#but just in general when you see vitriolic posts like that look carefully for who the vitriol is aimed at

[cthonicascendant]

ok i cant send asks to all a youse about this so im just makin a psa for my followers

thele5bianpoirot is a radfem please stop puttin her post about stay at home girlfriends on my dash (leavin the quirk on for that one so i dont accidentally summon that person somehow but replace the 5 with an s for the actual username)

i will be happy to try to explain how i knew her views were suspect AFTER my headache is gone but if you dont believe me just check out that persons blog you wont have to scroll far to find proof the very first post when i checked it out was a screed against intersectional feminism so

[ofmermaidstories]

I really like your blog because you have this really life loving vibe, the type of people that see all the beauty in the world and stuff, so I wanted to ask you for some advice, if that's ok. By nature I'm also like that, kinda mushy, very heartfelt, but a lot of mistreatment from people in my life made me also very cynical, judgy and distrusting. How do you manage to keep this wonderous mentality about life?

In the afternoon, I like to stretch out on my bed, amid my pillows and my blankets, and soak in the late light and the autumn chill. I follow a grocer on instagram in a city three hours away from me because they post pictures of the produce they sell: pumpkins cut in half, jewel-bright tomatoes held in someone’s hands, sourdough loaves made by a neighbour. On the weekends they offer bouquets of flowers, supplied to them by a woman who bills herself as “a weekend florist and full-time mother” — this weekend it’s red berries and sunflowers, bundled up like babies being brought home from the hospital.

On Sunday it’ll be Mother’s Day: I’ll be spending the day deep cleaning the house and ignoring instagram and facebook (mostly bc they’re boring tho, let’s be real).

I live a two-hour car drive from anyone I remotely socialise with who isn’t the cashier at the supermarket I go to. Sometimes, I get so mad that I have to force myself to mentally and physically shut down, like, complete black-screen mode, sit there and stare at the wall — it’s a self-defence tactic to spare whoever I’m getting angry at, and to spare myself: unfortunately, I’ve developed a bit of a talent for being able to say the right thing in which to hurt someone with. Unleashing it comes at a high price, and I like the people in my life, so I would literally rather bite through my own tongue then let any of that vitriol fly when I’m angry and not thinking straight.

The rubbish trucks come for the bins every Tuesday. On Monday evening, around 9pm, I’ll wheel mine out to the road. There’s no streetlights out here, and I live in a rural area — so on dark nights when we’ve lost the moon, you can look up and see the Milkyway, like you’re standing underneath a river of stars.

I buy myself flowers; the women at the florist in town treat me like I’m their most favourite person in the world (and I eat that shit up). Afterwards I’ll be carrying whatever weeds I’ve bought with me, through the supermarket or whatever, and someone will always comment on them. I’ve lost one of the pearl earrings that belonged to my Grandmother’s set, a woman long gone, now; I’ve also misplaced my favourite hairclip, pale blue with a shinning shell clasp, that I got from a seller that shut down during the mess of last year.

Last weekend, I visited the cemetery; I sat with who I was visiting and watched an old man half a lawn away from me sit in a folded chair and read a book, play a little radio. A couple, visiting one of the plots behind us, carefully took the decorations on it - frogs, lots and lots of frogs - and brushed them off, wiped them down. Reglued a few and then set them all back into place, proudly.

There’s a young boy, interred next to my person, who I never met in life; he was fifteen years old and it’s been five years, now, and his site is littered with rubgy scarves and laminated letters from his friends, photos of them together, photos of them separately, growing up without him. Empty bottles of beer, badly written poems about meeting again. I say hello to him as I peel mandarins as a offering for the possums that forage around the cemetery at night, and occasionally I brush the leaves off his footy scarves and when I go to leave I say goodbye to him, too. After my last visit, I went to the busiest shopping centre in the city and ate braised beef noodle soup, from a place where they make the noodles in front of you, pulling them and stretching them easily. I messaged a friend with updates about my meal, laughing as she kept me company even from thousands of miles away, and then just as I finished, some friends who live in the city asked if I wanted to have some cake with them — from their favourite cafe. They’d given me a key to their home, earlier, so I could come and go as I pleased. The key meant a lot to me, though they’ll never know it; it meant a lot because it felt like a physical manifestation of trust, of them saying that yes, they did want me in their lives, no matter how limited or what kind of time left we had together.

People are multifaceted; like gemstones. We can be mean and delightful and trusting and hurt. I lean into the soft, squishy parts of myself with abandon — a lot of the time it works out. I tell people I love them. I let them say they love me. A couple of times, people have left my life because they didn’t have the space in theirs for me anymore — it was hurtful and ugly each time. Humans can come together so easily, sometimes, that the joy and brightness of it can make you forget how ugly and hard it is when we leave each other in the wrong way. People and things will hurt you. That’s just a fact. Some days you’re not going to have the energy for anything but the self-preservation of being distrustful, or cynical, judgemental, and that’s okay — I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, sometimes we have to be selfish to protect what’s left of our hearts.

I keep a list of things that make me smile. I also keep a list of things that fucking shit me right off. The list of things that shit me is longer than the list of things that make me smile, but it’s because when I see something good — a bright red letterbox, a little kid that’s waving to everyone, a pleasing colour of the sky — I don’t think to write it down, because it’s generally so fleeting and so cheery. It does its job. Find the small things in your day to day that you like to linger over, that make you happy; the bad stuff still happens, and you’ll still have waves where it doesn’t seem worth the effort, but the small bright things fill the moments and remind you that it’s all part and parcel of this universal existence.

Here’s to a gentle weekend ahead, Anon. ✨🌻🍊🌿

[rotzaprachim]

be gentle with the people who were not made from The Fall

- Gen, Declan Lynch &  Mór Ó Corra

2k ao3 here

She passed Declan a blank manilla envelope. He ran his fingers gingerly over the edges, life having long ago built up a healthy suspicion of anything from the channels of the Fairy Market. He couldn’t feel anything, but he’d also never had the touch for it. At some point he’d always ended up having to hold his breath and jump in in order to get the rough work done. 

He slit it open with the knife in his pocket.  

There were answers he’d had before he even knew what the questions were. Firstborn, Niall told Declan. My All-American son, Niall told Declan. When you were born the rivers dried up and all the cows in Rockingham County cried blood, Niall told Ronan. When you were born, I wasn’t here, Niall told Declan. 

The silence swallowed his voice for a long time. 

“Ó Corra?” 

She gave him a look that said, you can’t pronounce your own name. Finally she said, “You have my name. It’s what they did when the father couldn’t be found.” 

He studied the certificate in the small crescents of yellow light that bounced in through the tinted windows of her sports car from the streetlight outside. The Births and Deaths Registation (Northern Ireland) Order 1976, Article 34. Registered in the District of Belfast. 24 July 1997. Declan James Ó Corra.

There was a box that asked for Name and Surname and Dwelling Place of Father (6). It was blank. There was another box that asked for Rank or Profession of Father. On that one, someone had gona back with a red pen at some later point, scrawled angrily, messily, bleeding jaggedly out from the neat black boxes, GONE. 

It made sense, in a strange sort of way that Declan’s brain dimly seemed to recognise in the same way that the drowning man thinks the sun streaming through the surface looks quite nice even when he’s being pulled under. Niall Lynch’s sons. The dreamer son of a dream and the dream of the dreamer the son of a dream. And here now was the odd one out, the liar the son of a lie. 

“I was two years younger than you.” The woman finally said. He couldn’t think of her as anything other than the vague idea digging at the back of his eye turned hard, angry secret when he started to shift through his father’s boxes of crap after death. He’d left a fuckton of a lot of loose threads, although Declan hadn’t thought he’d be one of them. Letters and phone bills from a far-away woman, even a photo or two, all the vitriol and anger he’d carried around bubbling up again acridly through a mirror. Collected in an old file box next to IOU’s and pay me bastard or i’ll fuck you ups in seven different languages, three of which Niall didn’t know how to read. Collected, and never returned. Even some photos of him as a kiddo in a tiny knit sweater. 

“No explanations.” Declan finally said. His voice sounded like when he’d had the lights punched out of him by one of the goons his dad owed rubles, or rupees, or riyals, in the parking lot of a Fairy Market. It could have been all three. “You don’t have to give me one.” I don’t know if I want one, he didn’t say. 

“I’m a very dangerous woman to find, Declan. You wouldn’t have found me if you hadn’t been looking.” 

He didn’t know what he wanted. He wanted safety, although he’d ruled out that as a possibility years ago. He wanted the ones the world had left him to care for to be safe, and he’d jeapordised all that on a wild goose chase to find the woman in one of his father’s fucking dream objects on a hunch of a hunch. He’d done exactly what he’d warned Ronan not to do, relied on himself to be smarter, sharper, more careful. All attributes hard won on his own,  like learning from imitation from a mirror. You see what this who looks like you does? Now do the opposite. 

He sighed. The air bristled, and he realised he sounded a lot like Mór Ó Corra.

“Maybe I-” 

Maybe he hadn’t been angry, almost, to find out. Maybe he’d almost been relieved. A voice to his darkest thoughts saying, you did not dream this up. The part of himself that’d been forced through seven years of Catholic school and then forced himself through a few months of therapy where he couldn’t tell the therapist about any of the things that had most profoundly fucked him up said a good man should have loved any child, regardless. He was about fifteen years past thinking Niall to be a good man. 

“Maybe I spent so many years dealing with all the fucking dreaming, the dreamers and the dreams and every fucking thing that’s come to kill us because Dad couldn’t fix any of his own shit and the fact that none, none of it was ever part of me that I thought I wanted some kind of fucking explanation for it all. I wanted some- some explanation for it all. Why I was different. WHy dad- … WHy dad. I wanted some part of a past that was mine.” Selfish, maybe. Learned. If you spent a lifetime you were different from other people, eventually you came to a wanting a reason for them to be different from you. 

“And you think I’m going to be the dear old Mam who darns your socks and calls to remind you to bring a good girl home to the family?” 

“No. I didn’t ask for that. You know what I asked for.” 

The second Manilla envelope she gave him was far thicker. This time, he could feel the slightest trace of- something. Not a buzzing, not a mist, a- something. He slid it into his briefcase. No expectations. Nothing more. A deal that was a deal, only a birth certificate instead of a handshake. 

“I was two years younger than you. Sometimes life doesn’t hand you many choices. I’d say you didn’t understand, and you don’t, but I’ll also say you’ve been a hell of a lot more of a father than Niall ever was. All the more so since the world’s made you be one.” 

Niall was drunk off some kind of spiked slivovitz when he’d come round to it the first time. Retrospectively, he was probably scared shitless, and rightly so. “Anything happens,” he’d slurred into the hotel couch. “You’re the man of the house. Take ‘em to church. Make ‘em proper. Make ‘em fear God. There’s money in the bank, anything happens.” And Declan had almost said, you know it’s my number Matthew’s school’s had down on the books for a year now? You know the priest there already thinks we’re orphans? 

“You’ve got a number and an adress. You’re a smart boy. You know if you use it my women’ll kill you just as likely as the dreamkillers.” 

“Everything has a price. At least you’re up front on it.” 

“I’m not a good woman, Declan. Don’t make your father’s mistake. Don’t dream me into being one.” 

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” 

--- 

He didn’t open the package until he’d driven two hours, switched lisence plates and then cars, moved a state line, and walked two miles out to a sublet Jordan knew from a friend of a friend of an enemy in the art underground, where two dreams were now. It came with two dozen forged Miró’s in the living room, all done with a variety of blue paint with a distinctly incriminating synthetic binding agent manufactured solely post 1986, and even in the palest strands of morning light it made the living room into a riot of psychedelic stick-figure Catalan sunshine. He opened the door carefully, walked gingerly past the still-sleeping Matthew, TV still flickering from where he’d probably been watching it far later than Declan would have let him. Flicked the kitchen light on and made himself a cup of instant coffee, and more than anything else resisted the urge to upstairs and collapse next to Jordan in the bed that was for the moment theirs and sleep till noon. But if there was a lesson he’d learned by know it was that he couldn’t do any of the things he wanted to in life. So he downed the shitty instant coffee and he opened Mór Ó Corra’s folder and he got to work. You do what you gotta do for your family, Niall had told him. A deal had gone south and they’d made it out with their lives and stacks of money shoved in their pockets. One day you’ll have yourself a wife and some kids and then you’ll know. And he’d swallowed what he now knew was his rage. 

     “Ready to make a deal with the devil?” The voice on the other end of the number had said when he’d dialed it, and he said, only the devil can help me now, and he’d been right. No one with their head above the water could know the things he wanted to know about the Moderators. I have two dreamers and two dreams to keep out of the reach of a shadowy intergovernmental agency who’s whole M.O is about killing every dreamer they can find to stop the end of the world. Only a shadow knows its kind. And for her part, Mór Ó Corra had been thorough. He didn’t trust her. He didn’t trust her and he didn’t even know if he trusted the birth certificate. When you were the lying son of a lie, another one would be more natural than anything. He wouldn’t act on any of her information until he could put some feelers out, a few red herrings, get ahold of some of Nialls’ other bullshit to run cross checks. It was a start. At some he’d always ended up having to hold his breath and jump in in order to get the rough work done. At some point, he’d always just been shoved in. 

He didnt’ realise he’d fallen asleep until he was woken up. By Matthew, prodding his neck with the tines of a fork. 

“You said to wake you up if you slept past noon.” Jordan set down a massive plate of something exactly an inch from his eardrum with a loud clatter. 

“It’s 12:02,” Matthew added generously. 

He looked down. He hadn’t gotten through the pile. There was still more- 

Jordan’s eyes flicked notably towards the floor tiles. Declan followed them. In his early morning haze he’d somehow missed a second, smaller envelope within the envelope. He slipped it into his jacket before Matthew could see. He slid all of the papers back into the envelope before Matthew could see more. 

“Two whole extra minutes? Well, that’s where’s where the rest of my day went.” 

“You looked like you needed it. Like, you definitely looked like you needed it.” She handed him the day’s second mug of instant coffee and it hit him again that he loved her a not, which would have felt all new and electric even in circumstances that were not the current ones and when and if this was all over with hopefully no more deaths she deserved a really really nice vacation to somewhere sunny. Which he would not promise until he knew he could actually pull it off, because Declan Lynch was a liar but he was not a man who broke promises. 

  He didn’t open up the other envelope until he was in the bathroom with the door firmly locked. Magical all female mafias ran on the power of the sticky stuff at the top of a Manilla envelope, apparently. Only a few sheets inside. A surprisingly blurry print-out map with a building circled, a clipping from the Belfast Telegraph about the NHS’s most recent warnings on the loneliness epidemic among young adults and seniors, and new local projects for seniors to form new connections through knitting circles, classes in French and Irish, and mentorship opportunities with Sixth-Form students. “Former school teacher Anne  Ó Corra recounts feelings of isolation after the untimely death of her only daughter in 1999. She says that mentorship opportunities with Saint Mary’s Compre-” Declan scanned the article. On the back the same hand that had scrawled, GONE, wrote, THink the old bat’d be happy to see you. 

[hadenodom]

On Last Week’s Incident in the Capitol

It isn’t often that I write a long, detailed opinion piece, but I feel like this time in particular is a time in which it is my patriotic duty to speak up.

Sometime late in 2019, I remember coming across an op-ed by a political commentator whose name I cannot remember.  This opinion piece highlighted the growth of extreme movements within the United States - namely AntiFa and The Proud Boys and related groups on both sides of the political spectrum - and how they’d become more bold in their violence in recent years.  It then dug back into the kind of messaging that was being boosted by Russian and other foreign intelligence agencies on social media during the 2016 election - and in this piece, the author discussed something that is often overlooked:  the social media messaging portion of Russia’s efforts during that election weren’t focused on boosting a single candidate’s campaign or even with reaching on side of the political aisle.  The messages they were boosting were, across the board, pushing rhetoric to inflame and provoke the extreme elements of both sides of our political divide and to widen that gap.  The author finished the op-ed by offering his analysis that these efforts had been effective, and that our country was in the process of being torn apart by divisive and hateful rhetoric - that Americans had been turned against Americans, and that this was going to have a destructive effect on our democracy. 

I remember reading that op-ed and being skeptical.  Sure, things had reached a fever pitch in 2016, but in 2019 it seemed like everything was calming down.  The economy was doing alright, there hadn’t been as much chaos or violence in the news, and the doomsday of Americans turning on each other over political differences seemed far-fetched.  I came away thinking that the Russians’ efforts to divide us had been in vain, and that our country was past the pains of that particularly fraught period.  We would elect someone other than Trump in 2020, and our troubles would pass.

I didn’t have 2020 vision.  I didn’t forsee the economy tanking due to a virus, streets erupting in protests over racial disparities once again, AntiFa and Anarchist elements openly looting and rioting in the unrest, and then, following a chaotic election, Trump’s supporters taking to the streets and getting violent, and then eventually descending on the capitol, fully invested in a conspiracy theory that the election had been rigged.  I didn’t forsee QAnon getting an outsize following and inserting themselves into this whole storyline.  I didn’t forsee a large portion of our society swallowing an outright lie about election fraud and refusing to believe that our democratic system worked.  I didn’t forsee any of this, and I feel like I’ve awakened in the midst of a national nightmare.  

Put simply, the situation is dire.  The potential consequences are dire.  Our nation’s population has large factions that actively believe that their opponents are *Un*-American.  The diehard Trump supporters believe that Democrats do not have the best interests of the country at heart, and most Democrats (and most Independents that aren’t leaning right) believe that Trump supporters are fascists, Nazis, traitors, and bigots.  The political rhetoric coming from both the White House and from those with large media followings has stoked these tensions and gotten them to where they are today - with a little help from Russian Social Media operations way back in 2016, which seems like a distant memory now. 

Making matters worse, these factions seem to have adopted separate realities with separate sets of facts- in one reality, the election was rigged: Covid-19 was either fake or not a serious threat: there’s a cabal of pedophiles orchestrating our government, and some guy named Q is an inside guy telling us the truth when the media won’t; Trump is either not a racist, or is only as racist as their lovely grandparents and their grandparents can’t be *that* bad.   In the other reality, the election was thoroughly secured, had a verifiable paper trail, and has been investigated to death -- and Joe Biden won by a large margin; Covid had the capacity to overwhelm hospitals and cause hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths if we didn’t take the proposed measures seriously; A Pedophile ring running our government is as patently ridiculous as the day is long; And Q is an obvious bullshitter who moves the goalposts every time his predictions and ‘insights’ fall flat; and finally, that Donald Trump is demonstrably racist and bigoted. 

Working on these separate sets of facts, both of these factions have come to believe that the other is everything wrong with their country - that their opponents (including everyday working-class people who support their opponents) are not patriots, are against what America stands for, and are worth lashing out at violently in the streets. 

These factions aren’t leaving with Trump, and they proved it in the Capitol last week.  They threatened for weeks to unleash violence on the Capitol.  They posted detailed plans about how they were going to intimidate our representatives - our elected voice in Congress - with violence, well in advance.  They repeatedly used phrases on social media before the attack, and shouted these kinds of phrases during the attack:  “We will not go quietly”  - phrases that all but indicated that they weren’t done just because pesky Democracy had denied their candidate a victory.  

What, then, is our course as a country as Trump leaves office in a couple of short weeks?  How will our leaders unite us?  Personally, after much reflection, I believe our elected leaders do have a duty to attempt to unite us - or to at least refrain from provoking these tensions - but I believe the real duty is upon all of us. 

It is incumbent upon all of us to remember that our fellow Americans are not our enemies - they are our neighbors, and most of us all share the same kinds problems and burdens in life.  We all look to some political philosophy that tries to meet these challenges and address them, and seek political leaders who espouse these pet philosophies.  If someone’s going through the same struggles as you and has a different idea of how to fix those problems for his or her country, they are not your enemy.  Sure, certain things aren’t up for good-natured debate - racism, xenophobia, and bigotry can be excluded.  But we should be able to discuss our problems as a country with our neighbors, and discuss differing ideas of how to solve them, without descending into vitriol and animosity.  We should be able to understand each other.  I feel that the only way to fix that is to make the effort to reach out and talk to those we disagree with.  I have neighbors, family members, and coworkers who hold vastly different political ideologies from me, and for too long, when I hear them discussing politics, I shy away from joining the conversation, because I feel like I’d be inviting that kind of vitriol and bickering into my life.  It can be uncomfortable and awkward to arrive at that stage of a conversation, where someone things you a radical leftist or a bigot simply because you dared to offer a slightly differing opinion from theirs.  Social media amplifies this, because that’s the kind of response it has conditioned us to expect - the kind of response that would come from anonymous shitpostsers on the other side of a keyboard.  But I’ve found that when I do, in good faith, step in and have those difficult conversations - and really have a conversation, rather then try to insert my opinion over their - when I sit down and listen to my friends, family, coworkers, or neighbors tell me about their issues and what they care about politically, and I then carefully consider their ideas and offer my own - I’ve found that experience vastly rewarding.  I’ve found myself able to identify with people who I’d otherwise completely disagree with, and I’ve even found that those conversations can end with a mutual understanding and even a slight change of heart on one side or the other, or simply a mutual respect.  It turns out, we’re all (the vast majority of us) interested in seeing our country and all of its people flourish and thrive, safe and secure, and passing on a better country to the next generation of Americans. 

Therefore I’m making an effort to get out of my shell and have those awkward conversations again.  We’ve all allowed ourselves to wallow in echo chambers, neither exposing ourselves to differing opinions or exposing our opinions to others.  This pandemic, combined with social media’s tendency to be a “build-your-own-echo-chamber” kit, has amplified this in 2020.  But in 2021, let’s all resolve to have those difficult conversations and to really listen to each other.  If you do it for no other reason, do it to save our Republic from being destroyed from within. 

I’ll finish this opinion piece with a quote you may be familiar with, one that I heard repeated on the radio recently and that has resounded infinitely with my soul in recent days: 

“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature”

-- Abraham Lincoln

That is from Lincoln’s inaugural address in 1861.  We, as a country, failed to listen to Lincoln then.  The Civil War occurred, and it took our country centuries to recover.  You might argue that it was necessary to eradicate the institution of slavery and that slavery, as an institution, could not have been eradicated as quickly without the civil war.  I will not disagree.  But I will disagree on the idea that a coming civil war is necessary or beneficial - if we come to that point now, History will remember us as violent and shortsighted fools who destroyed their country, the global bastion of liberty and human rights, from the inside out.

[keelywolfe]

FIC: Side Effects ch.3 (baon)

Summary: All Stretch wanted to do was drop off some pants to get altered for Edge’s cast. He’s obviously asking for too much out of life.

Tags:  Spicyhoney, Domestic Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Past Injury, Coffee Shop

CH1 | CH2

Part of the ‘by any other name’ series.

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Read it on AO3

or

Read it here!

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Barista, Tailor...

Stretch shifted in his bus seat, garment bag over his knees and his eye lights carefully focused on his phone screen.

He’d only taken the bus once since the whole incident in California, but the one that ran the Embassy route usually didn’t have as many Humans as this one to downtown Ebott.

Today he could feel the looks from other people, Humans, crawling up his spine and it was a little hard to ignore. No one approached him at least, ready to spit some extra-strength vitriol into his lap, so they were probably just curious. That did happen sometimes, either because he was a little bit Twitter famous or because he was just a Monster in general. People frequently took discreet pictures of him or videos, and he tried not to take it personally. Heck, Keanu Reeves got the same treatment when he took the subway.

Stretch sometimes found those pictures on instagram or twitter. Depending on the caption, he’d even comment, hey, being amicable about the amateur paparazzi was probably good public relations.

But it was one of the reasons he usually wore headphones on the bus, even if, like today, he didn’t have them turned on. Friendly was good and well, but sometimes there weren’t enough spoons in the drawer, and headphones acted as a decent barrier of sorts to that shit.

Not that a lack of spoons was a problem today. He still felt weirdly energized after pouring his all into healing Red. What he honestly felt was hungry, hell, starving, his magic pleading for a quick snack or maybe a ten-course meal. Coffee he’d remembered to bring along, but with Edge out of commision, the level of baked goods in their house was hitting critically low levels.

Hm. The stop for the Beanery was coming up and it wouldn’t take up too much time for a side quest into pastry retrieval. Getting Edge's trousers to the tailor could wait a couple mo'.

When the bus rolled to a halt, Stretch hopped eagerly down the steps to the sidewalk. He could already taste those sweet, sweet lemon bars, might even pick up a cinnamon roll for Edge while he was in. He took a moment to dump out the dregs of his morning coffee, might as well get a refill while he was here, and headed in.

The bell jangling cheerily overhead was the same as always, but there was nothing normal about the way the entire shop froze in their tracks when they saw him. Baristas and patrons alike stopped and stared, and Stretch froze right along with them, resisting the urge to glance behind him, cause he was pretty sure he was what they were looking at and not some other skeleton Monster that crept in on his heels.

“um, hi?” he tried, lifting a hand in an awkward wave.

That seemed to get the record playing again. Before he could even lower his hand, Debbie was around the counter, Jennie and Daniel at her heels, paying no mind to the line of people waiting at the counter. Then again, none of them looked put out by the barista parade, they only stood and watched as Debbie dashed up to him and flung both her arms around his ribcage, almost making him drop the garment bag. Jennie joined her, and Daniel, and Stretch only stood there bewildered, caged in Human arms and patting whatever heads and shoulders he could reach.

“um, hey, guys? sorry i haven’t been in, things have been a little weird.”

“We know, dear,” Debbie said finally ,and to Stretch’s horror, when she pulled away, she drew up her apron to wipe at her eyes. “We’ve been watching everything on the news. Oh, sweetie, how is Edge doing?”

Oh.

Oh, shit.

Well, fuck, he knew a few internet sleuths had figured out that Edge was one of the Monsters hurt even if he was such a stickler for privacy that his name wasn’t in any of the reports. Stretch hadn’t even considered that the people who knew Edge would be worried out of their skulls, fuck, he’d been home for almost a week, had no one bothered to let the Beanery in on it? What about Thomas at the book shop, he knew Edge, too...but no, he’d probably texted Andy.

Stretch abruptly realized the entire shop was waiting for an answer. Humans that he didn’t know by name, but whose faces he recognized, shop regulars who probably followed him on Twitter, nodding a greeting every time Stretch stopped in. Asgore hadn’t wanted him to post on Twitter about what happened because he was afraid it would open a can of worms and get people asking him questions that he probably shouldn’t answer.

(Which honestly, it wasn’t fair. Wasn’t his fault his fingers worked faster than his brain.)

But obviously radio silence on Twitter wasn’t the answer either, not from all the worried faces around him. He needed to have a chat with Asgore on that front, but first it was time for some damage control.

“He’s fine,” Stretch said, loud enough for everyone in the shop to hear, “seriously, he’s doing okay. he’s a little bang up, he’d got a temporary cast on one leg, but he’ll be up again with a coffee craving in no time.”

To his dismay, instead of being reassured, Debbie burst into full-fledged tears and hugged him again. He leaned down to wrap both arms around her, squeezing tight, until her sobs trailed away.

“I’m sorry, dear,” Debbie pulled away and grabbed a napkin from one of the tables, wiping at her eyes. “It’s only...i was so worried.”

“We were all worried,” Jennie put in. Debbie’s niece was like a younger, taller version of her, complete with her own tears. Behind her, Daniel was nodding along. “When we saw that awful video. But when we called the Embassy, they couldn’t tell us anything.”

Ah, shit, of course they wouldn't, especially not about Edge since he wasn’t supposed to be a public figure. And they probably hit Andy with a gag order, too, so he wouldn’t even be able to say much.

Welp. Stretch didn’t work for the Embassy, thanks, and Asgore only mentioned Twitter. If they didn’t want him talking to people’s faces, they should’ve sewn up any loopholes before they let him out on the street.

“he’s fine, i promise,” Stretch said firmly, then he reconsidered. “deb, do you have a cell phone?”

Debbie blinked, but pulled an iphone out of her pocket. It was older and the screen was cracked, and Stretch made a mental note to deal with that somehow, but that would be later. For now, he opened up her contact list and added his number, labeling it ‘Skeletor’s Second Cousin.’

As he typed, he said, “next time, call me, okay? not that i want a next time but, you get me. call, text, whatever. i’ll tell you what i can.”

Debbie nodded, still a little teary, and backed away enough to let Julia and Daniel get in another quick hug before they headed back behind the counter.

“Come on, let me get you a drink,” Debbie said briskly. She took hold of Stretch’s elbow, leading him up to the counter like a lost lamb, “You look like you’re on your way somewhere.” Stretch followed meekly along after her like a good little sheep. Not like letting her get in a little mom-ing was gonna hurt.

He allowed Debbie to steal his travel mug, watching as she worked her magic to fill it. “yeah, edge needs some of his pants altered if he’s gonna be able to wear them with a cast, so i’m headed down to the tailor.”

Debbie actually paused, lips pursed, “I see. Let me throw in an extra shot of espresso, I have a feeling you may need it.”

~~*~~

Not much time later, Stretch had a chance to really appreciate Debbie’s foresight.

He knew the Monster tailor, Bruno, as a casual sort of acquaintance but not so much professionally, not since he’d been fitted for his wedding tux. Stretch’s style tended towards either off the rack or out of Edge’s side of the closet, and that was about as far as he liked to think about clothes.

His husband, on the other hand, probably had his t-shirts professionally tailored. Not that Stretch was about to complain, heck no, not when he got to reap the benefits of that view.

But it did kinda leave him in the position to be standing awkwardly, listening to Bruno moan about the travesty he was about to commit on some perfectly good trousers.

“It won’t work!” Bruno declared, for about the fifth time if someone was counting, and Stretch really, really was. “There is barely enough material in his trousers for his legs, he expects me to maybe coax the silk worms into adding more for a cast?”

Stretch shrugged and took a sip of his coffee, munching on his last lemon bar as he watched the tailor pace. Everything on the overflowing tables rattled with every stomping step he took, the pictures on the walls hanging ever more crooked. Stretch couldn’t say he minded, it was kinda like getting a free show.

The sigh Bruno heaved was loud enough to shift all the pictures another inch, “The only way it might work is if I cut the seam all the way up the side and find a way for him to fasten them. The trousers won’t go over the cast, but he will at least be covered.”

“think velcro’s been proven to work,” Stretch offered idly. Even he shrank away from the look of pure distaste Bruno gave him, the void flickering in his vision as he almost shortcutted out to the sidewalk and to heck with the pants. Bruno was one of the rare Monsters who towered over him, with a pair of gleaming ivory fangs peeking out from his lips, the curling horns towering over his head well-polished. From the look of his shop, business was flourishing, which just proved that Human problems with Monsters wasn’t the way they looked.

“Is he planning on tearing them away in the middle of a meeting with heads of state?” Bruno sniffed. “Perhaps do a little dance for them?”

“uh...i hope not?” Stretch offered meekly. “i mean, probably should order a g-string too if that’s on the table.”

Bruno went on as if Stretch hadn’t said a word. “No, he is not. Hook and eye would work, buttons would be more secure, but.” He shook his head with grave misery, “No. he won't like it. No matter what I do, he won’t like any of it. No.” Bruno heaved a sigh worthy of any swooning Victorian heroine, sagging into a huge, squashy chair that creaked ominously. “I’ll do it, but I’m afraid he’s not going to like any adjustment I come up with. I certainly hope he doesn’t tell anyone he’s wearing one of my creations!”

“i’ll let him know to keep the business cards to himself for now.” Stretch leaned against the counter, plucking up a business card of his own to weave through his fingers. Oh, he was gonna regret asking, he knew it, but he was reluctantly curious. That might kill a cat, but hopefully skeletons got off for free. “okay, so, if what edge is asking for won’t work, what would you recommend?”

Bruno brightened instantly, illuminating like a newborn sun and clapped his huge hands with such exuberance that Stretch took a step back. “Ah, well! When it comes to something like a cast, there are a few options, oh, let me think!” He stroked a finger down one long fang, considering, “you both have such slender legs, but very shapely. Ah!” Stretch waited with morbid curiosity, almost expecting to see a bubble with the word ‘eureka’ come spilling out of the tailor’s ear. “I have it! I think he would be dashing in a business kilt!”

A what? “a kilt,” Stretch said, flatly. “that’s what you’re saying. that’s the big idea. not exactly original, is it.”

“Yes, yes, a kilt,” Bruno flapped an impatient hand at him, “and original isn't the question or suitcoats would have died out a hundred years ago! A sedate pattern, of course, nothing too flashy, not for Embassy work.” Yeah, as if that was Stretch’s big concern, that Edge might get stuck with something more appropriate for disco inferno than a business meeting. Then again, bell bottoms might work... “With a kilt cut jacket and tie, oh, yes, something in a dark wool, I think.” Bruno stood and marched over, Stretch bouncing along with every step, until he could lean in to whispered conspiratorially, “He’d look scrumptious and I don’t think I need to tell you that should be his natural state of being.”

“scrumptious.” Stretch repeated slowly, tasting the word. Yeah, okay, he kind of liked that one in the same sentence as Edge, he could warm up to this idea. “how long would it take to make something like that?”

Bruno’s expression turned into one from the sly family, his little smile widening to a toothy grin. “It’s entirely possible I have something in the works right now that might be suitable. If you’ll excuse the pun.”

Uh huh. He sure knew his clientele, didn’t he. “sold. let me know when i can pick it up.”

“I’ll have it done by the end of the week, along with the...trousers.” His distaste from the last word faded into a certain disturbing gleam that began to shine in Bruno’s eye and before Stretch could flee, he took hold of Stretch’s elbow, gripping firmly, “Now. Why don’t we see what I can do for you?”

“what? wait, no, i’m just here for edge!” Stretch tried, digging in his heels as Bruno began to pull. His sneakers squeaked on the tile as he slid along in the direction of the dressing rooms. “no, don’t! help! i don’t need new clothes!”

“Nonsense!” Bruno scoffed, “Everyone can use an addition to their wardrobe. Particularly when you come to me dressed like that,” He paused, his face twisting into a moue of pure disgust as he tutted over a perfectly decent sweatshirt and pair of track pants. “I couldn’t possibly let anyone see you leaving my shop this way. No, no,” He shook his head, tugging Stretch determinedly along. “My reputation won’t have it. Come now, let’s see what I have for you.”

Stretch gulped and cast a longing look at the door as he was hauled inexorably towards the dressing rooms.

Where was a damn explosion when you needed one?

-tbc-

[drkoestersmithrpg]

But Obey?

Peter started a little, confused at the sound.  He was certain he had never heard Tony knock before.  He went to the door and opened it.

Tony entered the room with a tense and frightened look.  Peter tried to smile in a comforting way as he took Tony by the hand and led him to the bed.  Tony was nervous.  But Peter already knew that.  Knew it when Tony knocked instead of just entering.  Peter thought they might kiss for a while, might hold each other before they talked.  But it hurt Peter’s chest to see the worry in his friend’s eyes.  There was no more putting it off.  He sat down on the bed, but Tony chose to stand.

“All right.  You want me to tell you why I asked you to meet me here.  Although you didn’t have to knock on your own bedroom door…”

“Your bedroom,” Tony corrected softly.  “This is your chamber.” 

“…oh.  Yeah… I guess… okay.”

Tony stood at attention, although his head a little bowed.  He waited.

“Tony,” Peter said, his voice breaking.  How he longed to just hide in his lover’s arms and forget about all of it, or else just hide under the blankets until it went away.  But it was too late for that.  He took a deep breath and plunged forward.

“Tony, I’ve been reading Abe Sexton’s journals for the past four days and I’ve… I’ve been learning things.  Disturbing things.  Like… the seal of Incêndio?  When each Post Patriarch inherited you, they put you under a seal that would burn you if you disobey them?  But each man had to one-up the Patriarch that came before him, so that his seal would burn you worse than the seals that came before?  So the new Patriarch could force you to disobey old orders because the new orders hurt worse?”

Tony was watching his face carefully, warily.  Now he was making tiny movements, shaking his head, just barely, to say “No.” 

“No?”

“Yes…” Tony struggled to explain.  “But the seals fade in time, after the death of each magician, the seals fade… the pain fades…”

“So they didn’t even have to… oh god… that makes it worse Tony, not better.   All these seals… they’re just there to put you in more pain than the pain that came before.  And that thing that Thomas Post did to you, when they gathered the three black animals to force you to tell the truth about what you did to Tom Dylan.  That was to make it hurt three times worse than whatever command Tom Dylan gave you…”

“And to strengthen me three times,” Tony said, almost too quietly to hear.  He clearly didn’t want to argue, but he also clearly disagreed.   “To make me strong, three times stronger than Tom Dylan’s command…”

“That’s NOT what Abe Sexton said!” Peter argued.  Although, secretly, he hoped it was true.  Maybe Abe Sexton had gotten it wrong.  “I’ve been reading his journals, Tony, and he said some terrible things.”

“Sometimes… novice magicians… make mistakes….”

“So… so if Tom Dylan had commanded you to not tell anyone what you had done, and then Thomas Post put you in the seal and commanded you tell the truth…”

“I would have spoken the truth.”

“And it would have hurt.”

“Yes, but I would be stronger within the seal.”

“And to disobey Thomas Post would have hurt worse…”

“To disobey Thomas Post, inside the seal, would have been impossible.”

“Because the most powerful magician is the one who can hurt you the most.  Can hurt you so badly that you’ll be too distracted to notice your being punished for disobeying the first magician.  That’s what all this is about, that’s what I wasn’t getting…”  Peter almost doubled over with the pain of it all, his hands fisted on the edge of the bed.  He had eagerly reached for Abe Sexton’s journal when he thought he recognized the name.  Poured through blocky, perfectly spaced handwriting of dozens upon dozens of journals, benefiting from Abe’s compulsion to document everything that happened in his family.  Peter thought he had discovered the ultimate treasure – until Abe turned 16.

Some of it was impossible to understand.  Abe liked to write in German and Latin, and sometimes in a language that Peter suspected he made up himself.  But his disgust saturated every page.  He was livid as he described “magician’s duels” that, in essence, subjected Methuselah to various types of pain, forcing the demon servant to serve the strongest magician.  And yet Abe also seemed hell-bent on becoming a powerful magician himself, in order to force Tony to defy his father to break… something.  It wasn’t clear.

His revulsion filled up years’ worth of journals.  And now, one hundred years later, Peter sat at his kitchen table and shared that teen’s outrage. 

Tony, on the other hand, remained baffled. 

“Tony,” Peter hissed, trying to make his friend understand.  “Did you know how terrified all the Post girls were that Judah Post would someday use the 300 League spell to kill their father?  And not because they were afraid he would die...  but that they were convinced Judah had the power to force you to kill your master and then destroy you when you just refused?  That they lived in fear of waking up to find him, or you, or both of you, were just dead?”

He was almost in tears now, and that wasn’t good.  Because Tony was looking very compassionate about the tears.  But not particularly concerned about the facts Peter had uncovered.

“Tony…”  Peter took a deep breath and tried again.  “When Abe turned 16 you were sent to his bedroom, do you remember?”

Tony nodded solemnly.  “Yes.”

“And he tried to kick you out, but you said you didn’t have the authority to leave, and he wasn’t a powerful enough magician to hurt you enough to force you to leave.  You had to stay and.. make him a man…”

Tony nodded.  His face was gentle with the memory.  “I could have taken any form he wanted, a woman or a girl or a man or a boy, but he wanted none of them.  But I could not leave; his father tasked me to stay until it was done.  Master Peter…”  He moved as if to reach out and stroke Peter’s face, but changed his mind and turned to the book.  With two hands he pulled the massive tome closer to them and opened it to a page in the middle. 

As Peter leaned to look down at the woodcut, Tony reached out to stroke the back of his head.  “We reached a pleasant accord.  He and I.  Why does this vex you now?  Abe Sexton found it most satisfying…”

Peter recognized the hillock where the two boys lay on a quilt, looking up at summer stars.  An odd looking boy with very wide eyes and old-fashioned clothes was lying on the quilt next to an identical boy in identical clothes.  They were talking.  Peter realized that Methuselah had found a “form” that Abe found pleasant, a boy exactly his age.  The boy’s hands were laying very close to each other.  Sometimes, Peter knew, their knuckles would brush against each other.  Maybe, by the end of the night, they would be holding hands.  Sometimes they smiled and pointed when they saw shooting stars.  It was a lovely picture.  No wonder Tony called it an “accord.”  Both Abe and his companion looked perfectly content.

They were probably talking about outer space, Peter realized.  Tony was probably explaining what he had been taught in the monastery and Abe was explaining what he had learned in his books.

“But…” Peter said, confused.  It was hard to justify the picture he was seeing with the vitriol of Abe’s journals.  “But he said… you couldn’t leave… until… until he had penetrated you…”

Tony smiled fondly.  “It is a secret, Master Peter.  Can I tell you?  You bade me ‘Be polite and keep their secrets.’”  But even as he spoke he turned the page.

On that page Abe, eyes wide, had his hand completely inside his doubleganger’s chest.  Abe’s hand, Peter knew, was planted firmly on the quilt beneath them.  Tony, having taken the form of Abe, looked back at the 16-year old calmly.  Then Abe withdrew his hand, and Tony’s chest grew solid again.  They would spend the rest of the night talking about the nature of solids, gasses and liquids.   

“Oh,” Peter said.  He took a breath of relief.  Of course, he should have known.  Following the letter of the law without actually doing what he had been ordered to do.  It was an artform.  And Tony was quite the artist.

“Can you… help me understand why Abe Sexton was trying to become a master magician himself?  He seemed to hate all his… but he seemed to really want to learn how to be able to force you to break something, but I didn’t understand that part because he always wrote it in another language.”

Tony bowed his head.  Still, he couldn’t help but smile fondly.  “The Tongue of Jephthah’s Daughter, he called it.  It is his own invention.”

“I should have known you would know.  What is the ephod nodum?  What did Abe want to force you to break?

Tony sighed heavily.  His shoulders sank.  He couldn’t seem to lift his head.  He looked as weary as Peter felt.  “It is a nothing.  There is no nodum…” he said, shaking his head.  He looked both broken and defeated, as if he were losing an ancient argument.  “Abe Sexton forever tasked me to find the ‘bottle’ or the ‘ring’ or the ‘lamp.’  Insisted I was a djinn of Solomon and I had to be set free.  It vexed him full sore that I knew nothing of djinn or Solomon.  I tried to tell him.  He did not like my answer.  I tried to tell him that the only ‘bottle’ to break would be the books of Ezra and Nehemiah Post, but he would have none of it.  He was my learned Doctor, but once he had learned, he could not be corrected…”

“But you did destroy those books.  It took you until Evan Post to do it…”

Tony smiled wistfully.  And not without a little pride.  “Yes, Abe Sexton had tasked me to it.  It took three generations, but I did succeed.”  

Another deep breath,  another stab at being understood.  “Tony, When I was fifteen I heard you say, in this room, ‘When the master commands, what else can the servant do but obey?’ And…”  Peter dropped his eyes.  “...and that there would be no secrets…” 

“Yes,” Tony said, nodding.  “It is your chamber, Master.  You have no secrets here.”

“And now I’m trying to make you understand my secret.  Tony, please try to understand that I love you.  And there are some things… I’m sure they made sense to the Post men and maybe to some monks in the 4th century but they do not make sense to me.  I can’t… I can’t ask you to… do things with me in bed, or do things to me in bed, if you don’t have any choice.  If it’s just one of your duties, like keeping me safe from snakes.  I can’t ask you to do anything… intimate... if you can’t tell me ‘no.’”

Miserably he reached out and pulled the huge leather book to him.  Grimacing, he tried to turn to the glossary at the back, where the words were, along with the definitions that made him tear up.  But the book refused to cooperate.  Instead the huge pages turned themselves until he was looking at the last picture he wanted to see, the picture of Nehemiah Post using Methuselah’s body before going to sleep.   

“Tony,” he said as factually as he could.  “When I was fifteen you asked me to ‘make me your beloved’ and I had no idea what that meant.  I thought it meant ‘special’ like ‘a beloved poem’ or ‘a beloved story.’  I had no idea you wanted me to do that to you…”  He shook his head in disgust.  Just now it was occurring to him, in Tony’s world, offering his body to the horny fifteen-year-old was more normal than not offering up his body.  Peter shook his head hard and tried to push forward.

“And then on the night before you left for the Dark Trinity, you asked me ‘Shall I make you my beloved,’ and you smiled like it might be a funny thing.  A silly thing.  I said ‘yes’ because I didn’t know what I was agreeing to.  And you’ve made it clear that you… I mean you created a body part just for me just to do it… and I appreciate that Tony, but…”

Peter recognized the look on Tony’s face now.  He didn’t look sorrowful anymore.  He looked baffled.  Baffled and frustrated.  He didn’t understand, and he knew he didn’t understand.  But he was trying desperately to understand.

“There’s a glossary in the back of this book.  I found out that “beloved” and “lover” aren’t the same thing, but I guess I always knew that.   Does this make sense?  Can you know my secret?  I don’t want to do that thing to you.  And I don’t… I can’t ask you to do that thing to me if you don’t want to…”

Tony walked quietly up to the book and turned the pages.   There, on the settee lounged Lysander and his two sturdy men with identical faces.  He turned Peter’s chin to face him with gentle fingers.

“Lysander was my beloved.  He made me his lover, made both of us his lovers.  It was his desire… his desire that I should ‘do that’ to him...”

“And you couldn’t tell him ‘no!’  Peter insisted, almost shouted, twisting his face away from Tony’s hand.  “That’s what I’m trying to get you to understand...Tony, how can I ask you to make love to me if you can’t tell me ‘no’?”

Tony no longer looked exhausted.  Now it was almost angry.  Maybe he did understand what Peter was getting at, and he just didn’t like it.  He actually glared at the book, as if he wanted to destroy it.  They stayed that way in silence for a while.  Tony’s mouth was working, although he said nothing.  His jaw was hardening and he was obviously trying to soften his expression, but couldn’t.

“Tony,” Peter said as gently as he could, “You were a slave in this house, in the Post house.  That changes everything for me.  I know Lysander tasked you to be his ‘lover,’ I figured that out,” he said, touching the book where three handsome men conspired.  “And all the other Post-men tasked you to be the… to be the ‘beloved’ but that is not the right word for it.  And I’m glad you and Abe Sexton found a way around all of that.  

“But these are things they ordered you to do, Tony.  And that’s why I can’t… we can’t… it was wrong for them to make you… what?

Tony had made a frustrated sound, so quiet Peter barely heard it.  Only when he insisted did Tony speak.

His voice was very quiet.  He spoke through a clenched jaw as he glared down at the carpet.

“You curse the poachers who commit crimes in Ethiopia, over 2,000 leagues away.  And you curse the name of the men in your book whose crimes are more than a score of years old.  Will you also now curse the generations as well?”  There was no patience in his voice, no understanding.  When he finally looked at Peter his eyes were dark.  “My angry Master.  Angry at crimes in far away lands.  Angry at hunters in far away climbs.  Now, will you be angry at the dead?”

“I have the right to be angry!”  Peter shouted.  “Mortally angry!  I’ve read Malcom X, I know how this works.  I inherited you, Tony, the same way I’m going to inherit the house some day.  And that means I inherit all the debt, too.  And yes, this is my debt.  I have to take care of you, Tony.  Not just because I love you but because it all falls on me now.  That’s just the way it is.  And now…”

Peter tried to breathe but his lungs were aching.  He didn’t want to argue with Tony (dear god was he actually yelling just now?)  All he wanted to do was bury his face in Tony’s neck and hide in the man’s arms, hide under the covers.  He wanted it so badly it hurt.   The temptation was overwhelming and making him sick.  Still, he fisted the creamy-white covers of the bed and pushed forward.

“Abe Sexton was trying to free you.  That’s what he keeps talking about in his journal, it makes sense now.  He was writing it in a language he invented because he couldn’t let his family know.  That’s what the ephad nodum was about.  He must have thought you were a genie, like in the Arabian Nights.  The genies were trapped by Solomon, that’s a legendary wizard from a long time ago, in bottles or lamps.  When he told you to destroy the ephod nodum he wanted you to destroy your genie’s bottle, but of course there isn’t one.  So you can’t destroy it.  You did destroy the German books, but that didn’t set you free, did it?  You still call me ‘Master.’  You still get hurt if you disobey me.  I asked you why the noisy room was so noisy and you didn’t know the answer and still got hurt because you didn’t answer the question right.  You’re still a slave and I guess there’s nothing we can do about that.  There’s no ephad nodum to destroy.  And that’s why we can’t be lovers… or lovers and beloveds or… whatever.  That’s why.”

“Will you…”

Peter waited patiently.  He didn’t look up at Tony as he waited for the words.  He would have said something, but didn’t.  He had never heard Tony sound so choked before.

“Will you send me into the ground?” 

“No!”  Peter said suddenly, loudly, startling them both.  “No, no no that’s not… no.  I never meant…”

“Will you cast me out?” Tony asked, his voice broken and pained.  But he was looking into Peter’s eyes now, his jaw unclentched, his face filling with relief. 

“No, no, of course not,” Peter said as gently as he could, realizing for the first time what Tony had been worried about.  “No.  Never.  You’re my best friend, Tony.  I love you.  I always want you with me.  Always.  Oh god… you think that’s… Tony how could I even… Tony that’s not what free means…” 

“He ordered me to leave, to leave Lysander and my princesa....to leave the land that I protected, the land I had made plentiful.  He said someday he would have the power to cast me out and I would never return.  I told him he would never have that power, that I would never let him inherit the spellbooks.  He thought to best me for he had been chosen by Nana-Justina.  He vowed to send me to the ends of the earth.

“But then the sheriff's son came to us, he who Lavern had healed and brought back from death.  His body was healed but his mind was ill.  When he left here Abe Sexton left with him.  Left with him, and did not return.”  

“But… didn’t he?  Didn’t he live with the sheriff's son for 50 years, and then come back to live with his family?

“He returned, but he did not return.  He lived on the land, but he never spoke to me again.”

His voice was quiet and relieved, but his face was solem.    Peter could see it just as easily as if he saw the woodcut in the book;  Tony’s relief that the man who seemed hellbent on casting him from the Homestead finally leaving the Homestead himself.  Tony’s confused longing when the man who had frightened him so badly was now ignoring him.

Peter knew that feeling.

“Probably…”  Peter said as gently as he could.  “I think he was… Abe Sexton was an abolitionist.  Like all the girls were.  Abolitionists and suffragists went hand in hand.  I think he was trying.. I know this must have sounded terrifying to you but I think he was trying to be kind to you.  The words he was using… they meant different things to him.  Damn!  No wonder he made up his own language, sometimes there just aren’t WORDS for things!  Tony, listen…”

And with that, Peter stopped talking.

Closing his eyes and bowing his head he pictured it.  Thought it as hard as he could.  

First he pictured the two of them holding each other in bed, the way they always did.  Kissing and touching each other.  Letting Tony feed until he fell asleep.  Knowing Tony would feed again as he slept.  Plotting together, working out spells and plans and schemes and sweet dreams and revenge.  

But then he let his mind wander to his plans for the future.  Tony as a small black dog that could walk in the woods with him in the mornings and evenings.  Sitting on his lap beside him on the couch as they watched TV, Peter explaining all the jokes in his favorite cartoons.  Or as a black cat, curling up in Peter’s lap, being stroked with Peter’s left hand while he did homework with his right.  Visiting Peter in dreams as he attended college in New York City.  

But so much more than that.  Peter thought of the years to come, when he grew up and took responsibility for the house.  Taking care of May and Ben in their old age with Tony at his side.  Walking hand in hand through the forest at night, looking at actual stars instead of dream stars.  Touching each other beside the lake-by-moonlight.  Rebuilding the cottages so that artists could come and live and create, feeding their light to Tony.  Creating works of art.  Inviting painters to create paintings of the underground chapel.  Rebuilding the South House.  

He could picture it so clearly he could almost taste it.  Someday the house would be his, and he could live opening with Tony.  Talk about the days’ events at the kitchen table.  Shout at politicians on the television as they snuggled on the couch.  Build a huge back porch like the DeSlaughters where they could sit and watch the sunset like Matty’s mom and dad.    

He saw it in his head, then he opened his eyes and looked at the man standing beside him.

“Do you understand?”

Tony’s face was calm and serene.  He looked at Peter longingly, but he didn’t move from where he stood.  “Yes, master.  I will always serve you well, until the end of your days.”

“Please try to understand Abe Sexton was… oh nevermind.  Maybe you can’t understand.  The words we use and the words you use have different meanings, oh dammit…”  He covered his eyes with both hands.  He growled at the ridiculousness of it all, then said a few obscene words to boot.  “But that’s the problem with all words, isn’t it?!  Words just have lots of meanings, and it’s impossible to anyone to be understood,” he moaned.    

He realized, for the first time, what it meant when Tony had been sent to “vex” people.  The impossible storm in his brain was vexing him now  

He took another deep breath and tried again.

“I always want you with me.  I’ll always take care of you.  And you can feed, and when you feed we will still kiss and touch, you can still make me feel good… I know you like that.  But we can’t be… we can’t be lovers, Tony.”

He snuck a peek back up at Tony’s face, only to see that hopeless confusion again.

“I love you, but that can’t happen.  Can you understand?” he said helplessly, knowing Tony couldn’t.

“Because there is no ephod nodum.”

“Yes!  Yes, Tony, you get it!”

“There were the German books, and I have destroyed them.”

“Yes!  But that didn’t set you free.  You’re still the genie in the bottle, and there is no bottle to break.”

“But if there were, you would take me as your lover.”

“Yes.  But there’s isn’t, so you can’t.”  Peter said, relieved that his friend finally understood.

[nadziejastar]

I hate Xemnas/Isa. It feels fucking gross and fetishy. I hate how there’s still parts of the fandom that still potrays Isa as his sociopathic counterpart, Saix. Even though, he did fucked up shit, he was a victim because of Xehanort. Plenty of people complained about the fandom treating Lea as if he still acted like murder assassin Axel, but the same doesn’t extend to Isa 🙄.

Why Axel Had a Good Redemption and Saïx Did NOT Have a Good Redemption

Xemnas/Isa? Eww. Yeah, it is really sad. I talked to someone a while ago who said that they always thought the Saïx/Axel friendship was totally pointless and just an excuse to give Axel more “drama” in Days. They also said Isa was a jerk in BBS and didn’t even know why Lea was friends with him. Their understanding was that Saïx was a jerk because he was a grown-up version of Isa, not a Xehanort-possessed version. They had no idea why he was even in the epilogue. They thought Lea had a good redemption, but they thought Isa had no right to eat ice cream with his “abuse victims”.  

And sadly, I could understand why they came to that conclusion since the writing was just so bad. But while they hated Isa, I obviously feel the exact opposite. I think for a lot of people, the entire concept of Saïx simply went right over their head. And KH3 certainly did nothing to help, so that misunderstanding still persists. But it’s really not that hard to see where they were going with Isa originally. His character got treated SO unfairly.

Also, it’s funny you mention this. Just the other day someone got really mad at me on Reddit for “bashing” Isa’s character. I made a post not long after KH3 released criticizing the way Saïx’s arc was handled, just to see the general fandom opinion on it. Occasionally I will still get responses on that topic. This particular person said they had NO problems with Isa’s arc, and the only reason people criticize Lea and Isa being apprentices is because our “headcanon fanfiction” didn’t come true. They also said I was “sickening” because I said that I got the impression that Axel’s feelings for Isa were romantic. I just had “shipping goggles” on and was trying to “fetishize” a platonic friendship. And that’s obviously why I had issues with the way KH3 was written. People are stupid.

I actually saw that response about “fanfiction” a lot. Honestly, I think it’s a form of denial from some fans who know that there are valid criticisms to be had over the writing, but simply don’t want to admit it to themselves. They are emotionally invested in the idea that the story is perfect, and do not take kindly to criticism. When I brought up obvious plot holes, like why Xemnas never bothered to punish Axel or Saïx, even though he knew they were plotting against him, they would just dismiss it. “You can’t read too much into Organization politics”. I mean, come on. Really? 🤨

One person insisted that Nomura had NO CLUE where he was going with Lea and Isa’s story when BBS showed them trying to sneak into the castle. He insisted that Nomura made everything up as he went along, and therefore I had no right to be upset that this mystery girl was never mentioned or hinted at previously.

This particular commenter about Isa was extremely vitriolic and insulting in their reply, which I also saw a lot. It’s amusing, really. If what I was saying was SO outlandish, I doubt it would have caused so many people to get that angry or defensive. This person thought I was being unfair to Isa by saying he didn’t have a good redemption. They were furious that I said Axel had the same basic personality as Lea. “Axel was just as sociopathic as Saïx was.” How could I think Axel had a good redemption, but not Saïx!?  

“So, Axel, what were you like when you were human?”

Xion glanced up at Axel, too, eager to see his reaction.

“Me…?” At a loss, he shrugged. “I dunno. Same guy, more or less.”

This is the quote I was referring to when I said Lea and Axel have the same basic personality. After this exchange, Roxas wondered what he was like before he became a Nobody, and I noticed how it showed the sky in the background—the sky for Sora, that is. I really appreciated how Days was full of small details like this. They’re subtle but they tell you a lot.

Obviously I know that Axel is a lot different from Lea. One is an innocent and cheerful teenage boy who spent his time eating ice cream and playing with frisbees. And the other is a jaded and nihilistic assassin who spent his time collecting hearts and plotting to overthrow Xemnas.

Day 118: You Changed, Not Me

Talking to Roxas and Xion always brings back memories of my human life, back when I was a kid. It’s a weird sensation. I ought to be able to share all this with Saïx, but I just don’t feel like it anymore. It’s strange, but I’m content with just missing what’s gone. I’m not the one who changed. You did.

But deep down, Axel still thought of himself as more or less the same guy. He didn’t feel the same way about Saïx, though.

Day 356: Unforeseen Events

What were you really after, Lea? We joined the Organization at the same time, and formulated our plan. At this point, it’s just an idle fantasy. Everything changed. You, and me.

And Saïx actually agrees with Axel, at least on that matter. Unlike Axel, he doesn’t think he’s more or less the same guy he used to be.

“That’s enough.” Saïx turned his head, giving Axel a sidelong look over his shoulder. “Traitor.”

Axel scowled darkly.

“I’m going. You know, don’t you, that you won’t stop me except by force? And even if you tried, you would fail.” Saïx went on his way. Memories informed him that he hated this kind of thing.

After all, it doesn’t say that Saïx remembers hating conflict, the way it does when Axel remembers the past. It says that his memories “informed him” that he hated conflict. As if he’s learning this fact about himself for the first time through his memories. 

This commenter also said that I couldn’t take the novels into account because they “aren’t canon”. Even though they introduced canon concepts before the games did. The KH2 novel references Nobodies having hearts, for instance. The novels were carefully written to be completely consistent with canon. Besides, the author was one of the main scenario writers for Days. I’m pretty sure she had a perfect grasp of what Saïx’s character was all about.

A smile played at the corners of Axel’s mouth. “The three of us, we’re inseparable. You’re my best friends.”

Roxas felt a grin come to his face. “Yeah… I guess we are.”

“Hee-hee.” It was Xion, awake—still lying down but laughing. “Thanks, Axel. You’re so sweet.”

Axel sheepishly scratched the back of his head.

Axel has experienced severe trauma, and certainly has changed a great deal. But the difference is how they act when they are exposed to characters who have hearts: Roxas and Xion. Unlike Saïx, Axel is completely open to befriending them. He enjoys how pure and innocent they are. The more Axel hangs out with them, the more he starts acting the same way he did as a human. He starts reconnecting with his old self again—his true self. Xion calls him “sweet”.

Xion had expected as much. Saïx never answered her questions.

Then Xigbar poked his face between them. “There you go again, Saïx. Why’re you so mean to our Poppet?”

Saïx pointedly ignored him.

Xigbar always talks to me, at least, thought Xion.

He’s so much nicer than Saïx. I like him.

This made me laugh. Xion actually complained about how much nicer Xigbar is compared to Saïx, who is completely cold to her at all times. He never tries to connect with her, and always dehumanizes her. In fact, it’s constantly implied that he doesn’t even have the capacity to see the humanity in her.

Axel: “Friends need to lean on each other every now and then. Ain’t that right, Roxas?”

Xion: “We’re friends… Axel…does that mean you and I are friends, too?”

Axel: “Well, if you’re friends with Roxas, then yeah, of course you’re my friend.”

Xion: “Thank you… Roxas, Axel!”

Axel: “Just eat your ice cream.”

Axel was the one Roxas and Xion always leaned on for emotional support. And they always came to him when they had a problem, or were looking for answers about the human heart.

Saïx: “Look at you, Roxas. Up in arms over a nobody.”

Roxas: “We’re all Nobodies!”

Saïx: “Settle down. Xion’s failings won’t affect your standing with us. You’ve nothing to worry about.”

Roxas: “Won’t affect my– What is WRONG with you? Look, I’ll do my mission–later.”

But the story clearly wanted to demonstrate that there was something seriously wrong with Saïx. He is inhumanly cold, more than any other Nobody.

Day 119: Hearts and Emotion

Watching that foolish beast flail about only deepens my disdain for humans and their incessant need to be pinned down by feelings. We became Nobodies precisely to avoid the shackles of emotion. It was only later that we realized the scale of that loss: that some things simply cannot be done without a heart. Nonetheless, I see nary a pleasant thing about it.

Xaldin gave up his heart willingly, due to his disdain for emotions. He later realized that he needed a heart do do certain things, which are never specified. But he’s very unhappy about it. He doesn’t want to deal with love and emotions. His general attitude towards love is the same as when he was a human.

Roxas: “Nah, it���s just… This is gonna sound stupid. Do you know what love is?”

Axel: “‘Scuse me?”

Roxas: “I found out about love on today’s mission–that it’s something powerful.”

Axel: “That’s true. It is. But I’ll never get to experience it.”

Unlike Xaldin, Axel always had a desire for love, even as a Nobody. That’s why he wanted to complete Kingdom Hearts so badly. He wanted his heart back. He hated his condition and called himself “broken”. He wanted to experience love. Before they were Nobodies, Dilan was a cold and uncaring person, while Lea was a warm and caring person. Even without hearts, they are very different people.

All of it disgusted him. Saïx looked up at the skyscrapers, tracking Axel’s presence. He wanted a heart more than anything. But what could he do to get one? Here he was, yearning for a heart so badly, while Axel had managed to gain one without doing anything at all.

Saïx wants the exact same thing as Axel, though. Unlike Xaldin, he desperately yearns for a heart, more than anything. He hates his condition just as much as Axel does.

Day 276: Behind the Truth

Saïx would laugh at people with no hearts calling one another friends, but that doesn’t make it not so.

Yet Saïx in particular is singled out as being quick to scoff at the idea of friendship and love. They never talk this way about any of the other Organization members. Not even Xemnas. Both Lea and Isa were comparable characters in BBS. They were nothing like Dilan.

Day 352: What I Must Do

I love Roxas and Axel. I’m sure Saïx would scoff at that. Call it a trick of my artificial memories. But the time I spent on that clock tower was real.

They were both innocent, kind-hearted boys. When exposed to characters who had hearts, you would expect them to have a similar degree of openness, allowing them to nurture new hearts. But they don’t. At all. 

Roxas: “You had me worried.”

Axel: “Worried? Well, that’s a neat trick, considering you haven’t got a heart to feel with.”

Roxas: “W-wait here. I’ll go buy us some ice cream!”

For the entirety of Days, Roxas and Xion’s friendship with Axel runs parallel to his and Saïx’s, showing how they are polar opposites. Roxas was worried about Axel. Afterwards, they talk and eat ice cream as they watch the sunset. Axel tells Roxas he hasn’t reported in yet because he’s still sorting out his feelings.

Saïx: “Why didn’t you report in?”

Axel: “Oh, good to see you, too. You’re welcome, thanks for the kind words.”

The next day is ~Day 72 Change~. Axel could tell that Saïx wasn’t worried about him like Roxas was. He viewed him as a tool, instead of as a friend.

He took a deep breath and said, “Because we’re friends.”

Why was it so blisteringly awkward to say that out loud? Still, words only meant something if you gave them voice.

And he couldn’t come up with a better answer anyway.

“Friends…?”

“Yeah. Friends. People who eat ice cream together or laugh at stupid stuff that doesn’t make sense… Like those kids we just saw.”

When Axel hangs out with Roxas, he shows him what friends do together.

“It’s cold…..” Isa mumbled, nibbling at the ice cream.“Whaddya mean, it’s ice cream so of course it is, got it memorized?”“…..moreover, it’s salty.”“But sweet!”As Lea went on, Isa smiled just a bit. It’s rare to see Isa smile. But, well, friendship means eating ice cream together, talking about stupid things, and laughing like this.

And it’s so important because he used to do the exact same things with Isa. At one point, his relationship with Isa was just like his relationship with Roxas and Xion.

“Most kids spend the time just messing around with their friends. They put off the homework until the end and then help one another finish it.”

He was apparently speaking from personal experience. Was Axel referring to his own memories of summer vacation as a human?

Axel was speaking from experience about summer vacation. It’s fair to assume he also spent his summer vacations with Isa. I can definitely see Lea acting like Hayner and putting off his homework until the last minute. And Isa would have been more like Olette, helping him finish it.

Day 224: Xion

Even if neither of us should exist, that doesn’t invalidate the bonds we form. Next break we get, I told her we’d all go to the beach. I hope we get the chance. Our little summer vacation. I know if we can get together and laugh about stupid stuff, this nagging doubt will go away.

This is why the beach ending of KH3 was so important. Everyone wanted to go. Even Hayner, Pence, and Olette never got to go to the beach during that same summer vacation. I am sure that beach ending was planned all the way back with 358/2 Days. Isa being there was significant. If Axel was speaking from personal experience, I’m sure Lea and Isa also went to the beach together as kids.

Saïx: “Hmph. What took you?”

Axel: “It’s my vacation. I can take all the time I want. Since when do I have to check in with you?”

Saïx: “You’re letting yourself get too attached to them.”

Axel: “Yes, sir, whatever you say.”

Saïx: “You’ve changed.”

But summer vacation means nothing to Saïx. When Axel finally tells Roxas and Xion they are his best friends and inseparable, it is immediately after he tells Saïx to shut his mouth. Their relationships run parallel even in KH2. Roxas had no memories of Axel. But after they fought, Roxas felt a connection with him again. Because of their connection, Axel kidnaps Kairi just to see him again. Saïx, on the other hand, has all of Isa’s memories of Lea, but he spends the whole game trying to hunt Axel down to kill him. Their relationships are always polar opposites.

Axel: “Well, I think you can be inseparable even if you’re apart.”

Roxas: “Really?”

Axel: “Sure, if you feel really close to each other. If you’re best friends.”

Roxas: “What’s it like having a best friend, Axel?”

Axel: “Couldn’t tell ya. I don’t have one.”

The main recurring theme of Axel and Saïx’s relationship in Days was that Axel really missed the past. The old Isa was a person very similar to Roxas and Xion.

Axel: “But you know, we’ll still have each other…even if things change and we can’t do this anymore.”

That’s exactly what spurred this whole conversation on to begin with. Things have changed between him and his former best friend. Lea and Isa used to be inseparable. But Saïx doesn’t care about Axel at all.

Axel: “As long as we remember each other, we’ll never be apart. Got it memorized?”

Axel thought that as long as he still had memories of the old Isa, they’d never have to be apart. Or at least, that’s the only comfort he can really give himself at this point. He didn’t know how else to cope with his loss.

Day 150: Too Precious to Lose

Axel and I talked for a while about the things we can’t bear to lose. Axel thinks that for Nobodies, it’s our pasts, because that’s all we have to remember the pain of losing something.

Despite how awful Saïx is, Axel considered his memories of the past too precious to lose. He didn’t want to forget the pain of losing something.

“ ‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”

—Alfred Lord Tennyson

Being a rather philosophical person, I think this is how he viewed his relationship with Isa. And this is why I think Axel had a satisfying redemption. He remembered what having a heart was like.

Lea: “I want everybody I meet to remember me. Inside people’s memories, I can live forever.”

All he wanted was the ability to experience love again. And through his own pure intentions and openness to love, he grew a new heart. He sacrificed himself trying to do good, and was rewarded with a glorious rebirth. He was the exact same person he always was, deep down. He just needed some help remembering his true nature.

That was all he wanted to say to me?

But just as Saïx started walking away, he caught a barely audible murmur—

“You’ve changed.”

He listened to Saïx’s receding footsteps, and his gaze dropped to his own feet.

“You sure I’m the one who changed?” he said under his breath.

The entire point of Axel and Saïx’s relationship is that Isa has changed. When Saïx interrogates Axel about the Chamber of Waking, it even zooms in on the moon, just like it did when Xemnas was giving his speech about conquering the heart. It’s similar to how the backdrop of the sky is shown when Roxas wonders who he used to be. This happens on ~Day 117 Secrets~. There’s a subtle message being sent: Saïx is exactly like Xemnas. But the reason is still a secret—and that secret is connected to Xemans’ speech and the Chamber of Waking.

If Saïx was saying that, he probably meant it. Axel stared at the stubborn set of his shoulders.

Both of them had changed.

“Wonder which one of us is more different now,” Axel said under his breath.

Just for an instant, he saw a twitch in Saïx’s shoulders. But he wasn’t about to hold his breath for more. Axel showed himself out.

Axel has changed, too. And now he’s changing yet again, to be more like how he was as a human. His progression is natural and gradual, though.

Oh, I am. And I’m sick of it. I’m even desperate enough to ask you if there’s another way.

The words nearly escaped him, but Saïx was already walking toward the Grey Area. The set of his shoulders told him plainly what the answer would be.

Axel realized how great the rift was between how he remembered their past and what he saw now.

It’s really not comparable to how much Saïx has changed. He is simply not the same person that Isa was. There is no continuity of personality there. They are NOTHING alike.

Saïx: “True, we don’t have hearts. But we remember what it was like. That’s what makes us special.”

Goofy: “Whaddaya mean?”

Saïx: “We know very well how to injure a heart.”

Like Axel, Saïx also remembers what having a heart was like, at least intellectually. Because of this, he knows how to injure a heart.

Saïx: “We have to set things right. There is simply too much on the line…Lea.”

And he is very good at it. Like when he used Axel’s true name. He knew exactly what he was doing. He knew how important the past was to Axel, and he tried to exploit it for everything it was worth.

Saïx: “Is she that important to you?”

Sora: “Yeah. More than anything.”

Saïx: “Show me how important.”

After Axel began to grow a heart, Saïx would have had the perfect opportunity to grow one again, too. They were best friends and Axel clearly wanted nothing more than to emotionally connect with him again. But Saïx never reciprocates. All he does is use Axel’s newfound feelings against him. 

This is a big reason why Saïx’s sudden epiphany in KH3 made no sense. There was something very unique about his condition that was never disclosed. It’s never explained why he was so cold to everyone, especially Axel. He was like that for a long time, too. Long before Roxas and Xion ever joined the Organization. So jealousy does not explain his drastic personality change in the slightest.

Saïx: “I passed on the message as you so desired. I told the young Sora to keep defeating the Heartless.”

Xemnas: “Good. Not only have you the power to inflict pain, you also have the power to plant seeds of doubt in one’s receptive heart.”

Xemnas even commended Saïx on his ability to plant seeds of doubt in a receptive heart. Wasn’t there someone else who had that ability?

Ventus has loved Terra like a real brother ever since he let him keep his old wooden Keyblade. It seems we have found a loose thread at which we can tug to unravel Ventus’s heart. The first step is to get Terra alone; then we need to plant the seeds of doubt in Ventus. Let him carry his faint light as he chases his brother into the darkness.

Oh, yeah! Master Xehanort was also really good at that…When he learned how much Ventus loved Terra, he exploited that fact to plant seeds of doubt in his heart.

Bottom line: Isa changed into Xehanort. This is why I do NOT think Saïx/Isa had a satisfying redemption. The story never acknowledged that he was Xehanort the entire time, nor did they take any measures to restore Isa. Axel was definitely not as sociopathic as Saïx was. Not even close. But Isa deserved to be associated with his Nobody’s actions far less than Axel. Isa’s situation was more like Terra’s situation. The difference is the story went to great lengths to differentiate Terra from Xehanort/Xemnas. Terra's old personality made a triumphant return and he had a heartfelt reunion with his friends.

Isa was not afforded the same consideration. I responded to the angry commenter that the STORY was unfair to Isa, not me. I’m not bashing him. I simply thought he deserved much better. I said it was unfair that he had to atone for what Saïx did to Roxas and Xion in the first place. In KH3D, Master Xehanort returns and he is able to transfer his consciousness into any of his vessels on a whim. It should have been impossible for Saïx to have a change of heart regarding way he treated Axel, Roxas, and Xion. The Seekers of Darkness are fully Xehanort at this point. I asked why Saïx even had enough agency to atone, since the whole point of a vessel is that they aren’t supposed to have free will. That’s the entire meaning behind the Recusant’s Sigil. And…they never replied.

[itsoktheyowedmemoney]

Marinette March Day 15: Support

A/N: A mini crossover with Doctor Who. This idea has been swimming in my mind since last week and I thought it could work for one of this month’s submissions. Takes place post-ML Chameleon and post-DW Resolution.

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Marinette did not feel the cool spring breeze prickle her face as she headed out the school doors, her arms loaded with textbooks. It had been another draining day that left her numb to her surroundings. Despite all her efforts in taking the high road as Adrien advised, Lila’s manipulative habits exponentially grew. Every day she would spew out a dozen or so lies that elicited sympathy or admiration from the class. Marinette wound up as a frequent target where Lila painted herself as the victim of her jealous attacks. As if on cue, the students would rush to console the scheming liar while shooting glares at Marinette and shunning her to her corner seat in the back.

It got to the point where she would often wake up on school mornings filled with dread, like someone placed a heavy object on her chest and pressed down, down, down, squeezing every bit of confidence from her spirit. Tikki was a source of comfort that she could turn too, but there was hardly much the Kwami could do for her in the classroom.

She was tired. She was disheartened. She never felt so alone despite being surrounded by the classmates she once called her friends.

And right now, she just wanted to get back home and finish her assignments, then work on her fashion designs. Or maybe play some Ultimate Mecha Strike IV.

At least she managed to avoid Chloe’s hostility today-

The ground beneath her feet vanished as she stumbled on the edge of a step and sent herself  flying down the stairs. The books she held spilled out of her arms and onto the sidewalk, one which happened to be her sketchpad –Marinette swore she put it in her backpack, just her luck – landed on the shoes of a very haughty blonde teen.

“Watch it Dupain-Cheng!”

Speak of the devil. The universe was truly conspiring against her.

Chloe snatched the sketchbook from the ground before Marinette could reach out for it.

“Still clumsy as ever, there's really no hope for you,” she said mockingly. “It’s a wonder that you can cross the streets in time before the cars run you over.”

“Give that back Chloe!”

Maybe it was because she found out her favorite makeup brand was discontinuing the mascara she always used. Or maybe it was because the newspapers published a detailed article covering an embezzlement scheme that linked André Bourgeois to a handful of top political officials two weeks ahead of the municipal elections. Whatever the cause was, her merciless behavior worsened the past several days.

“Don't tell me what to do! Or have you forgotten you're rightful place?” She opened the sketchpad and flipped through the pages.

“Oh look Sabrina,” she said as she threw a casual smirk at the red-headed girl standing beside her, “Lots of blank pages. Maybe the clumsiness infected her mind and hands too.”

Marinette felt her insides curl up. The stress of Lila’s torment hindered much of her creativity. She only managed to fully finish a few designs when inspiration struck, which nowadays came few and far in between.

Chloe stopped at a page “This one looks nice. The final work should belong to only the best.” She began pulling the edge of the sheet.

“Oi! What do you think you're doing?!”

Marinette looked to her right. A young woman in dark blue jeans and a grey sweater which was covered by a leather brown jacket approached them with an air of authority. She looked to be of South Asian descent and around Nora’s age, perhaps slightly younger. Her hair cascaded past her shoulders, with two bunches tied up in buns that perched on the sides of her head. She stopped in front of them, briefly hesitating as her eyes swept the scene, before steeling herself.

“What's going on here?” she asked calmly, but firmly.

Judging by her accent, she was not a local. The Dupain-Cheng bakery received plenty of visitors near and far for Marinette to gain a general idea of where a person was from based on the language as well as the way they spoke it.

In this woman’s case, definitely British, but unlikely from London.

“Why do you care?” Chloe sneered at her. “You're don't even go to this school, so it's none of your business.”

The older girl remained unfazed by the vitriol, taking a step to position herself between the two at an angle that shielded Marinette from Chloe’s scorching glare.

“I might not be a student, but we’re not on school grounds right now.” She quickly glanced down at Marinette in concern before returning her gaze on Chloe. “That means I have a right to ask. You’re Chloe, aren't you?”

Chloe seemed taken aback for half a second, only to immediately shrug it off.

“Obviously,” she said with a smug upwards tilt of her chin. “It's about time somebody recognizes my importance as the Princess of Paris, unlike some worthless people. They don't deserve to even hear the name Bourgeois grace upon their ears.”

“Everyone is important Chloe. And what you do isn't about what others deserve, it's what you choose to be. So as the mayor’s daughter, why not choose to be kind right now? Can you do that?”

Chloe paused in bewilderment, then threw out a snide laugh.“Ha, as if I’d take orders from someone like you!” she scoffed, “And what sort of nonsense speech was that? Only losers like you and her would waste time believing that type of garbage.”

The woman merely raised her eyebrows a bit. “If that’s your opinion, then I’m sure you would prefer to get on with the rest of your day away from some so-called loser like me.” She flashed a disarming smile that did not reach her eyes. “You two ladies must have something much more productive already planned on a nice Friday afternoon like this.”

Sabrina peeked from behind her friends shoulder “Yeah Chloe,” she chimed in. “We’re going to be late for you manicure appoint-“

“Oh zip it Sabrina!” the blonde snapped. She narrowed her eyes at the other girl, who remained composed, her face a mask of complete neutrality. A moment passed. Finally, Chloe rolled her eyes and released a huff.

“Whatever, it's not like I was going to stay around any longer.” She turned to leave.

The woman cleared her throat loudly and put out an open hand. “I believe you have something that should be returned to its rightful owner.”

Chloe let out a derisive snort and shoved the sketchpad into her hand.

“Ughh, both of you are utterly ridiculous. Come on Sabrina!”

The girl watched the pair go before turning to Marinette, her expression softening.

“Are you all right?”

Marinette nodded. “I-I’m okay.” She was still trying to process what just occurred. No one in recent memory had the guts to stand up to Chloe in that manner. Most confrontations with the mayor’s daughter ended in tears, frustration, or simmering rage. Her defender on the other hand not only got Chloe to back down, but managed to completely draw the ire away from her original intended mark.

The girl kneeled down to her level. Marinette studied her carefully. She had a calm yet steady demeanor, with deep brown eyes that exuded warmth. Marinette wondered if the girl dealt with these sorts of conflicts often. She certainly seemed experienced in facing a bully like Chloe. Perhaps she too was once a victim of one.

“That Chloe has no idea what she’s talking about,” the girl said gently, “You're not worthless or a loser. She puts people down to make herself feel better. You know that, right?

“Of course,” Marinette stammered with a little laugh. “That's Chloe acting like her usual self as expected.”

The girl frowned a bit, her brows knitted together. “Has she always treated you like that?”

“Yeah, but not just me. She acts that way with pretty much everyone. Don't worry, we're used to it.”

“I see...” Her fingers delicately brushed the surface of the opened sketchpad. “Did you draw these? They're beautiful.”

“Y-yeah, thanks.”

“You have a real talent for fashion you know. I believe you’re going be a great designer someday.”

Marinette felt her cheeks redden slightly. “Really? You think so?”

“I’m positive.” She closed and handed the sketchbook back, her dark eyes twinkling like they held some mysterious secret.

“My name’s Yasmin.” The edge of her lips curved upwards into a smile. “But you can call me Yaz.”

“I'm Marinette. Thanks for helping me out back there.”

“Anytime.” She joined her in gathering up the scattered textbooks, then helped her up. “Do you want me to walk you home? I can carry these books for you if you like. They're not too heavy for me.”

Marinette felt a smile grow on her face to match Yaz’s. “Uh, sure!” She pointed to the direction of the patisserie. “It’s that way.”

She hoped Yaz was in no hurry to go somewhere. Papa should hopefully have a fresh batch of cookies straight out of the oven that they could share together.

As they walked side by side towards the bakery, Marinette felt her heart lighten for the first time in a long while.

[dustedmagazine]

Voting with our ears: Dusted spends the rent on Bandcamp.com’s Voter Registration day

On September 25, Bandcamp.com held a fundraiser for the Voting Rights Project, seeking to raise both money and awareness around voter registration. For the day, all profits on everything you bought on Bandcamp.com went to this worthy cause. Dusted writers saw the opportunity to a) buy stuff and b) promote democracy and said, “Hell yes, we’re in.” Participating writers included Ian Mathers (who is Canadian!!), Justin Cober-Lake, Jennifer Kelly, Bill Meyer, Isaac Olson (who definitely wins) and Ethan Covey. Check out what we bought and then, for the love of god, vote. We’re depending on you.

Ian Mathers

IDLES

For various reasons I wasn’t able to shop quite as avidly as I did last time we got together for one of these, but I managed to make one impulse purchase of a record I hadn’t heard yet (but had transfixed me with its singles) and combine that with two long-awaited additions of old favorites to my Bandcamp collection (and my hard drive, after having lost track of the files in one move or another). 

IDLES — Joy As an Act of Resistance 

Joy as an Act of Resistance. by IDLES

As you might guess from the fact that it just came out at the end of this August, Bristol’s IDLES is the impulse buy of the three, one that so far has worked out just wonderfully. Having been recommended the mockingly anti-Brexit(/xenophobia) “Great” on YouTube and being drawn from the immediately bracing, invigorating likes of that to this album’s more openhearted ode to the greatness of not hating people you don’t already know, “Danny Nedelko,” and the more Protomartyr-ish opening track “Colossus” (the latter of which also probably has my favorite music video of 2018), I couldn’t imagine any band capable of those three songs would somehow whiff the rest of a reasonably-lengthed LP, and the often political, always heartfelt Joy As an Act of Resistance. proved me right. There are certainly places where it gets darker (particularly “June,” where singer Joe Talbot relates in heart-wrenching fashion his wife losing a child to a miscarriage), but the overall feel of the album can be summed up by Talbot barking repeatedly at the listener to “love yourself” over a careening, punkish anthem. The album title isn’t a piss take, which is a relief in itself.  

 The Silent League — But You've Always Been the Caretaker...

But You've Always Been The Caretaker... by The Silent League

Back in 2004 I first heard of the Silent League, as I think most people did, because frontman Justin Russo had been in Mercury Rev (for 2001’s All Is Dream, the last Rev record I can say I fully loved), and their debut, The Orchestra, Sadly, Has Refused was interesting, lysergic chamber pop with some proggy and/or post-rock elements. I lost track of them for a bit after that album and was surprised that when I heard about them again it was because of an entirely different musician I was a fan of. Shannon Fields, then of Stars Like Fleas and since of Family Dynamics and Leverage Models (the last of which made my favorite record of 2013 and which is, incidentally, about to return), maker of a ton of records I both love and think have been overlooked, let me know that he’d also been a contributor to the Silent League for quite a while and that with their then-current album, 2010’s But You’ve Always Been the Caretaker… he thought they’d made something that represented a bit of a leap forward for the band. Not only do I agree, but the Silent League’s swan song (to date) now represents one of the most frustratingly overlooked records I know of, 15 sprawling songs in any number of registers, styles and tones tightly packed into less than 49 minutes that, fitting the circular and slightly foreboding title, packs a bunch of richly interwoven thematic and sonic depth into what feels like a whole universe of popular music. There’s proggy/ELO overture “When Stars Attack!!!,” the sound of a glam rock band practicing a particular soulful jam down the hall and four walls away on “Sleeper,” at least one just perfect string-led “perfect pop” song in “Resignation Studies,” and literally a dozen other things here. And yet But You’ve Always… never feels scattered or showoff-y. It’s a whole world, dense and rich and worthy of being studied in detail for its brilliance. I was thrilled to see it on Bandcamp, not least because this is exactly the kind of record that could easily slip through the cracks. 

 Tamas Wells — A Plea en Vendredi

(PB024) Tamas Wells: A Plea En Vendredi by Popboomerang

It’s been over a decade, but when I was in university I am pretty sure I first heard Australian singer-songwriter Tamas Wells because I saw the song “I’m Sorry That the Kitchen Is on Fire” somewhere and thought the title was hilarious. To my surprise the song itself was gorgeous, a gently folky little waltz with Wells’ high, gentle voice, carefully picked acoustic guitar, a lightly hypnotic piano refrain, and sparing hand claps. I fell hard enough for it that even back when the internet wasn’t at all what it is now I tracked down Wells’ 2006 album A Plea en Vendredi and found a shimmering little suite of song, some as gnomic and vaguely unsettling in their implications as “I’m Sorry That the Kitchen is on Fire” (like “Valder Fields,” which is apparently a place where our narrator and others mysteriously regain consciousness, or whatever you can make of “Lichen & Bees”), some much more plainspoken (including the slight political bent running through “The Opportunity Fair,” “The Telemarketer Resignation,” and the gorgeous little instrumental “Yes, Virginia, There Is a Ruling Class”), all just as twee-ly beautiful and enrapturing as my initial exposure had been. At the time Wells was working in Burma on a community development project, and from what I’ve been able to find his moving around and focus on non-music work has occasionally kept his album on the back burner, although he’s found an audience at home and in Japan and China (and of course, sometimes as far as Canada where I ran into his work). He’s kept releasing records since, most recently 2017’s The Plantation on a small Japanese label, but even if A Plea en Vendredi was all I’d ever been able to find it’d still find a regular place in my rotation; even when things get a bit darker, on “Valour” and the closing “Open the Blinds” there’s something so soothing about Wells’ music and this particular set of gem-like miniatures has been a go-to album for me during difficult times ever since.

Justin Cober-Lake 

David Ramirez

Ashley Walters — Sweet Anxiety (Populist)

Ashley Walters // Sweet Anxiety by Ashley Walters

I’d been wanting to hear this one for a while. I first noticed cellist Ashley Walters on Wadada Leo Smith's America's National Parks, a remarkable album that I spent considerable time with while writing a couple features on it and Smith (including interviewing Walters). I was even more impressed after understanding what went into the work and seeing that ensemble perform it live. Walters writes of this album, “I seek to challenge your perception of what the cello, a stereotypically gentle instrument, is capable of,” and it's fair to say she succeeds. It's a demanding listen, more aggressive than expected, but Walters and her composers blend technical challenges with theoretical ones. At times, Walters cuts loose, and at times she works with tonality, often using nonstandard tuning to odd effect. Smith composed one of the brightest numbers here, making a nice shift in sound without lowering the difficulty level. Luciano Berio's “Sequenza XIV” provides the most interesting piece, not only for the actual performance but for the reconstruction work on the score that Walters highlights in the liner notes. This one's well worth a focused listen, and I'll need to give it quite a few more to properly process it.  

 The Beths — Warm Blood (Carpark)

Warm Blood by The Beths

In August, the Beths released one of my favorite albums of the year, Future Me Hates Me, a blast of pop-rock easily good enough to warrant going back, more or less, to the beginning, with 2016's Warm Blood EP. Both lyrically and musically, the group hasn't quite found its footing, but that says more about the focused energy of the full-length than it does about these five songs (including “Whatever,” which reappears on the album). The hooks are there now; the guitar on “Idea/Intent” represents the band as well as anything. The vitriol of that track fits in less well with the attitude the band generally puts forward, one that's self-reflective and confident without claiming to know all the answers. Some of the joy of the music is in Elizabeth Stokes' searching, but that's turned around on a track like “Rush Hour 3,” a comedic bit of come-on (and the rare track not written by Stokes). Warm Blood works as a nice look back at a band, but it's not just a history lesson — it's an enjoyable set that adds to the playlist of a group with only one album out. 

 David Ramirez — The Rooster (Sweetworld)

The Rooster EP by David Ramirez

I've been working my way backwards with David Ramirez, too, starting with last year's We're Not Going Anywhere (which didn't adhere to his previous folk-ish sound but did make me wonder why I hadn't found my way to the songwriter earlier). After spending time with the fantastic Fables, there was the live show that utterly sold me on him, in part because he has a bigger voice than you might notice at first, even in his sparser productions. The Rooster EP, a fitting complement to that album, feels like an ascent. His vocals are assured, even as he searches for clarity, or at least anchor points amid turbulence. Tracks like “The Bad Days” and “Glory” offer unrequested hope, and “The Forgiven” provides a meditation on performance, art, and faith that's central to his work. The five cuts on this EP have the gravitas of something bigger and strengthen my sense that Ramirez should be a songwriter that everyone listens to.

 Grand Banks – Live 8-25-2018

Grand Banks live 8-25-2018 by Grand Banks

Any sort of bonus shopping day provides a good excuse to support local music. This time I went with the latest release (such as it is) from Grand Banks, their live recording from August 25. The duo don't shy away from volume, but their focus on minimalist ideas and sonic experimentation makes for unusual experiences. Over this single 30-minute track, the pair builds with patience, even when developing a haunted-house sort of melody on the keys. The second half of the piece increases the challenge, with guitarist Davis Salisbury pulling an odd series of sounds out of his instrument (for the curious, you can try it at home with an electric guitar, a tuning fork, and a fuzz pedal, and probably some sort of sonic laboratory). The effects build on Tyler Magill's creepy keyboard work – maybe this one's an unintended seasonal release. The study in space and harmonics gives way to a chirpy conversation and surprisingly (in this context) guitar-like guitar moment before placidly drifting away, an apt conclusion for the performance.

Jennifer Kelly

The Scientists 

I bought five different records this time, mostly, but not all, falling somewhere in the punk/garage continuum. I liked them all in different ways, but the one that absolutely killed me was…

IDLES—Joy as an Act of Resistance (Partisan)

Joy as an Act of Resistance. by IDLES

This is Ian’s fault, really. He talked me into it. Plus, it turned up on the Bandcamp recommendation engine. Which, by the way, is just so much better than Amazon’s recommendation engine. (I see you like the Pixies. Wanna buy every Pixies album ever?) But turns out, they’re both dead on. Idles is vitriolic and literate like the Sleaford Mods but backed by a ripped-to-the-teeth full band a la Protomartyr. Yes, two of my favorite current bands in one, plus a whole other thing of jagged, jitter-drunk percussion and wind tunnel howl. There is a song called “Never Fight a Man with a Perm.” So glad I got to hear this. Score one for voter registration.

 The Sueves—R.I.P. Clearance Event (Hozac)

R.I.P. Clearance Event by The Sueves

Butt-simple garage rock from Chicago, punctuated by weird little intervals of found sounds. Beautifully unhinged and uncomplicated, it reminds me the most of Demon’s Claw and after that maybe the Hunches and then the Monks. I bought it partly because I wanted to get those “we have a new record” notices from Hozac, but they know what I like.

 The Scientists—Blood Red River 1982-1984 (Numero)

Blood Red River 1982 - 1984 by Scientists

Guess who got to see the Scientists last week? They were awesome. They played “Frantic Romantic” in the encore (which is not on this disc, by the way). I knew some of the early stuff from the Do the Pop compilation of Australian punk, but immersing myself in these clanking, droning, post-punk juggernauts was the best and most enjoyable concert prep ever. “Solid Gold Hell” and “Swampland” were my two faves, and they played them both.

 Mike Pace and the Child Actors—Smooth Sailing (Self Starter Foundation)

Smooth Sailing by Mike Pace and the Child Actors

This one, from the former Oxford Collapse frontman, was a little more Raspberry-ish power pop than I was expecting, but it’s growing on me. “Escape the Noize” is my go-to track, a lush jangle of melancholy, a tetchy bristle of palm-muting, then a sweeping swooning chorus. It’s about leaving the music behind, which Pace clearly hasn’t, and good thing.  

Onoto—Dead Ghost (Taiyo)

DEAD GHOST by ONOTO

Let me the first to admit that I haven’t gotten to the bottom of this one, a swirling, enveloping miasma of guitar tone, wrapped around confoundingly weird vocal samples. “Shake Well for the Eye,” is droned-out chaos that parts like fog for bits of mid-20th century menstrual advice (avoid vigorous exercise, horse-riding, skating, cold showers, hah!). Other cuts eschew narrative for slow moving landscapes of instrumental tone. The title track lets guitar notes hang for unmovable eons, with only sharp shards of harmonics to break up the endless vistas. As a straight through listen, the disc makes more sense as you go along, meaning, you have to adapt to its oddity and it changes you.

Bill Meyer

 Canary records

Kemany Minas and Garabet Merjanian — When I See You: From the November 1917 Recordings, NYC (Canary) 

When I See You: From the November 1917 Recordings, NYC by Kemany Minas & Garabet Merjanian

Various Artists — And Two Partridges II: From the Earliest Turkish-, Arabic- Armenian-& Kurdish-Language Recordings in America, Feb-Aug, 1916 (Canary)

And Two Partridges II: From the Earliest Turkish-, Arabic- Armenian-& Kurdish-Language Recordings in America, Feb-Aug, 1916 by Canary Records

Various Artists — Oh My Soul: Armenian-American Independent Releases, vol. 1: ca. 1920-25 (Canary)  

Oh My Soul: Armenian-American Independent Releases, vol. 1: ca. 1920-25 by Canary Records

Various Artists — Why I Came to America: More Folk Music of the Ottoman-American Diaspora, ca. 1917-47 (Canary)

Why I Came to America: More Folk Music of the Ottoman-American Diaspora, ca. 1917-47 by Canary Records

I buy stuff via Bandcamp fairly often, and my purchases are nearly always hard copies. Downloads may be convenient, but a record you can’t hold in your hands seems to me to be one of those bad 21st century ideas like a Trump presidency or an unrepentant frat-creep on the supreme court. But when Bandcamp puts its income behind a cause, I relent, and when I do, I buy downloads from Canary Records. These albums are all compiled from recordings made by Anatolian exiles who fled genocide, war and poverty to take their chances in the USA. Many of these recordings predate the first blues records, and collectively they make a case that our notions of what constitutes American music are needlessly exclusive. After all, why should the music of people who came here from the Ottoman Empire be any less American than people who came here from the British Empire?  

 Billy Gomberg — Live Sets 2016-18

live sets 2016-18 by Billy Gomberg

Well, there go the rules. This DL-only compilation of concert performances by one of my favorite ambient recording artists of recent years shows that the carefully wrought, ultra-deep atmosphere of his recent cassettes is no fluke.

 Various Artists — Two Niles To Sing A Melody: The Violins & Synths Of Sudan (Ostinato)  

Two Niles to Sing a Melody: The Violins & Synths of Sudan by Various Artists

Back on solid ground at last! This hardcover book + 2 CDs (there are also vinyl and DL versions) shows how sounds blur from one culture to the next when people live along the same rivers and coasts. These recordings from the Sudan blend the nimble rhythms and ardent longing of Arabic pop with just a hint of the sinuous melodic quality of Ethiopian popular music. 

 Tashi Wada with Yoshi Wada and Friends — FRKWYS Vol. 14—Nue (RVNG)

FRKWYS Vol. 14 - Nue by Tashi Wada with Yoshi Wada and Friends

If you’ve caught Tashi and Yoshi Wada in concert, you know that there’s no louder or more mind-melting drone that a drone that incorporates multiple bagpipes and alarm bells. This record puts Wada fils in the composer / arranger’s seat, and while it uses the same materials as those live performances, the music is much gentler. Sometimes you want to boil your blood, sometimes you just want to kick back and zone out. A portion of the proceeds from this record will go to the National Immigration Law Center.

Isaac Olson

Ustad Abdul Karim Khan

Toshiya Tsunoda/Taku Unami — Wovenland (Erstwhile)

Wovenland by Toshiya Tsunoda/Taku Unami

I bought this collection of chopped and screwed  field recordings on the strength of Marc Medwin’s review and the fact that Erstwhile dedicated their profits for the day to the Voting Rights Project. Pieces like “Park cleaning / Crickets chirping,” “In The Park”,  “From the rooftop, railway terminal station” are both ear-tickling and intellectually stimulating. The rest are more stimulating intellectually than auditorially.

 The Weather Station—S/T (Paradise of Bachelors)

The Weather Station by The Weather Station

I slept on The Weather Station in 2017 because the music didn’t grab me enough I wasn’t interested enough in the music to tune into the lyrics.  I’m not sure what compelled me to give it another try, but I’m glad I did. Songwriter Tamara Lindeman has crafted a compelling take on early adulthood in an anxious age, one that, once I started paying attention, resonated with me in a highly personal manner I haven’t felt or sought in years. The b-side is almost too subtle, but Lindeman is a sharp enough writer to bring it off.

 Red River Dialect—Broken Stay Open Sky (Paradise of Bachelors)  

Broken Stay Open Sky by Red River Dialect

This is another record where the words carry the music, which means, like The Weather Station, I initially passed it over only to connect with it in unexpectedly personal ways after honing in on the lyrics. While I loved the fiddling from the jump, it took time for the rest of Broken Stay Open Sky to grow on me, but grow it did. (Check out Eric McDowell’s review here).

 Ustad Abdul Karim Khan—Ustad Abdul Karim Khan (Canary Records)

Ustad Abdul Karim Khan: 1934-1935 by Abdul Karim Khan

Classical Indian vocal music is a complex, highly systematized artform that I can’t pretend to understand, so rather than take my recommendation that you should listen to these recordings, take LaMonte Young’s: “When I first heard the recordings of Abdul Karim Khan I thought that perhaps it would be best if I gave up singing, got a cabin up in the mountains, stocked it with a record player and recordings of Abdul Karim Khan, and just listened for the rest of my life”.

 VA—100 Moons: Hindustani Vocal Art, 1930​-​55 (Canary Records)

100 Moons: Hindustani Vocal Art, 1930-55 by Canary Records

A traditional performance of a raga can last hours. A 78 can hold about three minutes of music.

As such, the performances on this collection lack the the breadth and depth of a traditional raga performance, but they more than make up for it in intensity.

 Ross Hammond and Jon Balfus— Masonic Lawn (Self Released)

Masonic Lawn by Ross Hammond and Jon Bafus

Sacramento guitarist and improviser Ross Hammond (whose record with Hindustani vocalist Jay Nair  is also worth your time) teams up with percussionist Jon Balfus for a set of blues and folk inspired  improvisations that manage to feel spacious despite the dense polyrhythmic approach. Masonic Lawn’s improvisations are optimistic, wide-eyed meditations on Americana.

 Melvin Wine—Cold Frosty Morning (Roane Records)

Cold Frosty Morning by Melvin Wine

Old-time music, like most folk traditions that arose in relative isolation and pre-date the record industry, isn’t particularly well suited for album-length listening. That said, if you’re in the mood for scratchy, crooked, dance and trance tunes, West Virginia fiddler Melvin Wine is a great introduction to the distinctly non-bluegrassy mysteries of this music.  

Note: This recording features a minstrel tune titled “Jump Jim Crow”.  How we’re to deal with this in the modern, right-wing nightmare age we inhabit is a complicated question, so if you’re digging this music but that title bothers you (and it should), check out these articles by Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Mechanic. 

 V/A—Usiende Ukalale: Omutibo From Rural Kenya (Olvido Records)

Usiende Ukalale: Omutibo From Rural Kenya by Various Artists

Like the Melvin Wine recording above, Usiende Ukalale exhibits a local folk style that evolved in relative isolation and is, for the non-local and non-expert, enchanting in small doses and merely pleasant over the course of a full album.

 VA—I’m Not Here to Hunt Rabbits: Guitar and Folk Styles from Botswana (Piranha Records) 

I'm Not Here To Hunt Rabbits by Various Artists

I reviewed this one back in May and I’ve listened to it so many times since that it was high time to buy it. Highest recommendation.

 Jess Sah Bi & Peter One—Our Garden Needs Its Flowers (Awesome Tapes from Africa)

Our Garden Needs Its Flowers by Jess Sah Bi & Peter One

This unusual gem combines the loping rhythms, slide guitar and harmonica of American country music with traditional Ivory Coast village songs. Its breezy Bakersfield meets Yamoussoukro vibe belies its anti-apartheid lyrics. Mp3s of this one have been floating around the internet for a few years, so it’s great to see it get an official re-release.

 Ola Belle Reed—FRC 203 - Ola Belle Reed: Recordings from the collection of Ray Alden and the Brandywine Friends of Old Time Music

FRC 203 - Ola Belle Reed: Recordings from the collection of Ray Alden and the Brandywine Friends of Old Time Music by Ola Belle Reed

From the indispensable Field Recorders Collective, this release documents a 1973 performance by Ola Belle Reed. Reed’s music exists at the nexus of old-time, bluegrass, early country, and gospel, but it feels wrong to box in the wisdom, humor, and generosity of spirit that shines through this release with anachronistic genre tags. Best of all is the Reed original, “Tear Down the Fences”: “Then we could tear down the fences that fence us all in/Fences created by such evil men/Oh we could tear down the fences that fence us all in /Then we could walk together again.”  Amen.

 Ragana— You Take Nothing 

YOU TAKE NOTHING by RAGANA

I don’t listen to as much metal as I used to, but while this fundraiser was happening, Brett Kavanaugh — case study in patriarchal resentment and mediocrity — got one step closer to a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court. Ragana’s raw, sludgy, anarcha-feminist take on black metal really hit the spot that day.

Ethan Covey

Weak Signal

Omit — Enclosures 2011-2016 (Pica Disk/End of the Alphabet)

Enclosures 2011-2016 by Omit

Clinton Williams, the New Zealander known as Omit, has been quietly releasing nocturnal electronic compositions of uncompromising quality for the past couple of decades. Enclosures 2011-2016, released jointly by Lasse Marhaug’s Pica Disk and Noel Meek’s End of the Alphabet labels, provides an overview of five years of Williams’ output in a 30-track, six-hour package, available digitally and as a limited 5-CD set. Omit has previously been anthologized on two compilations courtesy of the Helen Scarsdale label, Tracer and Interceptor. And past releases have popped up via Corpus Hermeticum and PseudoArcana, as well as — most prominently — Williams’ own Deepskin Conceptual Mindmusic imprint. Great listening, all, if you can find ‘em. For those curious to dive in without too much digging, Enclosures is ideal. Much of Williams’ genius lies in composing tracks that are edgy, yet beautiful, creepy and experimental, yet profoundly listenable. It’s forward-thinking electronic composition that checks a lot of avant-garde boxes without feeling like a task. There’s a subtle, krautrock propulsion to the best tracks — the opening “Turner,” the “Echo Dot” pieces — where the listener gets locked into the rhythm and time slows to an elegant crawl — like a soundtrack for night driving on an Autobahn upended.

 Weak Signal — LP1 (self-released)

LP1 by WEAK SIGNAL

Weak Signal are NYC’s Sasha Vine, Tran Huynh and Mike Bones. Bones has previously released a pair of strong albums of indie songwriting courtesy of The Social Registry. As a guitarist, he’s done time with Endless Boogie, Matt Sweeney’s Soldiers of Fortune and Prison. This album was a tip from Danny Arakaki of Garcia Peoples, and it’s a swell one, 30-minutes of slack fuzz pop bashed out with energy and swagger. The majority of the tracks strut by on solid riffs, backed by boy/girl vox that slide into chant-along choruses. Like new wave bled dry, leaving a beautiful bummer. The eight-minute “Miami/Miami Part 2” stretches out into a haze of increasingly rapturous guitar soloing, string screeches and a spoken word coda. Lotta promise here, for sure. Here’s hoping they stick around for an LP2.

 Raising Holy Sparks — Search For The Vanished Heaven (Eiderdown Records)

Search For The Vanished Heaven by Raising Holy Sparks

Seattle’s Eiderdown Records has been releasing some of the best contemporary psychedelia around, and the latest by Raising Holy Sparks is no exception. The project is the work of uber-prolific Irishman David Colohan, and is offered in double and triple cassette, as well as digital, versions. The “short” cut of the album is an hour and a half long, and the triple cassette and download versions stretch that to well over two hours. Per the credits, the album was recorded in somewhere around 40 different locations over four years. Colohan is credited with over 30 instruments and is joined by baker’s dozen of likeminded collaborators. What they deliver is, like most of Colohan’s music, long, slow and often eerily beautiful. “I Am In The Mountains While You Are In My Dreams” passes in its 23-minutes through Popol Vuh-style ambience, spoken word incantations that sound like Coil if they’d truly embraced the countryside and a whole lot of birdsong. It’s a good overview of the general proceedings — accented occasionally by louder blasts of synths, random percussion that sounds like drum machine presets and banjo-plucking krautrock. On paper, that sounds like a head-scratching combo, but it works. One gets the impression Colohan’s dedication and attention to detail is such that the grab bag of sounds weaves together into a surprisingly fascinating whole. Listen with attention and you’ll want to follow along as each stretch and segue unfolds. Oh, and as is typical with Eiderdown, bonus points for exceptional artwork, this time courtesy of Aubrey Nehring.

[ambivalentangst]

May They Rest at Ease

Hi!!! Long time no motivation!!! I realize I've been absent for awhile after I shat out that one thicc one shot, but I finally have something to post! It’s an original idea that I got attached to really fast: the concept of the soldiers that stayed loyal to Lotor being assigned to guard the Garrison trio, and upon learning how young they were, decided they would do pretty much anything to protect them. Involving some angst, whump, and comedy, I really like how this turned out, so I hope you do too!

tw: panic attacks, implied violence, and use of derogatory language

Trivars and Lovan were not what one would call prime soldiers, by any stretch of the imagination. Lovan had trouble doing more then a poor sprint, and Trivars currently had little to no muscle mass to speak of. Still, they’d been trained, like every other Galra in the empire. Everyone was enlisted to serve from the ages of twenty one phoebs to thirty one. For a time, they’d been in shape. They of course had to graduate top of their faction to be stationed with the main fleet, but it was easy to let loose a little when the fortress was hardly large enough to comprehend, and nobody ever actually attacked.

The rebels went after more remote locations, where it took longer for backup to reach and got the runts of the group. They got to reap the rewards of a few movements of hard work, and even when the new emperor ascended the throne, he appeared to have no desire to ship them out, which was good.

Truth be told, neither of them were all too eager to leave their little outpost, despite the fact that there’d been considerably more traffic their way ever since Voltron had been resurrected. There’d of course been the murmurs of dissent. The emperor was a half-breed, their commanders sneered, vitriol harsh in their tones. Lovan had personally looked to Trivars. They’d arrived to their current station essentially at the same time, despite the fact that their training ships were several galaxies apart from one another. It was generally kind of hard to dislike one another when they were both equally committed to staying out of as much conflict as possible, and were more content waging war on the old and very blind cook for extra servings then saying “vrepit sa” and blowing up their own ships.

“Meet me on the rec deck for cards?” Trivars mouthed, while Commander Nermant raged on. Lovan nodded, and that was the end of any protest from them towards the power switch.

It was with that kind of attitude that they got assigned to food patrol, and despite the fact that most of their superiors had jumped ship upon Lotor’s seizure of the throne, they didn’t really want their positions, so they did as they always did. Quajants, the cook, was too old to care much about the shift in rulers anyways. As long as he had his grill and pitiful variety of seasonings, he’d work.

When Lotor assigned them to the comfort and care of three of the paladins, they started to be a little mindful of his rule. The paladins, green, blue, and yellow at least, were absolute freaks, and had apparently very little regard for their own lives. They’d chased them across the ship for blowing up food packets--certainly nothing Quajants approved of--but quiznack them both if they sometimes needed a break from the surprisingly tasty brick impersonations he made. Lovan in particular had bemoaned that later, his legs aching from the exercise they hadn’t endured in quite some time. Still, there was no escaping it, and they at the very least could admire the artistry in launching the sentry out of the robeast coffin. It was a lot less disconcerting then the--shudder--witch using it for her own vile purposes, so they sucked on their popsicles and didn’t say anything about it.

It was only later that they realized that their antics were not the work of young adults having too much free time, and rather the products of cubs who desperately needed a break from the war they fought.

Lovan had first seen it, when the blue, red? It was very confusing and there were bets going around about which lion he actually piloted, but regardless, when the paladin had shown up from a recon mission out in the quadrants still in turmoil.

He had of course been there to greet him, because yeah they weren’t motivated, but they at least did what few duties they were assigned well. The paladin came from the hangars rubbing his back, stumbling into walls and clacking his teeth occasionally for no apparent reason. Lovan’s brows scrunched tightly together. He was not well versed in the way of the paladins’ species, but from what he had observed it was not normal behavior.

“Paladin, do you need to be taken to the infirmary?” he asked, and the boy had stopped, bracing himself against a wall.

“No, no, I’m fine. And I told you to call me Lance. I just got a little close to another explosion, and I still get some pain sometimes from one that got me awhile back. First foot battle I’d fought, actually,” he muttered, mostly to himself. Lovan still had his concerns, but Lance waved him off.

“I’m ‘gonna go lie down in one of the spare rooms. Lotor mentioned where they were when we first arrived, so you don’t have to show me,” he told him. Lovan resisted the urge to argue, and watched the paladin stumble away. He’d be fine, probably. He was a warrior.

Lance did not come out from the rooms quickly, and it was in fact Lovan who came in to check on him. The Altean castle ship stayed near Galra headquarters, which was certainly a change up from the norm but not entirely unwelcome. It was a symbol of peace, at the very least, a reminder that though they were soldiers they might not have to fight. Regardless of its proximity, Lance appeared to not care if the way his body was pressed wholeheartedly into the mattress was any indication.

“Uh, Lance, right?” The name was odd on Lovan’s tongue, and it came out strangely with the way he stressed different sounds. “Is there anything you need? By Galra standards, you’ve been down for quite some time,” he told him, standing off to the side. He did not care to do anything that wasn’t authorized, and have the emperor find out. Lance turned on his side with a hiss of pain, staring out at Lovan through glassy eyes. He bit his lip, seeming to debate it for a moment before asking,

“Do you have a heating pad somewhere?” Lovan nodded.

“Of course, I’ll have it brought it immediately, sir.” The “vrepit sa” he usually added at the end of such an address was on the tip of his tongue, but he shoved it down and turned away. Only out of the corner of his eye did he see the way Lance rolled back onto his stomach, hands twisted into white knuckled grips around the fabric of the sheets. He frowned.

Lovan came back to give him the pad as requested, and found Lance as he had left him.

“On your back?” he asked, and the paladin nodded. Lovan carefully set it across the boy’s skin, smoothing out the lumps in the gel as gently as he could. He was a solider, but he was not cruel. He was inspecting his work when he heard Lance sniffle, and smelled the faint salt that came from his tears.

“Lance?” he asked after a moment’s hesitation. “Are you alright? Was I too rough?” Lance waved him off, not moving from his position on his stomach.

“No, no, it’s not you. I’m just--it hurts is all. Coran had some meds for it, that’s our, uh, advisor I guess, but we ran out and I’ve been meaning to ask Lotor but he’s been busy so I just need some time. I’m fine,” he explained, but his hands hadn’t unfurled from their positions. Lovan examined him, unsure of how to respond, but knowing that if he made a move to leave, the emperor would have his hide. In line with how contradictory he was to most of what the Galra represented, the emperor had instructed both he and Trivars to treat the paladins with utmost care. With his orders in mind, Lovan crossed to the other side of the bed and sat. There was a surprising amount of room, considering how small the paladins were.

Lovan remembered his sister, older then him and with cubs of her own. He had liked being an uncle, on the rare time he had off. He didn’t know how old Lance was, the subject had never before been broached, but he did feel like something had to be done to comfort him. He stared at his hand for a moment, flexing clawed fingers experimentally, and then settled them delicately into Lance’s hair.

The boy tensed for a moment, shoulders hunching, before he let out a soft cry of pain at his own action and relaxed. Lovan twisted his hair gently in his fingertips, ran his hands gently over his scalp and down the back of his neck. Cubs calmed quickly with ears scratched and pats lavished atop their heads, but Lance did not have the same furry features Lovan was accustomed to, so he made do. He said nothing, but Lance didn’t pull away and soon the tension in his body melted away along with his tears. When Lovan looked over and saw his eyes closed, he felt content.

Lovan later told Trivars about the incident through time spent cleaning their rifles, to which he replied that he’d experienced something similar with the green paladin, or Pidge, as she preferred to be called.

She’d come back from a mission worn, a scuff on her glasses that she was apparently trying to buff out but was being stubborn. Trivars had offered his assistance, but he’d been shooed away until she absolutely burst into tears, to which he panicked because he had his orders, and he wasn’t so great with emotions.

“Pidge was crying and she started telling me about how her dad and her had gone with her brother to pick out the ‘frames’, and her dad had gone back home and Matt was on a mission. She cried for awhile, and then I got her to step away from her computer and take a nap.” Trivars stated it plainly, tongue poking from the side of his mouth as he rubbed his rag over a particularly hard to reach area. Lovan took a moment to process the information, and it wasn’t until they were putting their blasters back onto the rack that he wondered aloud,

“How old do you think they are, anyways?” Trivars paused, already halfway to the door. His lips pressed together, ears twitching.

“They’re warriors. I’d assume they’re young, if the incident with the sentry means anything, but after a year spent in training, they’d have to be twenty two phoebs, at least. I don’t know what they’re supposed to look like at that age. Humans,” the word was stretched awkwardly to accommodate fangs and a fumbling tongue, as many involving the paladin’s were, “Age differently, of course, but that’s a good guess.” Lovan nodded. Young, but not obscenely so. He didn’t dwell on it for too much longer, and raced Trivars to the rec room. He wanted the good chair, without any of the common rips in it that usually came from a botched game some soldier got sensitive about.

A few weeks later, the paladins that Lovan and Trivars were in charge of again stayed on emperor’s ship, as was becoming routine with the continuing negotiations between Voltron and what technically constituted the empire. The ship was on its sleep cycle when the alarms began to ring, and the whole thing shuddered violently, an explosion able to be heard off to the west. Lovan and Trivars, who were sleeping peacefully in their bunks, jolted awake and stumbled over each other in an attempt to get to their guns first.

They both raced down the halls, yelling at each other.

“Lotor is going to kill us!” Trivars announced loudly, cringing as the ship shook again.

“The paladins are up ahead. They said something about a ‘sleep over,’ and apparently are staying in the same room for the night. We can corral them there,” Lovan told him. He was not so out of breath as he had once been, traipsing after their charges while doing damage control for their antics. The paladins had gotten the both of them back into shape unwittingly, but effectively.

They burst into the room to find the three suited up, but crouched around the yellow paladin, who sucked in wheezing breaths as best as he could, and seemed to curl further into himself every time there was a particularly loud bang to be heard. Lance rubbed his back, while Pidge held his hands to keep his nails from biting into the skin of his palms.

“Hunk, Hunk, it’s okay. We’re all okay. Lotor and Allura and Shiro can take care of it. It’s just some of the rebels. Remember? Unorganized, scattered. It’s nothing like before.” Trivars looked to Lovan, unsure of how to proceed. Lovan shrugged. If he had to guess from their conversation, the yellow paladin was agonizing over memories of a nasty fight where an accident had happened. He’d seen soldiers in similar states under Zarkon’s rule, except of course their superiors weren’t nearly as forgiving. They could hear footsteps from down the hall, sloppy, limping. Trivars’ ears twitched, the sound still too far off for the paladins to hear.

Hunk continued to gasp, and Lance’s expression darkened, eyes narrowing.

“He’s seventeen. I’m seventeen, and I’m on the floor helping him get a panic attack under control so we can go out and fight the thing that caused it. This is fucked,” he hissed, knowing Hunk wouldn’t register it at the moment, and Pidge nodded her agreement. She kept her grip gentle on Hunk’s hands regardless.

Lovan looked to Trivars, trying to understand what had been said. They didn’t use the same terminology, but they got the gist. Lovan’s finger moved to the trigger of his blaster, and he willed himself to keep from firing. There was no enemy at the moment, and the sound would only exacerbate whatever was occurring with the yellow paladin, no, with Hunk. Trivars’ voice was hard when he spoke, claws denting the metal of his own gun.

“We’ll be in the hall. Keep yourselves safe. The rebels will be dealt with,” he explained, and Lovan followed him out the door that slid shut behind them.

The rebels came skulked towards their location with smoldering clothes and a fire in their eyes.

“Stand down,” the apparent leader sneered, despite the disarray of himself and his men. “Don’t waste your lives in defense of a half-breed.” Lovan thought of the way Lance had melted into his touch, and Trivars remembered Pidge’s hysterics after her father and brother left, even only temporarily. The memory of Hunk’s fear was fresh. Where the rebels were scorching in their intensity, they were cool and frozen over with resolve. They looked to one another, guns growing hot under their paws.

They weren’t fighters for the empire, exactly. They could care less what Lotor did as long as it was easy for them. They were, however, willing to be protectors of the cubs, their cubs, that were caught in a war they shouldn’t have to deal with.

“Vrepit sa,” Trivars and Lovan snarled, and fired away.

[occasionalfics]

The One to Stay, 1 (Thor x Reader)

general masterlist | tots masterlist

Summary: To capture a kingdom, you wait until they’re at their lowest point. Maybe it’s not your best choice, but it’s the most strategic.

A/N: I feel like I’ve been talking a lot about this, but it’s finally here! So yeah I mentioned in at least one other post that this is gonna have a sequel and I’ve already started on that! I don’t think it’ll be quite as long (this is...almost 90 google doc pages itself), but I’ve got big plans. Warnings: mild violence, some explicit language.

Tags: @thewayilookatbacon @mysweetcookie99 @httpmcrvel (send me a message if you want to be added! please specify if you want to be added to this story, or as a global tag!)

Words: 4,196

Your father wanted Asgard. Everyone did at some point, but your father saw an opportunity and wanted you to take it for him. He was old and decrepit, sitting on a throne that he could hardly leave without assistance. You, on the other hand, were young, lively, and skilled in battle. And you were his only living heir - all others had died or been killed off, or married into thrones on other planets and inherited other kingdoms while your ancient father refused to die or be killed himself.

You weren’t particularly fond of your father, but you never let him see as much. If you were the only heir that wasn’t too impatient to wait for the throne or too stupid to die before you could inherit it yourself, you could hide your disdain for the man who helped bring you into the world. You would do what he bid, so long as it put you in his good favor. So if he said he wanted Asgard, you would give it to him.

Somehow, you convinced yourself that this meant he would willingly give you the throne, whenever he thought you were ready to take it. You’d talked yourself into believing that none of your older siblings were right for the job. That was why your father had never given the throne to them, you thought. You were different, though. You’d show him that he could trust the crown would be safe in your hands.

You often asked yourself why you didn’t simply kill your father yourself. But when you thought about doing it, you realized that it wasn’t your father that kept you from doing the deed. You were scared of the repercussions. Patricide wouldn’t be taken lightly on a small planet like yours. You wouldn’t last a week on the throne if your subjects didn’t trust you. And besides, you were the youngest of your many, many siblings. Some of your older ones died trying to kill their father - either by your father himself, his guards, or the people your father ruled over. See, he wasn’t a malevolent ruler (or he hadn’t been), just a terrible father.

Still, he wanted Asgard. And because you’d learned from the mistakes of your family, you would be the one to give it to him. Personally. He didn’t care if you brought it with the King dead or alive, which meant you had some choice in the matter.

You waited as long as you could - long enough, even, that your father had started mocking you at court. He’d started saying that you would never do as he asked, that you were disobedient and a liar. But you were being tactful, waiting for a moment of weakness to pounce. You were a highly trained Warrior Princess, but you also knew your army was small. Formidable, but low in number. So you let Hela, Goddess of Death, do most of the work for you. When she was done with, you rallied your troops and met Asgard as it stood in a single ship, its King looking out into the vast vacuum of Space, watching carefully as you came into view with an army behind you.

As you’d planned, stealing command of their ship and threatening their very lives was as easy as knocking the Gatekeeper unconscious, tying up the Trickster God, losing a few dispensable troops to the Hulk, and holding off the Valkyrie with four of your trusted swordsmen. The last two weren’t exactly easy, but you’d managed. Your personal part, however, consisted of hand-to-hand combat with a weary, weakened, one-eyed Thunder God. He got a few good shocks into you, but he underestimated you, too. You were able to catch him off guard long enough to wrap your fingers around his bulky neck and squeeze.

It didn’t bring you joy to see him - or anyone, for that matter - like that. But it was what your father wanted. It was what you needed to give him to watch him step down from the throne. You didn’t plan on killing the Thunder God King; you wanted him in your court, truth be told. You didn’t need Asgard like your father said he did, but who would it hurt by having them?

“I know you’ve suffered quite a loss, Thunder God,” you said, glaring at his ragged, though still sculpted and beautiful face. “And yet, I must take more.”

He gasped for air, his single iris blown out in what you assumed was surprise a your strength. You couldn’t blame him; you were much smaller than he was, and yet, he could not wrestle his freedom from your grip.

“But because you’ve lost so much,” you said, pulling him closer to you, “I am prepared to show some semblance of mercy.” You loosened your hold just a bit - not enough for his deprived fingers to pry you from him, but enough to allow more oxygen into his body.

“Please,” he gasped, gritting his teeth between his words. “Spare them.”

“Spare whom, Thunder God?” you asked.

He coughed before answering, “Asgard.”

A thought occurred to you, then. You glanced just over his shoulder, past your long arm and curved fingers against his golden skin. Behind him, beyond the fighting, was a large crowd huddling together, surrounded by whatever army Asgard had left to defend them. They were citizens, just like those on your planet. There were children, dirty and tiny with cuts and bruises. There were screaming women and men shielding their families from the destruction happening around them. They were people - they were Asgard.

Your father wanted Asgard, and now you had it to give to him.

You looked at the Thunder God once more, your fingers loosening more. You even let him fall to the ground, desperately pulling in air to fill his lungs once more. If you were truly evil, as you were sure he believed you were - as his people believed you were - you would’ve mocked him for being weak.

But, alas, you were the Goddess of both War and Mercy. Somehow, they went hand-in-hand, perhaps because one was often fought over life and the other spared it. So instead of mockery, you kneeled before the Thunder God, gently putting your hand on his chin before he pushed it away with a force that should have knocked you over. It didn’t. Goddess of War and all that.

“Relinquish your rule of Asgard to me, Thunder God,” you said. “They will be spared. You may be, as well. Give me Asgard, and you will all live.”

He glared at you with enough passion to burn you, if his eye could do so much. You swore you saw a flash of light give a warning in his pupil, but he said nothing of it, so neither did you.

“Odinson,” you whispered, “it gives me no pleasure to see you and your people like this. I wish we’d met under other circumstances, but that’s not the case.” You looked at his people once more, hoping he would see the gesture and know you were being sincere. “If you want your people to thrive, you will give them to me.”

He seemed to contemplate this. He looked around the ship, though he did not attempt to stand, and saw the destruction he was allowing to take place on his ship, in front of and for his Asgardian people.

“The Gatekeeper will find useful employment,” you said. “Your citizens will have more fulfilling lives than you can give them on a ship.” When he slowly turned back to you, still breathing heavily, you tilted your head and said, “I’m giving you exactly what you want, Thunder God.”

“What do you know of what I want?” he asked, practically spitting at you with the vitriol of his entire people.

You nodded, but were otherwise unphased. “Perhaps I don’t,” you said. “But as King, would you not like to see your subjects happily living normal lives? Perhaps not as refugees?”

The dark tint to his blue eye did not change. Clearly, he didn’t like what you were offering, but you knew as well as he that he had no better option except to search for a place to leave his people on his own. A solution to his wandering problem was presented, though maybe not in the way he would’ve liked. It wasn’t even the way you would’ve liked, but it was how you went about the business anyway.

“I’m cutting out much of your own work for you, Thunder God. Give them to me. Come and serve in my court-”

“As what? Jester?” he asked, still spitting.

“You’re wasting time,” you said in a flat tone. “We’ll discuss your place in all of this later, should you comply. Give me your people, and give them a chance to live.”

The Hulk picked up four of your men as if they were nothing, and threw them into a wall not too far off from the group of huddled masses. Thor watched it all, turning to see better. You slowly stood, bringing your boots to his line of attention.

“So, Thunder God,” you said. He turned back to you, and then you said, “What’ll it be?”

His glare soured, his fingers twitched with lightning, and he answered through his teeth: “Fine. I relinquish my rule of Asgard to you, Goddess of War.”

You bent at the waist, looked him straight in the eye, and smiled as you told him, “And Mercy.”

You stood before the doors to the throne room. The Thunder God, the Trickster God, the Valkyrie, and the Hulk, now subdued and bound to one another by reinforced chains, stood in a line behind you. Behind them were four armed guards you’d ordered to make sure the group followed you.

This was not the way you wanted to conduct this business. You wanted the Thunder God to trust your word, that you would be merciful - that you were the Goddess of Mercy, to begin - and that you would care for his people. He’d gotten a small peek at your own people, thriving and lively and welcoming, and yet, he was not convinced. You knew the cuffs did not help.

You bit your lip and straightened as the doors opened, then stepped lightly, one foot in front of the other, as you made your way down the aisle towards your ancient father’s throne. He sat, hunched over, glaring with his large, dark eyes. Eyes that looked nothing like yours. You hoped the Thunder God saw that, at least.

“Father,” you said with a bow. “I bring you Thor and Loki Odinsons, the King and Prince of Asgard, as well as their court.”

“Small court,” your father muttered.

“Yes, Your Grace,” you said, mostly ignoring the comment. “But then, Asgard does not require a large court now.”

“There is no Asgard, girl,” your father said.

You smiled at him. “If by that, you mean that Asgard is here now, you are correct.” You turned on your heel, pulled the key to the Thunder God’s cuffs from a pocket on your thigh, and rushed to uncuff him. As you fiddled with the metal, you used your limited abilities to throw your voice at him, whispering, “You must please him if you wish to see Asgard thrive.”

He glared over his shoulder, his expression half-enraged and half-surprised. You weren’t close enough to whisper so clearly to only him, and he knew it. But if you’d leaned in, he would have squirmed, and you wouldn’t have blamed him. Plus, everyone in the room would’ve seen - not excluding your father, who glared even as you took the cuffs off and came back around to stand in front again.

“Your Grace, I’ve done as you bid me. I’ve brought you Asgard, as it stands.” You put a hand back just enough to wave the Thunder God on. He seemed to at least pick up on the gesture, and came to stand beside you, his arms crossed against his broad chest now.

“You’ve brought me a broken, lost people, Daughter,” your father said, his voice gravelly and sparse. Still, somehow, he filled the room with his command. “You brought me refugees.”

“My people were promised peaceful shelter,” Thor said from beside you.

You froze, tensing up in what could only be described as a completely noticeable move.

Your father looked from you to the Thunder God and asked, “Oh? Tell me, Odinson, under what terms?”

Thor threw you a sidelong glance, never changing his position as his brows furrowed. “That I must surrender them to you, as well as, I assume, the title of King of Asgard.”

Your father gave a single loud chuckle and shook his head. He shut his eyes, dropped his head a few inches, and continued to laugh. Thor turned his gaze to you, a question lingering in his single blue eye. You were still frozen in place, practically unable to meet his stare in the presence of your father this way.

“That title means nothing,” your father said. He’d glanced back at you by then, and his laughter had died. “I told you to bring me Asgard a year ago, Daughter, and you pilfered your troops, time, and my patience.”

“I was waiting for an opportune moment-”

“You were waiting for a Golden Invitation, I understand,” he said, holding a hand up. He nodded, but you didn’t trust the gesture. You knew your father too well to think he wasn’t about to snap. “But as your King, my command is your Golden Invitation. You let Asgard go in its prime, and now it means nothing to me.”

“Odin was still in power a year ago,” you said, standing taller in defense of yourself. “Of course I wouldn’t have been able to claim Asgard for you!”

“Um, actually,” you heard from behind you.

You turned around to see that Loki had leaned forward to speak to you, but he wasn’t able to get a word in edgewise.

“Silence!” your father yelled, now glaring the light out of the Trickster God’s eyes.

Loki stood with his mouth hanging open, staring back at your father. You turned around again, letting some thick strands of hair fall in your face to hide behind. You felt your face go cold in a nervous flush, and you balled your fists to try to get ahold of yourself.

“My father was in Norway a year ago,” Thor said, his voice just as demanding of your attention as your father’s. “My brother had sent him, unwillingly, to Midgard, where he died.”

Your father seemed to contemplate that information. He watched Thor carefully, the way he watched anyone accused of treason, on the occasion he was required to act as judge and jury. “So then, Odinson, who ruled Asgard in the interim?” he asked.

“I did,” Loki said, and when you turned back to him, he was standing tall once more. “I disguised myself as Odin and ruled in his stead.”

Your father seemed to smirk - or he conjured what could only be called a smirk on his wrinkled, ancient face, and gave another small chuckle. “Clever,” he muttered. “But that means my Daughter should have invaded much earlier than she did, as I’ve been saying.” His stare made its way back to you, and you had to fight your instincts to keep from backing down.

“To be fair,” Loki continued, “most of Asgard didn’t know I’d taken over. I’m quite a good impersonator, if I do say so myself.”

Thor turned around and hushed his brother, then faced your father once more. “I ended his rouse just before Odin ascended to Valhalla. And, as his heir, I am King.”

Your father sat forward in his throne, pushing himself slowly to the edge of the seat as he continued to lean out. You thought he might stand, but he didn’t. He glared, his eyes so bright you thought he might ignite Thor’s tunic, despite it being thick leather. “You are King of nothing, Odinson,” he said. “King of Travelers, Refugees, and Tricksters.”

Thor dropped his arms to his sides. You could just barely see the redness in his neck rise, but you didn’t dare focus on him entirely. Your father was just as sly as Loki fancied himself, you knew. You had to keep your eyes on him for your plan to work.

“Your Kingdom is no good to me,” your father spat. “My Daughter has offered services she has no place in giving. She is far too late on delivering what’s been asked of her, and her word means nothing.”

You were tired of hearing him speak, but you knew all too well what would happen if you stepped forward and tried to stop him. He’d likely disintegrate you, or something along those lines. You’d seen it happen before, to a brother you hardly knew. Being a ruler for so long meant your father would tolerate absolutely no derision or discord.

You bit your tongue hard enough to draw blood, but stood your ground anyway.

“What would you make of us, then?” Thor asked, his body like a boulder as he stood tall and heated beside you.

Your father smirked, pushed himself back into his seat, and shrugged. “You are not many,” he said. Your eyes widened before he went on with: “It won’t be hard for us to rid ourselves of the Asgardian trash.”

Thor lunged, and immediately four guards pounced on him, holding him back with all their might. His fingers glowed, as did his eye, with the might of the lightning he wielded. You shook your head, your heart racing now. Maybe you couldn’t go up against your father yourself, but you could at least try to follow through on your promises to Thor.

“Father, please,” you yelled, moving around the guards to approach the throne. More guards pushed past the crowd around you, but they stayed back. “These people are without home. They are scholars and merchants and soldiers. They contribute to society - but they need a society to thrive in. How could you turn your back on them?”

Even sitting, he seemed to tower over you, as if he’d made himself larger in an instant. “I am not turning my back on them,” he said. “I’m turning my back on you. After all, you brought the rabble in.” He looked at Thor as he said, “Perhaps I should dispose of you, too, Daughter. You’ve proven to be...quite ineffective.”

You’d heard him say something to that effect to a sister of yours decades before. She disappeared in the night, only to turn up in the sewers a week later, her neck slashed and many of her bones broken needlessly.

You took a step back and desperately grabbed for anything that might save you. “Your Grace,” you said. “What if…” You looked over your shoulder and saw you’d moved back closer to Thor than you’d meant. He was still bound by the guards, his face a hard stone of rage as he looked from you to your father. You hadn’t brought him here for this. You’d wanted to offer him peace - to offer his people a chance to live. You’d wanted him to join the court… And that might be the thought that saved you.

“What if the Odinsons joined our court,” you said, turning back to your father.

He rose an eyebrow at you, but not in any sign malice. “What benefit does that offer me?” he asked.

“It gives you command of their armies, who defeated Hela and escaped Ragnarök,” you said. You stepped forward once more, a sudden surge of courage overtaking you with your next words. “It gives you what you asked for: you rule Asgard if the King and Prince hold positions equal to mine. And,” you stopped just before the first step to his dias, smiling now, though you did admit to yourself that it felt odd. “The Nine Realms will see you as the King that accepted the downtrodden people of Asgard into his keeping. You’ll be revered for your generosity and feared for your military prowess. Is that not what you were seeking when you gave me the quest to bring you Asgard in the first place?”

He propped himself on one elbow and seemed to think. The room went silent - even Thor stopped thrashing in the grasp of the guards as your father contemplated. He took his sweet time, and during that span, you made a mental note to meet with the new Asgardian members of the court in absolute secret later.

You had plans, and your father was giving you time to work them out, even if he didn’t know it. Maybe he did. Maybe he expected you to plot against him. You were going to have to be compliant and stealthy. You needed spies and resources, secret means of communications and-

He nodded. “The Asgardian refugees may stay, if their King relinquishes his power to me by joining my court. I’ll decide how much power to attribute to him over time,” your father said. You heard Thor grunt behind you, and the armor of the guards rustle, but you refused to turn until your father dismissed you. There had to be a catch, you knew. There was always a catch. “Until such time, however,” he said, looking down at you. “You, Daughter, are responsible for our new...guests. Their actions will reflect on you. Is that understood?”

Without hesitation, you said, “Yes. Thank you, Your Grace.”

Before anyone else could offer reasonable doubt or voice their discontent, your father waved you off. “Go. I have important matters to attend to.”

You bowed once again, then turned and ushered the guards to bring your new party back into the corridor. When everyone had exited the throne room and the doors were shut behind you, you turned to one of the guards and said, “Ready my suite. I’ll be hosting our new guests indefinitely.”

“Indefinitely,” you heard Loki mumble.

You looked at him - no, glared at him, then nodded to the guard. He gave orders to the other guards, and then they left you in the hall with just your new Asgardian responsibility.

When you were sure you were as alone as you would get in an open corridor, you reached into your pocket and pulled out the keys to the cuffs three out of four of them were still wearing. You held them out to Thor, who was still red-faced and looked indignantly at you. You waved the keys at him and said, “Release them.”

“I’m not your lackey, girl,” he spat.

You deserved that, and for a second, you just stared at him. But then you sighed, pulled on one of his hands, and put the key in his palm before he had the chance to wretch away from you. “You’re right, Thunder God. You’re my guests, but I get the feeling not a single one of you trust that I’ll actually free you.”

“You’re just scared we’ll beat your ass to a bloody pulp,” the Valkyrie said. Her brows were furrowed into a deep crevice in the center of her forehead.

Thor seemed to ignore her, first going to the Midgardian Hulk to undo his cuffs.

You shrugged. “Perhaps,” you said. “But the thing is...you need me.”

The not-green Hulk threw his head back and laughed. “Right! Good one,” he said. He tapped Thor on the shoulder and said, “This girl’s crazy and hilarious.”

You stared at him as he moved, watching as Thor shrugged the hand from his shoulder before going to the Valkyrie to undo her cuffs next. “I’m...not joking,” you said, placing your hands on your hips subconsciously.

“The thing is, you need us too,” Loki said. He held his hands out for Thor expectantly, but he stared right at you.

“I do,” you said. “In more ways than you know.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Thor asked. “And how are we to trust the woman who attacked us in our most desperate hour?”

“We don’t even know her name,” the Hulk said.

“(Y/N),” you offered, glancing at his fleshy, remarkably not-green appearance. Then you focused back on Thor as he came back to stand between you and his cohort. You admired that of him, even if you’d never say so. He protected them when, clearly, they could do the job themselves - after all, they’d all survived Hela. They could survive your father, too, especially if they trusted you. But that would take work. Lots of work.

“You haven’t answer either of my questions,” Thor said. Despite having one eye, his glare was the most intense.

“Not by omission, Thunder God,” you said. “This hallway is not the ideal place for introductions.”

“It never is,” Loki muttered, as if you were meant to understand that. It didn’t seem important, so you let the comment go.

“Is anyone hungry?” you asked.

“Starving,” the Hulk said.

“I’m not eating anything she doesn’t eat first,” the Valkyrie said.

You smirked. “That’s fair. Now, come. Let me show you your new home. First meal’s on me.”

[mittensmorgul]

Bubble Theory

To a certain extent, we all live in our own self-made echo chambers. This isn’t a bad thing in and of itself. It’s just a reality of being a human being, and not an omniscient deity. Being aware of this simple fact makes life more pleasant all around. But maybe especially in fandom, or on social media in general.

Even if we actively and regularly step across the edge of our own bubbles and peek in at what else is going on in other bubbles, we’re still experiencing that foreign bubble from an outsider perspective, and viewing information and conversations going on there without the context of everything surrounding that conversation.

The only time this causes conflict is when someone fully steps into a different echo chamber where they don't know what's really going on, where they don’t know the history or the etiquette, or the backgrounds and motivations of the people they’re now interacting with, and simply assume the entire awareness and discourse inside that “other bubble” is on a level with their own echo chamber, and react in a manner that everyone in the “invaded” bubble is baffled by, or offended by, or worse.

So I mostly stay out of the bitter discourse, because it’s not my place to tell other people how to feel, without personally understanding WHY they feel that way. That’s just... Not Cool.

I do try to at least keep an eye on other fandom echo chambers, despite spending most of my time in my carefully curated corner of this fandom. Because this IS where I come for “fun and relaxation,” and not to engage in discourse heavier than the pineapple on pizza or “is Cas now a ginger” nonsense or whatever.

The danger is in letting your personal echo chamber inform your understanding or opinion of an entire fandom.

I think that’s at least part of what causes the conflicts between "factions." Whether it be shipping factions, character stan factions, meta factions, or even the different culture and etiquette and conversations happening on twitter versus tumblr. These communities all have their own accepted understanding and mutual etiquette that holds them together within the larger fandom, and by that very nature can lead very quickly to misunderstandings among people outside those particular bubbles, and often what’s perceived by the “invaded bubble residents” as horrifically offensive behavior. Instead of understanding other points of view and other interpretations, and other's motivations for engaging with the show the way they do, it just becomes inter-fandom wank.

And heck... to put a Supernatural meta spin on this, "miscommunication is the worst villain" in real life too.

Here on Tumblr, I often see people who venture into “fandom Twitter” report back about how absolutely, horribly toxic it is over there; and when I have personally ventured into Fandom Twitter, I’ve seen comments about how glad the participants there are not on Tumblr, because gosh Tumblr fandom is a trash fire. I think a lot of this interpretation of “the other fandom bubble” comes directly from this lack of understanding about the different culture, expectations, and etiquette inherent in these two very different social media platforms.

(not even touching on the fact that how “toxic” any of your experiences on ANY social media site is directly informed by the people you choose to follow and interact with, and your experience can become instantly less toxic by not engaging with toxic people in general.)

We all know the way our own echo chamber communicates, but not necessarily how the others do, or even what they talk about on the other side of the bubble. Barging in to another bubble armed with the assumption that we know and understand the discourse you’re bringing with you is bound to fail.

It’s a larger fandom disconnect, just like when certain factions latched on to the vegetable water post and judged all destiel shippers as morons who think cucumbers make you gay, or that wearing a certain type of plaid makes you gay, rather than understanding these as essentially crack posts that we all pointed and laughed at, because they functioned like a meme that validated everything we’ve written about Performing Dean. And everyone INSIDE our bubble knew this, because we’d already HAD the discussion (and it’s conveniently available on all our blogs, in painful detail, for anyone outside the bubble who actually cares to educate themselves on why we’re making crack posts about pie vs cake, or dean in shorts, or whatever). It's that level of disconnect.

Looking at the surface-layer of what crosses the bubble (i.e. the sorts of posts that “go viral” and therefore escape the bubble they were intended for), and making broad general assumptions about the motive, intent, understanding, and personal investment of the person who created that content based on your own experience inside a different bubble is just... ignorant.

I really can’t abide ignorance. Especially when that ignorance is used to directly hurt, insult, offend, or shame other human beings. Also, Not Cool.

And it’s not just over the matter of shipping where these disconnects are happening. It can result from misunderstanding ANYTHING from outside your personal bubble. Because NONE of us have completely shattered our own bubbles, you know? NONE OF US know everything, NONE OF US should even be EXPECTED to know everything, and NONE OF US should EVER barge into a bubble they self-admittedly have very little knowledge of and behave like assholes in someone else’s bubble.

Not everything that conflicts with your experience inside your own bubble is automatically “hate,” or “ignorant,” or “gross.” Everything outside your own bubble is not inherently malicious, or intended to be malicious. Not everyone engages with fandom in general in the same way you might be accustomed to. That does NOT give anyone the right to wander into another bubble where they CLEARLY do not understand the background, context, and the very real human beings on the other end of a tumblr post, and spew shaming vitriolic assumptions all over the place.

This goes for the residents of EVERY fandom bubble.

(I can’t believe we have to have this conversation as ostensible adult citizens of the internet, but here we are. The golden rule still applies, even when you think you know better than the person you’re trying to “educate.” Also: “sorry your feelings were hurt” is not actually an apology.)

[anexplanationofunfortunateevents]

THIS IS HAPPENING TO YOU. PAY ATTENTION.

It’s hard to know how much to say about Trump-Russia reports because they’re mostly confirmation of things that we’ve known for ages. But last week there was a wave of information about how the disinformation attack happened, and it’s really important to understand.*

Maybe even more important, it’s been confirmed where the attack happened: everywhere. Every social media network, whether or not it has a conventionally political slant, was infected by viral disinformation. Google! Pinterest! Tumblr! Pokemon Go! Is nothing sacred?!???

It’s important to remember: just because this operation was to help Trump, does not mean that all the misleading online content was overtly targeted at Trump supporters. We’re talking about disinformation – ie, lies. They impersonated and exploited people all over the political spectrum. White supremacists. Conventional registered Republicans. Sanders supporters who don’t identify with any political party. Texas secessionists. Racial justice activists. Environmentalists. And on, and on. The idea was just to crank up the volume and turn the environment hostile and irrational. That would always benefit Trump because nobody does hostile and irrational better than Trump and the Pepes, which was a big part of why he was the Kremlin’s guy.

This infinite list of feigned viewpoints is possible in part because compared to television and other older media, political ads on social media are cheap and unregulated. (Snapchat, which does screen the content it promotes even if it hurts their bottom line, doesn’t seem to have been hit with the disinformation campaign.) If you’ve targeted your audience as carefully as you would if you were selling homemade soap, your target audience will pick it up and pass it on for free, doing most of the work for you. They might even take a meme from one platform and pass it along to another, infecting a whole new group of people with the disinformation.

It doesn’t even all have to be ads, which at least leave a money trail for us to catch. Some of them are just fake accounts, pumping this stuff out for free. During the election, the people leading the Trump campaign regularly shared content from at least one Twitter account which was a Kremlin sockpuppet. (Which, tbf, was a pretty good impersonation of a standard-issue #maga supporter.)

A few examples:

Then there’s these clowns: 

One of the posts from that month includes a link to a story about Hillary Clinton wanting to censor New York’s Laugh Factory comedy club. “Hillary must be in prison for this!” the account wrote with the link attached.

The pair also promoted a shirt labeling Bill Clinton as a rapist in an October video called “A word of truth about a rapist’s wife.”

“To say the truth, Bill Clinton is a rapist. And there is a lot of fact to prove it,” the host says, before saying the Clintons are “serial killers and they are going to rape the whole nation.”

The video concludes with the line: “We have to do all we can to not allow this racist bitch to become the next president.”

In an August video, one of the hosts explicitly endorses the movie Clinton Cash and begins the video by saying, “I support Bernie Sanders.”

“Today is old bitch Clinton time,” the host says before a title card informs people watching that the film will premiere the day prior to the Democratic National Convention.

Most people aren’t dumb enough to think this is logically substantiated, but that wasn’t the point. The point was to overload people with this firehose of vitriol until they lost track of where all the ugly was coming from, until they bought into the slogan here:

“Everyone Sucks, We’re Screwed 2016” was not a reasonable assessment of reality, which was that all the suckage was coming from Trump. But somehow it became a mantra repeated constantly by Trump skeptics on the right, Bernie fanatics on the left, and smug comedians on late night television.

Because it was fucking everywhere, including on Tumblr. (Those links are to the Wayback Machine and just posts that I could find easily. I don’t know if they’re troll accounts or suckers, but they’re examples of the propaganda.)

It’s going to be a while before we know how widespread this campaign was. For now, you can flip back through your own tags from last year. Did you interact with Wikileaks posts? Links to right-wing propaganda sites from accounts that otherwise seemed progressive? People questioning the legitimacy of the Democratic primary process? Jill Stein cheerleaders? Then you got dragged into this, too, and you deserve to understand as much as possible about how it worked.

Some of it was more or less straightforwardly what you’d expect from an operation with the Kremlin’s goals. Remember, they wanted to install Donald Trump in the White House if possible, and if that didn’t work, at least damage Hillary Clinton enough to hobble her presidency. So, although these guys weren’t the only targets, it makes sense that there was lots of Breitbart-style trash targeted at conservative-leaning voters. But that kind of stuff isn’t only absorbed by people already inclined to hear it. When it gives the rabid right-wingers something to splash all over their social media networks, it makes the political environment downright hostile for people who were sincerely excited, and as those voices are silenced, all that’s left to worm its way into the subconscious of people who are largely apathetic is loud ugliness.

They also targeted voters who were inclined to be anti-Trump by trying to gin up apathy or outright hostility toward Hillary Clinton from the left. Some of this was the same misogynist tropes as the pro-Trump ads, just swapping out Trump for Bernie Sanders or Green Party nominee Jill Stein. The left isn’t nearly as bad as the right, but we do have bigots, nihilists, and weak-willed Billy Bush types who accommodate them, which allowed the propaganda to take hold. That failure was particularly destructive because the left tends to have a lot of impressionable idealists and young people who are forming their political outlook based on general vibe of the current election. So you had a lot of people cynically expressing, passively validating, or actually believing this idea that there wasn’t a meaningful choice between the candidates. By the way, weeks before the election, Steve Bannon was openly boasting about the campaign running exactly this digital strategy. What a shocking coincidence! 

There’s an even more devious layer. Remember the dress from a couple of years back? 

There’s studies about something called priming: basically, when you remind people of social outgroups, it can actually activate some people’s subconscious biases against those outgroups. So a Kremlin troll looking to turn Americans against each other could target ideologically opposed groups with the same ad. Conservative-leaning whites would see what appeared to be an uncompromising Black Lives Matter post, get defensive, and become more susceptible to Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric. The exact same post would win credibility with members of the multiracial progressive coalition who were young or otherwise new to politics, making the troll account more effective when it told them not to bother voting. Other troll accounts made similar efforts with the LGBTQ movement and with at least one defunct Muslim organization – appropriating the activism and the very identities of the people the Trump and Putin regimes threaten the most.

It can be subtle.

After an American admirer of ISIS massacred 49 people at an Orlando nightclub in June 2016, the community quickly created an event titled “Support Hillary. Save American Muslims!” that presented Clinton’s name in an Arabic-style font.

The fake United Muslims of America page was quick to point out Clinton was “the only presidential candidate who refuses to ‘demonize’ Islam after the Orlando nightclub shooting,” and boasted that “with such a person in White House (sic) America will easily reach the bright multicultural future.”

Insofar as you can evaluate the words The Daily Beast quotes, they’re either true or aspirational. If you’re a person who was disgusted by Trump’s Islamophobia, you probably did support Hillary at least in part to protect Muslim Americans from the nightmare they’re experiencing now. It’s very true that Clinton was the only candidate who refused to demonize Muslims after the Pulse Nightclub murders, and she was as clear as could be that demonizing Muslims is wrong. If you’re a person who understands that was the right thing to do, you probably didn’t think that electing her would “easily” bring about any “bright multicultural future,” but you certainly hoped it would be a step in that direction – and it hardly seems unfair to Clinton, since it seems pretty clear that if she could wave a magic wand and get rid of xenophobia easily, she would. So you have to squint for the tells that it’s meant to push people away from her and toward Trump:

The timing. American Muslims are normal, decent people, as much as any other group of Americans. They didn’t make the Pulse shooting about themselves as Muslims. They showed up for the people who were attacked. Or they kept their heads down, specifically because saying things like this while the attack was fresh in everyone’s mind would have the priming effect on some people, reminding them that Trump and his supporters believed it was socially acceptable to use the tragedy as a club against Muslim Americans.

The Arabic-style script. If the ad was for Arabic speakers who would have a harder time reading the Latin alphabet, the ad would be in Arabic. It’s in English because it’s not for them. It’s there in a distinctive script to prime the audience to associate Clinton with the foreign and unfamiliar.

The phrasing. Voters who were susceptible to Trump’s rhetoric were likely to have a deep anxiety about the changing demographics of the future. The confident assertion that Clinton’s America would “easily” bring about its multicultural future aggravates that anxiety. Also, and this may have been an unintentional error but the effect would be the same, the ad doesn’t refer to “a” hypothetical “bright multicultural future.” It uses “the,” a definite article, suggesting that this multicultural future is imminent and inevitable. Basically, this endorsement pushes the same button as “taco trucks on every corner” guy. (Reason #22,909,002 to stay mad: WE COULD HAVE HAD A TACO TRUCK ON EVERY CORNER.)

This attack could not have worked if there weren’t already deep fissures in American society. That’s no excuse to take this lying down! First of all, if the divides were as deep and poisonous as they could be, nobody would’ve bothered with an attack. If the Kremlin had not interfered in last year’s election, if we had only been up against our own undemocratic demons like voter suppression, campaign finance failures, and the Electoral College, we’d be living in a world where President Hillary Clinton was solidifying the gains of the Obama years, Associate Justice Merrick Garland was striking down voter suppression laws, and we were all arguing about Empire and Riverdale instead of fighting for our lives every fucking day. If not for this years-long foreign assault on our hearts and minds, we’d be alright. We’d be far from perfect, but we’d be able to keep working on bridging those divides. Hell, without Russian help, Trump may not have made it past the New Hampshire primary. There’d still be a bunch of boneheaded racist misogynists who abandoned the GOP to support him as a third-party candidate and they’d still be a problem, but they wouldn’t be running the show without an international criminal conspiracy to get them there. (But we’re the “globalists.” Sure, Jan.)

On top of that, though? There’s a reason that they attacked the Democratic candidate and were so desperate to demoralize progressives. There’s a reason that they could take over the GOP. The Republican Party is already a party of intolerant extremists who are doing everything they can to destroy liberal democracy – or, worse, people who know better but have enabled them for decades. The left-of-center coalition has to hold the line right now. Not just on principles, either, but in giving a shit what’s true. That’s not even about moral superiority, though if moral superiority keeps you on task, by all means, go with it. It’s strategic. We’re never going to beat them at their own game. The Democratic coalition is too diverse to agree on some fantasy, and too young to avoid the long-term consequences of ignoring reality. We’re going to have to keep on being the party that autocratic oil baron pigs hate. That means hone your bullshit detector, and start expecting the people around you to do the same. Do more call-ins than call-outs. Start watching out for sites or situations that push your buttons more than they inform you. These kinds of attacks aren’t going to stop, so we need to start building immunity now. I’m sorry, I know this is the hard way, but them’s the breaks.

Further reading:

There’s a deep dive at The Guardian.

A researcher at Columbia University, ran the data on six – six – of the 470 profiles Facebook has acknowledged were Russian troll accounts. The results are sobering – as was Facebook’s response to the scrutiny. 

If you’re curious how this worked on the Russian side of things, read the summary of an investigation done by Russian independent media and an interview with a paid troll who worked out of St. Petersburg. This won’t get at the size of the operation, but there’s some insight into how it worked.

And no, we still haven’t done the kind of forensic audits that would tell us if this years-long intensive cyber operation successfully hacked the final vote. Sleep tight.

*An illustration of how this news flow works: this post was mostly done by Monday. New reports that were worth adding into the description have come out at least once a day since then.

[coolandreezie]

The Terrible Bargain We Have Regretfully Struck Posted by Melissa McEwan at Friday, August 14, 2009   [Trigger warning.]

Despite feminists' reputation, and contra my own individual reputation cultivated over five years of public opinion-making, I am not a man-hater.

If I played by misogynists' rules, specifically the one that dictates it only takes one woman doing one Mean or Duplicitous or Disrespectful or Unlawful or otherwise Bad Thing to justify hatred of all women, I would have plenty of justification for hating men, if I were inclined to do that sort of thing.

Most of my threatening hate mail comes from men. The most unrelentingly trouble-making trolls have always been men. I've been cat-called and cow-called from moving vehicles countless times, and subjected to other forms of street harassment, and sexually harassed at work, always by men. I have been sexually assaulted—if one includes rape, attempted rape, unsolicited touching of breasts, buttocks, and/or genitals, nonconsensual frottage on public transportation, and flashing—by dozens of people during my lifetime, some known to me, some strangers, all men.

But I don't hate men, because I play by different rules. In fact, there are men in this world whom I love quite a lot.

There are also individual men in this world I would say I probably hate, or something close, men who I hold in unfathomable contempt, but it is not because they are men.

No, I don't hate men.

It would, however, be fair to say that I don't easily trust them.

My mistrust is not, as one might expect, primarily a result of the violent acts done on my body, nor the vicious humiliations done to my dignity. It is, instead, born of the multitude of mundane betrayals that mark my every relationship with a man—the casual rape joke, the use of a female slur, the careless demonization of the feminine in everyday conversation, the accusations of overreaction, the eyerolling and exasperated sighs in response to polite requests to please not use misogynist epithets in my presence or to please use non-gendered language ("humankind").

There are the insidious assumptions guiding our interactions—the supposition that I will regard being exceptionalized as a compliment ("you're not like those other women"), and the presumption that I am an ally against certain kinds of women. Surely, we're all in agreement that Britney Spears is a dirty slut who deserves nothing but a steady stream of misogynist vitriol whenever her name is mentioned, right? Always the subtle pressure to abandon my principles to trash this woman or that woman, as if I'll never twig to the reality that there's always a justification for unleashing the misogyny, for hating a woman in ways reserved only for women. I am exhorted to join in the cruel revelry, and when I refuse, suddenly the target is on my back. And so it goes.

There are the jokes about women, about wives, about mothers, about raising daughters, about female bosses. They are told in my presence by men who are meant to care about me, just to get a rise out of me, as though I am meant to find funny a reminder of my second-class status. I am meant to ignore that this is a bullying tactic, that the men telling these jokes derive their amusement specifically from knowing they upset me, piss me off, hurt me. They tell them and I can laugh, and they can thus feel superior, or I can not laugh, and they can thus feel superior. Heads they win, tails I lose. I am used as a prop in an ongoing game of patriarchal posturing, and then I am meant to believe it is true when some of the men who enjoy this sport, in which I am their pawn, tell me, "I love you." I love you, my daughter. I love you, my niece. I love you, my friend. I am meant to trust these words.

There are the occasions that men—intellectual men, clever men, engaged men—insist on playing devil's advocate, desirous of a debate on some aspect of feminist theory or reproductive rights or some other subject generally filed under the heading: Women's Issues. These intellectual, clever, engaged men want to endlessly probe my argument for weaknesses, want to wrestle over details, want to argue just for fun—and they wonder, these intellectual, clever, engaged men, why my voice keeps raising and why my face is flushed and why, after an hour of fighting my corner, hot tears burn the corners of my eyes. Why do you have to take this stuff so personally? ask the intellectual, clever, and engaged men, who have never considered that the content of the abstract exercise that's so much fun for them is the stuff of my life.

There is the perplexity at my fury that my life experience is not considered more relevant than the opinionated pronouncements of men who make a pastime of informal observation, like womanhood is an exotic locale which provides magnificent fodder for the amateur ethnographer. And there is the haughty dismissal of my assertion that being on the outside looking in doesn't make one more objective; it merely provides a different perspective.

There are the persistent, tiresome pronouncements of similitude between men's and women's experiences, the belligerent insistence that handsome men are objectified by women, too! that women pinch men's butts sometimes, too! that men are expected to look a certain way at work, too! that women rape, too! and other equivalencies that conveniently and stupidly ignore institutional inequities that mean X rarely equals Y. And there are the long-suffering groans that meet any attempt to contextualize sexism and refute the idea that such indignities, though grim they all may be, are not necessarily equally oppressive.

There are the stereotypes—oh, the abundant stereotypes!—about women, not me, of course, but other women, those women with their bad driving and their relentless shopping habits and their PMS and their disgusting vanity and their inability to stop talking and their disinterest in Important Things and their trying to trap men and their getting pregnant on purpose and their false rape accusations and their being bitches sluts whores cunts… And I am expected to nod in agreement, and I am nudged and admonished to agree. I am expected to say these things are not true of me, but are true of women (am I seceding from the union?); I am expected to put my stamp of token approval on the stereotypes. Yes, it's true. Between you and me, it's all true. That's what is wanted from me. Abdication of my principles and pride, in service to a patriarchal system that will only use my collusion to further subjugate me. This is a thing that is asked of me by men who purport to care for me.

There is the unwillingness to listen, a ferociously stubborn not getting it on so many things, so many important things. And the obdurate refusal to believe, to internalize, that my outrage is not manufactured and my injure not make-believe—an inflexible rejection of the possibility that my pain is authentic, in favor of the consolatory belief that I am angry because I'm a feminist (rather than the truth: that I'm a feminist because I'm angry).

And there is the denial about engaging in misogyny, even when it's evident, even when it's pointed out gently, softly, indulgently, carefully, with goodwill and the presumption that it was not intentional. There is the firm, fixed, unyielding denial—because it is better and easier to imply that I'm stupid or crazy, that I have imagined being insulted by someone about whom I care (just for the fun of it!), than it is to just admit a bloody mistake. Rather I am implied to be a hysteric than to say, simply, I'm sorry.

Not every man does all of these things, or even most of them, and certainly not all the time. But it only takes one, randomly and occasionally, exploding in a shower of cartoon stars like an unexpected punch in the nose, to send me staggering sideways, wondering what just happened.

Well. I certainly didn't see that coming…

These things, they are not the habits of deliberately, connivingly cruel men. They are, in fact, the habits of the men in this world I love quite a lot.

All of whom have given me reason to mistrust them, to use my distrust as a self-protection mechanism, as an essential tool to get through every day, because I never know when I might next get knocked off-kilter with something that puts me in the position, once again, of choosing between my dignity and the serenity of our relationship.

Swallow shit, or ruin the entire afternoon?

It can come out of nowhere, and usually does. Which leaves me mistrustful by both necessity and design. Not fearful; just resigned—and on my guard. More vulnerability than that allows for the possibility of wounds that do not heal. Wounds to our relationship, the sort of irreparable damage that leaves one unable to look in the eye someone that you loved once upon a time.

This, then, is the terrible bargain we have regretfully struck: Men are allowed the easy comfort of their unexamined privilege, but my regard will always be shot through with a steely, anxious bolt of caution.

A shitty bargain all around, really. But there it is.

There are men who will read this post and think, huffily, dismissively, that a person of color could write a post very much like this one about white people, about me. That's absolutely right. So could a lesbian, a gay man, a bisexual, an asexual. So could a trans or intersex person (which hardly makes a comprehensive list). I'm okay with that. I don't feel hated. I feel mistrusted—and I understand it; I respect it. It means, for me, I must be vigilant, must make myself trustworthy. Every day.

I hope those men will hear me when I say, again, I do not hate you. I mistrust you. You can tell yourselves that's a problem with me, some inherent flaw, some evidence that I am fucked up and broken and weird; you can choose to believe that the women in your lives are nothing like me.

Or you can be vigilant, can make yourselves trustworthy. Every day.

Just in case they're more like me than you think.

...As I lie awake at night wondering what happened to the light hearted, easy going, flirty girl I once was, I read this and understand. I am angry and also saddened. Trust is important in order to live a complete life. To feel that trust from people you love, and depend on, makes life a secure and happy place. No trust, no security, erodes your very being. Soon, you become someone who you barely recognize. Someone who questions everything. One who decides to do nothing. Who is scared and just plain tired of fighting so hard for respect and dignity.Who trust no one.

[lonelygloryrpg]

ANOTHER WIZARD JOINS THE FIGHT!

Congratulations, GREY! You have been accepted as the role of BENJY FENWICK with the face-claim of Edward Bluemel. We advise you to submit your account within 24 hours otherwise your role in the group will be reopened. You can review the next steps by clicking here. Welcome to the family!

The path to glory is a lonely one. Which do you dare to take?

the player  —

name: grey

age: 31

preferred pronouns:  she/her

timezone: AEST (Sydney); GMT +10

triggers: //**removed**//

ships and anti-ships: given how open all the characters are, i don’t have any particular thoughts about specific ships at the moment, and generally i’d have to see how things unfold during play with various people. Be prepared though, because anything long term would need to be the slowest of slow burns with where he currently is (though his mental state right now also leaves him vulnerable to emotional manipulation if anyone wants to go the fucked-up route).

preferred method of contact: discord, tumblr im

the tale  —

(tw: death)

Camden Prewett was the only child born to his parents, a pureblood couple living in South Wales. His father played Chaser for the Welsh team, while his mother (a Greengrass) worked part-time writing an advice column for the Daily Prophet. For a while, there was nothing to reveal that they weren’t the picture perfect wizarding family that they appeared to be.

As the years passed and Camden grew from toddler to boy, the lack of strange events about him started to cause his parents concern that only grew as more and more of his yearmates had outbursts of uncontrolled magic that changed the colour of their hair, caused sugar to coat the walls of their room, sent them floating near the ceiling, or - in one notable case - set their grandmother’s hair on fire. When he hadn’t so much as hiccuped a bubble by his fifth birthday, they started seeing a specialist at St Mungo’s. By his eighth birthday, his parents were telling people he was sickly and couldn’t leave the house – not that many of his previous friend’s still kept in touch as their parent’s carefully nudged them away.

It wasn’t until the September following his 11th birthday passed with no Hogwarts letter that his parents finally gave up hope and acknowledged their son was a squib. They enrolled him at Eton, where their correspondence was patchy at best. When he returned home for the summers, he found his father’s eyes sliding past him as though he were invisible and could see the blame in his mother’s eyes when the owl post came without any invitations to the high society events that used to fly thick and fast. The summer after he turned 17, he withdrew a small sum from the Gringott’s account his father had started when he was born (and eventually given up on adding to), converted it to muggle money, closed his eyes and stabbed at a map –  and went to Oxford instead of going home.

He didn’t exactly have a plan in mind, and what exactly might have occurred had he not walked past Fenwick Bakery and heard the familiar sounds of Welsh spilling into the street is likely a much sorrier tale. As it was, Mrs. Fenwick took one look at the scrawny boy dragging a school chest of books around with him as though it was the only thing he owned in the world (it was) and announced that he needed to be fed (he did). When he politely asked if they could direct him to a boarding house, Camden found himself caught in a whirlwind of activity that ended with him installed in the old study above the shop (“Nae, don’t argue lad. No one’s using it and our Ben went off to the Army last year, he did. Truth is, we could use a hand around the place from time to time.”).

Over the next several years, Camden worked part time at the bakery, put himself through Oxford University, fell in love with the Fenwick’s daughter Elizabeth and married her shortly after her graduation from the police academy (taking her name in the process), moved into the house directly beside the bakery and started a small accounting business which he ran from the same set of rooms above the bakery that he’d lived in previously. He gave little, if any, thought to the world he’d left behind.

Benjy and Anna were born three years later, Benjy following after Anna then as always. Both babies were healthy, alert, and apart from a tendency to cry when separated that the nurse said they’d grow out of, seemed as perfectly normal as sand. It never occurred to Camden, delighted with a life where nobody expected him to perform magic beyond the usual Dad-level magic of making food appear and hurts go away, that maybe magic wasn’t as done with his family as he was with it.

In retrospect, it probably should have.

‘In retrospect’ meaning after he’d walked into the twins’ room to find his toddlers giggling and playing with floating balls of coloured light and then gone and made himself a rather stiff cup of tea and had a bit of a sit down. And then down the street for a pint or two after he realised he was – somehow – going to have to explain the fact that both magic was real and that their children had it to Elizabeth.

For the most part though, the magical outbursts grew less frequent as they aged out of the most emotionally volatile years, although the two always shared a sort of uncanny awareness of each other. If one was out, the other always knew when they were coming home, moving to open the door before the other came into view of any of the windows. When Benjy broke his leg playing soccer in P.E., Anna started crying in her maths class on the opposite side of the school. Sometimes, they’d both wake up from the same dream.

(Camden was rather bemused to find how easily prepared everyone was to write that off. ‘Oh yes,’ they’d nod knowingly, ‘Twins. I know how that is. Why, I once knew a pair who…’)

Benjy, for the most part, was a quiet boy, a little shy and inclined to bookishness. He excelled at his schoolwork, did decently in the under-10s soccer team he joined, and the parents of his friends always commented on how polite he was. He liked spending time in the Bakery, helping Granna Fenwick knead the dough (and to this day still has a tendency to make his bread the muggle way).

Camden had sent one letter to his parents when he arrived in Oxford, another with an invitation to his wedding, and a third when the twins had been born. The first had received a vague set of well-wishes and a half-heartedly unconvincing reminder that he was welcome home; the second a note that they would be out of the country at that time and would be unable to attend (along with a set of magical tupperware that Camden had had to sneak out of the house before anyone attempted to use them) and the third an utterly impersonal congratulations card. Despite this, he wrote another when the twins received their Hogwarts’ letters, thinking they might be able to introduce the twins to some of their schoolmates ahead of time.

The letter he received back didn’t come from his parents at all. It came from their lawyer, with the news that his parents had died two years ago. It also contained the keys to two Gringotts vaults, with a letter explaining that his parents had set up the trusts on the off-chance one or both of their grandchildren should prove to have magic.

And thus went Benjy’s introduction to the Prewett family; they only cared if he had magic.

Anna was Sorted first, and the Hat had barely landed on her head when it sent her to the Hufflepuff table. Benjy’s turn, though, seemed interminably long. He clutched the edge of the stool, and thought longingly of just taking the thing off and going to sit with his sister. “Hufflepuff? Hmm, no, I think not. Oh, they’d take you, certainly, but that’s more about them than you. No, wouldn’t work, it’s all wrong for you. You’d stagnate. Ravenclaw, perhaps…” How long he sat there, balanced on the knife edge between two Houses, he never was certain. And perhaps, if the hat had sent him to Ravenclaw, his life would have followed a different path, an easier one.

A happier one.

Instead, it placed him in Slytherin, for reasons that took him seven years to understand.

Green was not a kind colour for a boy with a muggle name. It was the week before Christmas that things came to a head. Sent sprawling once again in the Charms corridor to a series of sniggers and drawling comments about mudbloods belonging in the dirt, flushed with shame and anger, he snapped back that he wasn’t a mudblood, he was a Prewett.

(It’s nothing compared to the shame that he feels at home, crying into his father’s shoulder because he hadn’t admitted Camden was a squib, had validated the belief that it mattered. He’s too young to know that that’s the root of his shame; all he knows is that somehow, in some way, he’s let his Dad down.

It’s the one and only time he claims the name of Prewett.)

He avoided as much as he could, tucking himself into hidden corners of the library with books and poured himself into his schoolwork to escape the slings and slights still aimed in his direction. The uncertainty of his blood status caused a general lessening in their volume, but the vitriol of those that remained took a nastier edge from those who decided that squib-born was worse than muggle-born.

Benjy… endured. He started to learn, in bits and pieces, to not react, to protect himself with distance.

(The winter break of his second year, he asks his mother how to disarm someone.)

It was his third year that bought a change in his circumstances. It came in two parts – the first, a skilfully convincing performance in duelling club that made several people reconsider certain choices in regards to the quiet boy. The second - an invitation from Slughorn, impressed by the boys skill in potions, to join the Slug Club. Anna was thrilled ( “You’re finally making friends! Oh Benjy!” ); Benjy knew the club was more about connections, and power, and influence – and he’d seen the effect of not having all three far too clearly to turn them down when they were offered.

It didn’t gain him acceptance, it didn’t make him friends, but it achieved what he’d wanted: to be left alone. And as the ice grew thicker and colder around him, he smothered the plaintive, lonely voice that asked if this is what he really wanted, and played the game. He learned to think not just of the moment but the turns and plays that loomed ahead, to manoeuvre his pieces into place.

(He doesn’t see the worry and concern in his family’s eyes as he withdraws even further into himself.)

After graduating with a high score on all of his N.E.W.T.S., Benjy took up an apprenticeship at St. Mungo’s on the recommendations of both Madame Pomfrey (who he had started assisting in the Hospital Wing after a few detentions in his second year) and Professor Slughorn. (Anna, watching her brother disappear each evening behind a towering stack of text books, informed him that he was crazy for extending school by another handful of years. Benjy informed her that she was crazy for hopping on a floating stick of wood for hours a day of risking her neck – and then made her read the sections of his textbook covering broken bones and impact traumas in detail.) He did well, though his bedside manner was noted as an area for improvement.

In the background, though, the war was still brewing, growing darker and grimmer as it went. When Benjy finished his apprenticeship, he strongly argued for moving somewhere else for his residency (to America, Australia… where ever, he didn’t care, as long as it wasn’t in the path of Voldemort). Anna had different plans, plans that were almost entirely opposed to Benjy’s. She didn’t want to leave, she wanted to stay and fight. There was a group, she said, fighting Him. And when they couldn’t fight they tried to help. (And besides, she’d just made first-string Chaser and she wasn’t going to start all over again, thank you very much).

Benjy could out-stubborn most people, but he could never stand up to his sister.  And so he ended up standing impassively behind Anna at their first Order of the Phoenix meeting, apparently unaware of the side-eyes and mutters his presence caused among those who subscribed to the idea that all Slytherins were evil incarnate or full of betrayal. Still, they thawed gradually, as they came back from mission after mission to find Benjy standing there, waiting silently with his medical supplies arranged neatly on the table, and asking no questions other than a few blunt ones about any injuries and their causes.

Benjy remained stiff, because he didn’t want to be ‘alright, for a Slytherin’ or ‘the good Slytherin’. He didn’t want to be the exception that proved the rule to them, he wanted them to realise that the rule itself was wrong. Still, Benjy’s chilly oddness became something familiar, and people started being more open with him about Order activities.

Six months later, Anna stumbled onto a gang of Snatchers going after a Muggle family and tried to intervene. Benjy was in the middle of examining a patient when suddenly he was choking on phantom blood, the taste on his tongue, struggled to draw breath and inhaled liquid instead. His nerves shrieking with agony as electric shocks bounded along them, burning the nerve path searingly as his heart convulsed under crushing weight and he struggled to breath, sight narrowing – and then, abruptly, horrifically, it stopped – and in it’s wake, a gaping emptiness as something that was never supposed to be torn was ripped out of him.

It wasn’t thought, it wasn’t planning, it wasn’t anything other than the purest fear and need and instinct that made him disapparate with no clear destination and nothing but a trace of shared sensation to follow but somehow, somehow, he made it.

She was already dead, left lying in the street with her eyes open. Besides the thin trail of blood escaping her mouth, she might have been simply stunned.

When he walked into the Order’s headquarters and laid her body silently on the table, many thought that would be the last they’d see of either of the Fenwick’s, that Benjy would take the opportunity to leave now that he didn’t have Anna holding him here. But three weeks later, he resurfaced again, still overly pale and with deep bruises under his eyes, in need of a shave. He didn’t talk, or meet anyone’s eyes, simply started to lay out his medical supplies again almost mechanically. (He became more active in meetings, which most ascribed to his sister’s death making things personal – they were right, to an extent, but not only in the way that they thought.)

Three months later, the Ministry fell and Benjy found himself in possession of knowledge that would quickly escalate him to the top of Voldemort’s Most Wanted if anyone knew he had it. Because he not only knew that Dumbledore was alive but how to find him – and the exact details of his injuries and recovery. This also, he found, put him into the odd position of go-between; when he got back from the Order, he’d fill in Dumbledore on what was going on, and in turn he’d try and vaguely guide things in the direction Dumbledore instructed, though he was limited to the occasional nudge here or there or dropping pieces of information that he’d ‘heard from a patient’, lest he give away Dumbledore’s secret.

[2017mdia4120-blog]

Shelby Harris - Friday 2/3/17

1. 

http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/315924-national-park-tweets-climate-facts-amid-trump-social-media

This article is about Trump’s choice to limit the social media usage of the EPA, Department of the Interior and the National Parks services after taking office due to tweets about climate change, the environment and his inauguration crowd compared to past presidents. I thought this was an interesting move on his part because it seemed to show that his administration understands how polarizing his policies on the environment are. The article brought up the unique point that Sean Spicer made to defend these actions, which was that the social media restrictions were simply due to the change of administration. Through all of the articles I’ve read on the social media restrictions, I had never read this argument. I was under the impression that Trump’s restrictions were unprecedented compared to past administrations and that this was openly acknowledged by his employees, so this argument slightly changed how I viewed the situation. Generally I think that it is in no way appropriate for the president to restrict communication from the government like this, especially in the case of the national parks because they simply tweeted scientific and verifiable facts, but Spicer’s defense reminded me that sometimes we need to look past the initial story and think more critically about what we’re reading. I don’t mean to say that I agree with his point in any way, I just mean that it’s important to remind ourselves to look past strong emotions and think about context sometimes.

2. 

http://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2017/01/22/trump-sends-mixed-messages-about-women-s-march-on-social-media.html

This article was about inconsistencies in two of Donald Trump’s tweets about the women’s march. I know that through social media analytics research it’s been found that there are two distinct parties tweeting from that same account, so I’m under the impression that Trump tweeted criticizing the march, while his social media team tweeted the message that was supportive of our right to protest. I think that this particular instance is fascinating because I can’t think of any other better examples in recent memory of a huge public figure like Trump having such inconsistent social media voices competing on the same account. It’s so obvious based on tone and vocabulary that his tweets are separate from these carefully designed PR statements, but this has never been addressed officially by him or his team. In fact, communication between Trump and his team was so sparse that often during the election, people close to him like Kellyanne Conway would be caught off guard by the things he tweeted, indicating that they had no plan in place. As someone studying to eventually get involved in social media analytics or management, it’s amazing to me that the president of the United States still has these communication issues.

3. 

http://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Trump-executive-order-memes-10900131.php

This article is a bit silly, but I think that it has a really strong deeper message about how people view and interact with Trump through social media. Someone took a clip of Trump showing the press a signed order and edited it to make it look like he was presenting childish drawings that he made to the crowd. This sparked a huge trend on social media that turned into several different sources putting out these new edits, all of which making the president look like he was displaying a child’s drawings. On the surface this just looks like a funny joke that people attached themselves to, but I think it’s sudden rise and massive popularity speak for how people view Trump as a leader. I think it’s also showcasing social media’s influence on how we protest. Social media is good for organizing meetings or speaking out against injustice directly, but I think the creation and circulation of these embarrassing gifs is also sort of an accessible form of protest in its own way. The gifs could be interpreted as commentary on how Trump’s work seems sloppy and inexperienced, and how he looks to the people around him and the media for his validation.

4.

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/trump-education-hires-social-media-democrats-234496

This article is about how several of Trump’s education hires were discovered to have shared sexist, racist and transphobic statements on social media. I saw this article as a window into how older or more disconnected generations view social media and don’t understand how it affects real-world situations. I also feel like it���s not surprising that Trump’s education picks would have this history given his own history of making bigoted remarks publicly in his past. To me, it seems like these people that make statements like this online as public figures don’t seem to understand that when you post something on the internet, it doesn’t disappear after a while. It stays there forever, and at any point people can go back through your history and compare your past remarks to what you say now. Social media is permanent, and when the remarks making you look ignorant and hateful are essentially coming from your own “mouth”, or your own profile, there isn’t really any strong defense for you. Social media has been around for awhile now, but we’re still seeing examples of politicians not aware that social media comments can be used against them, and I think that’s a really good indicator for how they value the things that they say or their word in general.

5. 

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/01/23/online-ugliness-inauguration-sparks-anti-trump-vitriol-on-social-media.html

I thought it would be interesting to pick an article that I don’t particularly agree with and talk about it, so I found an article from Fox News criticizing the amount of “vitriol” that Trump received on social media surrounding his election victory and inauguration. The author makes the argument that Trump has received too many hateful comments from those on the other end of the political spectrum, and that as a country we should be supporting our president. I strongly disagree with a few points that the author made, but I unexpectedly did find common ground in his condemning the people who have tweeted insults directed at Trump’s 10 year old son, Barron. I have seen a lot of horrible jokes made at the expense of Barron, and I personally think that making these comments about a 10 year old boy is absolutely not appropriate. As for the hateful comments leveled at Trump, the article makes the point in the first few sentences that people have a right to voice their discontent any way they want, which is exactly how I feel about the situation. Social media gives us a change to communicate more openly about the things that we disagree with, and I support take advantage of that ability as often as possible.