed it to your memory?”

“Yes. I have perfect echoic memory. Obviously I don’t always process this in a way where I can duplicate it perfectly. But, I can mimic it pretty close.”

Trevor finally spoke up. “So when you hear something you can pull up that audio in your mind and not only play it back for yourself but you’ve trained yourself to be able to mimic it almost dead ass spot on?”

“Yeah. That’s pretty much it.” Jayden said as if she’d just read rattled off the day’s weather report. “You’re pretty sharp.” The compliment rolled off of Trevor in his astonished state of mind. Just then, his phone vibrated in his pocket. “Damn” he muttered looking at the screen. “Aite y’all, that’s my cue.” I gotta head out. Just as his mother had done, Trevor said goodbye to everyone individually. He saved Jayden for last.  “Good luck Jayden. It was nice meeting you. Matter of fact, let me get your info so I can follow up with you to see if you really get that perfect score” He offered his phone out to her with the keypad pulled up. 

“Oh, you already know that I came to win today.” she tapped some buttons and gave him back his phone. Looking down, Trevor realized that she’d followed herself on his Instagram account.  She smiled but her eyes only said one word: 

Checkmate. 

---

TAG LIST: @twistedcharismaaa​ @mygirlrenee @glittermakesmesmile @sarcastic-sunshines @chaneajoyyy @shewrites02 @ghostfacekill-monger @raysunshine78 @shewritestheblues @scrumptiouslytenaciouscrusade  @fd-writes @eyeknowmywrites​ @thadelightfulone​ @yoyolovesbucky

Imma update my tag list and this fic soon y’all. Hold me to it. 

[minyoongleschimjoongles]

Windfall 1

Pairing(s): Poly!BTS X OC, Sugar Daddy! BTS X OC

Warnings: Implied sexual situations

Note: In this fic, Zara can’t speak very much Korean. Until the language barrier is closed, Bold Text indicates that a person or an app is speaking in Korean.

Masterlist

The way Seokjin tells the story, the day he and the boys met Zara was foretold for centuries. He distinctly remembers the clouds parting to reveal the shining sun, and a choir of angels singing praises to the heavens. The moment her green eyes met Namjoon’s dark ones, the world stopped spinning for a noticeable moment, then her eyes swept over the rest of them, and their fates were sealed forever.

Jin’s full of shit.

The truth of the matter is this; the sky was downpouring, the clouds inky grey above pedestrians, locals and tourists as they ran for cover into stores and under awnings. It seemed to Zara like they’d never see the sun again.

The small coffee shop she was sitting in was overcrowded, but the wifi was free, and the Chai Tea was cheap, a blessing to Zara’s depressingly thin wallet. On the laptop in front of her was the essay that was due at midnight, the half-edited blog post scheduled to go up in two days, and the raw footage for her latest youtube video. When you were a content creator in college, multitasking was key.

Jin’s “chorus of angels” was actually the squealing of a group of prepubescent girls that had caught sight of the Boys as they moved through the shop with their coffee orders. Polite as they were, they were taking photos with the fans as they passed, though Big Hit would surely yell at them when they find out.

Zara was paying no attention to the commotion, eyes on her computer screen, listening to the audio of her video through the chunky headphones she wore. Had she been paying attention, Zara might have been able to prevent the disaster that occurred right at that moment.

Namjoon, still smiling at the young fan he’d just taken a selfie with, made to take another step towards the door. His foot caught on a table leg, his long, clumsy limbs pinwheeling in an attempt to recover his balance. The coffee was released in favor of the edge of Zara’s table, his eyes widening in horror as they followed the downward trajectory of the beverage, straight onto the keys of Zara’s computer. The screen flickered once, twice, then blinked out completely.

The world did go still when Zara’s eyes met Namjoon’s for the first time, but that’s because of the fury that surrounded the small young woman.

“Holy fuck,” Yoongi’s words were carried with a nervous exhale. Zara’s angry gaze swept over him briefly before going over the other five young men, before finally settling back on Namjoon.

“What,” she reached up to pull her headphones off her head, “the fuck?!”

“Oh, shit!” Namjoon straightened to his full height, grabbing for napkins to sop up the coffee before it began to drip into her lap. “Fuck, I am so sorry!”

Zara stood quickly, and despite being half a foot shorter than he was, the look on her face made him take a step back. He watched as she began to fiddle with her laptop, trying to get it to turn back on, to no avail.

“Oh, no,” she whined softly when she realized how screwed she actually was. “Oh, no, no, no!” She hung her head and brought her hands up to her face, thinking over her options. Her essay and her blog post weren’t an issue; anything she had to type, she did in Google Docs before submitting or posting. She didn’t need to worry about the unedited video footage either; her personal channel was nowhere near as popular as her family’s, so there was no uproar if supply didn’t meet demand, and her “fans” would understand. But the memories, and the photos she’d saved on her computer couldn’t be replaced, and to be honest, neither could the computer. At least, not for a long time. She quite simply couldn’t afford it on her meager part-time retail salary.

Namjoon reached out to gently brush her shoulder with his fingertips. “I’m so, so sorry. Are you okay?”

Becoming aware of the whispers and the many eyes on her as she had a quiet meltdown, Zara stepped away from him, shoving her ruined laptop into her bag. Namjoon watched her with guilty eyes, casting a pleading look at his brothers over his shoulder. Taehyung, the epitome of ‘no help’ shrugged his shoulders. Namjoon turned back to see Zara had shoved the rest of her stuff into her bag, leaving her half-finished tea on the table.

“I can make it up to you,” he said, as she hoisted her bag onto her shoulder and made for the door.

“Look man, don’t worry about it, okay?” Zara’s voice shook as she called over her shoulder. “I gotta go, I gotta get out of here.”

Namjoon was quick to follow her out the door, his long legs carrying him over the distance between them in record time.

“Hey, hey!” he looked down as he matched her stride. Zara’s eyes stayed on the sidewalk, her hand tightening on the strap of her bag. ���Come on, let me make it up to you.”

Zara’s cheeks burned, and she glared up at him.

“Oh my gosh, you’re not going to use this as an opportunity to hit on me, are you?”

To her surprise, Namjoon laughed, bringing out the most adorable dimples Zara had ever seen. “No, I’m going to use it as an opportunity to get you a new laptop.”

That stopped her in her tracks, and Namjoon grinned at her wide green eyes. “That’s better, Speedy. Hi. I’m Kim Namjoon.”

***

“How about this one?”

It had taken Namjoon the better part of an hour to convince Zara to agree to letting him buy her a computer and to come out to lunch with him and the boys, swearing up and down that they weren’t going to kidnap and murder her. Now she sat in a huddle of attractive young men, Namjoon’s phone in her hand, scrolling through the laptops Amazon offered with a frown on her face.

Namjoon looked up from the book in his hand at the price of the laptop on the phone screen and shook his head.

“No way, pick a more expensive one.”

“A more expensive one?!”

Namjoon just shushed her, a small smirk on his face.

Zara gave the boys a few more options, none of them going over $200. Finally, Jimin sighed and snatched Namjoon’s phone out of her hand.

“If you’re going to be unreasonable, I’ll have to do it myself.” He scrolled back up to the top of the page, clicking on a Macbook. Though Zara didn’t understand his words, his actions spoke loudly enough for her to understand.

“No, hey, that’s way too much!” she cried, as he clicked, ‘Buy now.’ “I’m never going to be able to pay you back!”

He completely ignored her protests, completing his order. When he had confirmation that the deed was done, he spun around to face her. His eyes darted over her face, taking in the blush, the slackened jaw, the frustrated tears.

“I can’t afford-”

“We can afford,” Taehyung assured in broken English, taking up her hands and shaking her gently. 

Namjoon closed his book, accepting his phone back from Jimin, before fixing Zara with a smile. “Look, I messed up. You don’t owe me anything. Come on, Zara, don’t cry. I hate it when girls cry.”

“I’ll find a way to pay you back,” she promised, wiping her eyes. “It’s not right to let you spend so much money on me when you could certainly be using it on something more important.” Over Zara’s shoulder, Namjoon connected eyes with each of his bandmates, his brow arched high. Jin’s shoulders lifted in a shrug. It wasn’t every day that they met someone that didn’t know who they were. It was certainly refreshing.

“You don’t have to.”

“I’ll pay you back!”

Taehyung rubbed her arms again, and seeing that she wasn’t going to cry anymore, he let her go.

“Yeah, you can try, Speedy.” Namjoon said, “Come write your number down so we can let you know when your laptop arrives,” he paused, and his grin widened a little more. “By the way, this will be the opportunity we’ll take to hit on you, Pretty Girl.”

“You’re incorrigible,” she scoffed, but now she was smiling too.

“Oh, you haven’t met incorrigible.”

***

PJM: What are you doing right now?

Zara looked away from the paper notes in front of her, a tiny smile appearing when she saw Jimin’s initials pop up. Over the past week, the boys had stayed in contact, painstakingly Google-Translating every text to ask her questions about herself, telling her stories about themselves. Jin admitted they’d googled her when she told him about her family’s Youtube channel AHillofaRide, and she admitted she’d googled them too, as soon as she’d gotten home that first day. She’d been more than shocked to discover how famous they actually were, but it got a lot of the awkward stuff out of the way and she found herself grinning like a fool every time her phone buzzed with a message from one (or all) of them.

Zara: I’m cramming for my WWII History Midterm.

PJM: I thought you were in Art School, Z?

Zara: I am, but I’m double majoring in History.

PJM: That’s amazing, Zara, you’re amazing. Art and P.E. were always my favorites in school, but I guess History was okay too.

Zara: You’re a monster, History is the best. Stop lying to yourself.

PJM: Yes, Ma’am.

PJM: So, Speedy...

All the boys had taken to calling Zara by Namjoon’s initial nickname for her, and it had begun to make her heart flutter.

Zara: So, Jimin...

PJM: Your laptop’s here. Did you want to come pick it up from the arena, or did you want me to drop it off with you? I can come by now?

Zara glanced up from her phone screen to look at the messy floor of her dorm room. She and her roommates had had a study party the night before, and the floor was covered in pizza boxes, candy wrappers, soda cans and a mixture of dirty and clean clothes. She imagined much of their suite looked the same.

Zara: I don’t want to be a bother.

PJM: It's no bother. I’m just hanging around doing nothing right now, anyway.

PJM: You’d be doing me a favor, really.

PJM: I’m getting stir crazy.

Zara: Well, we wouldn’t want that. Can you give me 20 minutes before you leave?

PJM: Sure thing. See you soon, Speedy.

Zara slammed her notebook shut, bolting to her feet. She shot a quick message to her roommate, Ji-yoo (who, conveniently was originally from South Korea), and their suitemates Jane and Clara, letting them know she was having a guest over, that she was purging the disaster, getting only positivity in reply. Apparently it was about time she had a boy over.

She started with the pizza boxes, breaking them down and putting them aside to be recycled. She moved on to the garbage in the floor, gathering the wrappers and shoving them into the overflowing garbage can that she and Ji-yoo shared. She let out a grunt and scoured the top shelf of their closet for any garbage bags, letting out a victory screech when she found the roll of bags wedged between the shelf and the wall. The garbage was dumped and she moved on to the soda cans.

The clothes were a lost cause, so she tossed them all into the hamper to be dealt with later. She made the beds, folding blankets and fluffing pillows and tucking in the sheets, before moving on to their desks. Ji-yoo’s desk wasn’t awful, just a little cluttered with her notebooks and textbooks. Her makeup sat in an overflowing basket on the corner of her desk, but other than that, all Zara had to do was put some papers in the drawers. 

Her own desk was covered in pallets of paint and sketchbooks and pencils, the drawers of the organization caddy she’d bought for her supplies were open, their contents scattered across the desk and the top of the caddy. With a huff, she cursed her disorganized tendencies. By the time she had everything back in the right drawers, and the desktop cleared, she knew her 20 minute head start was over, leaving her only another 15 to clean the common area.

The dorm suite was a simple set-up, consisting of a small common area; no more than a long hallway with a counter top spanning the length of it. There was a toilet room at one end, a shower room at the other, and the two dorms between them. The door to the suite had an electronic lock on it, as did each of the dorm doors, but the girls usually left the doors open during the day.

Sharing such a small space between four girls wasn’t difficult for Zara; she had younger siblings, so she was used to lots of people living their lives around her. Living in the dorm actually helped her with a bit of her home sickness. Having three people there to talk to made living on the complete opposite end of the country from her home, made living in a strange, huge city bearable and for that she would always be thankful.

Due to the common area being the most shared space, it was the cleanest. Jane had gone out and bought the recycling and garbage bins and Clara had brought a shoe rack from home that she let all of them share. Command hooks held various jackets, hats, and accessories, and Ellie’s art had been proudly sticky-tacked to the wall by Ji-yoo. 

There was a microwave on the counter and a mini-fridge on the ground beneath it. A TV sat haphazardly next to the microwave, with Zara’s blu-Ray player and Jane’s Xbox next to it, cables a tangled mess around it. There was a lone circle chair between the two dorms, upon which a large Scooby-Doo plush sat standing guard, courtesy of Zara’s younger sister Scarlet. 

She’d just finished tying off the top of the garbage bag when her phone vibrated on the counter.

PJM: They won’t let me into the building without you here with me.

Zara: That’s because you’re a random 4 foot tall stranger.

PJM: Ouch.

Zara snorted and lifted the bag, grabbing her key card and student ID from her jacket pocket on her way out the door. She dropped the trash in the bin at the end of the hall and started down the stairs at a light jog, her slippers echoing quietly in the silence.

It was easy to see Jimin standing at the security desk, an easy-going smile on his face as he made large hand gestures to the security guard, one hand holding the Amazon box. He looked nice in his plain white t-shirt and black skinny jeans, his hair tousled from the wind. His eyes lifted to meet hers and his smile turned into a full on grin.

“There she is!” He exclaimed in Korean. He quickly set the Amazon box on the counter and, to Zara’s surprise, wrapped his arms around her, sliding between her tank top and the flannel shirt she wore. The next sentence was spoken in slow, careful English, clearly something he’d practiced. “It’s nice to see you, Pretty Girl.”

Zara could feel her face heat up against Jimin’s t-shirt.

“Zara Underhill,” the security officer said, causing Jimin to break away from her. “You’ve never had visitors before.”

“There’s a first time for everything,” Zara sighed, reaching for the sign-in sheet and signing her name. She slid the clipboard in front of Jimin and held out the pen to him. He filled out his information and signed his name with a flourish.

“Okay, Miss Underhill, he’s all yours.”

“Thanks, Phil,” Zara smiled and started back up the stairs. Over her shoulder she called, “This way, Jimin. Follow me.”

Jimin wasn’t the only one who had been practicing. Zara had enlisted Ji-yoo to teach her some Korean, sensing that her interactions with these boys would last longer than the short time they’d be in California. Although, Zara was far from fluent.

Jimin grabbed the Amazon box and followed after her up the stairs. On the third landing, he gave a little whistle. “You live so far up. Which floor do you live on?” When he saw Zara turn to blink back at him stupidly, he searched his brain for his limited English vocabulary. “What Floor?”

“Five.”

“Elevator?”

Zara shook her head and pulled out her phone, the Google Translate already open and at the ready. “It’s always crowded. I get enough crowding at home, you know, so the stairs are easier.”

Jimin nodded, smiling. He pulled out his own phone, “I guess it’s good exercise!”

When they reached her suite, she let them in and he lingered awkwardly in the doorway, looking at the art in the small common area.

“Yours?” He looked at the perfect colored pencil rendition of Rapunzel, a grin working its way onto his lips.

“Yep,” Zara replied, quickly tapping on her phone. “My sister, Scarlet, really loves fairy tales, and she was on a real Rapunzel kick. She’s got a picture of Flynn Rider I drew framed next to her bed.”

“That’s the cutest thing I’ve ever heard.” Jimin mumbled to himself. Zara grinned at him, and nodded to her dorm room.

“Come on, Legs.”

Obediently, Jimin followed her in, setting about opening the computer box as Zara settled herself at the head of her bed. She watched him quietly as he plugged it in and began the setup, letting her type in all her information, jokingly looking away from her passwords.

“There you go, Miss Zara,” his phone droned as he scooted back so that he reclined against her headboard next to her. He watched her fingers moving lightly against the keyboard as she scrolled through her Twitter. She placed her hand on the top of the screen and paused, before closing the laptop and setting it gently to the side.

“Jimin,” She said, sitting up on her knees. In response to the slightly serious edge to her voice, Jimin straightened his back a little. “Tell me what you want in return for the computer.” This is the phrase Zara had practiced.

They were back to this again, were they? Jimin’s lips twisted into a pout, and his fingers tapped across his phone screen.

“Zara, I’m serious, you don’t have to pay us back.”

“No, Jimin, I’m serious. Why won’t you let me pay you back?! It’s not like it’s a sex thing...”

Jimin, who had already been shaking his head and typing before Zara’s phone had even stopped translating, froze abruptly, lifting his eyes slowly, and Zara’s own eyes widened as realization took root.

“Oh my gosh, it is a sex thing! Jimin, you’re a total Sugar Daddy! Or would it be Sugar Daddies? Is it all of you?”

Jimin winced at her tone of voice, not needing her to translate the words, ‘Sugar Daddy,’ at all. His fingers finally typed out a response, “That’s not exactly the situation, but I guess that’s one way to put it.”

Zara stared at him a little longer, before coming to a decision. She reached for her flannel and ripped it off. Jimin started, dropping his phone onto her bed.

“Zara, what are you doing?”

She didn’t answer, reaching next for her black tank top. This action is what spurred Jimin into action.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!” He grabbed her wrists gently, forcing her down onto her back. She gazed up at him as he hovered over her, stress showing in his eyes. “What are you doing?”

This, Zara understood.

“I’m paying you back.”

“Jesus Christ, Zara,” it was a long suffering sigh that left him, as he moved himself off of her. He sat on the edge of the bed and put his head in his hands. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”

Silence, and then Zara joined him on the side of her bed. She stayed quiet for a few more seconds before typing out, “We could do it, you know? All of us... that would be okay.” He glanced at her and nudged her with his shoulder, reaching back for his own phone.

“The laptop really was just a gift. Hyung killed your first one, we don’t want you feeling obligated to sleep with us just because we replaced it. And it really would be all of us, Zara. All seven. I can’t explain why right now, but I promise if you decide you’re okay with it, we’ll explain right away.”

“Okay,” Zara agreed, but Jimin shook his head and stood up.

“No, we want you to seriously think about it. I want you to think long and hard about if this is really what you want. It doesn’t matter what the guys and I want.” He looked down at her and smiled, “I’ll see you around, Pretty Girl.”

And he left, leaving Zara to think.

@snowythellama​ @stskpop​

[softysuho]

Racing Love

Paring: Baekhyun x reader

Genre: Racer!AU

Warnings: Cussing, mentions of sexually related topics

Summary: Baekhyun's massive crush on you was no joke, all it took was one kiss.

•••

Baekhyun swirled his tongue around the purple sucker, leaning against his black Ford GT, with custom electric blue lights wherever he thought they looked coolest. His eyes watched you whenever you weren't looking. You were standing in the usual spot, collecting the bets from the crowd of men and women ranging from early twenties to late fifties. Your hair was curled for once, pants tighter than what he knew you were comfortable in and a soft crimson crop top that you always seemed to look the most delicious in.

Tonight was a big race for Baekhyun and his friends. It was just him and Jackson, the son the of biggest company in the country. Big money was placed for and against him but he knew how stressed Junmyeon was over this single race. Junmyeon treated all his boys fair, taking just the right percentage from the money they win from bets. Baekhyun was his best, the boy always crossed the finish line miles before others.

You caught Baekhyun's eye this time, sending a soft playful wink his way. His jaw clenched, eyes zeroing in on the lip you took between your teeth as your eyes devoured his body. His heart began to beat quickly, flustered by the attention you were giving him the first time in.. ever.

It was no secret Baekhyun had big heart eyes for you, he was constantly trying to find ways to be around you without seeming creepy. Picking up the keys you dropped or draping his leather coat over you after races when he deemed it 'too cold'. Jongin would often tease you about the name that was practically written on your forehead in neon letters, branding you as Baekhyun's girl without you even realizing. No man would approach you in a way that seemed suggestive or flirty, knowing Baekhyun would run them over at 200 miles per hour.

You however, seemed to be either oblivious or weren't interested. Baekhyun--hoping for the latter--kept up normal friendly banter, tossing in a few flirty remarks or stupid pick-up lines that had you blushing and giggling next to him. He wouldn't deny that he had a massive crush on you and that one day he would finally make you officially 'his girl'

You sent a gentle wave his way, pointing to the deep green Mustang that sat loudly next to his own. His jaw twitched, a smirk spreading across his face at the silent 'good luck' you sent him. He blew you a kiss, chuckling when you pretended to catch it and threw his lollipop stick on the ground.

"She's a cutie and, although innocent looking, I bet she's an expert in bed." His opponent strolled up to him, reaching his hand out with a cocky stuck up smirk that made Baekhyun pity the mans existence.

"What sperm malfunction made you." He changed the topic quickly from you, Baekhyun liked when the other racers were a bit angry and eager to punch out his perfect teeth, it made the end result all the more satisfying when he rolled across the finish line in first place.

"That's quite a mouth you got there Baekhyun. Use it often?" Jackson's arms were crossed, Baekhyun scoffing at the lame attempted response.

"Does your daddy know you're out here Jack, or did you sneak past all his dogs?" Baekhyun mumbled, catching your smug smile as you handed Junmyeon the bet stats.

"Fuck off Baekhyun, if I win, I get to fuck your girl toy." Jackson pointed at your back before storming off to his car.

"Please, after this race, I'll make sure I have her." His brows creased in determination, slipping into his prized car.

•••

The tension was noticeable within the crowd, men and women biting their nails in hopes they made big bucks. You however leaned against the fence, eyes drifting from Baekhyun's car to the giant electronic screens built into the side of the tall skyscraper. You could see Becca in her small white leather shorts and giant pink, puffy bomber jacket with the checkered flag in her hands.

The lights of the cars flicked on the moment the flag was held high in the air, Becca inhaling before she counted down. Your back tensed, suddenly feeling the atmosphere's anxiety. Jongdae, your best chaotic and wild friend, stood beside you. A lazy arm thrown across your shoulder, giggling at stupid messages sent from his girlfriend. You nudge his side, breaking the skin of your lip when Becca finally screamed "GO!"

Baekhyun was off, as well as Jackson. Their engine noise died in the distance as they got further away in the city. The big screen that showed Baekhyun's face and dash cam became your entire focus. Jongdae screamed his cheers as Baekhyun gained another mile ahead of the other racer. Whistling loudly, fists raised in the air.

"That's my guy! Go Baek!" You smiled widely at Jongdae, gripping onto his jacket in excitement. "I can't wait to see the stack Suho gains tonight. He could buy us a beach house Y/n!"

You felt your body warm, the sweating bodies of the drunk men and women made the cold air increase in temperature. Squishing closer to Jongdae, you smiled and cheered even louder as Baekhyun's engine was heard in the distance once more. His proud and smug smirk was clear on the screen when he knew he won yet another race. Jackson slamming his wheel as he tried to make his car go faster, a deep irritated frown was evident on his face.

Baekhyun smoothly jumped out of his car, shrugging his shoulders at the fuming Jackson. "Better luck next time brat!" He waved his fingers through the air, skipping to your spot in the crowd.

"Hey, good job Baek," You spoke softly as you hopped over the fence, reaching up to ruffle his hair. "I knew you could do it."

"Close your eyes." His hands were placed at your hips, taking a half step towards you. "I promise, nothing bad will happen. Trust me, I'd never let anything bad happen to you."

You raised a questioning brow, gripping onto the black jacket and nodded. "You owe me if it's bad."

He watched with adorned eyes as your own flutter closed. His pink lips were wetted with a swipe of his tongue, tilting your chin upwards. With one last deep breath, Baekhyun connected his lips with your glossy ones, humming lowly when your fingers tangled in his locks.

All around you, the boys could be heard from your ears as they cheered and clapped when they saw the both of you. Some whining about bets, some whistling in approval. And there was a distinct noise of a single click, a small flash and an obnoxious laugh following. "That's going in the racer book!"

Baekhyun pulled away, sneakily slapping your ass that earned a flick to the forehead. He whined and pouted, tugging on your shirt when you finally walked away. "Come on puppy, mama's got a treat for you." You called over your shoulder, blowing a kiss at the boy.

"Get some Baek!" Chanyeol yelled, pumping his fist in the air.

"Oh hell yes.." His eyes were wide, stumbling after your retreating figure.

"Okay Chen, where's my hundred?" Chanyeol stuck his hand out, laughing loudly as the bills were stacked in his large palm. "I just made some easy ass money."

[a-room-of-my-own]

Four years ago, I wrote about my decision to live as a woman in The New York Times, writing that I had wanted to live “authentically as the woman that I have always been,” and had “effectively traded my white male privilege to become one of America’s most hated minorities.”

Three years ago, I decided that I was neither male nor female, but nonbinary—and made headlines after an Oregon judge agreed to let me identify as a third sex, not male or female.

Now, I want to live again as the man that I am.

I’m one of the lucky ones. Despite participating in medical transgenderism for six years, my body is still intact. Most people who desist from transgender identities after gender changes can’t say the same.

But that’s not to say I got off scot-free. My psyche is eternally scarred, and I’ve got a host of health issues from the grand medical experiment.

Here’s how things began.

After convincing myself that I was a woman during a severe mental health crisis, I visited a licensed nurse practitioner in early 2013 and asked for a hormone prescription. “If you don’t give me the drugs, I’ll buy them off the internet,” I threatened.

Although she’d never met me before, the nurse phoned in a prescription for 2 mg of oral estrogen and 200 mg of Spironolactone that very same day.

The nurse practitioner ignored that I have chronic post-traumatic stress disorder, having previously served in the military for almost 18 years. All of my doctors agree on that. Others believe that I have bipolar disorder and possibly borderline personality disorder.

I should have been stopped, but out-of-control, transgender activism had made the nurse practitioner too scared to say no.

I’d learned how to become a female from online medical documents at a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital website.

After I began consuming the cross-sex hormones, I started therapy at a gender clinic in Pittsburgh so that I could get people to sign off on the transgender surgeries I planned to have.

All I needed to do was switch over my hormone operating fuel and get my penis turned into a vagina. Then I’d be the same as any other woman. That’s the fantasy the transgender community sold me. It’s the lie I bought into and believed.

Only one therapist tried to stop me from crawling into this smoking rabbit hole. When she did, I not only fired her, I filed a formal complaint against her. “She’s a gatekeeper,” the trans community said.

Professional stigmatisms against “conversion therapy” had made it impossible for the therapist to question my motives for wanting to change my sex.

The “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders” (Fifth Edition) says one of the traits of gender dysphoria is believing that you possess the stereotypical feelings of the opposite sex. I felt that about myself, but yet no therapist discussed it with me.

Two weeks hadn’t passed before I found a replacement therapist. The new one quickly affirmed my identity as a woman. I was back on the road to getting vaginoplasty.

There’s abundant online literature informing transgender people that their sex change isn’t real. But when a licensed medical doctor writes you a letter essentially stating that you were born in the wrong body and a government agency or court of law validates that delusion, you become damaged and confused. I certainly did.

Painful Roots

My trauma history resembles a ride down the Highway of Death during the first Gulf War.

As a child, I was sexually abused by a male relative. My parents severely beat me. At this point, I’ve been exposed to so much violence and had so many close calls that I don’t know how to explain why I’m still alive. Nor do I know how to mentally process some of the things I’ve seen and experienced.

Dr. Ray Blanchard has an unpopular theory that explains why someone like me may have been drawn to transgenderism. He claims there are two types of transgender women: homosexuals that are attracted to men, and men who are attracted to the thought or image of themselves as females.

It’s a tough thing to admit, but I belong to the latter group. We are classified as having autogynephilia.

After having watched pornography for years while in the Army and being married to a woman who resisted my demands to become the ideal female, I became that female instead. At least in my head.

While autogynephilia was my motivation to become a woman, gender stereotypes were my means of implementation. I believed wearing a long wig, dresses, heels, and makeup would make me a woman.

Feminists begged to differ on that. They rejected me for conforming to female stereotypes. But as a new member of the transgender community, I beat up on them too. The women who become men don’t fight the transgender community’s wars. The men in dresses do.

Medical Malpractice

The best thing that could have happened would have been for someone to order intensive therapy. That would have protected me from my inclination to cross-dress and my risky sexual transgressions, of which there were many.

Instead, quacks in the medical community hid me in the women’s bathroom with people’s wives and daughters. “Your gender identity is female,” these alleged professionals said.

The medical community is so afraid of the trans community that they’re now afraid to give someone Blanchard’s diagnosis. Trans men are winning in medicine, and they’ve won the battle for language.

Think of the word “transvestite.” They’ve succeeded in making it a vulgar word, even though it just means men dressing like women. People are no longer allowed to tell the truth about men like me. Everyone now has to call us transgender instead.

The diagnostic code in my records at the VA should read Transvestic Disorder (302.3). Instead, the novel theories of Judith Butler and Anne Fausto-Sterling have been used to cover up the truths written about by Blanchard, J. Michael Bailey, and Alice Dreger.

I confess to having been motivated by autogynephilia during all of this. Blanchard was right.

Trauma, hypersexuality owing to childhood sexual abuse, and autogynephilia are all supposed to be red flags for those involved in the medical arts of psychology, psychiatry, and physical medicine—yet nobody except for the one therapist in Pittsburgh ever tried to stop me from changing my sex. They just kept helping me to harm myself.

Escaping to ‘Nonbinary’

Three years into my gender change from male to female, I looked hard into the mirror one day. When I did, the facade of femininity and womanhood crumbled.

Despite having taken or been injected with every hormone and antiandrogen concoction in the VA’s medical arsenal, I didn’t look anything like a female. People on the street agreed. Their harsh stares reflected the reality behind my fraudulent existence as a woman. Biological sex is immutable.

It took three years for that reality to set in with me.

When the fantasy of being a woman came to an end, I asked two of my doctors to allow me to become nonbinary instead of female to bail me out. Both readily agreed.

After pumping me full of hormones—the equivalent of 20 birth control pills per day—they each wrote a sex change letter. The two weren’t just bailing me out. They were getting themselves off the hook for my failed sex change. One worked at the VA. The other worked at Oregon Health & Science University.

To escape the delusion of having become a woman, I did something completely unprecedented in American history. In 2016, I convinced an Oregon judge to declare my sex to be nonbinary—neither male nor female.

In my psychotic mind, I had restored the mythical third sex to North America. And I became the first legally recognized nonbinary person in the country.

Celebrity Status

The landmark court decision catapulted me to instant fame within the LGBT community. For 10 nonstop days afterward, the media didn’t let me sleep. Reporters hung out in my Facebook feed, journalists clung to my every word, and a Portland television station beamed my wife and I into living rooms in the United Kingdom.

Becoming a woman had gotten me into The New York Times. Convincing a judge that my sex was nonbinary got my photos and story into publications around the world.

Then, before the judge’s ink had even dried on my Oregon sex change court order, a Washington, D.C.-based LGBT legal aid organization contacted me. “We want to help you change your birth certificate,” they offered.

Within months, I scored another historic win after the Department of Vital Records issued me a brand new birth certificate from Washington, D.C., where I was born. A local group called Whitman-Walker Health had gotten my sex designation on my birth certificate switched to “unknown.” It was the first time in D.C. history a birth certificate had been printed with a sex marker other than male or female.

Another transgender legal aid organization jumped on the Jamie Shupe bandwagon, too. Lambda Legal used my nonbinary court order to help convince a Colorado federal judge to order the State Department to issue a passport with an X marker (meaning nonbinary) to a separate plaintiff named Dana Zzyym.

LGBT organizations helping me to screw up my life had become a common theme. During my prior sex change to female, the New York-based Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund had gotten my name legally changed. I didn’t like being named after the uncle who’d molested me. Instead of getting me therapy for that, they got me a new name.

A Pennsylvania judge didn’t question the name change, either. Wanting to help a transgender person, she had not only changed my name, but at my request she also sealed the court order, allowing me to skip out on a ton of debt I owed because of a failed home purchase and begin my new life as a woman. Instead of merging my file, two of the three credit bureaus issued me a brand new line of credit.

Walking Away From Fiction

It wasn’t until I came out against the sterilization and mutilation of gender-confused children and transgender military service members in 2017 that LGBT organizations stopped helping me. Most of the media retreated with them.

Overnight, I went from being a liberal media darling to a conservative pariah.

Both groups quickly began to realize that the transgender community had a runaway on their hands. Their solution was to completely ignore me and what my story had become. They also stopped acknowledging that I was behind the nonbinary option that now exists in 11 states.

The truth is that my sex change to nonbinary was a medical and scientific fraud.

Consider the fact that before the historic court hearing occurred, my lawyer informed me that the judge had a transgender child.

Sure enough, the morning of my brief court hearing, the judge didn’t ask me a single question. Nor did this officer of the court demand to see any medical evidence alleging that I was born something magical. Within minutes, the judge just signed off on the court order.

I do not have any disorders of sexual development. All of my sexual confusion was in my head. I should have been treated. Instead, at every step, doctors, judges, and advocacy groups indulged my fiction.

The carnage that came from my court victory is just as precedent-setting as the decision itself. The judge’s order led to millions of taxpayer dollars being spent to put an X marker on driver’s licenses in 11 states so far. You can now become male, female, or nonbinary in all of them.

In my opinion, the judge in my case should have recused herself. In doing so, she would have spared me the ordeal still yet to come. She also would have saved me from having to bear the weight of the big secret behind my win.

I now believe that she wasn’t just validating my transgender identity. She was advancing her child’s transgender identity, too.

A sensible magistrate would have politely told me no and refused to sign such an outlandish legal request. “Gender is just a concept. Biological sex defines all of us,” that person would have said.

In January 2019, unable to advance the fraud for another single day, I reclaimed my male birth sex. The weight of the lie on my conscience was heavier than the value of the fame I’d gained from participating in this elaborate swindle.

Two fake gender identities couldn’t hide the truth of my biological reality. There is no third gender or third sex. Like me, intersex people are either male or female. Their condition is the result of a disorder of sexual development, and they need help and compassion.

I played my part in pushing forward this grand illusion. I’m not the victim here. My wife, daughter, and the American taxpayers are—they are the real victims.

[berrygibbs88-blog]

Eat, Wish, Love Through Elizabeth Gilbert-- Customer reviews, Conversation, Bookclubs, Lists.

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[evescole]

Fear // Peter Parker

word count: 2,045

pairing: peter parker x stark!reader

warnings: hints of an eating disorder, swearing, sexual harassment, electrocution, angsty angst angst

summary: when the avengers are split after the scene at the airport, you’re beginning to realize there’s major consequences to your actions. 

tagged: @fightmeandmy100fandoms @purplekitten30 @neejaatjeh @cam0flug3 @annoyingcoffeephantom (i just tagged everyone who asked + commented on the last one, sorry if you didn’t want to be tagged!)

a/n: here’s part two. peter’s not in this one as much but he’ll be in the next one, i promise. GUYS I HIT 200 FOLLOWERS THANK YOU BUNCHES!!

masterlist

leave me stuff

part one // part three

--

Fear wasn’t an unknown topic in the world. People had lots of fears, right? Spiders, clowns, the dark. There was a possibility to be scared of anything. Monophobia is known as the fear of being alone. You had done your fair share of research on it to know that you had it. Ever since you were a little kid, the fear of being alone was prominent in the back of your head. Now, more than ever, your fears were becoming reality.

Since you were torn from your friends at the airport, everything went downhill. You hadn’t spoken a word, not even when you were briefly reunited with your teammates. They had taken your group to the Raft Prison. You knew you were going to get in trouble but you didn’t think it would be this consequential.

Weapons were confiscated as you were taken in before you were forced to change clothes. The girl who was assigned to watch you was creeping you out, eyes scanning your body as you zipped up the blue outfit.

“If you weren’t a criminal, I’d definitely be taking you home with me.” She smirked as she walked towards you. You rolled your eyes, not interesting in her childish acts.

They had taken everything, including the clips that had once pinned your hair back. The one thing you had managed to hide was the necklace that Peter had given you. The locket stayed clipped around your neck, hidden by the blue uniform that you’d been forced into.

You folded your original outfit up before putting it in the box that held the rest of your stuff. Before you had a chance to turn around, something cold locked around your neck, making you jump. Your hands immediately went to the foreign object as the girl chuckled.

“Boss’ orders. Said we need to keep freaks like you and the witch in check. I happen to agree with him.” She traced your cheek with her pointer finger.

You grit your teeth, holding back the desire to smack her hand away. You didn’t need to make the situation any worse than it already was. You knew with everything that happened, you were on thin ice.

“Aw how cute. The little baby of the group doesn’t talk. She needs everyone else to defend her,” She teased, her bottom lip jutting out. “Arms out.”

You rolled your eyes and followed her directions. She lifted a heavy jacket on them before walking around you and securing the buckles on the back. You looked down, a sinking feeling in your chest as you realized what the jacket was.

“You know, when they said some of the Avengers were coming in, who would’ve thought that Tony Stark’s daughter was in the group. I have to admit, you’re just as psychotic as he is.”

Insulting you was one thing but now, you were mad. Yeah, you had your fair share of arguments with your dad and especially now, you regretted all of them. In the end, he was a good father and you were about to let someone treat him like he wasn’t.

“I mean, wow. Not only did majority of his team go against him, but his own kid? If that doesn’t tell you he’s a shit person, I don’t know what will.”

All your pent up anger released as you threw your elbow back, connecting with the girl’s stomach. She gasped, letting go of you as she stumbled back.

You stomped towards her, grabbing the front of her shirt. “You can sit here and taunt me, harass me, and make fun of me all you want, but you won’t say a thing about my dad. Do you understand?” You growled, your fist tightening even more.

She nodded, a bit terrified by you lashing out. You dropped her before walking away back to the center of the room. You took a deep breath to calm yourself, glad that you got your point across.

“Crazy little bitch!” The girl sneered as she stood up from the floor, clutching a black remote in her hand. You squinted at the device before a searing pain filled your body. You collapsed on the ground, fingers tugging weakly at the collar on your neck as the sensation stopped. The girl leaned down in front of you, chucking like a mad woman. “Don’t mess with me, ever again or I’ll make sure you never get out of here.”

You gulped and nodded, not wanting to be electrocuted again. She grunted in satisfaction before standing and pulling you up too. You fell back into silence as she wrapped your arms around your waist, securing them behind you.

Eventually, you were led out of the room by the girl as she gripped your arm a little too tight. You kept your eyes on the floor, lips silent. You passed through a series of doors and hallways before stopping at one. The girl paused to scan her badge before leading you into the circular room.

“Y/N!”

You looked up to see Wanda behind a wall of glass wearing the same restraints as you. You blinked at her before scanning the room to see the rest of your team.

The girl yanked on your arm before practically shoving you into the cell next to Wanda’s, a smirk forming on her lips as you collided painfully with the ground.

You managed to wiggle yourself into a sitting position as she slammed the door shut. Your shoulder throbbed from the impact with the floor as you leaned against the wall. You pulled your knees to your chest, finally able to release all your pent up emotions.

Clint was in the cell opposite yours, eyes on you the entire time of your entrance. He felt for you. He knew this would be the consequences of fighting on Steve’s side. He also knew that you weren't prepared for this. You were just a kid. Tony’s kid, more importantly. You shouldn’t have ever had to decide on whose side you would fight on.

He just hoped they could get you out of here soon.

--

You weren’t sure how many days had passed. You stayed in your spot, curled in the corner. Trays of food had been brought in the room countless times and you stared at each and every one. You hadn’t dared to touch a bite in fear of there being something inside. No matter how much Wanda and Clint (and sometimes Sam), begged you to eat, to talk to them, you stayed frozen in your spot.

You felt awful. You couldn’t believe you made the decisions you did. Yes, you loved Steve and yes, you wanted to support him but you did the worst thing ever. You betrayed your dad, the only real family you had. Not to mention, you basically got in a fist fight with your boyfriend. You were disappointed in your decisions and now, you were punishing yourself for it.

The sound of the door opening and closing made you jump but you didn’t dare look up. You knew it was probably just Mr. Ross again and you didn’t have anything you wanted to say to him.

Clapping, however was not what you planned to hear. You glanced up to see Clint standing in his containment, clapping loudly.

“The Futurist, gentlemen! The Futurist is here.” You could hear the sarcastic tone in his voice. “He sees all. He knows what’s best for you, whether you like it or not.”

Looking closer, you could see two figures approach Clint’s cell. One, you could definitely tell was your father, which sent chills down your spine. The other, you hoped to God you were wrong about.

You could tell Clint was mumbling for a bit, a conversation going on. You blinked as you were mentioned, eyes still on the group as Clint talked. “That didn’t used to mean me. Or Sam, or Wanda, or hell, your own daughter.”

With a wave of his hand, Clint had both of the newcomers looking at you. As soon as you caught their eyes, you looked right back down at your lap.

“Y/N!” Peter’s voice cracked as he kneeled down in front of the glass door. “Oh, my God. Are you okay?”

“Angel.” Your father’s voice was stern as he approached. You could hear his dress shoes on the hard, tile floors. “Look at me.”

Figuring you owed him that much, you made eye contact with your dad. You could hear Peter take a sharp breath. You knew you weren’t in the best condition but that didn’t mean you were going to change it.

“Alright, what the hell is going on?” Your dad walked away from you towards Sam.

The male didn’t bother to answer the question, only retaliating with one of his own. “How’s Rhodes?”

Tony scoffed, “Are you kidding me? My daughter’s falling apart and nobody’s doing-”

“Shut the hell up, Tony!” Clint snapped, gripping the bars of his containment tightly. “She did this because of where she is. Because she’s alone. And you know damn well that she can’t stand being alone.”

Your father gave you another pity filled glance before diving into a conversation with Sam. Your eyes left him to land back on your boyfriend, who was begging you to talk to him.

“Y/N, please. Please just tell me you’re okay.” Peter sat down on the floor, leaning up against the glass. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry we didn’t come sooner but I had to beg your dad in the first place to let me come and I just-”

You heart broke a little more as he started crying. You clenched your eyes shut, leaning your head back against the wall. You could only handle so much pain, so much grief, before you broke yourself.

Silently, you shuffled your way over to lean against the door next to him, your head against the cool glass. “I miss you.”

Peter stopped crying at your voice, hesitantly looking up. When he saw you moved, he about burst into tears again. “I miss you too, baby girl. So much. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not...it’s not your fault.” Your voice cracked from the lack of use as you curled into yourself again. “I’m sorry, Peter. I made a mistake.”

“No, no, no.” He shook his head desperately, wanting nothing more than to reach for you and cuddle you close. “You didn’t do anything wrong, love. I promise it’s okay. Your dad and I, we’re gonna get you out of here. I promise.”

You sniffled and nodded, curling up against the door as your eyes dropped to your lap. Silence filled the cell block again, making you want to scream. You could hear brief mumbling before shoes connected with tile again until your father was crouched down beside Peter.

“You know, that’s the most movement, the most noise, we’ve gotten out of her since she got here, Tony,” Wanda sighed, “She’s not going to last much longer.”

Your father nodded, his eyes still on your deteriorating form. He knew something had to change, and fast, if he wanted to keep you with him. He had let you slip from him once and he was bound and determined not to let it happen again.

“Parker, we’ve gotta go,” Tony mumbled, his eyes not leaving you.

Peter wiped the tears from his cheeks. “Yeah, okay.” He moved to a crouch, placing his hand near your face against the glass. “It’s gonna be okay, Y/N. I love you.”

You watched as he stood up, leaving your father in your eyesight. You gave him a quick glance, failing to hold back the tears in your eyes.

Tony sighed, “Don’t give up on me. Not yet.” He tapped the glass gently, looking into your eyes to give you a sad smile before standing back up. You watched as he wrapped an arm around Peter’s shoulder as they exited the room, leaving you to curl up in your tears all by yourself.

Before he lost sight of you completely, Peter turned to your dad. “We’re gonna bring her home, right Mr. Stark?” He whispered, his voice making it evident of his sorrow.

“Yeah,” Tony sighed, squeezing the teen a little tighter. “Yeah, kid. We’re gonna bring her home.”

--

a/n: tell me what you think!! i wanna know :)

masterlist

part three

[gordonwilliamsweb]

Retiree Living the RV Dream Fights $12,387 Nightmare Lab Fee

Lorraine Rogge and her husband, Michael Rogge, travel the country in a recreational vehicle, a well-earned adventure in retirement. This spring found them parked in Artesia, New Mexico, for several months.

This story also ran on NPR. It can be republished for free.

In May, Rogge, 60, began to feel pelvic pain and cramping. But she had had a total hysterectomy in 2006, so the pain seemed unusual, especially because it lasted for days. She looked for a local gynecologist and found one who took her insurance at the Carlsbad Medical Center in Carlsbad, New Mexico, about a 20-mile drive from the RV lot.

The doctor asked if Rogge was sexually active, and she responded yes and that she had been married to Michael for 26 years. Rogge felt she made it clear that she is in a monogamous relationship. The doctor then did a gynecological examination and took a vaginal swab sample for laboratory testing.

The only lab test Rogge remembered discussing with the doctor was to see whether she had a yeast infection. She wasn’t given any medication to treat the pelvic pain and eventually it disappeared after a few days.

Then the bill came.

The Patient: Lorraine Rogge, 60. Her insurance coverage was an Anthem Blue Cross retiree plan through her husband’s former employer, with a deductible of $2,000 and out-of-pocket maximum of $6,750 for in-network providers.

Total Bill: Carlsbad Medical Center billed $12,386.93 to Anthem Blue Cross for a vaginosis, vaginitis and sexually transmitted infections (STI) testing panel. The insurer paid $4,161.58 on a negotiated rate of $7,172.05. That left Rogge responsible for $1,970 of her deductible and $1,040.36 coinsurance. Her total owed for the lab bill was $3,010.47. Rogge also paid $93.85 for the visit to the doctor.

Service Provider: Carlsbad Medical Center in Carlsbad, New Mexico. It is owned by Community Health Systems, a large for-profit chain of hospital systems based in Franklin, Tennessee, outside Nashville. The doctor Rogge saw works for Carlsbad Medical Center and its lab processed her test.

Medical Service: A bundled testing panel that looked for bacterial and yeast infections as well as common STIs, including chlamydia, gonorrhea and trichomoniasis.

What Gives: There were two things Rogge didn’t know as she sought care. First, Carlsbad Medical Center is notorious for its high prices and aggressive billing practices and, second, she wasn’t aware she would be tested for a wide range of sexually transmitted infections.

The latter bothered her a lot since she has been sexually active only with her husband. She doesn’t remember being advised about the STI testing at all. Nor was she questioned about whether she or her husband might have been sexually active with other people, which could have justified broader testing. They have been on the road together for five years.

“I was incensed that they ran these tests, when they just said they were going to run a yeast infection test,” said Rogge. “They ran all these tests that one would run on a very young person who had a lot of boyfriends, not a 60-year-old grandmother that’s been married for 26 years.”

Although a doctor doesn’t need a patient’s authorization to run tests, it’s not good practice to do so without informing the patient, said Dr. Ina Park, an associate professor of family community medicine at the University of California-San Francisco School of Medicine. That is particularly true with tests of a sensitive nature, like STIs. It is doubly true when the tests are going to costs thousands of dollars.

Park, an expert in sexually transmitted infections, also questioned the necessity of the full panel of tests for a patient who had a hysterectomy.

Beyond that, the pricing for these tests was extremely high. “It should not cost $12,000 to get an evaluation for vaginitis,” said Park.

Charles Root, an expert in lab billing, agreed.

“Quite frankly, the retail prices on [the bill] are ridiculous, they make no sense at all,” said Root. “Those are tests that cost about $10 to run.”

In fall 2019, The New York Times and CNN investigated Carlsbad Medical Center and found the facility had taken thousands of patients to court for unpaid hospital bills. Carlsbad Medical Center also has higher prices than many other facilities — a 2019 Rand Corp. study found that private insurance companies paid Carlsbad Medical Center 505% of what Medicare would pay for the same procedures.

The bundled testing panel run on Rogge’s sample was a Quest Diagnostics SureSwab Vaginosis Panel Plus. It included six types of tests. Quest Diagnostics didn’t provide the cost for the bundled tests, but Kim Gorode, a company spokesperson, said if the tests had been ordered directly through Quest rather than through the hospital, it was likely “the patient responsibility would have been substantially less.”

According to Medicare’s Clinical Laboratory Fee Schedule, Medicare would have reimbursed labs only about $40 for each test run on Rogge’s sample. And Medicaid would reimburse hospitals in New Mexico similarly, according to figures provided by Russell Toal, superintendent of New Mexico’s insurance department.

But hospitals and clinics can — and do — add substantial markups to clinical tests sent out to commercial labs.

Although private health insurance doesn’t typically reimburse hospitals at Medicare or Medicaid rates, Root said, private insurance reimbursement rates are rarely much more than 200% to 300% of Medicare’s rates. Assuming a 300% reimbursement rate, the total private insurance would have reimbursed for the six tests would have been $720.

That $720 is less than what Carlsbad Medical Center charged Rogge for her chlamydia test alone: $1,045. And for several of the tests, the medical center charged multiple quantities — presumably corresponding to how many species were tested for — elevating the cost of the yeast infection test to over $4,000.

Toal, who reviewed Rogge’s bill, called the prices “outrageous.”

Resolution: Rogge contacted Anthem Blue Cross and talked to a customer service representative, who submitted a fraud-and-waste claim and an appeal contending the charges were excessive.

The appeal was denied. Anthem Blue Cross told Rogge that under her plan the insurance company had paid the amount it was responsible for, and that based on her deductible and coinsurance amounts, she was responsible for the remainder.

Anthem Blue Cross said in a statement to KHN all the tests run on Rogge were approved and “paid for in accordance with Anthem’s pre-determined contracted rate with Carlsbad Medical Center.”

By the time Rogge’s appeal was denied, she had researched Carlsbad Medical Center and read the stories of patients being brought to court for medical bills they couldn’t pay. She had also gotten a notice from the hospital that her account would be sent to a collection agency if she didn’t pay the $3,000 balance.

Fearing the possibility of getting sued or ruining her credit, Rogge agreed to a plan to pay the bill over three years. She made three payments of $83.63 each in September, October and November, totaling $250.89.

After a Nov. 18 call and email from KHN, Carlsbad Medical Center called Rogge on Nov. 20 and said the remainder of her account balance would be waived.

Rogge was thrilled. We “aren’t the kind of people who have payment plans hanging over our heads,” she said, adding: “This is a relief.”

“I’m going to go on a bike ride now” to celebrate, she said.

The Takeaway: Particularly when visiting a doctor with whom you don’t have a long-standing trusted relationship, don’t be afraid to ask: How much is this test going to cost? Also ask for what, exactly, are you being tested? Do not be comforted by the facility’s in-network status. With coinsurance and deductibles, you can still be out a lot.

If it’s a blood test that will be sent out to a commercial lab like Quest Diagnostics anyway, ask the physician to just give you a requisition to have the blood drawn at the commercial lab. That way you avoid the markup. This advice is obviously not possible for a vaginal swab gathered in a doctor’s office.

Patients should always fight bills they believe are excessively high and escalate the matter if necessary.

Rogge started with her insurer and the provider, as should most patients with a billing question. But, as she learned: In American medicine, what’s legal and in accordance with an insurance contract can seem logically absurd. Still, if you get no satisfaction from your initial inquiries, be aware of options for taking your complaints further.

Every state and U.S. territory has a department that regulates the insurance industry. In New Mexico, that’s the Office of the Superintendent of Insurance. Consumers can look up their state’s department on the National Association of Insurance Commissioners website.

Toal, the insurance superintendent in New Mexico, said his office doesn’t (and no office in the state does that he’s aware of) have the authority to tell a hospital its prices are too high. But he can look into a bill like Rogge’s if a complaint is filed with his office.

“If the patient wants, they can request an independent review, so the bill would go to an independent organization that could see if it was medically necessary,” Toal said.

That wasn’t needed in this case because Rogge’s bill was waived. And after being contacted by KHN, Melissa Suggs, a spokesperson with Carlsbad Medical Center, said the facility is revising their lab charges.

“Pricing for these services will be lower in the future,” Suggs said in a statement.

Bill of the Month is a crowdsourced investigation by KHN and NPR that dissects and explains medical bills. Do you have an interesting medical bill you want to share with us? Tell us about it!

Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

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[stephenmccull]

Retiree Living the RV Dream Fights $12,387 Nightmare Lab Fee

Lorraine Rogge and her husband, Michael Rogge, travel the country in a recreational vehicle, a well-earned adventure in retirement. This spring found them parked in Artesia, New Mexico, for several months.

This story also ran on NPR. It can be republished for free.

In May, Rogge, 60, began to feel pelvic pain and cramping. But she had had a total hysterectomy in 2006, so the pain seemed unusual, especially because it lasted for days. She looked for a local gynecologist and found one who took her insurance at the Carlsbad Medical Center in Carlsbad, New Mexico, about a 20-mile drive from the RV lot.

The doctor asked if Rogge was sexually active, and she responded yes and that she had been married to Michael for 26 years. Rogge felt she made it clear that she is in a monogamous relationship. The doctor then did a gynecological examination and took a vaginal swab sample for laboratory testing.

The only lab test Rogge remembered discussing with the doctor was to see whether she had a yeast infection. She wasn’t given any medication to treat the pelvic pain and eventually it disappeared after a few days.

Then the bill came.

The Patient: Lorraine Rogge, 60. Her insurance coverage was an Anthem Blue Cross retiree plan through her husband’s former employer, with a deductible of $2,000 and out-of-pocket maximum of $6,750 for in-network providers.

Total Bill: Carlsbad Medical Center billed $12,386.93 to Anthem Blue Cross for a vaginosis, vaginitis and sexually transmitted infections (STI) testing panel. The insurer paid $4,161.58 on a negotiated rate of $7,172.05. That left Rogge responsible for $1,970 of her deductible and $1,040.36 coinsurance. Her total owed for the lab bill was $3,010.47. Rogge also paid $93.85 for the visit to the doctor.

Service Provider: Carlsbad Medical Center in Carlsbad, New Mexico. It is owned by Community Health Systems, a large for-profit chain of hospital systems based in Franklin, Tennessee, outside Nashville. The doctor Rogge saw works for Carlsbad Medical Center and its lab processed her test.

Medical Service: A bundled testing panel that looked for bacterial and yeast infections as well as common STIs, including chlamydia, gonorrhea and trichomoniasis.

What Gives: There were two things Rogge didn’t know as she sought care. First, Carlsbad Medical Center is notorious for its high prices and aggressive billing practices and, second, she wasn’t aware she would be tested for a wide range of sexually transmitted infections.

The latter bothered her a lot since she has been sexually active only with her husband. She doesn’t remember being advised about the STI testing at all. Nor was she questioned about whether she or her husband might have been sexually active with other people, which could have justified broader testing. They have been on the road together for five years.

“I was incensed that they ran these tests, when they just said they were going to run a yeast infection test,” said Rogge. “They ran all these tests that one would run on a very young person who had a lot of boyfriends, not a 60-year-old grandmother that’s been married for 26 years.”

Although a doctor doesn’t need a patient’s authorization to run tests, it’s not good practice to do so without informing the patient, said Dr. Ina Park, an associate professor of family community medicine at the University of California-San Francisco School of Medicine. That is particularly true with tests of a sensitive nature, like STIs. It is doubly true when the tests are going to costs thousands of dollars.

Park, an expert in sexually transmitted infections, also questioned the necessity of the full panel of tests for a patient who had a hysterectomy.

Beyond that, the pricing for these tests was extremely high. “It should not cost $12,000 to get an evaluation for vaginitis,” said Park.

Charles Root, an expert in lab billing, agreed.

“Quite frankly, the retail prices on [the bill] are ridiculous, they make no sense at all,” said Root. “Those are tests that cost about $10 to run.”

In fall 2019, The New York Times and CNN investigated Carlsbad Medical Center and found the facility had taken thousands of patients to court for unpaid hospital bills. Carlsbad Medical Center also has higher prices than many other facilities — a 2019 Rand Corp. study found that private insurance companies paid Carlsbad Medical Center 505% of what Medicare would pay for the same procedures.

The bundled testing panel run on Rogge’s sample was a Quest Diagnostics SureSwab Vaginosis Panel Plus. It included six types of tests. Quest Diagnostics didn’t provide the cost for the bundled tests, but Kim Gorode, a company spokesperson, said if the tests had been ordered directly through Quest rather than through the hospital, it was likely “the patient responsibility would have been substantially less.”

According to Medicare’s Clinical Laboratory Fee Schedule, Medicare would have reimbursed labs only about $40 for each test run on Rogge’s sample. And Medicaid would reimburse hospitals in New Mexico similarly, according to figures provided by Russell Toal, superintendent of New Mexico’s insurance department.

But hospitals and clinics can — and do — add substantial markups to clinical tests sent out to commercial labs.

Although private health insurance doesn’t typically reimburse hospitals at Medicare or Medicaid rates, Root said, private insurance reimbursement rates are rarely much more than 200% to 300% of Medicare’s rates. Assuming a 300% reimbursement rate, the total private insurance would have reimbursed for the six tests would have been $720.

That $720 is less than what Carlsbad Medical Center charged Rogge for her chlamydia test alone: $1,045. And for several of the tests, the medical center charged multiple quantities — presumably corresponding to how many species were tested for — elevating the cost of the yeast infection test to over $4,000.

Toal, who reviewed Rogge’s bill, called the prices “outrageous.”

Resolution: Rogge contacted Anthem Blue Cross and talked to a customer service representative, who submitted a fraud-and-waste claim and an appeal contending the charges were excessive.

The appeal was denied. Anthem Blue Cross told Rogge that under her plan the insurance company had paid the amount it was responsible for, and that based on her deductible and coinsurance amounts, she was responsible for the remainder.

Anthem Blue Cross said in a statement to KHN all the tests run on Rogge were approved and “paid for in accordance with Anthem’s pre-determined contracted rate with Carlsbad Medical Center.”

By the time Rogge’s appeal was denied, she had researched Carlsbad Medical Center and read the stories of patients being brought to court for medical bills they couldn’t pay. She had also gotten a notice from the hospital that her account would be sent to a collection agency if she didn’t pay the $3,000 balance.

Fearing the possibility of getting sued or ruining her credit, Rogge agreed to a plan to pay the bill over three years. She made three payments of $83.63 each in September, October and November, totaling $250.89.

After a Nov. 18 call and email from KHN, Carlsbad Medical Center called Rogge on Nov. 20 and said the remainder of her account balance would be waived.

Rogge was thrilled. We “aren’t the kind of people who have payment plans hanging over our heads,” she said, adding: “This is a relief.”

“I’m going to go on a bike ride now” to celebrate, she said.

The Takeaway: Particularly when visiting a doctor with whom you don’t have a long-standing trusted relationship, don’t be afraid to ask: How much is this test going to cost? Also ask for what, exactly, are you being tested? Do not be comforted by the facility’s in-network status. With coinsurance and deductibles, you can still be out a lot.

If it’s a blood test that will be sent out to a commercial lab like Quest Diagnostics anyway, ask the physician to just give you a requisition to have the blood drawn at the commercial lab. That way you avoid the markup. This advice is obviously not possible for a vaginal swab gathered in a doctor’s office.

Patients should always fight bills they believe are excessively high and escalate the matter if necessary.

Rogge started with her insurer and the provider, as should most patients with a billing question. But, as she learned: In American medicine, what’s legal and in accordance with an insurance contract can seem logically absurd. Still, if you get no satisfaction from your initial inquiries, be aware of options for taking your complaints further.

Every state and U.S. territory has a department that regulates the insurance industry. In New Mexico, that’s the Office of the Superintendent of Insurance. Consumers can look up their state’s department on the National Association of Insurance Commissioners website.

Toal, the insurance superintendent in New Mexico, said his office doesn’t (and no office in the state does that he’s aware of) have the authority to tell a hospital its prices are too high. But he can look into a bill like Rogge’s if a complaint is filed with his office.

“If the patient wants, they can request an independent review, so the bill would go to an independent organization that could see if it was medically necessary,” Toal said.

That wasn’t needed in this case because Rogge’s bill was waived. And after being contacted by KHN, Melissa Suggs, a spokesperson with Carlsbad Medical Center, said the facility is revising their lab charges.

“Pricing for these services will be lower in the future,” Suggs said in a statement.

Bill of the Month is a crowdsourced investigation by KHN and NPR that dissects and explains medical bills. Do you have an interesting medical bill you want to share with us? Tell us about it!

Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

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[megacircuit9universe]

Relative Charisma & the Incel

WED SEP 30 2020

So the first of three debates between Trump and Biden happened yesterday, and it was... as CNN’s Jake Tapper so aptly put it, “A hot mess, inside a dumpster fire, inside a train wreck.”

I didn’t see it, because I was at work, but I’ve heard enough sound bytes, and seen enough post debate coverage to know that... history will remember this one and play back those clips for centuries to come... of Trump, behaving like an angry, wounded animal.

For some context, despite my last entry, in which the indy left media (TYT mostly) was crying that Biden was losing the election, based on two stand alone polls that had Trump up a tick in two states... Biden’s lead in those and all other states is actually holding, or slightly growing.

I should disclose that my information is coming from an independent YouTube polls analyst whom I’ve come to trust over the past few years.  There are many such channels on YouTube, but this guy eventually won me over, because he’s thorough, transparent, always has receipts, and pretty good at calling trends, while keeping expectations grounded in reality.

In my experience, news outlets... be they mainstream media, or indy news sources, only present polling data that they can sensationalize.  

Right wing media just deny reality and convince their viewers all news of Trump being behind is fake.  But Mainstream media always wants you to think it’s a dead heat... because that gets ratings.  Meanwhile, the indy left news wants you to think Biden is losing, to fuel more activism and more participation.

And none of this is the subject of the entry at hand, but... it’s important to get this out of the way as we move into October, when the polling data is really going to be indicative of what happens on Election Day. 

I vetted a lot of different YouTube analyst channels and settled on the one I have, because... I trust this guy.

So... when I sit here an say that Biden has a significant lead in all critical states, has several paths to 270, is ahead in national polls, etc... I’m getting that from a trusted source.  It’s not just me being blindly optomistic based on some things I happened to pick up here and there.

Okay...

Back to context for Trump behaving like a wounded animal in yesterday’s debate...

On the one hand, yes, Biden is still way ahead, and looking like he’ll be the clear winner... which I’m sure Trump doesn’t like.  But on the other hand, Trump was also deeply humiliated this past Sunday when The New York Times published a bunch of his tax returns... going up to 2017 and 2018, when he was, of course, President.

And the story reveals that he’s drowning in debt, and has been for quite a long time... with most of it being owed to mysterious unknown parties... which is a security concern.  It also exposed how little taxes he’s paid... which may or may not be tax evasion, technically, but is not a great look for a populist President.

Quick sidebar here... Presidential tax returns are never normally news, because all Presidential candidates since Nixon have willingly published theirs upon declaring their candidacy... until Trump.  

So it’s not like he’s being singled out by the New York Times for exposure of his private business. 

On the other hand, the tax returns weren’t exactly a bomb shell.  More like a fizzling sparkler.  No personal check from Putin, with, destroy democracy, written on the memo line.

Yeah, he pays almost no taxes, but... we already knew that’s par for the course for all billionaires.  It’s kinda the reason the progressive left exists.

But in terms of context for Trump being a wounded animal... it’s the drowning in debt thing he never wanted to go public.  For Trump... it’s an unspeakable humiliation, like getting pantsed in public, only to reveal that you like to wear Wonder Woman Underoos or something.

It’s a massive blow to the image he’s created for himself, and defended so dearly... of being a legitimate billionaire, who used his shrewd instincts, and financial brilliance to amass deep pockets of untouchable wealth... self proliferating, tax free, multi-generational wealth.

Instead, he’s just an idiot, billions of dollars in debt, forcing the US government to pay millions to his Mara Lago resort, for hundreds of golf outings (around 200 to date) and he’s still in the red... at Mara Lago!  Forget his other debts and failing ventures!

A quote from Iron Man 2 is very apt, here...  

Ivan Vanko : [laughs] If you could make God bleed, people would cease to believe in Him. There will be blood in the water, the sharks will come. All I have to do is sit back and watch as the world consumes you.

That was Ivan’s rationale for attacking Tony Stark at the racetrack.  It’s also been interpreted as a foreshadowing of the scene in Infinity War, several years later, where Tony Manages to punch Thanos hard enough to scratch his cheek and get a single drop of blood out of the mad titan.

Here in 2020 reality, the New York Times did get that single drop of blood... on Sunday.

And going into his first debate with Biden... who has been stubbornly leading in the polls all summer long... Trump was so furious, he could not keep his composure.

And this, at long last, brings us to the matter of relative charisma.

I’ve talked about it several times in the past, saying that, if you want one simple rule of thumb for predicting the next president... it’s that, whoever has the most relative charisma will win the election.

Relative, in this model, meaning... relative to the opponent. 

A great example of this would be George HW Bush (Bush1) who had way more charisma, relative to stodgy, stuffy, Michael Dukakis, in 1988.  But four years later, the same George HW Bush, looked himself, quite lacking in charisma compared to his new opponent, Bill Clinton.

It’s happened in every election of modern times.  Carter had more relative Charisma than Ford, but far far less relative charisma than Reagan... and on and on back to FDR.

It was also, obviously true that in the match up between Trump and Hillary Clinton... Trump had all the relative charisma. PT Barnum levels of charisma!.. as the happy, quippy, rude, outsider... to her... boring gramma persona saying, “Pokemon Go to the polls!”

And early this year, during the primaries, when Bernie Sanders was still in the running, I said several times that Trump would, “mop the floor,” with Biden in a debate.

But... that was before Covid19... and 200,000 dead.  Before record unemployment and record evictions.  Before the Black Lives Matter movement caught fire in the streets, facing off with fascist police with tear gas and batons all summer.  Before Biden sailed through all the insanity, staying ahead of Trump in the polls, to get the nomination.

And it was before Trump, in recent months, sent thugs to kidnap protesters in Portland, threatening all other democratic cities with the same, began knee-capping the post office, was exposed for calling our soldiers suckers and losers, refused to accept the election results if he wasn’t the winner, refused to commit to a peaceful transition of power unless we, get rid of the ballots, and... was exosed as swimming in debt.

So in Tuesday night’s debate... while he did try his level best to mop the floor with Biden... Trump came off as... well, an incel*.

We all, sadly know how incel’s debate, having suffered them like a bed bug infestation in every comment section on the internet for the past ten years, and in last night’s debate... Trump was, incel personified!

Moderator Chris Wallace, of Fox News, even gave Trump the chance to back away from the event horizon of the black hole that is at the heart of incel culture, by asking him to simply denounce white supremacy.

And not only could Trump not denounce white supremacy... after dancing around the quesion, he wound up saying that a group of white supremecist incels known as the Proud Boys, should, “stand back, but stand by!”

In other words... he’s not only banking everything on the incel vote... he’s calling on the incels to join Beta Force, and be ready... to intimidate voters in person on election night... and to create mayhem when he loses.  

Please stand by, incels... but you understand, this is not a paid gig, right?  I’m kinda tight on money right now, so you’ll need to be fighting for me out of the prematurely ejaculating spite in your sexually inadequate hearts!

The point here, is that the question of relative charisma between Joe Biden and Donald Trump has finally been answered.

Incel vibe, is not charisma.  It’s the opposite of charisma.  It’s a combination of wounded spite, bitter frothing at the mouth, and indefensible stupidity... all the things that make normal people want to puke.

So, while Biden may not have much in the charisma department... he does have a few charming attributes above the base line for a decent human being capable of empathy and logic.  

And in a match up with the Trump of October 2020... that means, Biden has all the relative charisma... and he now has it on lock down.

We can talk soon about Trump’s incel chances of stealing the election by incel force, and the true threat that his army of incels present to our democracy, but for tonight... Trump is an incel... and incels have zero charisma.

I’m going to bed.

*Incel is a portmanteau for, Involuntarily Celibate.

It refers to straight, cis boys or men, most often white, from 15 to 35 who, despite deeply craving to engage in sexual activity with counterparts of the opposite sex, fail to attain it.  Such males believe they are entitled to sex with the partner of their choice, and are thus baffled and aggrivated by their inability to obtain it consentually.

Incels are characterized by their extremely toxic interactions, which go beyond the mysogyny one might expect, to encompass all of society.  For, in their mindset, it is not simply women who are to blame for their lack of sex, it is the entire framework of society... and that framework is also to blame for every other wish they perceive as being unfairly denied to them.

Incels resort to harassment, often thinly veiled as debate or argument, in order to torment those (most) who will not recognize their entitlement, and dream of reforming the societal order, such that their bullying rules the day... often waxing nostalgic for imagined times in the past when men such as themselves ruled without question.

They are thus, quite attracted to all forms of fascism, including, but not limited to white supremacy.

In the modern day, incels are widely regarded as a scourge, and considered by nobody outside their circle to have anything resembling charisma.

[eng251unvoicedthoughts]

To all the seculars:

Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor, wrote Meditations, thoughts on stoic philosophy between 161- 180AD. Although this book tends to be more popular amongst seculars than the Bible, the amount of similarities between the two books is unexpected.

“You entered the world as a part, and you will vanish back into that which brought you to birth; or rather, you will be received back into its generative reason through a process of change” (Aurelius 26). This strikes similarity with John: 3 in The Bible when Jesus is speaking to Nicodemus, ruler of the Jews. “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” to which Nicodemus answers, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?” (p. 1328).

“Rarely is a person seen to be in a bad way because he has failed to attend to what is happening in someone else’s soul, but those who fail to pay careful attention to the motions of their own souls are bound to be in a wretched state” (Aurelius 12). When Jesus is preaching the Sermon on the Mount St. Mathew 7: 3, the same concept is taught, “And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?” (p. 1197).

Another comparison between the two accords can be made regarding Aurelius’s description of Maximus in his last days, “How he behaved to the tax-collector at Tusculum who asked for his forgiveness, and his general conduct in such matters. He was never harsh, or implacable, or overbearing-” (Aurelius 8). This is similar to the forgiveness shown in The Bible when Jesus is giving the parable of the self- righteous pharisee and the humbled publican. Within St Luke 18: 12-14 it reads, “I fast twice in the week I give tithes of all that I possess. And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner” (p. 1308). Both stories hold the emphasized motif of being kind to someone that debt is owed to.

At this point throughout Aurelius’s writings I begin thinking that Meditations, to me, reads as a characterless version of The Bible and in doing so, provides a stripped version of religion down to the basic beliefs of spirituality. Sam Harris, author of Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion explains the taboo structure behind defining or even comparing spirituality to religion, “They don’t always point to the same underlying reality- and when they do, they don’t do it equally well. Nor are all these teachings equally suited for export beyond the cultures that first conceived them… In one sense, all religions and spiritual practices must address the same reality- because people of all faiths have glimpsed many of the same truths” (Harris 20). Harris goes on to explain that the fact that many religions have quoted from or adopted other religion’s beliefs, testifies that human interconnections outweigh the strength of religion. I find the ties between these two blatantly different accounts beautiful and a witness of the similarities between all human hearts and intellect.

 To all the religious Netflix lovers:

Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion by Sam Harris offers the audience methods of meditation to serve as proxy of religion. As the title of the book would suggest, spirituality is brought to the forefront, allowing the reader to delve into their own spirituality while questioning the methods of religion. Referenced in the annotation for Educated: A Memoir, Harris explains the perceived deception that can happen within hierarchies of religion, “A relationship with a guru, or indeed with any expert, tends to run along authoritarian lines. You don’t know what you need to know, and the expert presumably does; that’s why you are sitting in front of him in the first place (Harris 159).

I recently was able to watch a couple episodes of Tiger King. Although I don’t fully understand the hype it’s generated, I couldn’t help but draw comparisons between the show, religion, and spirituality.

The staff working on these cat farms are paid $100 an hour, so other than working with exotic animals, why would they stay?

On Carole Baskin’s farm, she has organized a hierarchy through her employees through the color of shirts they wear. The longer they’ve worked there, the higher ranking of shirt they’re given, and the more attention received from Carole Baskin. This reminded me of the levels of priesthood within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Similar levels are given to the young women within the church as they progress through their teenage years. By being recognized through these levels, people are more likely to stay in particular organizations or cults.

Another element that stood out was the admittance to luring in those that only have that job as their last resort. They are in desperate need financially, emotionally or both. How many religious members are using their beliefs or their religious community as a refuge from what they’re dealing with and sometimes, because of this, refuse to believe anything else?

Within Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations, it reads, “Let this saying of Epicurus come to your aid, that ‘pain is neither unendurable nor everlasting, if you keep its limits in mind and do not add to it through your own imagination’. And remember this too, that many disagreeable feelings are really just the same as pain although we do not perceive them to be so-” (Aurelius 67). Harris writes about pain and the customary quality of pain being perceived as negative until it is suddenly associated to growth, such as after a workout. Harris goes on to write about the emotional difference it would make if people regularly associated all pain with progression.

One of Joe Exotic’s employees ends up losing their arm due to a tiger attack. Although her arm ends up needing to be amputated, she jumps right back into work after her surgery. She did this so that Joe Exotic’s business wouldn’t face the repercussions of her injury. How many times do people subconsciously force themselves to believe in a prayer or a blessing given to them because brief disappointment is better than no longer having something to believe in?

 To all members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints:

Within Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover, Westover outlines some of her earliest memories growing up in Idaho as a Latter-Day-Saint. Emphasis is placed on the eccentrics of her family due to a self-inflicted sheltered life and unconventional religious views. Although Westover disclaims her experiences to have any affiliation with the church itself, being a Mormon that grew up in rural Idaho as well, I recognized similarities between our lives that should be addressed. To preface these similarities, I’ll first shed some light on the parallels that can be drawn between Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion by Sam Harris and Educated: A Memoir. Harris unveils an authoritative manipulation approach within religion. The “self-deception” and “exploited trust” one is susceptible to when being taught by a spiritual teacher can be due merely to the setup of them being the intellectual superior in that given situation. “The bishop and I met every Sunday until that spring. To me he was a patriarch with authority over me, but he seemed to surrender that authority the moment I passed through his door” (Westover 200). Although Westover paints her bishop in a more forgiving light, the fact that he had authority over her is not shied away from, it is written barefaced to help explain the gaping hierarchy. The hierarchy within the Bishop’s office followed her into her own home. Westover was abused mentally and physically by her older brother and mentally by her father. Nobody within the household would stand up to either male figure, even Westover’s mother was described many times to back down to the will of her father due to it being “a man’s house”. Although my family is very loving now and I am very fortunate, my household was once abusive as well, leaving my mother, my two older brothers, and me running from my father, staying with different friends of my mother’s to avoid my father finding us.  Maybe this is a coincidence and has nothing to do with the religion of my father, but I’ve always wondered if the hierarchy of males within the Mormon church has swayed the treatment of the women. Westover explains some of the teachings within the Latter-Day Saint church, “As a child I’d been taught-by my father but also in Sunday school that in the fullness of time God would restore polygamy, and in the afterlife, I would be a plural wife” (Westover 245). I, as well as most women within the church I’m sure, have always taken issue with this. Once, my sophomore year of college I asked my Bishop if it were reversed, and the men were told that in heaven they would be plural husbands to their wives, if he would still believe in the faith, to which he replied along the lines of, “Yes, if that were God’s will”. If the doctrine were changed, I honestly don’t see as many men being members of the church and I also don’t think sexism- against women, would be as prevalent. Harris writes of the account of Tibetan lama Chogyam Trungpa where he orders a young girl to be stripped of her clothing and paraded around. While this is sexual assault, Harris writes that Trungpa’s followers viewed this occurrence as “a spiritual teaching meant to subdue their egos” (Harris 160). Within The Last Podcast On the Left with Ben Kissel, Henry Zebrowski, and Marcus Parks also tackle a time when Latter-Day Saint prophet, Joseph Smith safeguarded his way through illegal, degrading actions. According to their findings, Joseph had an affair on his wife and was caught doing so, before announcing his revelation for polygamy. However, members of the Latter-Day Saint faith are told his reasons for polygamy were to ensure celestial glories for the women of that time since there were more women than men and the women would need to be sealed. How many other teachings of the church have subtly quieted women into uncomfortable acceptance? If not careful, will certain hierarchies within religions translate to feelings of superiority within the home?

Sources:

Aurelius, Marcus, et al. Meditations: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Bible: King James Version. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, 1979.

Harris, Sam. Waking up: a Guide to Spirituality without Religion. Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2015.

Kissel, Ben, et al. “Episode 378: Mormonism Part I - When You're Here You're Family.” Castbox, The Last Podcast on the Left, 2019, castbox.fm/episode/Episode-378%3A-Mormonism-Part-I---When-You%E2%80%99re-Here-You%E2%80%99re-Family-id1383024-id177828673.

Westover, Tara. Educated: a Memoir. Random House, 2018.

[kadobeclothing]

Elizabeth Warren unveils plan diverting Trump’s ‘racist wall’ funds to coronavirus work as Democrat’s campaign flounders – The Sun

DEMOCRATIC presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren has pledged to take all funds from President Trump’s “racist” border wall and use them to tackle the growing threat of the coronavirus. Warren, a senator for Massachusetts, said she would take “every dime” of Trump’s border wall funding and use it against the escalating threat of the disease, which had it first case in the U.S. of “unknown origin” this week. 7 Senator Elizabeth Warren said she would use all funds proposed for President Trump’s ‘racist’ border wall to tackle the coronavirusCredit: CNN7 Warren said she would take ‘every dime’ of fund to use to combat the virus, which had it’s first case of unknown origin in the U.S. this weekCredit: AP:Associated PressThe senator made the remarks during a CNN town hall interview in Charleston, South Carolina, on Wednesday evening. South Carolina will play host to the next democratic primary contest, with Warren currently finding herself in a precarious position, having failed to win any of the previous primaries. Warren, 70, said: “I’m going to be introducing a plan tomorrow to take every dime that the President is now spending on his racist wall at the southern border and divert it to work on the coronavirus.” The presidential hopeful also took aim at Vice President Mike Pence during the discussion, after he was announced by Trump to lead the effort against the virus. Warren added: “Do keep in mind that this Vice President has dealt with a public health emergency before — in Indiana. And what was his approach? To put politics over science and let a serious virus expand in his state and cost people lives.” These comments were in reference to Pence’s time as governor of Indiana, where he took time approving a needle exchange program that was aimed at stopping the spread of HIV in a rural county. As a result, the outbreak spread and at least 200 people were infected, reports claim. 7 President Trump issues a statement about the progress of the coronavirus on Wednesday evening, announcing Vice President Mike Pence oversee prevention effortsCredit: AP:Associated Press7 Pence, pictured left, also came under fire from Sen. Warren, who targeted his record with previous health emergenciesCredit: Splash News7 San Francisco issued a state of emergency because of the ideas on WednesdayCredit: EPAWarren’s comments come just days before Saturday’s democratic primary in South Carolina, as well as March 3’s Super Tuesday, which will see 14 states vote for their democratic nominee for the 2020 presidential race. Warren currently stands forth in the Democratic Party’s standings, having collected eight of the 100 pledged delegates. With a strong performance in South Carolina and Super Tuesday acting as a propellant to the party’s nomination, Warren currently stands 27 points behind Joe Biden in South Carolina, according to a Clemson University poll. IMPORTANT PRIMARIES During Wednesday’s discussion, Warren also took on the gun industry, white supremacists and tobacco companies. The Massachusetts senator was questioned by Rev. Eric Manning, the pastor of Charleston’s Mother Emanuel AME Church, where nine African-Americans were killed by a white supremacist in 2015. Asked what her response would be to the families of the tragedy, Warren said that her government would “aggressively pursue white supremacists and the we will bring them to justice.” She added: “I also believe that we have to redouble or efforts on gun violence. And as you know more than anyone, gun violence is an issue of mass shootings.” TAKING AIM Speaking of the gun industry, the senator – who currently stands third in the democratic primaries – said she would address gun violence as if it were a “pubic health emergency.” Warren also said she would go after gun dealers to combat the problem, as, she believes, “it’s a handful of dealers and people who show up at gun shows who are getting most of the guns into circulation.” And it wasn’t just the gun industry the senator took aim at – it was the tobacco industry, too. Warren said the industry is rife with “corruption” and that she would focus on a “tobacco industry that still calling the shots too often in Washington.” She said: “So, this is my commitment, it’s my commitment across the board. I don’t owe anything to the tobacco industry. Or the drug industry. Or the prison industrial complex. We can go through the list. BUFF JUSTICEWoman who went topless in front of stepkids admits guilt to avoid sex registerNOT SO SWEETWhy Coronavirus could cause a massive Coke Zero and Diet Coke shortageHEAD-ON HORRORThree kids among six dead in crash caused by elderly man driving wrong wayExclusiveRAT-A-CHEWYMan who can’t have sex after ‘rat bit his penis in prison’ to reopen lawsuitMASSACRE AT MOLSON COORSWorker kills five people & then himself in beer factory shootingHORRIFIC CRUELTYSicko gets 4 years for sexually assaulting baby girl & breaking her ribs   “But on yours specifically, I want to see an FDA that is science based. That is research based. And they make recommendations and they make regulations that our based on that science and nothing else. “I will have a head of the FDA who believes in science. And then I will back that person up 100%. I don’t care about the political pressure from the outside.” Her campaign and the race to the White House, Warren said, had been a culmination of her “life’s work.” 7 Warren, shown speaking at an event earlier Wednesday, now heads into the South Carolina primaries and Super Tuesday in forth placeCredit: CNN7 Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont is the current frontrunner for the democratic presidential nominationCredit: AP:Associated PressDo you have a story for The US Sun team? Email us at exclusive@the-sun.com or call 212 416 4552.

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Pro-Vaccine Maryland Parent Outraged over Corruption in Mass Gardasil Vaccination Policies

Josh Mazer has uncovered mass corruption around the HPV Gardasil vaccine and now is a spokesperson nationwide opposing mandatory Gardasil vaccination policies. Image source.

by Brian Shilhavy Health Impact News Editor

Maryland parent Josh Mazer is a pro-vaccine parent. He has stated: “A properly administered, robust vaccine policy is instrumental in promoting the public welfare.” (We disagree on this point.)

However, there is one vaccine he does not promote, and after the local health department started promoting this vaccine to 12 and 13-year-old children without parental consent or knowledge, he decided to do some investigating behind this large public campaign of mass vaccination.

The vaccine in question is Merck's HPV vaccine Gardasil, which is well-known to the readers of Health Impact News, but less so among the general public.

Mazer was notified of the policy earlier this year (2018) by a “a career public school nurse” who told him that she was “being forced” to market Gardasil to 11 and 12-year-old kids at her school.

She gave him copies of the letter which outlined the policy, “one on Maryland Department of Health, the other on Montgomery County Schools, letterhead,” which was sent to every school superintendent in Maryland.

Mazer exposed all of this in an opinion piece published in the Maryland Capital Gazette. Mazer writes:

It opens with the alarming statement, “there is a critical public health issue of under-vaccination Maryland's adolescents against Human Papillomavirus (HPV),” “14 million people get infected….each year posing a significant public health risk,” and that “it is imperative…. for age-eligible children to… complete the HPV vaccination series while obtaining “school- entry required vaccinations.”

Mazer was concerned, and decided to investigate the letter's claims:

I contacted Dr. Jinlene Chan, who signed the letter, to inquire about the alarming health care crisis and to get information about the safety and effectiveness of the shot.

She said she could not help me.

I next contacted Dr. Ken Lin Tai, director of the Cancer Control and Prevention unit at the Department of Health. She could not provide any documentation supporting the assertions in the letter.

Finally in March, 2018 I met with Dr. Howard Haft, deputy director of the Maryland Department of Health. He told me statements in the letters are supported by data from the Centers for Disease Control. (Source.)

Mazer has published the letters on a website he created to publish his research.

Mazer was still not satisfied, and decided to investigate further:

April of 2018 I filed a Public Information Act request with the Prevention and Health Promotion Administration.

I learned the state health department received $91.6 million just since 2012 from pharma funded non-profits to promote the HPV vaccine in Maryland. (Source.)

Bingo. Welcome to our world, Mr. Mazer.

As he continued his investigation, he soon learned more about the corruption behind a vaccine that is not needed, and has serious side effects, including death.

I contacted Dr. Pete Doshi, assistant professor of pharmaceutical health services research at the University of Maryland. He was unaware of any critical public health crisis centered around “under vaccination” for HPV.

In our discussion, I learned 98 percent of HPVs clear the body naturally within a few years; Maryland's rates of cervical cancer were in decline for years prior to introduction of the vaccine; the vaccine itself has never been proven to prevent cancer; and It protects against only 9 out of 200+ strains of HPV.

HPVs are sexually transmitted, a fact not disclosed in the health department letter.

The approach being used by our state to prevent HPV cancer seems to be centered on fear mongering the dangers of the disease and over selling the potential benefits of the vaccine. The entire effort seems to be more a sales campaign than a disease prevention program.

The harm that may arise is tragically illustrated by the death in 2008 of Sparks resident Christina Tarsell after her third HPV shot. The U.S. Court of Federal Claims decision September of 2017 states the preponderance of evidence demonstrates the shot series caused the fatal arrhythmia that took Christina's life.

Our public health officials owe the citizens of this state better than this. The lack of disclosure of any potential negative effects of the shot, up to and including death as evidenced by the loss of Christina Tarsell, appears to violate the moral and ethical imperative of informed medical consent. (Source.)

Josh Mazer represents what it takes today to be a parent and make a fully informed decision about vaccines for your children.

Do not trust the government for reliable vaccine facts because they have a conflict of interest, do not trust your doctor who is relying solely on government vaccine propaganda and will also be ignorant unless he/she has done their own research, and start with the belief that corruption in the vaccine industry is the norm, not the exception.

Mazer has now become a go-to parent to speak on these issues and has been interviewed in other states where lawmakers are considering making the HPV vaccine Gardasil mandatory. Here is his website.

Comment on this article at VaccineImpact.com.

More information about Gardasil

California Nurse Gives Gardasil Vaccine to Own Daughter who Develops Leukemia and Dies

Infant Accidentally Vaccinated with Gardasil – Mother Blamed for Vaccine Injuries and Baby Medically Kidnapped

Iowa Girl Faces Death: Life Destroyed by Gardasil Vaccine

Gardasil Vaccine Given without Consent and Ruins Life of 14 Year Old Girl

After 3 Years of Suffering 19 Year Old Girl Dies from Gardasil Vaccine Injuries

Gardasil: The Decision We Will Always Regret

15 Year Old French Girl's “Descent into Hell” After Gardasil Vaccine – Wheelchair Bound and Paralyzed

The Gardasil Vaccine After-Life: My Daughter is a Shadow of Her Former Self

Gardasil: An Experience no Child Should Have to Go Through

I Want my Daughter's Life Back the Way it was Before Gardasil

Gardasil Vaccine: Destroyed and Abandoned

15-Year-Old Vaccinated by Force with Gardasil now Suffers from Paralysis and Pain

Recovering from my Gardasil Vaccine Nightmare

Gardasil: We Thought It Was The Right Choice

“HPV Vaccine Has Done This to My Child”

13 Year Old World Championship Karate Student Forced to Quit After Gardasil Vaccine

If I Could Turn Back Time, Korey Would not Have Received any Gardasil Shots

What Doctors Don't Tell You: Our Gardasil Horror Story

Family Fights U.S. Government over Compensation for Gardasil Vaccine Injuries

Gardasil: When Will our Nightmare End?

HPV Vaccine Injuries: “I Cannot Begin to Describe What it is Like to Watch your Daughter Live in Such Agony”

Gardasil: Don't Let Your Child Become “One Less”

The Gardasil Vaccine Changed Our Definition of “Normal”

Gardasil: I Should Have Researched First

“They've Been Robbed of Their Womanhood” – Local Milwaukee Media Covers Gardasil Vaccine Injuries

Gardasil: The Day Our Daughter's Life Changed

Gardasil: The Decision I will Always Regret

Gardasil Vaccine: One More Girl Dead

Gardasil: A Parent's Worst Nightmare

After Gardasil: I Simply Want my Healthy Daughter Back

Gardasil: My Family Suffers with Me

Gardasil Changed my Health, my Life, and Family's Lives Forever

Gardasil: Ashlie's Near-Death Experience

Gardasil: My Daughter's Worst Nightmare

My Personal Battle After the Gardasil Vaccine

Gardasil: The Worst Thing That Ever Happened to Me

A Ruined Life from Gardasil

HPV Vaccines: My Journey Through Gardasil Injuries

The Dark Side of Gardasil – A Nightmare that Became Real

Toddler Wrongly Injected with Gardasil Vaccine Develops Rare Form of Leukaemia

Dr. Andrew Moulden: Every Vaccine Produces Harm

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Canadian physician Dr. Andrew Moulden provided clear scientific evidence to prove that every dose of vaccine given to a child or an adult produces harm. The truth that he uncovered was rejected by the conventional medical system and the pharmaceutical industry. Nevertheless, his warning and his message to America remains as a solid legacy of the man who stood up against big pharma and their program to vaccinate every person on the Earth.

Dr. Moulden died unexpectedly in November of 2013 at age 49.

Because of the strong opposition from big pharma concerning Dr. Moulden's research, we became concerned that the name of this brilliant researcher and his life's work had nearly been deleted from the internet. His reputation was being disparaged, and his message of warning and hope was being distorted and buried without a tombstone. This book summarizes his teaching and is a must-read for everyone who wants to learn the “other-side” of the vaccine debate that the mainstream media routinely censors.

Read Dr. Andrew Moulden: Every Vaccine Produces Harm on your mobile device or computer by ordering the eBook!

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