#cos i feel like a lot of folks ended up ignoring what came immediately before and after that section idk

[nenoname]

im surprised that most people's reaction to baby bill wasnt "god i want to punt that thing into the sun like a football" and instead was "omggg we should draw cutesy art with him and kid ford"

[sereisstuff]

ｗａｔｅｒ ｓｐｉｒｉｔ 2

merman!jungkook x chubby reader

summary of the tale - Jungkook was the son of Poseidon and you were a mortal what more was to come when you were saved by him, friendship?. or will this end in a tragic tale of war between love and law.

summary of this chapter - Jungkook being adamant on persisting this facade while you still fall clueless to his lie

genres - romance, friendship, comedy and angst (further on)

(two posts in one night ugh who am I?? I stan myself *goes back into hibernation after this* anyways folks I also have chapter 3 lined up for this series and am now writing chapter 4)

Your feet padded quickly across the broken wood of the wharf, jumping over the unhinged pieces and quickly regaining your own movements with a clenched fist, knuckles bearing a pale white with a light pink restoring the stretch.

“y/n” Jungkook happily yelled, his bright smile blinding you for a second as your own stretched upon your lips, you greeted back jokingly “Hey, waterboy” he pouted, enjoying the small nickname none the less.

“How was your day?” you asked, grabbing your can of coca-cola and chugging it down with a bag of chips dropped next to you, Jungkook sighed, elbows leaned against the edges of your feet as he began to express his feelings “not as bad as I thought but still boring, having something to look forward too was my motivation,” he said, watching you with an intense gaze of curiosity, his pale blue eyes flickering between the chips and the loathsome canned drink you held in between your fingertips.

Your foot nudged his shoulder as you glanced up from your half-eaten chip a goofy expression resting on your face “four months and I have yet to hear any other answer” you threw your chip into your mouth resting your weight on your arms as you leaned back.

“I-i’m not hiding anything if that’s what you’re implying” he stuttered, hair straddled in a mop of mess mirroring his worry but you could care less as you munched on your most favoured chips, sipping on the drink “well are you?” you questioned, gazing out into the open ocean. Clearly, you were joking but your fellow friend was adjusting to the fact that you indeed knew his ‘secret’ ….

“I’m kidding, don’t look so frightened” you chuckled, closing your eyes to embrace the shuddering feeling of the open breeze “so, how was your day, cherub?” jungkook cooed, you blushed as he uttered the nickname that brought a crimson red to your excessive cheeks, curling your lips into a smile you replied “class” was your bland answer.

You noticed his attention drawn to your chips grabbing the packet then offering him a few “try one” you demanded, Jungkook hesitated, soaked fingers reaching for a chip before you move the pack of delightful snacks away and grabbing a few for him “you might soak my chips” he understood what you meant “rude” although he still replied.

Placing them in his hands for him to enjoy only for him to close his eyes, chewing ever so slowly with the chip in between his teeth, you analysed his reaction “good?” you asked, his voice muffled with fulfilment as he placed his pinky up wriggling it in the air a sign that he did enjoy it, you chuckled, half confused but the other half enjoying the view.

“I’m glad, these are my favourite I’ll make sure to buy a few more packets next time I come” his eyes lit as you mentioned the delectable chips “well give me the rest then” Jungkook reached for your packet in the speed of light, you faster than him as you were in your element ripped the packet from his palms.

“No, no, nooo, these are mine” Jungkook huffed, blowing a damp strand from his glistening forehead “sorry, these are mine” you repeated in a high pitched tone shrugging your shoulders, eating the chips with a pleased smile until a splash of water came flying on your face wetting the edges of your hair and a loud evil chuckle emitting from your spirited friend, you spat out a few droplets of water before opening your eyes to jungkook smiling as he hummed an unknown tune with the chips in his mouth.

“What?- it’s only fair that I get this one, you can buy you some more, you have legs” he defended, shoving copious amounts of chips between his lips as his eyes sparkled at the feeling of a new taste melting in his mouth, you tilted your head slightly agreeing “valuable point if I had money!!” you ended clenching your teeth, muttering death threats.

“Money?” he added raising a brow.

“Something that helps me get these” you gestured to your half-eaten food, you switched positions, laying on your full belly with a bit of discomfort as you played with the water, making subtle splashes towards Jungkook who now finished his food placing the packet near you.

And then a splash spread across your face with a groan you looked at jungkook defeated “I swear, I’ll jump in the water and choke you” you threatened with empty words, jungkook rolled his eyes with a smirk “why? it wasn’t me” he coughed and you frowned not believing anything coming from his mouth

“Look” he pointed beneath the wharf and you trembled, why must you stare into an abyss of darkness all for the sake of finding out who splashed you “you know what I think I’m good” and then a giggle echoed from beneath you, not one but multiple. Children whispered as the hairs on your neck straightened.

“They do this all the time”

“They like to mess with humans a lot but their harmless” Jungkook continued, looking under the wharf, as he was about to summon them out he realized they would only listen to him if he used his title, shaking his head, unprepared to do so he ignored them, biting his lip nervously “just ignore them” 

You nodded sighing as you twirled the necklace in between your fingers admiring the glint it held once the metal meets the emitting light of the moon “it’s beautiful isn’t” Jungkook muttered, his head just inches away from yous as you just continued to admire it, humming in response.

“It is, how did you make it” he grinned, eyes moving down to his hands as your gaze followed helplessly, inching a bit more to the edge as the wind nipped at your skin, he began to sway his hands beneath the water, mesmerized by his movements, the water began to combust into his power following his every silent command.

Different shapes began to form from his palms, surrounding you as they twinkled, different shades of a clear blue shone around you in little groups, you giggled “Wow” unknown to jungkook who laughed with you happy his abilities could bring a joyful smile to your face and his for once.

Maybe it wasn’t the power that made him smile, your friendship was a gift and he cherished every hour you spend with him his only real friend not trying to kill him or befriend him due to his father, the one person who genuinely enjoyed his company as much as he enjoyed yours.

“Your amazing” you coed unaware of what left you mouth but that didn’t stop jungkook from blushing out of embarrassment “no, you are,” said Jungkook, his mind wandering off elsewhere totally forgetting that the water he placed around you was only there out of focus, as he began moving his hands to scratch his wet neck.

Delicate was all you could think of that was until the water came splashing down, soaking your body as you lay mortified, trembling at the touch of the gifts of the sea yet licking your lips before snapping your head up at your most favoured merman with a furious gaze “can you be any less playful” you growled getting up from your positing.

Jungkook raced to your aid immediately spitting apologies “I-i didn’t mean too, please don’t leave” he pleaded desperately, you grab your rubbish stuffing them in your pockets as you glared down at him, his sorry gaze fell on you as you curled your hands warning yourself not to fall into his trap.

“Please” he pouted, knowing now that is was all fun and games, water spirits we’re playful creatures always mistaken to be vicious yet here he was pouting at a mere mortal being asking for forgiveness after he spilt buckets worth of water all over her.

“Your a blessing and a curse?” you mumbled bending on your knees “but I really do have to go,” he sighed, this was always his least-liked part “why can't you stay for a bit longer” gazing into his pale pools which sunk ever so deeply into your own hues, sharing his longing for 

the company but you still had class and even so if you did want to stay there was no chance.

“I’m going on a school trip tomorrow be it so like a small camp or a class picnic” you watched as he furrowed his brows, you tilted your head “but you wouldn’t know what that is would you?” you looked at the moon then at your friend, sadly part of you wished he did, the things you guys could do if he could come on to land, as for now you just enjoy every second of your guys friendship.

You ruffled his damp mop of brown locks, smiling in reassurance “I’ll only be down at the emerald lake not too far from here, okay, I’ll see you tomorrow at the same place” you got up but not before he pulled you back down “ah, you’re forgetting something” now this time you were confused, he turned his head now facing his chiselled jawline your way, you gulped.

“Ah” you reached out, about to awkwardly rub his side profile before he slapped your palm looking at you with disappointment as he shook his head “tsk, I meant a kiss on the cheek idiot” you made the loudest noise of understanding when you heard his response, rolling his eyes to once again try to get your lips on his soft cheek.

“There,” you said proudly after kissing his velvet cheek “be safe” he shouted as he watched you fade away, sighing again, he hated watching you walk away leaving him here with his thoughts knowing he’ll die if he ever left the water, not knowing whether or not he’ll ever see you again or with deafening thoughts of you losing interest in him, but he laid a thick armour of bravery on going into battle of mind with headstrong thoughts that you will come back, and you weren’t like that.

“My prince” one of the many guards swam from beneath the depth of the sea, gills adjusting to the infuriating pollution of air

Jungkook slumped as those words entered his ears “yes” he turned around sulking back to the kingdom.

“Jungkook” came a bustling voice, as he tumbled towards jungkook with open arms “Seokjin” his brother crashed on him, invading his privacy as he landed bubbled kisses on to his cheeks with a smirk “you went and saw that girl again didn’t you!!” Seokjin whisper shouted as jungkook growled “shush” his brother rolled his eyes “tell me, is she beautiful?” Seokjin ignored he pleads as he flicked his Finn when they both entered a bubble floating in the water.

Bubbles acted as soundproof rooms so in this case, they could speak freely “of course she is” jungkook replied with a smirk, remembering your face as you giggled at one of his fishy puns which you thought were hilarious due to their out of earth context.

“Don’t turn this into some angsty love story” warned jin, gasping for his life “maybe you’ll be the jack and she’ll be rose” Jungkook laughed playing with some floating bubbles that dispersed from the enlargened bubble they sat in “I can breathe underwater if you clearly remembered?” jungkook said sarcastically.

“Anyways it’s law even if I did, we all know what would happen” Jungkook groaned rolling his head back, Seokjin inched to the exit of the bubble “don’t tell anyone” jungkook cried, easily throwing those thoughts out for the sake of his brothers loyalty ‘I won’t” Seokjin promised “only if you tell me which beach you threw my titanic book at” 

“Are you being serious”

“very” Seokjin rejoiced watching his brother groan in agony “fine, I hid it in the tropical islands, now shoo you peasant” and with those words, Seokjin left his brother eagerly to find his book leaving jungkook to rest in his bubble.

[nonbinaryresource]

ive been thinking abt this for a little while & have been needing to ask someone abt it. i am nb & have always considered myself trans but recently ive not been vibing with the trans label bc i am so sick of seeing ppl exclude & invalidate nb ppl. ik that i shouldnt stop doing smth just bc other ppl r being assholes but its so tiring to see ppl constantly say how u dont belong or arent valid. srry this is long & kinda rambly i just dont really know how to feel abt it

I will directly address your ask, but I’m going to start by telling you a story about my journey with identifying as asexual and queer.

.

When I was about 11, my friends suddenly started drooling over magazines and calling people hot, and I didn’t know what it was, but I knew I did not feel whatever it is my friends were feeling.

Until I was about 16/17, this part of me remained a mystery to me and to my friends. I never had crushes, I never found people hot, I never liked complimenting people physically, I was uncomfortable with sex on TV, and I didn’t even like platonic touch. Now my group of friends were all repressed and closeted queer folk, so I didn’t have to deal with “being left behind” as my friends dated. But the later we got into high school, the more my friends began discovering and exploring their sexualities.  A freshman became a part of our friend group and was openly trans and gay. One friend came out as gay. Another as bi. They started commenting more and more about other’s looks and having crushes.

Still, there was nothing on my end. My friends used to think I was just being vague and secretive because this is what I tended to be like. I don’t think they’ve ever realized how much of it was that I truly didn’t know or understand what my lack of sexual feelings meant or that it could even mean anything. I used to just consider it a “nothingness” of myself. Until, by complete chance, I came across the term asexual. I immediately connected with it. It explained so much that I didn’t even know I needed explained.

I came out quickly after that and I was really excited and happy and proud to know who I was and what how I felt meant. My friends were great and supportive. My mom was a little ignorant but overall supportive. AVEN was great and a community for me. But if I tried to talk about it anywhere else online…

Well, the effects of how people treated me would fester for years. See, I came out as asexual before exclusionism (the specific movement of anti-aro and anti-ace erasure and gatekeeping from lgbt+ spaces) was a movement or a named thing. Yet exclusionist attitudes were exactly what I faced. My queer friends all completely accepted me as one of them and I helped co-run our school’s new GSA with the rest of them. But online, as a teen, I was facing 30+ year olds telling me I wasn’t queer and that I was just trying to seem special and that I needed to shut up about my asexuality and my experiences and that I wasn’t valid and that asexuality wasn’t a real thing and that even if asexuality was a real thing it wasn’t valid and it certainly didn’t matter.

I graduated high school and went to college and was no longer really in touch with my group of friends. I therefore completely cut myself off from any lgbt+/queer community, even though a friend invited me to join the college’s queer association. I stopped participating so much in online asexual spaces. I become wrapped up in other things.

A couple of years went by and a lot of things in my life changed. By chance, mod applications for a blog about aro and ace headcanons for a fandom I enjoyed came across my dash. I had extra time on my hands and thought I could help, so I applied and was accepted. This increased my exposure to the aspec community again and thrust me back in… just around the time exclusionism was becoming a specific and named movement of bigotry.

At the same time I resisted these ideals, I was also still hurt and unhealed from what I’d gone through as a teen. I internalized a lot of the hatred and gatekeeping. I was so hurt and so tired. I just wanted to be able to exist in peace. And people I considered myself one of were harassing me and dismissing even my biromanticism. So I struggled with my identity and my asexuality. I did not specifically become an exclusionist, but I turned my back on the lgbt+ community and spaces. I did not consider myself lgbt+ because I learned that doing so only brought pain and upset and made me feel alone and isolated. I didn’t speak a lot on exclusionism or inclusionism, but at some point I did make a plea to my fellow aspecs to just let the larger community go and be our own community and accept that maybe we could be straight. I did it out of desperation and hurt, wanting to stop feeling targeted and attacked and to stop seeing the fighting on my dash and in the tags. I just wanted us all to be happy and feel accepted and supported.

On that post, one wonderfully kind and patient person opened up a discussion with me, explaining their own hurts over exclusionism and being so damn exhausted of them and fellow aspecs being targeted and excluded and written out and not supported and feeling like they had to split their asexuality from their other queer identities and how being asexual was a part of them and how it had strongly shaped their experiences, especially with realizing and coming to terms with the other parts of their queer identity. And through their raw honesty I came to realize… I had never stopped to process the harassment I had faced and the pain and hurt that cut me so deeply.

It was a changing point for me. I realized that I had handled my pain in a bad way and had ended up lashing out at other aspecs instead of the people who were actually hurting me. I realized how much I had hurt myself and held myself back and cut myself down and dismissed parts of myself trying to fit into the box exclusionists had laid out for me, as if I could ever made them happy enough to stop harassing me and just let me exist. I cut myself down for them, but the truth is that exclusionists don’t just want aspecs “out” of the community. They want to hurt us. They want us to hurt. They want us to doubt ourselves. They want to feel strong and powerful, and they feel they can achieve this through bullying us. Perhaps some, like myself, are trying to appeal to their oppressors by pointing out another vulnerable group they could target more/instead. They are passing on hurt instead of standing up to it and so they are actually festering in hurt instead of changing anything.

Today, I am a staunch inclusionist. I understand myself and the issues aspecs face much better. I am a more compassionate person regarding the confusion and upset aros and aces have over their identity and their place in the world. I feel more stable and confident regarding my identity as an asexual - and now as an aromantic - queer person who is lgbt+.

But it was a long, hard, difficult journey to get here. It was full of a lot of turmoil. I wish I would have had a happier journey where I felt more supported and accepted, and I hope I can help provide more stability and support for future generations to not have to go through what I did.

.

My point (or one among a few, anyway) is that I deeply and personally understand how you are feeling and the decision facing you now. As someone who went through a very similar experience, my advice to you is to take care of yourself and to prioritize your mental health.

It’s okay if you can’t handle identifying as trans right now. Maybe you do need some space from the label (and definitely from the hatred and gatekeeping). Maybe you need to pull back from certain communities or blogs or discussions.

However, I will say that not identifying as trans may not bring the peace you desire. It may end up making you feel even more isolated. Not identifying as LGBT+ certainly didn’t help me. It was reactionary and it only made me feel like there were less spaces for me. That said, you may find peace in this. But I think the bigger action to take is to separate yourself from those who are saying harmful things more than to separate yourself from a label you feel really suits you. Use your block button liberally. Don’t force yourself to partake in spaces where gatekeeping is allowed or encouraged. Follow and listen to more people who are inclusive.

I think burnout like this is unfortunately pretty common. You do not have to force yourself to face this hatred or exhaustion because you think it’s the right thing to do. It’s okay to pull back and just take care of yourself. Just work on some self-care. Work on building up a community of people around you who don’t resort to bigotry and hatred and exorsexism and gatekeeping and identity policing. Engage only with what you can actually, honestly handle.

We will confront and move past this bigotry only by acting as a united front. The responsibility for improving things isn’t on any one person’s shoulders. And no one needs to be on the front lines 100% of the time, especially at the cost of their own wellbeing. Take care of yourself and rest now before you completely burn out and break down.

You do not have anything to prove, okay? I have both hope and faith that there is a lot more to your journey - a lot more good things and a lot more happiness and belonging. Take whatever time it is you need to help heal yourself and recover from the hurt and harassment that’s been plaguing you. You are important and you matter, much moreso than whatever label you use at whatever point in time. It will be okay.

I am here for you.

~Pluto

[jewish-privilege]

Being an ethnically ambiguous person comes with a lot of privileges; however, answering the constant questions about my identity is not one them. Like many other exoticized women, I am asked on an almost daily basis: “What are you?” and “Where are you from?” followed up with “No really, where are you from?” after I reply “Brooklyn” to their line of questioning.  

When you tell folks in America that you are Romani, nearly 100 percent of the time they will ask if you mean Romanian. Often times, I will reply “No, Romani, which is gypsy but please don’t call us that because it’s a slur.” I’ve learned that Americans are familiar with the word “gypsy,” using it to describe a vagabond, free-spirited lifestyle, and have a faint idea of us as mythical creatures, but are ignorant to the plight of actual Romani people.

So, who are Romani? More importantly, why do we need to remove the word gypsy from our vocabulary?

Simply put, Romani are the largest ethnic minority in Europe, originating from northwest India, migrating through the Middle East, and some through North Africa, to Europe. There are Romani living around the world, with estimates of 10 and 12 million living in Europe and another million in the US. Europeans imposed the word “gypsy” on Romani when they came to Europe, believing that we originated from Egypt because of our dark features. Romani have a history of persecution in Europe; it is estimated by Roma historians that over 70 to 80 percent of the Romani population was murdered in the Holocaust, a fact that is little known or recognized. Even lesser known, Romani experienced chattel slavery in Romania for over 500 years ending in 1860.

Although it is rarely talked about, the situation for Romani has not improved much; we are still victims of hate crimes, receive inadequate health care and housing, experience segregated education, and die in prison. While policies in the US systematically discriminate in covert ways, many of the policies against Romani in Europe are overt, which is apparent through opinions from political officials. In 2013, Zsolt Bayer, co-founder of the Fidesz Party in Hungary, said, “A significant part of the Roma are unfit for coexistence. They are not fit to live among people. These Roma are animals, and they behave like animals. When they meet with resistance, they commit murder. They are incapable of human communication. Inarticulate sounds pour out of their bestial skulls. At the same time, these Gypsies understand how to exploit the ‘achievements’ of the idiotic Western world. But one must retaliate rather than tolerate. These animals shouldn’t be allowed to exist. In no way. That needs to be solved — immediately and regardless of the method.”

These ideas are not reduced to words; according to a study by the National Federation of Gypsy Liaison Groups and Anglia Ruskin University, 9 out of 10 Roma children have suffered racial abuse in the UK. In Hungary, 60 percent of Romani live in secluded rural areas, segregated neighborhoods, and settlements. The fact that 90 percent of Romani in Europe live below the poverty line is an even more extreme illustration of current living conditions for Romani.

We cannot have a conversation about the use of “gypsy” without mentioning what it specifically means to be Romani and a woman facing racism, classism and sexism, excluded from traditional feminist and Romani activist movements. Romani women experience particularly disparate treatment in the areas of education, reproductive health care, and in the labor market. Only 1.6 percent of Romani women attend college in Romania, while 90 percent of Romani women are unemployed in Hungary. Romani women in Slovakia, Hungary, and the Czech Republic were victims of forced sterilization, a practice that ended less than 10 years ago. Romani infant mortality remains an issue; it is double the national average in the Czech Republic. These policies that impact actual lives of Romani women are upheld by cultural attitudes, some of which people don’t notice they are perpetuating.

...The media offers two stereotypes of Romani women: the beggar, who is dirty and exploiting social welfare, and a hypersexualized magical being who threatens the patriarchy. So, while the use of the word “gypsy” seems innocent, it is dangerous to Romani women. It conjures up a romanticized image of poverty and sexualization, which doesn’t acknowledge that there is nothing romantic about being a victim of institutionalized racism. There is nothing romantic about the link between perceived uncontrollable sexuality and forced sterilization. There is nothing romantic about being a victim of domestic violence but afraid to speak out because law enforcement won’t believe you or it will further oppress your community. There is nothing romantic about lacking political power and representation, and being left out of both anti-racist and feminist politics.

However, that doesn’t stop the rampant consumerism and pop culture references associated with “gypsy.” Just to name a few examples: The Gypsy Shrine, Gypsy Warrior, Shakira’s song “Gypsy,” Fleetwood Mac’s song “Gypsy,” Cher’s song “Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves,” and the latest, Netflix’s original series Gypsy. There are over 2,000 “gypsy” costumes on Amazon and over 250,000 “gypsy” items for sale on Etsy. When folks unknowingly or knowingly profit off of the word “gypsy,” claim they have a “gypsy soul,” or use “gypsy aesthetic” for a day at Coachella, they are reinforcing racist stereotypes of Romani women and dehumanizing us. People in the US must recognize the link between the language we use and how cultural depictions inform public policy for marginalized groups. Beyond language and the word gypsy, this is about how gypsies are struggling for liberation, and how Romani women suffer while gadje (non-Romani) profit off of our likeness. So before you put on that coin skirt and scarf, or proclaim your “free-spirited gypsy-ness,” remember that we already exist and will be always be gypsies and Romani.

---

I’m sick of seeing celebrities who are so good with anti-racism (and even antisemitism, which almost never happens!) “reclaim” the g-word when they, as non-Romani, have no right. When they are confronted with the history and present of the word, they either ignore it or scoff at the possibility that they are acting in a racist manner. I’m not Romani and it feels like a slap every time I see it; I can only imagine how painful and exhausting it is for a Romani person to deal with it on a daily basis.

[ocoree]

Something I realized that I feel needs to be said.

Hey guys.

I know I've been kinda silent on this front, with the craziness of work, heatwave-sickness, coordinating with local artists to hopefully start up a co-op to finally have some personal studio space to get my butt out of the apartment (yay?) and get some serious headway on projects, and small project concepts being mulled over. But..

There's something on my mind that has been rocketing around my skull and rib cage since I had a random spike of self-reflection during a low-morale swing, and I feel the message it has in itself is really important to share with people, especially folks with young kids. And that message starts with a phrase I uttered at the tender age of four almost three decades ago  in the climax of extreme despair and devastation -

"I wish I was never born."

I'm going to need to preface why this statement should be a warning flag, because what happened to me back then has led to probably one of the loneliest and confusing lifespans I've had to contend with in the battle to retain the sense of self from that singular point.

Sure, I started out as your typical toddler; always getting into things, throwing tantrums, discovering how you can interact with the world... not putting your chin on a piping hot pizza cooling rack in your excitement for dinner to be ready... you know... kid things.

That only lasted until I started realizing that I was doing more things wrong in my parent’s eyes, than good. The longer that kept happening, the lower and lousier I was feeling with each failure and resulting discipline/punishment to the point I became extremely anxious on the point of severe panic when I began going to elementary school.

I don't remember what had happened when I said that phrase for the first time, but I remember the most poignant one that started the snowball rolling. My parents were in the garage with some neighbor friends socializing, and I couldn't take the strain of being a failure and disappointment in my parents eyes any further, and said them to my mother.

She laughed.

Reflecting on that moment made me realize that was the point I lost trust in the being that was supposed to be the foundation that supported my becoming my own person, lost the trust in any adult really. If adults laughed at me for crying out to them in desperation when I had no other words to express what I was feeling, ignored me when I curled under a chair hoping that if I held my breath long enough I would simply disappear from existence, who could I trust?

Certainly not my peers. I moved too much to learn how to socialize properly (and long before someone gave me the label of high functioning aspergers because of it) with other people, and had to learn to engage myself in my own head quietly tucked away in my room where I wouldn't disappoint anyone. Moving as part of a military family meant I was nervous, wary, and often resulted in incidents where the principal calling my parents was almost daily. No one saw the warning signs that something was psychologically wrong with me then. Other kids often found a reason to pin the blame on me, so I had to learn to lash out verbally in primal gutteral growls and glaring to keep what was left of 'self' safe.

You know the saying, "It's when kids are silent that you should be worried."?

That wasn't the case for me. Being silent meant I wouldn't be in trouble, would be ignored, under the radar and left to my own imagination that would later fuel my artistic processes.

Coming to Maine in the summer and winter was probably the only time I could escape that reality, and remember what it's like to be a kid again, even if my body was a few years older than I was mentally able to handle at the time. I always looked forward to coming here where I could blast down to the shore to swim from the house when I wanted, go kayaking, and toddle down to the local thrift shop on my own when in the 'city', where my stepmom had her photography studio at the time, and buy a couple bucks of pipecleaners on my own to occupy my time making dragons and other creatures.

That changed when I decided to move up there. My suicidal depression became a tool against me. I was still making mistakes, and not understanding how to fix them, or myself, due to how wildly different and extreme each social situation within the family environment was. I was a workhorse primarily - doing chores and grounds keeping through the day, expected to be up by a certain hour; later becoming the exclusive food supplier/cooker and the convenient in-house mediator to the bipolar rages of one of the parents while being expected to hold a job after I got booted out of my mother’s home again when she was fed up with my damaged psyche. I had to learn many skills a young teen/adult should not have needed to learn just to survive living in that house.

They're useful today, but I feel alienated because of how I had to learn them, and thinking, "These are skills no one else my age has because they likely didn't have to learn to watch faces and body language, anticipate what people are going to do/need, and constantly watch all sides of the immediate area for 'threats' with experience in being socially/psychologically neutral-calm when dealing with antagonizing situations, thus treating everyone around them like a cornered wild animal."

When I was with that family, my suicidal flareups went from, "Oh you're just being dramatic." to "You're just thinking that so you can try to create the most damage possible to me because you’re always out to hurt everyone, but it isn't going to work on me!" Often accompanied with triumphant patronizing glares, when on the flip side I hear from the same mouth about how the sibling took his life because he couldn't take the pain from what his family did to him any longer.

So non-blood relatives can be sympathised for their need to end their lives, but I get ridiculed for it. How many times have I looked at a kitchen knife morbidly wondering how it'd  feel? What it'd be like to just flee from the house down the road to that dock I once swam off of and just not come back up? I still flinch away from the knife if someone else holds it and swings it in my direction, and I still pull myself out of it by reminding myself of all the projects I want to do, and my animals that were the only things that were a solid emotional anchor even when they too were threatened to be ripped away from me a few times.

Heck... I almost committed to it one night after a particularly bad row when I was at the end of my wits in what to do, as nothing I did was good enough, nothing I said was the right thing, but I still stopped myself at the edge of the house deck in the torrential downpour shivering in the pitch black while a war raged in my head until my dad came out to stand beside and begged me to come back inside the house.

Why could other people do it and be sympathized, but I be villanized? Dismissed?

It's not something I bring up a lot, even when I vent to my friends about general frustrations and low-morale depressed thoughts to try to tough it out, because I learned that my needs and stresses come last to everyone else. Everyone else comes first, and take priority to every shred of emotion out of me until I have little left for myself to the point sometimes I just sit at the desk in blank torpor unable to bring myself to draw in my favorite means of meditation and self-charging for the next day of demands.

These days, all I feel like I want to do is just sleep.. sleep and maybe.. not wake up at all.. I still feel the inner 'self' yelling at me that there's still things to do, but that voice is not as loud as it used to be, and I'm having to hide away from the world more and more to re-connect with that inner fire to keep it alive.

So.. thank you to all who took the time to read that, and I wish to say it again to parents with children, or anyone who is relation to a child that hears these words -

"I wish I was never born."

- Please... PLEASE... Stop and pay attention. REALLY listen to the delivery.

What transpired to cause those words to be said may be minor in older eyes, but something had to have snapped to cause a CHILD to say words that they should never have reason to say.

I've learned things that have helped me in life since those days, but the price I had to pay for it is not a cost that should be met.

[starberry-cupcake]

Overall thoughts on Les Mis BBC

I decided, after all those summaries I made, to write what I hope can be a more coherent opinion on what I thought of the adaptation as a whole. I wanted to make sure to state that my critical reactions weren’t for entertainment purposes only or exaggerated for the fun of it but based on real concerns I’ll expand in this post. This is like the “serious companion”, if you will. 

I don’t know if anyone cares about it at this point, but I feel that even though my summaries helped me go through the immediate frustrations in a (mostly) lighthearted way, it’s the distance from having watched it all what gave me a little bit more clarity to order my thoughts. 

I’ve established my opinion isn’t worth a damn, I’m not smart or knowledgeable enough for this fandom and, needless to say, these are all my personal opinions, take them with a grain of salt or a bathtub of it. I’m a worthless nobody and my words have no value, but the internet is still (sort of) free, so here I go.  

Introduction: the initial news, Andrew Davies & the PR mess

BBC announced the adaptations of 2 media phenomenons which started as books that I love so much I’m considering tattoos of both. And, for both of them, my main concerns were on the person adapting the script. 

On the one hand, there’s His Dark Materials, a book series that made me the person I am today, pretty much. One of the directors is none other than Tom Hooper (what are the odds) and the script adaptation was in the hands of Jack Thorne. Cursed Child Jack Thorne. Yeah, not thrilled about that. 

Surprisingly enough, His Dark Materials was given a projection of 3 possible seasons, rather than just one, the 3rd hasn’t been yet confirmed but the fact that the script was made thinking on one season per major book on the series, and that each season has 8 episodes planned, at least gives me a bit of hope, even if the person adapting it isn’t in my favorites list. 

Les Mis, on the other hand, went to the hands of Andrew Davies, another person I don’t trust. 

I’m one of those folk who was never too fond of the ‘95 version of Pride and Prejudice, mainly because of how Darcy was made into a sort of sex symbol, where his flaws were seen as “attractive marks of broody character” rather than vulnerability and with gratuitous sexualizing fanservice. I know a lot of people love it for that and that’s cool, you do you, but it’s not for me. 

Then, when he adapted War and Peace, he talked about adding more sex to it and had the Kuragin siblings shown explicitly sleeping together from the get-go in episode 1 and that’s when I stopped watching (there were other things I didn’t like but that one was my limit). 

To make matters worse, it made me weary that Les Mis was getting an overall amount of only 6 episodes whereas HDM was getting a potential 24-ish. That was an odd choice. 

So, as you can guess, I knew coming in that Davies writing the script, a script with a limited time-frame for the story, was a huge risk. 

But, on the other hand, as the cast was announced, I got excited. Especially for people like Archie Madekwe, Turlough Convery, Erin Kellyman and some famous actors like David Oyelowo. Their filming logs on social media, how nice they all were and how much fun they had filming made me happy. I felt that maybe these great folks could turn around whatever the scrip had to disappoint me. 

But then came all the PR stuff. 

The more I read Davies & co. talking about the show, the less hope I had for it. Talking very badly about the musical and the 2012 movie, calling female characters “not complicated”, insulting Cosette, saying that Javert’s lack of explicit heterosexual sex in the brick was reason enough to push a homosexual narrative centered on an unhealthy behavior, patting themselves on the back for having a diverse cast as if no other adaptation of Les Mis had ever done it before...even their talks about Fantine’s make up made me weary. And, let’s not forget their ridiculous insistence on not having songs. 

By the time the show premiered, my hopes had dwindled. The excitement I had upon knowing there would be another Les Mis adaptation so soon, a BBC one at that, and with a cast I had hopes for, was blurred by all the nonsense of PR and I was more afraid than hopeful. 

In the end, after having watched it completely, and as you can see for my summaries, I was heavily disappointed. I’ll try to list some of my biggest concerns, in no particular order. 

I can’t be super extensive about it, because there are a lot of points to go over, but there are a lot of amazing opinion pieces out there about specific issues, so you don’t need me for that. 

Anyway, let’s delve into some of my biggest problems with BBC Les Mis.

Problem #1: The portrayal of femininity

Solely by the fact that Davies stated that women on Les Mis “are not terribly complicated” you know that things are not going to go all too well on that front. 

I’m going to pick 3 characters to showcase how badly women were portrayed in this: Fantine, Cosette and Éponine. I’ll leave other characters for another section. 

1. Fantine

I’ve talked about Fantine before, upon receiving some questions on my summaries, but I’ll try to explain it all in a more understandable way. 

The lens in which Fantine was seen was sexist from the get-go. The way in which the story was framed made the audience complicit in the choices she was making, choices that were negatively regarded by the narrative perspective alone. Her “fall to disgrace” was framed as her own decisions being incorrect, silly mistakes that were easily avoidable, and never regarded as the result of living in a society that was unable to contain her and see her as a valid human being. But we’ll get to that when we talk about the politics (or lack thereof) on this show. 

Like I said in my response before, the way in which Fantine is portrayed, even in the musical itself, varies greatly performance to performance. Patti LuPone performing I Dreamed a Dream after Fantine gets dismissed isn’t like Anne Hathaway performing it after she has become a prostitute and neither carry the same implications as Allison Blackwell in the Liesl Tommy’s Dallas modern production, influenced by her experience in apartheid South Africa. 

Still, the key element to developing Fantine’s portrayal, when it comes to sexism and the showcasing of her environment, has two layers: the actual oppression showcased in the source material and the contemporary interpretation or lens in which an adaptation will view it. 

In this version, Fantine’s character was toned down in her attitude. She was less reactive than in the brick, a lot more passive, a lot more of a tragic figure, which paired up with the fact that this adaptation covered her entire “fall to ruin”, from meeting Tholomyès onward, made her a victim of everything that happened to her. 

A victim of her own bad decisions, though, not of a social context that was failing her. 

But the worst part is in how the focus of the show is placed. You can have Fantine being a summarized version of herself, with less spunk, and still showcase through her that the circumstances she was in were permeated by an escalating force of social disadvantage and oppression. 

This adaptation made, like I said, the audience complicit in Fantine’s decisions as if she was a princess in a movie, unaware of the threats she was getting herself into by her own naive foolishness. 

Tholomyès is blatantly shady, clearly dishonest, not at all charming or in any way trustworthy and Fantine gets a “voice of reason” on a friend who tells her various times that he will eventually leave. There are a lot of red flags, blatant for the audience, that Fantine chooses to dismiss. The show focuses less on why Fantine trusted Tholomyès and more on her making a clear bad choice we all knew was doomed from the start. 

This becomes a problem once again when she chooses to leave Cosette with the Thénardiers. They are very clearly shady, very blatantly aggressive and ready to take advantage of her, visibly manhandling Cosette in front of her and asking for more money on the spot, and Fantine again naively ignores all of this. 

They do it again when she enters employment in Montreuil. She talks to Valjean himself in this version, and is asked repeatedly and with kindness if she has a family. The scene makes it seem as if she could have easily told the truth, especially because we were previously given a scene in which Fantine hears a speech talking about how Valjean is the Best Person Ever and could potentially help her. Still, she chooses to repeatedly lie and the show makes it seem less for necessity and more for a sense of pride of some sort. 

(Also, as a foreshadowing of creepy Valjean to come, there are some insinuations from her co-workers that she could seduce Valjean, which is confusingly placed and awkwardly added where it is.)

Then, after she’s dismissed, there’s a man in a post office who asks her, after receiving letters from the Thénardiers (to which she reacts a lot more passively than in the brick), why she doesn’t bring Cosette to live with her, in a condescending tone, as if he was stating the obvious. Fantine responds again as if she was doing it out of pride. The same man is the one to suggest her to start selling her body and then tell her she should have done it before selling her hair and teeth because “nobody would pay for her after that”. 

Every turn we’re met with ways in which Fantine’s decisions are seen as foolish in the eyes of the viewer. It’s like Blue’s Clues or Dora the Explorer when they ask stuff to the audience for the kids to say they shouldn’t do something. It’s patronizing as fuck, is what it is. And, yes, sexist. 

These narrative choices are sexist because they erase most of the social and political situation which made Fantine vulnerable in the first place, to push the tragic drama as if she was a victim of being “too naive”. It’s sexist because it makes the audience know from the get go that what Fantine is doing is a “bad choice”, easily avoidable mistakes that whoever writes is smart enough to sense are bad but poor naive Fantine can’t understand. 

It isn’t just that she’s called a whore a lot of times, that she’s smashed against walls and the ground hard enough that Lily Collins was actually hurt, that she’s shown explicitly being used by a patron on the street. It’s that all of it is done with the added layer of her having “chosen wrong”. That everything is framed as the consequences of actions that the narrative voice, as well as the audience, are smart enough to know are wrong, but poor little Fantine can’t handle.

Like many things in this adaptation we’ll see later, Fantine’s journey is framed more like the tragic end of a woman who didn’t know how to choose right and was punished for said choices rather than the result of an unfair society which didn’t allow women any freedom to choose and didn’t see them as worthy human beings. 

2. Cosette

When Andrew Davies called Cosette a “pretty nauseating character” in need of change, I knew I was up against one of those people. 

Cosette is probably one of the most underestimated female characters in literature, and adaptations tend to do her dirty very often. I’m not even fond of her interpretation in the musical all that much, which goes in tow with the interpretation of Éponine. I’ve seen my fair share of men on youtube claiming Gavroche should be the face of Les Mis rather than Cosette, I’ve received my fair amount of messages claiming she’s The Worst, I’ve seen it all. 

This adaptation does with Cosette something that, out of context, I would have thought impossible. They manage to somehow attempt to make her more “active” (they would call it “strong” but I have problems with that denomination) while making her even more of a helpless victim. It’s a pretty impressive oxymoron. 

Let’s begin with little Cosette. 

This adaptation does something very weird in that it only showcases Cosette’s storyline as a child when it serves other characters, but then intends to build upon the abuse by mentioning it or making it clear that adult Cosette remembers it well. 

So we see Cosette when she’s important to Fantine’s storyline, the Thénardiers’s storyline or Valjean’s storyline, but not much about her on her own, aside from one time she’s looking at dolls and another time when she’s being beaten up by Madame Thénardier, which could be also a moment for the Thénardiers and not solely for Cosette’s narrative. 

What I mean with this is that the view on her is reduced to a side character rather than a main one and, with that, her perspective on her own abuse isn’t taken into account. You don’t know how Cosette feels about things, you don’t see her perspective on it, you only see what others do to her but never get to see her side of it. For all the musical erases of her narrative, at least they give her Castle on a Cloud. 

It’s with little Cosette where we start to see this weird sense of sexually charged perception towards her relationship with Valjean. 

For some inexplicable and highly alarming reason, it’s implied by various witnesses in different occasions that Valjean’s intentions with Cosette may be inappropriate, and I would have let it slide as just people thinking The Worst out of living in a social context in which The Worst is most often the truth, hadn’t that perception carried throughout the series and mixed with Valjean’s erratic and possessive characterization. 

When Cosette grows up, she gains a bit more focus, but she also starts to be charged a lot more sexually. 

Both Cosette and Éponine are sexualized and objectivized in this adaptation. This will be addressed later, but most often than not this sexualization acts as an accessory to a narrative about masculinity. 

Cosette’s virtue, beauty and body are talked about and even exposed in various moments. They tell her she can’t be a nun because that would be “a waste of her beauty”. In that dreadful scene in the dress shop I talked about in summary 4, the shop assistant again implies that Cosette is Valjean’s lover and lets him see her in undergarments through the curtain, with clear intentions. Valjean’s erratic persona is intent on separating her from Marius, explicitly telling her he’s worried that she will be taken advantage of by men, bringing up Fantine’s history to her with that in mind, while putting her in danger and in the company of the Thénardiers again, in more than one occasion. 

Adult Cosette has visible signs of the trauma she suffered, which is an interesting direction to go. I haven’t seen an adaptation taking such a big route on her remembering her past abuse, and is a change that worked in performance, Ellie did some great visible responses like covering herself when Valjean wakes her up or going fight or flight every time she sees Thénardier. She is visibly upset when Marius gives him money and looks both angry yet still hesitant when she sees the man for the last time. 

But all that kind of loses its importance when the men around her not only don’t give a shit but also do their worst. 

Valjean manhandles her, harms her even, pushes her to the limits of her emotional state by taking her to see the prisoners intentionally after she mentioned prison, acting more possessive than caring and more erratically violent than conflicted and concerned. 

Marius has a somewhat wet dream about her and then again dreams with her in confusing ways when he’s out of the barricade, with his grandfather talking about her as if she’s a piece of meat even after he meets her and she’s right in front of him. 

They tried to make Cosette more aggressive, I think, more reactive, which in some moments worked. But when the lens in which she’s viewed is objectivizing, when she’s being commented on, offered and treated as an object, then it isn’t enough. It makes it worse, actually. 

I’m sorry for Ellie, though, she did good. 

3. Éponine

Much like Cosette, Éponine’s childhood was all but a few cameos. It’s very often that adaptations try to “tone down” Éponine in order to pull a narrative of her as an underdog in a love triangle, the “friendzoned” girl who tragically dies. The musical does that, for example. 

Some of Éponine’s most controversial actions in the brick tend to be most often deleted or changed, except for adaptations in which she’s an “enemy” to Cosette’s narrative of a classic heroine. 

It isn’t easy to find adaptations that are able to make Éponine showcase the complexity of her canon character not as a problem but as what makes her character so good and important in the overall story. Hey, even fandom sometimes tends to romanticize Éponine as if she had to be “redeemed” in order to be seen as a worthy character (but that happens a lot with female characters in general). 

Éponine doesn’t exist for Marius’s narrative, as the other girl in a love triangle, or for Cosette’s narrative, as an enemy, she’s her own character with her own reason for existing and complex human dynamics that are extremely permeated by the social circumstances she’s immersed in and represents. 

I’d say this adaptation is on the group that uses her for Marius’s storyline.

Added to that, it’s one of the worst I’ve seen on that case, because in this one, Marius is complicit of Éponine’s intentions, which are sexualized to a degree I don’t feel comfortable with. 

We’ll talk a bit more about the Marius side of things later, but for Éponine, it meant she was reduced to a character that exists to sexually awaken Marius rather than a tragic figure on her own or even a piece of a love triangle. So, basically, this is the worst I’ve seen in a while. 

This is clearly seen in that interview when Davies explained why he added that “wet dream” scene, saying:

“One of the best things Hugo does is to have Eponine tease Marius with her sexiness because he is a bit of a prig. So I have introduced a scene where Marius, even though he is in love with Cosette, has a wet dream about Eponine and feels rather guilty about it. I think it fits into the psychology of the book.” Source

Let’s leave out the part where he considers that to be “one of the best things Hugo does” because I cannot deal with that right now. Let’s focus on the other bit.

Like this quote suggests and I said before, Éponine was rather reduced to a tool for Marius’s sexual awakening. In this version, it isn’t only the “wet dream” which precedes more crucial interactions between Marius and Éponine, there’s also a scene where she strips for him through the hole in the wall and another where Courfeyrac is commenting on her and Azelma as Marius moves into the building for the first time. 

By the time Marius gives her his money and any sort of bond can occur, it’s evidently clear in this version that Éponine has been teasing Marius and he is fully aware of it. He looks at her through the peep hole licking his lips and then has that disturbing dream where she’s kind of forcing him onto her in a very questionable way. 

So, this Marius is by no means unaware of the fact that Éponine was attracted to him in some capacity and has played along her seduction, which makes his dismissal of her and his request for her to find Cosette a lot like he is using her for his own gain and replacing her for another girl. 

Éponine’s attitude, much like Cosette’s, tries to be more active at times. She’s confrontational to her parents, seems protective of Azelma and is pleased to see her mother stuck in jail. 

However, much like with Cosette, any kind of agency is compromised for having her narrative be serving a male character’s development rather than her own. Her involvement in the barricade is also somewhat modified but, by that time, her journey has already been substantially affected. 

Much like Ellie, Erin was a very good Éponine when she was allowed to perform at her best and I wish she had been involved in an adaptation that was able to portray Éponine with more justice. 

I’ll talk a bit more about women on the show in general in problem #3 but, for now, let’s move on. 

Problem #2: The portrayal of masculinity

1. Javert

I am not the best person to write an essay on Javert, there are a lot of people more capable than me for that, and I may be called out for this and mess everything up, but I can’t write overall opinions without mentioning my issues with his characterization, at least summarized. 

Javert is a complicated character. He is, as much as everyone else, affected by the circumstances and a man who goes through a huge emotional impact and sees his values questioned and compromised. His and Valjean’s journeys have a lot in common, in different ways and with different outcomes. 

Sadly, Javert tends to be seen as a villain in a lot of adaptations. It’s a way to simplify the plot in the way movies tend to do: something is defined by what the other isn’t, if Valjean is the protagonist, then Javert must be his antagonist. I was worried that this version was going to fall into that trap, because of time restraint and Davies’s tendencies of simplifying complex characters. 

Javert’s characterization was erratic, much like Valjean’s. His attitude was blurred by fits of rage and moments of confusing violence, followed by charged pauses in strange cadences which tended to fluctuate. I don’t think his attitude was as all-over-the-place as Valjean’s, but it was certainly not as well defined as other Javerts I’ve seen through the years. 

This Javert, however, had a choice made for him that separates him from other versions: 

Over tea in central London, Davies tells me that he was surprised to discover that, in Hugo’s 1862 novel, neither character [Javert or Valjean] mentions any sort of sexual experience, leaving the 82-year-old screenwriter wondering, at least in the case of Javert, whether it was indicative of a latent homosexuality. Source 

There is a lot to unpack there. 

First, there’s this idea of masculinity in which the lack of explicit heterosexual intercourse in canon is directly representative of homosexuality. I’m not gonna delve a lot in the brick but there are a good bunch of characters you can easily read as gay. Hell, there’s that whole thing going on with comparing Enjolras and Grantaire to greek couples. And if you want to write Javert as gay, go ahead, there’s a lot of fanfiction out there who is with you on that and I’m here for all interpretations, no problem at all.   

But if you’re going to take that route, you need to be careful with your optics. 

This Javert is, at the end of the day, in this adaptation, a gay man of color. He is also explicitly obsessed with Valjean in a way that exceeds his sense of justice. He looks at him undress in prison, is all over his personal space while he’s in chains and later interrogates him believing Marius is his lover, clearly attempting Valjean to confess to him if he was. He receives a lot of comments from an officer who touches him and looks at him strangely in the last episode, prompting an immediate rejection from him. 

Everything points to Javert’s homosexuality being in the plot only as a further motivator for his need to capture Valjean, which makes for both a problematic portrayal of predatory homosexuality and a subsequent narrative of police abuse, both very problematic aspects to portray through a gay man of color. The way he acts and the way in which people act around him make it seem like his obsession with capturing him is fueled by the fact that Valjean represents his closeted feelings and that is all kinds of messed up. 

He is also clearly not as involved in other aspects of the law as he is in capturing Valjean, since Thénardier ends up being a secondary worry to him, even explicitly knowing he has been mistreating and abusing a child, and he also explicitly doesn’t care about his achievements or the ones of his other officers as long as Valjean is on the loose. He lets Thénardier escape prison on his watch and doesn’t take care of it himself, prioritizing Valjean. 

It isn’t about what happens in canon or not but in how all of this, in this version, is framed under this idea that Javert is also gay and has an obsession with Valjean that seems predatory in part, rather than fueled by his beliefs. And that is a dangerous optic to write a gay character under. Especially a police officer who is also a man of color. 

I’m not the one to talk about that, it’s not my experience to tell and I’m not going to speak over those whose experience this is, but as a content creator, I’d question if my need to diversify is stepping over the lines of problematic aspects that may ill represent the identities I’m trying to integrate. Just saying.

David’s performance hits some very good moments, especially when Javert starts contemplating suicide. That is a very important scene in every adaptation and a very amazing chapter in canon and David does well in performing the turmoil in Javert’s decision. They also add, as a voice in off, the notes he left to improve the service, which is a great touch. 

But, much like the other characters I mentioned, his performance is blurred by these writing choices in which Javert has been added this sort of predatory sense in which Valjean in jail symbolizes also keeping his identity hidden away. Davies would probably say his “desires” because that’s the kind of guy he is. 

I hope my opinion isn’t overstepping anyone’s voice and I’ll leave the further of this discussion to someone more appropriate, but I felt it was an important matter to include and something we all, as media consumers, must pay attention to. 

2. Marius

I had higher hopes for this boy, I really did. 

The good thing this adaptation does for Marius is give him a bit more room than others do. They touch more on his relationship with his father and his grandfather, they bring up the Thénardier connection to his dad, they introduce Mabeuf, and they bring him on as a kid in the beginning, which even though questionable in comparison to him having more development as a child than Cosette and Éponine, at least helped to introduce him as another key character of the whole story. 

I had hopes that this earlier introduction, albeit unfairly unbalanced with Cosette’s and Éponine’s, would allow for his character to develop more strongly, especially since politics were very present in his conversations with his grandfather and the ideals of his dad. I thought that by introducing politics through Marius that would allow his connection to Les Amis de l’ABC be more profound when the moment for revolution came. 

Yeah, no, that didn’t happen. 

Les Mis is a book where people are the heart and soul of it. With that in mind, characters aren’t like each other, they aren’t repetitions of the other’s attitude, they are diverse reflections of the complexity of humanity. The portrayal of masculinity in characters like Javert, Valjean, Gavroche or each individual member of Les Amis aren’t the same between each other, and neither are the same as Marius’s. 

Marius represents a very wide emotional spectrum. He’s sensitive and vulnerable, passionate and driven, but at the same time can take action into his own hands when he has to and fight, even at the cost of his own life. There are layers in Marius. Like a Rogel cake. 

I don’t want to generalize but a problem I have often with older male writers is that they see emotional complexity as weakness, especially when it comes to the portrayal of masculinity. There’s this idea in which something that is undefined or conflicting isn’t “strong” enough and therefore requires forcing. 

Remember that quote I brought up for Éponine’s characterization? we’re going back to that. To Davies calling Marius “a prig” in need of being seduced. 

Like I said, this version made Marius complicit in Éponine’s advances and aware of her sexually charged intentions, and this was made in an attempt to “upgrade” Marius’s masculinity and make him “less of a prig”. Because in order to be a Man, Marius needs to objectivize women. Apparently.  

Like I mentioned, the gesture of Marius giving Éponine the little money he had ended up being a lot less effective by the fact that he had already fantasized about her more than once, and with her knowing that. He is taken to a brothel by Courfeyrac and Grantaire in which women pretty much throw themselves at him while he looks for Cosette. The “wet dream” he has is a very eerie combination of idealization and assault, in which Éponine, taking Cosette’s place, forces him onto her (much like Davies is forcing this onto Marius).

It isn’t about sex or eroticism being introduced to Marius’s storyline, is that they appear forced and almost violently thrust upon him in order to validate him in this idea of masculinity the adaptation seems to have, which seems to be very narrow. 

And, with that in mind, we’ll move on to the last bit of this section.

3. Valjean

I am unable to write a piece about how many layers of wrong this Valjean embodied. 

There are a lot of good tumblr scholars and Les Mis experts talking about it already, they can explain better than I ever could, but we need to, at least, try to glimpse at the mess this was, because this is a post on problems and this was a major one. 

There are a lot of interpretations of Valjean, some of which are astronomically awful. He’s a character that can be easily fucked up, maybe because he also represents a very complex range of emotions, a very wide spectrum of masculinity, and is inserted in a wide variety of social contexts and spheres during his lifetime, which permeate his way of living as well as his agency to do things. 

Any adaptation of Les Mis from the get go starts with the challenge of representing all of this in a limited time frame and with a limited perspective. It’s very difficult to translate not only all of this complexity but also all the thoughts the narrator can rely, all the feelings and conflicts and internal turmoil that we can get from the book because it’s written. 

The musical, in that sense, has some elements from its medium that help, like the soliloquies, the changes of key, the ability for characters to bear their souls through song without interrupting the believability of the story. 

Representing Valjean without a medium that allows a peek inside his head is a big challenge. He is a character whose turmoil is most often interior, so showcasing that externally poses difficulty. 

Still, you can’t fuck up this much, my dude.  

I’ve seen bad Valjeans in my life, this one is...complicated. He’s not good, don’t get me wrong, but he isn’t as clear-cut godawful as others I’ve seen, he’s too erratic to be easily described. 

I think this adaptation tried to showcase complexity through visible emotional distress and physical violence. Instead of having a soliloquy or symbolism, we have Valjean shouting or screaming or burning his hand with a coin and staring at it for a while or shouting at nuns or carrying Cosette by force so hard her arm is in pain. 

Everything gets even more confusing when everyone around him treats him weirdly. 

You get years of exposition clumsily thrown at you via a speech Fantine hears when she arrives at Montreuil and he’s been elected. You get girls looking at him naughtily and suggesting Fantine to try to seduce him. You get inkeepers and Thénardier suggesting his intentions with child Cosette aren’t appropriate. You get women in dress shops thinking his intentions with young adult Cosette aren’t appropriate. You get Javert thinking his intentions with Marius aren’t appropriate. Everyone wants to talk about Valjean’s sex life or something, I don’t know. 

His attitude towards Cosette is also muddled by this erratic behavior and the very strange way in which he sees her and Fantine. 

He is visibly more worried about men taking advantage of her, of “defiling” her, than other dangers she could be in, like his identity being found out by the police or her falling in the hands of the Thénardiers again. He forcibly removes her from Marius’s presence and has a fight with her about it that ends on him taking her to see the prisoners. He knows she still, as an adult, visibly flinches when she’s approached harshly yet manhandles her when he wants to keep her locked up. 

There’s something possessive about this Valjean that ties in to how Cosette is portrayed as an object. He talks about Cosette as if she was something he needs to keep, says Marius will “rob” her, not because he wants to be a good father or see her happy but because she is his to have. 

This Valjean feels as if Cosette was his attempt to get rid of the guilt he feels for having failed Fantine more so than anything else. She’s less of a person and more an object he needs to keep for himself like a third candlestick. That’s the impression I got of their relationship with his characterization. 

By the time the series ended, I felt upset with Valjean. 

I didn’t care if he died, I didn’t care if he suffered. And that’s pretty shitty for a Les Mis adaptation to prompt. He made me feel uncomfortable, uneasy, as if he was the last person I would trust to take care of a young girl. And whatever internal journey he was going on wasn’t developed well enough to understand any of these choices. 

I don’t know, like I said, I’m not an expert of the subject of Jean Valjean, but I’m pretty sure this is not how you adapt him. 

Problem #3: Diversity without optics

This show hadn’t even started and it was already patting itself on the back for being diverse. 

Now, if you haven’t been in the world of Les Mis for too long, let me tell you there are a lot of adaptations which are diverse, and not only of the musical. In itself, it wasn’t a pioneer move, but I was nonetheless happy that they were going to pay attention to that. At the end of the day, Les Mis is about society, about oppression, and adaptations of it should represent the diversity of the social landscape of the time and place they’re created in. 

That being said, diversity in a highly political storyline needs to be carefully worked through, because without optics you can make questionable choices. And, you guessed it, questionable choices were made here. 

I can’t and won’t go over all of the issues with this that there are, but I can give a few examples. 

There is, of course, the always present argument of casting Fantine and Cosette white and the majority of the Thénardiers and Éponine as poc. And of casting the majority of Les Amis as white and the majority or most visible part of Patron Minette as poc. People have discussed this at length so I won’t go over that. 

There is also how constantly woc were cast in roles of service, some of which were questionable given the context. Simplice, for example, is cast this way, which I overlooked at the time but as it kept escalating with other characters like Matelote and eventually Toussaint, it grew a bit more complex. 

Toussaint was...a very problematic choice. 

When you present the character of a “housekeeper” in a period series which is meant to represent France in the 1800s, and she is a woman of color, some alarms start ringing. I don’t specialize in French history, but my instincts were proven correct when I checked various sources on dates, after seeing the episode, and I’m quoting wiki for easier access here: 

Slavery was first abolished by the French Republic in 1794, but Napoleon revoked that decree in 1802. In 1815, the Republic abolished the slave trade but the decree did not come into effect until 1826. France re-abolished slavery in her colonies in 1848 with a general and unconditional emancipation.

This series has a weirdly set timeline in comparison to the book but, for all intents and purposes, we’re in the early 1830s at the time she’s first introduced, correct? There was still an unstable situation regarding abolition at the time. The general emancipation hadn’t been yet stated in the colonies and the decree had just been starting to hold effect. 

I know this show is casting in a general way as a suspension of disbelief of some historical facts and I’m all for diversity in casting in period dramas, regardless of anything else, if it’s allowing for representation in media. 

But, at the same time, you need to be careful with your optics. She could have been cast as anyone else.

I don’t wanna go over this a lot because I don’t know enough about these parts of French history nor is it my story to tell, but the problem is in the erasure of conflicts or racism altogether as a way to prompt a shallow sense of diversity in a story that is directly linked with the subject of oppression. 

Let’s continue with another similar optics problem involving “diversity” to exemplify this issue further, so that I can clarify. 

This barricade had women on it and didn’t have Combeferre. 

Now, here is the thing about that. In the barricade my man Combeferre gives an amazing speech about women and children. 

In case you weren’t aware, the 1800s were the moment when European women and children barely started to be seen as separate members of society and not only “men but worse” and “men but small”. There are a lot of good articles about that, including one by Martyn Lyons about the new readers of the 19th Century, which changed the course of the editorial market, those being women, children and working class men, who didn’t have access to literature or literacy before that. The idea of childhood as we know it started then, and the later editions of the Grimm fairy tales was one of the first published books of fairy tales explicitly aimed at children’s education. And since a lot of us, in other places of the world that aren’t Europe, were colonized af or barely getting free from colonial governments in the 1800s, we kinda had to go with the flow, regardless of the social structure of native peoples, because colonialism sucks. 

But you all came here for Les Mis so, let’s get back to that. 

As this terrible and summarized dive into history implies, women and children were vulnerable to the fucked up state of social strife. Education was scarce and only accessible to some, employment was scarce and only accessible to some, food was scarce and only accessible to some. Most often than not, “some” did not include women and children. 

In comes the the sun to my moon, Combeferre, with his speech. 

He talks about all of this. Basically he talks to men who are the main providers of families, providers of women and children who depend on them and goes (I’ll paraphrase) “it’s our fault as a society that women can’t be here now, it’s our fault they don’t have the same possibilities and education we do, so at least do them a solid and don’t die today here if they depend on you to live, because the only possibility they have without your support is prostitution”. It was a fucking power move to include that on Les Mis. I mean, the entire book is a call out to the social and political situation, but damn. 

So yes, there aren’t women there but the reason for it is that patriarchy sucks and the consequences would be disastrous for them. 

Davies & co. pretty much didn’t give a shit about this. But, at this point, considering Problem #1, who’s surprised. 

They removed Combeferre, his speech and placed random women on the barricade, as if nothing of that was going on and the patriarchy didn’t exist. Because ~diversity~. 

The fact that they thought more woke to put some random women there on the barricade to die fighting instead of acknowledging the existence of sexism altogether pretty much sums up what this whole show thought diversity was. 

For them, diversity wasn’t a political and social standpoint born from reality, a way to represent the dynamics of oppression that are at stake even on this day, but an aesthetic. 

And, talking about speeches, let’s move on to the next bit. 

Problem #4: Where are the politics?

1. The social and political landscape

Les Mis adaptations have a fluctuating balance with politics and social conflicts. 

That is, at the end of the day, the very core of the existence of this story, the reason why still, to this very day, it is relevant and quoted, adapted and regarded is the fact that we still need it. 

All of us, as human beings living as members of society, are always immersed in political decisions. It’s not only unavoidable, it’s part of our lives as people living together. 

In the same way, the personal narratives of the characters of Les Mis are intrinsically linked to this landscape. They are set in different places of the social spectrum and hold different power dynamics and actions that relate to political standpoints. 

Adaptations tend to work this in very different ways. 

Some focus less on the politics and more on the social strife, with a greater focus on the characters. Others re-insert the characters in other different historical moments with the same levels of social and political strife. Others just copy-paste the situations and put them in another context, without really explaining what revolution it is, what they’re fighting for and why they’re being killed. The focus varies. 

It seems, for how this adaptation starts, with Waterloo and a subsequent argument between Gillenormand and Baron Pontmercy about Napoleon, that politics are going to be important. This doesn’t last very long. 

My biggest issue with the introduction of these circumstances is that they don’t bother on them but then attempt to use them for gratuitous self righteousness. It isn’t that they abandon them altogether, they overlook them but then attempt to use them for shock value. 

There is a constant use of exaggerated, almost cartoon-y, stagings of social depiction: 

- You have Gillenormand dining with his boys, in a luxurious and incredibly flamboyant scenery, while dissing political views in an almost comical fashion 

- You have beggars downright assaulting Valjean and Cosette on the street right outside the convent, as a means of shock to Cosette’s expectations of the world outside of it

- You have Fantine’s entire sequences as a prostitute with higher and higher degrees of abuse 

- You have the streets before the barricades, in some sort of confusing clamor that loses focus in favor of Valjean’s storyline 

- You have a god awful last scene which attempts to say something socially compromising by showcasing the kids Gavroche was helping (I don’t think they’re siblings in this version), as a means to say “the revolution wasn’t successful and social strife will always continue” I guess, I don’t know, because it’s not like they gave a shit about it all before, so this kind of Perrault-ish moral of the story at the end makes no goddamn sense

They are exaggerated snippets of things without context, with very little exposition, that are used more as props to shock than they are to actually take a stand on what the original story is trying to tell. 

Even the reality Fantine has to suffer is blurred by the fact that the social situation isn’t seen as much as a reality in itself but a combination of Fantine’s “choices” and Valjean’s “guilt”. 

But, in order to delve more into the non-political aspect of this adaptation, let’s focus on some specific characters. 

2. Enjolras

Well, I’ve seen a lot of Enjolrai in my life (is that be the plural of Enjolras? yes? no? can it be?). 

Enjolras has very different characterizations, even within fandom itself, but we can all agree that he’s a) highly political, b) highly committed to the cause and c) extremely charismatic. 

And when I say “charismatic” I mean it in the sense that his speeches are so beautifully crafted, so certain and commanding, that you just wanna listen to what he has to say, regardless of your views. They’re political discourse but also very poetic, which is a very interesting literary opposite to Grantaire’s voice, but I digress. 

Still, Enjolras doesn’t stand on his own. 

He represents a part of a whole, an important part, but a part nonetheless. Les Amis are a very diverse mixture of individuals, and the main triumvirate represents different stances on the same political action that coexist together. 

Without others to stand with, Enjolras loses context. Not because he can’t support himself as a character, but because his biggest value is within other people. 

This Enjolras is confusing, angry and loses a lot of steam when most of the people who should be around him aren’t really paying attention. 

Courfeyrac, although performed really well, doesn’t really get a chance to show his political ideas without Enjolras around, and that makes it seem like he’s being convinced to participate rather than doing it for his own reasons and being one key part of the group. 

In the barricade, Enjolras acts as if he doesn’t know what he’s doing half the time, and the other half he doesn’t give a shit about killing soldiers, smiling and laughing while shooting people. 

It isn’t just that the scene with Le Cabuc doesn’t exist, Enjolras doesn’t seem to have empathy, which is all given to Grantaire instead. 

By taking away Enjolras’s vulnerability, his complexity, they make him seem more shallow overall, and in tow, make his cause lose importance. 

And without a clear political standpoint, because his expositions about the situation are very shout-y and unclear, and his speeches are summarized with some actual quotes but without their meaning and true feeling, he seems to be fighting just because, rather than having strong ideals. 

Enjolras in the brick is eloquent enough, humane enough, that you understand what he’s doing and why. This Enjolras is a mess that I couldn’t understand at all. 

I don’t think people who have never seen, read or heard of Les Mis before will understand Enjolras as a character through this. He’s just a very angry student with weird facial hair (why?) who rants in a cafe while his friends are playing games and making jokes, who is friends with some workers and is the leader because he shouts the loudest but doesn’t seem to know what he’s doing. 

And, worst of all, doesn’t seem to care for human life. Which brings me to the next bit...

3. Grantaire

Man, was I excited with this casting choice. 

When I heard Turlough was playing Grantaire, I was delighted. And, at the end of the day, his performance was very good, but for a character who wasn’t quite Grantaire at times. 

I mean, he wasn’t as off as Enjolras, but he was also so erratically written. 

They decided to make Grantaire hesitant rather than a cynic. He didn’t get to express his cynicism or his attachment to his friends (what friends though? only Bossuet had a name other than Courfeyrac and Enjolras) and his involvement with the fight was shown as insecure rather than questioning of ideals. 

He is shown conflicted when he decides to fight with them, he doesn’t have any of his long speeches, the Barrière du Maine scene or anything of the sort. He is just...hesitant about death, I guess. About dying and killing people. That’s his conflict. 

This has, to me, two big problems attached to it. 

First, it’s a simplification of the entirety of Grantaire’s thoughts. It’s taking the cornucopia of drunken philosophy that Grantaire’s voice in the brick represents and replacing it with a single fear, which while very valid doesn’t reflect Grantaire’s true extensive complexities. 

Second, it takes away from Enjolras’s humanity. Enjolras is showcased as an indiscriminate machine of shooting soldiers while Grantaire is conflicted about having to do this and, in tow, makes Enjolras’s rejection of him when he leaves and gets drunk like a jerk move of an insensitive asshole. 

There isn’t a clear instance of Enjolras giving Grantaire a chance to do something before the barricade and Grantaire failing at it, with all the dominoes symbolism and all the stuff it implies. There isn’t a complementary set of complexities between each other. Grantaire seems to care about human life more than Enjolras does in this version, at the end of the day, because Enjolras’s speeches, even if carrying canon quotes, are inserted in a context in which he laughs while shooting people, knowingly sends Gavroche into danger and chastises Grantaire for being conflicted about human lives at stake.  

So, instead of representing Grantaire’s true complexity as a character, they chose to give him something else that they think makes him more dimensional, when, in reality, takes away from his (and Enjolras’s) worth as a character. 

All of this is very weirdly intersected with drunken jokes. Sometimes, the jokes and the behavior pays off and is inserted in good moments, sometimes they just don’t know when to stop and they kind of ruin their death scene with them, which is even worse considering it’s one of the few where they’re actually holding hands. 

Overall, I think this was a simplification of Grantaire, in a way, a simplification which falls apart without a solid context to exist in. And it’s a pity, because Turlough was good. 

4. Gavroche 

The only reason I’d want an immediate new adaptation of Les Mis is so we can cast this same Gavroche in a decent one. He’s one of the best Gavroches I’ve ever seen, hands down. 

In this case, the problem isn’t with his interpretation or how he was written, necessarily, and all time frame and socio-political simplifications aside, the problem is in how the context reacts to him. 

A lot of Gavroche’s agency is deleted in this version. 

For starters, his age is kind of all over the place at the beginning. He’s fine by the time of the barricade, but before it’s kind of a mess. As a result, he lives with his parents for a bit longer than necessary and the few times we see him on his own, being his independent self, are in conflict with how his involvement in the main events come to happen. 

It feels as if he’s been used in the barricade. When he’s off to find bullets, only Marius tries to get him back to safety, while the rest cheer him and laugh. 

His character is well performed and we get to see his personality and his situation when he’s allowed to act on his own, but within the context he’s inserted in, he seems more like a prop than a character. 

This makes it so that when he dies, you’re upset more so than sad. It doesn’t feel like a tragic circumstance born out of a lot of layers of social strife which culminate in a dead end for a kid who deserved a better life. It feels like every adult around him, every person he encounters, either neglects him, mistreats him or sends him into danger. It feels, much like with Fantine, like an easily avoidable situation. 

And things get worse with this guy:

Like I said in my summary, this David Harbour-ish soldier is the one who is shown to mercilessly kill both Gavroche and execute Enjolras and Grantaire. 

This is another layer in the modus operandi of an adaptation who uses social oppression and political strife as shock value rather than commentary and discourse. 

By personalizing “evil” in one stern, mean, unreasonable, power-hungry soldier, they’re villanizing (and trivializing) the social context as a whole. It isn’t about how Gavroche got to that point, how we as a society failed so hard that he has to die in that way. It’s just one bad guy. 

But then, they try to be fake deep about it, by doing that last scene with his brothers or by placing him alongside Mabeuf and Éponine but not explaining what that means, why those juxtapositions are socially relevant and important to the plot (maybe they don’t know why). 

Overall, this was such a waste of a great Gavroche that I just feel really bad. Reece deserved so much better. 

5. The barricade

Needless to say, this barricade was more of a mess than you would have expected. 

The lack of proper introduction to the political landscape, the clumsy exposition, the out of context shout-y speeches and the erratic behavior of its characters, paired together with the fact that it ends about 1/4 into the last episode, giving more time to personal drama than any of what happens in it, makes it one confusing mess. 

It’s also in the barricade where it’s super clear how visually similar this series is to the 2012 movie. A lot of visual choices are extremely similar, even when they didn’t need to be (Fantine’s and Cosette’s hair choices? the shots in the hulks? the scaled down yet very similar camera angles and movements during the entire fight? the color schemes of some particular scenes?), and it’s pretty heightened in this barricade. 

Which I wouldn’t care about hadn’t they talked crap about the movie during their entire PR campaign. 

Like I said, there were so many issues within the people involved in the barricade. With the women, with the characters, with the soldiers. There was also a very strangely set line between workers and students that they were very clumsy about setting yet didn’t get to do much aside from having the leader of the working class men leave when Enjolras prompted it. 

By the way, Enjolras was a lot less convinced about the whole ordeal in this version, which made his characterization even more confusing. 

The barricade had a lot of messed up ingredients and not enough time to even simmer. At least the musical, which doesn’t have a lot of time dedicated to the students either, has Drink With Me, which doesn’t only serve as a way to characterize different students and their beliefs and personalities (“Is your life just one more lie?”) but also brings some melancholic change of pace, a pause between the action. 

The highlight of this barricade, though, is Marius going apeshit with the torch. 

But, all in all, there’s no much we can expect from a barricade born of confused ideas and even more confusing characterizations. This barricade feels less like a climax and more like a thing they had to do because it was in the book. 

And don’t even make me talk about how they butchered my favorite speech. I’d rather not have it there at all, tbh. 

Conclusion: A writer’s ego

We arrive to the end of this long and boring trip through my thoughts. If you’re reached this point, thank you for your time. 

All in all, I feel like a lot of the issues of this adaptation stem from the fact that Davies thinks he’s better than everyone else and other men around him agree so much that they let him do as he pleases, without questioning anything. 

I can’t really understand how you’re going through the script of this and see some of these choices (like the dress shop scene, the carriage scene and let’s not even mention the peeing in the park scene) and you go, and I’m quoting Shankland here:

“Andrew’s scripts made these characters feel modern. That was nothing to do with having them speak in a very modern way or changing their behaviour, he just found the humanity and earthiness of it,” Shankland says, recalling a scene in which Fantine and her companions urinate in a Paris park. “I thought, ‘Oh god, they’re going to pee in Les Misérables, that’s exciting.’” Source

That just sums it all up, doesn’t it? 

After I watched this, I let some time pass. I watched all 3 fanmade adaptations that are currently out at this moment (back to back), revisited some of the ones I had seen before, read fics, read people’s articles and rants, looked into other adaptations on stage, from the classic ones to the more interpretative versions, and other current tv adaptations being done in other countries. 

All of those things are vastly different. Some are more similar to each other, some are widely different, but they’re all different points of view on the same canon. 

This is a canon that has some of the wildest possible interpretations coexisting. You can have a play centered on one specific character told through the songs of a specific album, a tv drama in modern times with a lawyer Valjean, a coffee shop au starring Les Amis, a parody comedy set in 1832, all happening at the same exact time. 

And that’s great. That’s fascinating. That means this book is still alive because we need it still today. 

Some days you’re in the mood for a heavily political adaptation which gives you goosebumps for setting canon in a context that is closer to your everyday reality, other days you just want all the Amis to live and have movie marathons cuddled together. It’s all valid. 

But what all of those adaptations have in common is that they aren’t trying to be more than they are. They aren’t acting brand new, they aren’t pretending they’re re-inventing the wheel or that they are smarter than Victor Hugo himself because what Hugo didn’t know he needed in the “psychology of the book” was a soulmate au or a documentary series. 

This adaptation, through what they said and how it was written, acted as if it was going to be the ultimate Les Mis adaptation to end them all. It presented itself as smarter than us all, as holding the keys to the meaning of Victor Hugo’s thoughts, as being able to fix his “mistakes”, fix other adaptation’s “mistakes” and deliver the best interpretation of canon possible. 

And it managed to be a sexist, socially insensitive, problematic, un-political, homophobic mess. 

Which, is a problem in itself, but even more so when the canon you’re adapting should be, first and foremost, against all that. It isn’t about how many brick quotes you use, it’s about channeling the soul of the story. 

[the-roanoke-society]

concerning the co-op mission on the moor.

on the canonical beginnings of hymns & holograms, puppy love, and to some extent, the solidifying of butterfly knife.

some of the details below the cut are not pleasant. please exercise caution.

it was around seven, eight months after what was affectionately being called the ‘poppyacalypse.’ the social climate worldwide had more or less settled back into some state of normal.

and succubus, to be frank, was miserable.

because butterfly knife had come to a bittersweet end when the kingsman--one of whom had nearly lost his lower half—went back to the united kingdom to rebuild their organization. a few souls, it turns out, had escaped poppy’s attack, one of whom was named the new arthur: rowan alston, who had formerly carried the title of agent kay. with the help of his remaining agents, the reconstruction of one of the world’s finest spy organizations began.

but the apparent peace they experienced then was sort lived.

reports began flooding in from scotland, all around glasgow, edinburgh, the surrounding villages, merlin’s hometown. murders. many murders. gruesome ones at that, that left scotland yard baffled—not only because of the lack of evidence for use against human beings (they kept finding canine hair but the killings were too many, too bloody, to be the work of animals alone—animals didn’t work in groups like this, animals couldn’t coordinate like this) but because the bodies were so precisely mutilated they seemed like they couldn’t be the work of a person at all. who had the strength to eviscerate, say, the corpse of a three-hundred-pound farmhand like this?

so they called on the kingsman.

who were quickly--we’ll say surprised.

something attacked them while doing surveillance at night. something—something inhuman that they hadn’t been anticipating.

eggsy was almost bitten by… whatever it was. almost.

harry, roxy and merlin all thanked christ he wasn’t.

“we have to call the borley council.” harry said softly, one evening, rubbing at his face while he was studying the files with merlin, who had been busily trying to explain it all as just a pack of wolves that had gotten out of hand. unusually large, unusually clever wolves. not completely impossible.

“who?”

“the borley council. they’re the british cousins to roanoke.” merlin just—stared at him, uneasily. sure, succubus—raeanna? was that her name?—had been kind enough. gentle. but… he didn’t trust them.

harry, however, was of a different opinion.

“for god’s sake, just let me have the comm.”

but as it turned out—borley wasn’t exceptionally talented with the demonic. had this been simply a case of werewolves gone amuck, it would have been easily handled but something was wrong. the ones they brought in, the bodies of these poor farmers, country folk, city folk—they all had this sigil burned into them. circles, triangles, geometric in nature. but…

ness had shuddered at the sight. “call roanoke. get lilith on the line. now.”

and so it was that one day, agents succubus and lycan were called into lilith’s office, going over photos, maps, the various histories of the lands where this was happening.

“… sol?” lilith began over the intercom, as if she was hesitant, while they continued their quiet murmuring, trying to fit together what pieces they could.

“yes ma’am?”

there was a pause. images flowed across her mind, one in particular, of an agent still reeling with the damage of that godforsaken place in the hills, sticking. “can you send seraphim to my office please?” lilith made a note to talk to her about picking an apprentice at some point. seraphim knew that city better than most, knew the demons there. but it was beginning to wear on her. maybe this was just the adventure she’d need to put the light back in her eyes.

and succubus looked downright delighted. “morgan gets to come? oh she’s never been to the uk before, she’ll be delighted. and a chance to show her stuff? lilith she’ll fucking pass out.”

and lilith just smiled. “… maybe.”

she couldn’t ignore the pull, and while she didn’t know what it meant at the time—she trusted it. as she always did.

so it happened that agents lycan, succubus and seraphim were flown across the pond—and taken straight to kingsman headquarters, where the kingsman and some members of borley were waiting for them.

well.

some borley members would’ve been waiting for them had they arrived on time. but as it turns out, they were very early, so it was just harry, merlin and eggsy there to greet them.

that was when eggsy and lycan locked eyes for the first time.

(of all the ship tags, there are—many, who may have had rough starts. but among those, still, are puppy love and hymns & holograms. puppy love’s main obstacle was in the form of princess tilde. but hymns & holograms, well…)

merlin looked upon seraphim and was hit with multiple emotions at once.

the attraction was instant.

the affection was not.

he didn’t say a single word to her during the welcome, aside from the preliminary ‘welcome to kingsman’ shpiel. harry was too blatantly overjoyed at seeing succubus again, eggsy was trying to figure out lycan as quickly as possible—and seraphim wasn’t a moron. she could read merlin’s distaste from a mile away. it hurt, but it wasn’t entirely unexpected, given the history of witches in this country.

all right. so the quartermaster was offended at her existence, and that of her colleagues. fine. not the first time. not the last.

after a while, borley agents dartmoor, shuck and canvey arrived—along with ness—to go over the mission files and collected data so far. photographs of the corpses, maps, logs. imagery that lycan immediately recognized—sort of.

she’d frowned, “this—this isn’t right. look, these are definitely werewolves but the marks are—just so precise. these are like surgeon’s cuts.” she shook her head. “there’s something else at play here. has something to do with those sigils. rae, morgan? anything familiar?”

“not even slightly.”

it dawned on the roanoke women, in the kingsman dining room, that this may take weeks to crack.

it did.

because the killings—they seemed to slow down, once they arrived. like something knew they were here. that they were looking for it.

and one day, after they’d been there for a few weeks—after merlin had shown enough evidence of being wound up so tightly he hardly knew what to do with himself, after seraphim had begun to openly bite her bottom lip and stare at the ground at some of the offhand things merlin would say, as if ashamed—harry and succubus came together to think of something. eggsy and lycan were entirely too distracted by each other, and that was fine. one couple behaving like this was enough.

one night over scotch, harry said quietly, “you know—morgan’s rather sweet. and if i didn’t know any better, i’d say you harbored some feelings, based on how you’re so cold to her for no reason—”

“i absolutely do not.” came merlin’s swift answer. too swift. “she’s—she’s a—“

“writer?” harry suggested. “bookworm? a capable agent, has kept rae out of trouble multiple times…”

“no, harry, she’s—“ a heavy sigh. “she’s a witch.”

“and?”

merlin was squirming. it was unnatural to see.

“so she’s—“

“if the next words out of your mouth are ‘in league with the devil,’ then so help me—”

“no, no, nothin’ like tha’. i just—“ he’d never seen merlin quite at this kind of loss for words. and when he spoke again, it was slowly, like he was carefully thinking out what he said: “—i don’t know how to approach someone who seems like they dinnae belong to this plane of exist’nce. she just—seems to flit about, y’know. like nothin’ bothers her. nothin’ quite touches her…”

“oh i can assure you, plenty bothers her.”

“like wha’?”

“your callous behavior, for one.”

(the talk that seraphim and succubus had went a bit differently: “i wish i didn’t like him so much. he’s so handsome, and smart, and that laugh…”

“then why do you wish you didn’t like him?”

“because i know he’ll never like me in return, rae. and it—it hurts. i can’t keep doing this. better to let it go now, before it gets out of hand… i still have jack to contend with when i get home…”

and poor lycan—seraphim just put an arm around her shoulders. “amy, look at me… we’re going to be fine. okay? everything’s going to work out. somehow. i promise. we have to have each other’s backs out here.”)

the group temporarily relocated to the kingsman glasgow headquarter office to be closer to the scottish moors where the most recent slaughter had taken place. harry’s comments stung hamish enough to the point that he’d softly agreed—at harry and succubus’s insistence—to take seraphim on a walk around the moors. coincidentally, the same spaces that he’d explored as a child.

at first—it was unbearable. seraphim could hardly get a word out of him, and she gave up. so for a while, they walked in silence together—which was almost comfortable. almost.

until seraphim squinted, spying what little sunlight broke through the overcast sky glinting off the surface of a lake very far away, and made a comment about the loch ness monster.

“… you lot know about nessie?”

“… what? of course we do, borley more than us, but we’re very much aware she exists. she’s just—a lot quieter now, with her age.”

“… i fuckin’ knew it.”

and his grin was so broad that it broke her heart.

but more importantly it led to him actually asking her a question: “what—what else have ye seen?”

she began gently. stories of the gentler fae folk, the cryptids more likely to cuddle than to claw. and he kept asking her questions. so she kept answering.

and then, when the conversation reached a lull, when they’d reached the top of a hill overlooking the nearest village, dull in the bright, murky light of the afternoon, she turned to him, still soft, still wary she’d lose what she’d gained—“harry said you were born around here. is that your hometown?”

“yes, actually.”

“… what was it like to grow up here? before you moved to glasgow.”

for a beat, he didn’t answer. her stomach fell to her knees. maybe it was too much too soon.

but then he began. “believe it or not, a lot more interesting than ye might think, given how tiny the place is…”

so really you could say it happened on a moor. with a cloudy sky. very slowly.

and neither of them would’ve recognized it then, if you asked them. but looking back—they’d both agree: yes. it happened on a moor.

by the time they were almost back to the boarding house where they were staying in—a clever cover for the glasgow offices—they felt closer. neither would admit it. but seraphim caught a whiff of his cologne, he could smell her perfume.

when had they started walking so close together?

there was a moment when they were standing in the foyer, looking at each other. and merlin was about to open his mouth, to say something, but then—

“there you two are! and nothing ate you, great. i’m starving, harry said he knew about this great little tavern down the road, are y���all hungry? we need some protein before we head out tonight. i can go grab eggsy and amy if you’re ready to go?”

and they both answered with a bit more enthusiasm than they meant: “yes!”

but when it was time to sit for dinner, they sat down next to each other as if they’d been doing it for ages. harry swore there was a moment when he almost put an arm around her like it was nothing.

harry squeezed succubus’s hand under the table, rubbing a thumb over her knuckles.

even like this, it was still the most relaxed he’d seen merlin in ages. one hand around a pint and the other—not quite behind her. resting on the back corner of her chair. and she was leaning a little into him, like they already shared some private joke that was making her smile so hard her nose crinkled.

a start.

this—harry glanced to the woman sitting next to him—was a touch a familiar. it was fun, getting to see it from an outside perspective. getting to help.

until the night came full force, dropping down with an inky blackness. stars like diamonds shards. and a full moon, milky white.

“all right, r team, we’ll take the southern half. b team, you’ve got the north. merlin, wizard, you read us?”

“loud and clear--seraphim. all of ye’. everyone’s signals are tied back to us here at th’ glasgow base. if any of ye need extraction, call a code red. we’ll get to ye as soon as we can.” his tone softened at the last bit. seraphim was the only one who hadn’t understood that he’d been speaking just to her (she’d almost missed a swift embrace between lycan and eggsy—but harry and merlin had seen; harry’d just lifted his brows in a pointed glance at the quartermaster. merlin just rolled his eyes. but it stuck with him). “otherwise, we’ll see ye at the rendezvous point here in a few hours. agent galahad’s stationed at the point to keep it secure, but keep in mind that post is a bit aged… he can receive calls, but he can’t answer them. all that aside—good luck.”

it was cold. they were bundled in layers, all from the roanoke, borley, statesman and kingsman labs, but the winter winds cut through them still. seraphim shivered, turning back. “succubus, you’ve got—alll of this—“ merlin had his hands folded together, watching the feeds. he ignored the anxiety building in his muscles. it was a lot to keep track of, not counting the additional footage streaming from a pair of drones overhead. “and amy, my darlin’, this neck of the woods is yours. i figured, divide and conquer. arms up now, lemme see—all right, everyone packin’ the good shit. groovy. blessed these shells myself, if they fail us, i’ll eat a shoe. remember what sprite said, elbows in, eyes sharp. don’t shoot to kill if at all possible. these things are still men, somewhere in there. probably. and we may not find anything at all.”

merlin was still trying to piece together how he felt about the leadership in her voice coming in over the mic when the three put their hands in and then lifted—an old school “team, break!”

all six agents separated, trying to tackle the moor in as broad of sweeps as possible.

and for a while, nothing happened. but instead his dread only increased.

merlin thought back to a brief remark he’d made to harry, likening the work of roanoke and borley to children with make-believe toys, playing spy, when he’d been in a particularly vicious mood (which of course happened when seraphim rounded a corner and walked straight into him and his hands went to her arms… the travesty).

he wished he could take it back.

because as the night got colder, darker, the tension on the field rose.

and then it began.

“—succubus? ye’re heart rate’s gone up, talk to us.”

“—morgan how far away from me are you right now?”

“throw up a light. … shit, maybe ten, fifteen yards, why?”

“… i need you to come here please.”

now seraphim couldn’t see what succubus did, which at that second may have been for the best. her voice held a thinly-veiled panic so that the others on the moor didn’t all rush in (although everyone did ask—we’ve got southern charm, borley has their british manners). “no, no, guys, i’m all right, just uh, need my dearest guardian angel to please come this way…”

but merlin could see, through her glasses. and he fought to say silent.

seraphim took the words out of his mouth, anyway. “… jesus christ, lord of heaven.”

stick figures. stick figures like ones they’d both seen only one time before (and would see one time again), wrapped in—okay, it looked like a mix of human ligaments, hair and good old-fashioned twine. great. hanging from tree branches, leaning against trunks.

seraphim clocked their coordinates, speaking them into the ears of the other agents. “everything’s fine, we’ll signal if we need help, but for the time being, maybe avoid us until succubus and i give the all clear.” merlin was impressed. if seraphim was anxious, he couldn’t hear it.

“morgan this is not good…” succubus lifted her flashlight beam, focusing on one figure, then another, then another.

“they—look, they’re making a trail…”

howling lots of howling. sounding somewhere far away.

seraphim began to creep forward through the trees, eyes up, as lycan’s voice crackled to life, “pack movement. sounds like it’s north of us. ears open.”

merlin jumped when harry suddenly appeared, mugs of tea in hand. “merlin? are you all right? you look a bi—“ but harry’s voice failed when he saw the feeds. he almost dropped the cups.

succubus and seraphim pressed forward, close together. “how many of these things are there…?”

the answer was: a lot. too many. leading to—somewhere off the moor. further into forest. somewhere where it was like their flashlight beams lost strength, and their glasses—seraphim squinted—the glasses were no help at all.

more howling. still distant, but more spread out. it sounded like it was coming from a large, surrounding circle…

“was—was that the pack?” canvey’s voice was trembling. “why—why did—“

“hush.” lycan snapped. “… this isn’t right. packs don’t do this… if this is even still a pack, it sounds twice as big the group that gave the call before…”

harry had his hands folded neatly in his lap. merlin’s were clasped together against his lips.

“something tells me… that whatever’s behind all this… is right down this way.” seraphim whispered, haltingly. but succubus grabbed her arm when she took a step forward.

“this is just like last time. look, we’ve got the coordinates, we leave now, get backup tomorrow. you don’t have to go down that way.”

but seraphim just shrugged off her grip, gently. “you’re worrying too much. sure it’s—really fucking creepy, but that’s our bag. you and i are the most qualified to tackle this anyway. trust me, i’ll be fine.”

“seraphim.” she was surprised to hear merlin’s voice. “seraphim, return to the rendezvous point. that’s an order.”

and she had the audacity to roll her eyes. “quartermaster, with all due respect—“

“morgan. please.”

and seraphim wasn’t the only one who was taken aback that time. harry locked his gaze on him, startled by the tenderness in his voice. ‘tenderness’ was an apt descriptor.

“look—everyone relax, all right? let me check it out, a least a surface look. i promise i’ll be fine. rae, you stay here, keep watch on my six, no reason for both of us to get ambushed.”

merlin’s eyes searched the screen. no blips, no heat signatures but their own. which—wait, if there were wolves about, then where were they are on the radar?

he watched with dread as seraphim’s began moving forward, with zero hesitation. he started taking up one of the drones in an attempt to circle the moor. nothing. that couldn’t be right.

“whats wrong?”

“what’s wrong is tha’ the only heat signatures i’m readin’ are those of th’ agents, harry. we had audio of whatever’s out there with them. but there’s no other blips.”

an eerie silence fell. it felt like it wrapped around seraphim’s frame like a robe. she could faintly see an outline of her silhouette from where succubus’s flashlight shone behind her, keeping her inside of the beam.

until—

something else was on the radar now. a thin green line, looking like a vein, in between succubus and seraphim’s signatures on the radar screen. “what on earth—“ it wasn’t organic to the rest of the screen readings. merlin’d never seen anything like it.

“morgan?” succubus took a few steps forward. silence. harry stared at her feed. seraphim was gone, as simply as if she’d dipped behind a wall.

and seraphim thought she heard something like the drawing of a curtain, saw the light disappear. when she turned around, it was just her light that shone. “rae? … rae?”

“harry, what—what—“ his voice failed him. harry was silent. this was—unexpected. because according to seraphim’s feed, it was succubus who’d vanished. merlin took little comfort in the fact that he could see bits and pieces of her gun moving in and out of the borders of her glasses.

there was an awful, awful quiet that fell as both women froze. listening.

seraphim jumped when there were as an abrupt explosion of both warmth and light behind her. torches, tied to the trees. more figures, same as the others. “shit,” she swore. it was more of the trail.

succubus called her name one more time and the memories of what had happened in alabama two summers ago came flooding back, visceral.

“raeanna—rae.” harry took up a mic. “breathe. calm down. talk to us. tell us what you’re seeing…”

seraphim had no choice. she had to keep moving. she turned her flashlight off, very aware that this could all just be an illusion. she remembered her training. but she held a bare hand out to one of the torchlights, abruptly brought it back. it felt real. her footsteps made no sound as she continued, and she walked for maybe another minute before—oh.

well. that explained a lot.

someone had opened a gate.

and this gate was tied to… she edged closer to the pit. it was surrounded in sigils, shapes that looked exactly like the ones seemingly burned into the bodies of the victims.

harry had succubus’s tremulous voice in his ear, and merlin, merlin couldn’t speak at all.

these feeds were fucking something else. on one screen, nothing, a forest, darkness. and on seraphim’s, literally just yards away—this.

and he wanted to tell her to stop, wanted to tell her to turn around, but he found himself rooted in terror. his heart was in his throat.

but he saw what she saw as she looked down.

it was a wolf—but it wasn’t. it was something much, much worse trying to pass as a wolf, sitting at the far, far bottom of the pit in a blackness so thick that it was just—unnatural. he could see the vague backlight of its eyes as it stared up at seraphim, could see the glint of its teeth as it slowly opened its mouth in the light of the torches, and were those antlers, that wasn’t right, wolves didn’t have antlers like that, nothing had antlers like that—

and then screaming.

seraphim screaming.

her feed cut abruptly upwards as something large, much, much larger than a wolf or any kind of dog should have been, flew at her from between two trees. everything disappeared—the torches, the pit, the sigils, and most importantly, the vein on the radar.

“morgan!” succubus was rushing forward, yelling, “amy, AMY! MAYDAY! get to our coordinates NOW!”

“copy, on my way!”

but there wasn’t enough time.

because suddenly her entire feed was just teeth. maw, saliva, fangs, the downward sloping of a ribbed, ruby throat and her screams became more like choked cries, like something was in her airway—

then cracking. her frames split. the last thing merlin saw before her feed cut completely was the shatter line across the glass.

he thought he was going to be sick. he stood up, hands on the edge of the desk.

succubus was running towards the newest body. she was running towards a monster. and neither kingsman agent was quite enough inside of their own minds to tell her to turn around.

merlin closed his eyes.

she was like magic, then.

first he saw her.

then he didn’t.

he almost fainted when harry gripped his arm like a life preserver, “hamish, for god’s sake, look—”

because while seraphim’s audio was completely destroyed, succubus’s wasn’t, and they both heard one shot, then another, then multiple, ringing out across the woods. the firing kept on for a solid thirty seconds as lycan joined succubus and both of them sprinted forward in time to find—seraphim. hoisting off the body of something big, furry and blood-stained.

“okay—well. that was uh. that was a thing.” merlin teared up. her voice sounded so weak, rough. still trying to make jokes as the adrenaline flooded out of her system. she coughed.

he heard lycan sniff. “morgan? are you okay? did it—did it bite—“

“no, no, it ah—got my glasses, though—“ he watched through succubus’s eyes as rae helped get the body of the best off of her best friend, and she stood, visibly shaking with blood and open lacerations on her face. a new mark on her neck, something like a paw print. that’s why she sounded hoarse. “shit, merlin’s gonna kill me, those were just supposed to be a loan…” and she laughed. tried to laugh. tired so hard to play it off like she wasn’t about to cry. a hand went to her throat absentmindedly, rubbing.

“… this isn’t a werewolf,” lycan finally said. her feed moved around as she wiped at her eyes, stepping closer to the thing that had attacked seraphim. “it’s—it’s too—wait, holy shit—!”

at once, the fur rotted away, peeling back like it’d been flayed violently by invisible hands leaving behind a very naked, very dead, partially decomposed human body, with that same sigil tattooed across the width of his back.

succubus groaned, “oh, great, the fucking adventure continues, who the hell is this asshole?”

“whoever he is—“ a painful cough. “shit, that hurts—the answer to our mystery is probably in the same place as his identity—rae, is your comm still working? yeah? hold on, i’m gonna get in your space—merlin? hack. merlin? harry? can you see where we are? we uh—not a code red, but this guy’s like, seven feet tall, we need some help with body retrieval.”

merlin jolted to life, “of course, of course. i—“ words bunched up in his mouth. he swallowed all of them at the sight of the curve of her jawline. “seraphim, ye need medical attention. did that—that thing step on yer throat?”

“oh, uh, yeah, for a second—“ her voice trailed off as the borley agents came tromping through the underbrush, heaving.

“next time—try not—to get attacked—so far away—holy hell i’m out of shape—“ canvey had to take deep, gulping breaths. dartmoor and shuck weren’t in much better shape and shuck actually threw up behind a bush.

merlin heard seraphim laugh. he could have cried.

“borley agents, if ye would be so kind as to catch yer breaths by th’ body. i’m dispatchin’ a small chopper to yer location. it can be left on th’ auto mode, it knows how it get home. load up, and we’ll see ye back at hq.”

“roger... merlin… oh my god… dartmoor out… canvey i think i’m dying…”

“oh shut it.”

“as for ye three lovely roanoke ladies, if ye would please head to the planned rendezvous point. harry and i will be there to pick y’ up ourselves. morgan, with yer permission, i’d like to examine ye as soon as we get there. ye can still speak, which is a good sign, but all th’ same—“

and succubus just smiled really widely, turning in time for merlin to see seraphim blush, despite everything.

“of course. roanoke agents out. we’ll see y’all in a second.”

seraphim’s first thought when they approached the post was poor, poor eggsy. he was already outside of the small concrete building as soon as they could see it, lit overhead by one huge, massive lampost, and he looked like he’d been crying. as soon as he saw lycan, he bolted, arms outstretched. succubus and seraphim kept walking to let them have a moment, though seraphim heard them both speak over her shoulder—

“i thought—i thought—”

“it’s okay. i’m okay. everyone’s okay.”

and it only took about eight, nine minutes for merlin and harry to pull up alongside the back pathway, behind the outpost in their massive—armored car? seraphim frowned, lifting a brow at the emblem on the front. no way anyone was thinking this thing was a fucking escalade, even custom-built…

behind her, harry caught succubus in a gentle embrace, holding her flush against him. “you’re the bravest woman i know,” he muttered in her ear. he let her shake in his arms.

seraphim felt her breath catch when suddenly a large, warm hand was on her shoulder. “seraphim? c’mere closer to the light, let me have a look at tha’—“

she let him lead her more into the glow of the lamp over them, face tilted upwards as one hand rested against her jaw, the other tugging at her collar to get a better look at the blossoming bruise. she swallowed. she had dried blood from the wounds on her face, she probably smelled too much like the forest and decay, no telling what she actually looked like to another person...

but then he met her eyes.

he moved so slowly that for a second, she thought she was imagining it, but then—no, no. she knew what it felt like to be kissed. her eyelids fell shut, she tried to will time to slow down… and then he pulled away.

“i’m—i’m sorry i uh—i shouldn’t have done tha’—“ he took a step back, running one hand nervously over his scalp, eyes on the ground like the words he was looking for were in the gravel at his feet. “i just—i almost, i mean we, we almost los’ ye tonight. and i wanted—“

“to kiss me?” she suggested. and there was no anger in her voice, nothing like that. he looked up at her.

“… yes.”

“… you gigantic fucking doofus.”

“i beg yer p—“

but his words got lost when she grabbed him by his jacket, pulling him to her, pressing her lips against his. his arms went around her waist, keeping her close, so that even when they broke apart, she ended up with her face in his chest.

she finally felt safe. she turned her head to one side. even through his coat, she thought she could still feel his heartbeat.

“hey! like i’m glad y’all broke the tension finally but stop making out! we need to go home! and merlin she had something legit attack her, let her rest for one fucking minute, god damn!”

seraphim put her hands over her mouth, trying to stifle her laughter as merlin ran one hand through her hair, kissing her temple.

it was a good night.

the next morning they held an impromptu joint conference call with the remaining kingsman agents, borley and the executive board of roanoke. lilith was painfully aware of the looks being passed around by some of the present members, despite the—disturbing evidence they were being presented with.

“so still at a square one,” she began, pinching the bridge of her nose. “agents. i’m giving you a few more weeks to investigate what you can for this case. find out the meaning behind the shapes, who this man is. see if you can find the gate again but do NOT go it alone. we’ll have a follow-up conference then. and seraphim?”

“yes ma’am?” sitting next to merlin. trying not to hold his hand. her voice was rougher, the bruising worsening.

lilith smiled at her gently. seraphim couldn’t see how he was looking at her.

so—that was the pull.

“please take care of your throat. do everything the quartermaster tells you. merlin, do take good care of our token exorcist, would you? we’ll be needing her back home, before long.”

he just nodded, and they looked at each other as the holograms disappeared from their view.

a few more weeks.

plenty of time.

[ink-in-water]

hillview drama

I never really expected that if I came back to writing over here it’d be about this issue. But I guess things that are bubbling under the surface will always spill over eventually.

So today morning Tim’s parents came over to hillview and they were shocked to find me, js and edwin there; so obviously they freaked out and I guess tim’s mum had a meltdown and chased us out. Which I totally understand. But also given how sudden it was and how tired we were, I wasn’t processing things as well? Everything felt surreal. 

Now that I am more rested I am started to reexperience the whole thing and it’s very disturbing and a bit unsettling to me. I also spoke w tim with js around after the whole thing. And speaking to Tim’s mum was very bittersweet and I think I can’t still can’t make sense of it entirely nor stop overthinking. I think we are wrong to have gone to his place even though his parents aren’t as happy already but it also sucked that the bigger issues are left unsaid.

I know it’s not right for me to comment too much but given what tim has been struggling with so long and what his mum shared over the phone. It just sucks big time that his parents are so scared he feels like he has to choose between friends or family; and tim feels so pressured that he has to do it. Like it sucks cos it reminds me of my own struggles with pa? How you love each other but it’s so difficult cos you love differently. The only difference here is that they have two decades worth of solid foundation and a system that works. I guess that system is very much anchored by their faith but tim is obviously not as invested as he was before and he tried so hard. So I just wished things like that will eventually pass and everyone can see the priority: the people. I mean for me, it’s really a great pity and irony for them to loose their son and disfranchise him over a book that could have been mistranslated. At the end of the day what religions want is just for people to be good folks and it’s sad to see it destory people and families instead.

But also the whole thing was traumatising? Edwin and I had an almost four hour phone call and it really brought up a lot of painful things? Like ofc I guess we took the space for granted but it was also the only place that felt like a save space. It was very privileged and we were always aware of that but we forgot that it’s not our privilege, it’s tim’s parents' privilege. The three of us and all the rest are there on borrowed time and land. But that’s the thing that is scary. Because for now, it seems that this kind of safe and healing spaces seem only possible because someone else 施舍我们，寄人篱下的感觉真的不好受。It's difficult for me to confront with this whole thing and like it’s very scary. Since JC the three of us have dreamt of sharing a studio, or just something that can allow us to grow together and spend time together. I guess what we forgot as we visited hillview more and more was that it’s only identity is that it’s the chng summer house. or summer home. It was a space that could host guests but it was never meant to be shared the way we have so complacently believed it could be. And to be fair, we have no stake in this, we had no right to allow ourselves to inhabit the space in that capacity. That I think was our greatest mistake to our selves and their family and thus grave disrespect.

But jumping out of this context, the issue remains. Where are safe spaces, why are they so privileged? And for myself, why is it almost definitely mutually exclusive from my own house or anything remotely related to my family. Why do we allow trauma from our lives that agency. Maybe because we never got to heal, but to heal and to abstain from the conditions that afflict such trauma onto you, that is something that most people don’t have and might never have. I think I tried, by staying out with CO, by working so much, by staying in Hall, by overcommiting so that the trauma has to take a backseat. But what really needs to happen is a place that is purged of things like this, or a state where I have transformed these trauma into something of a different form. That is when I can have a safe space. Edwin has been asking me for a place that I feel safe at, I realise I don’t have such a space, I don’t have a home. I feel like a bird without its feet; you just keep flying but you can’t land, you can go to places with less wind and rain but you cant sit yourself down and just take a break. And that’s scary and I know that won’t work in the long run. So really, maybe the safest spaces are found in people and for now, until I can be that person for myself, I need to keep my friends and everyone who can provide this for me close and also respected. 

To always feel like you have to hide, to be dismissed because you are different. These feelings suck and I never expected to have to feel it so strongly from such a precious friend’s parents. And I don’t demonise them, I know it comes from a position of fear and ignorance. But the scary thing is, they are not gonna be the only ones in that place, a lot of people out there are like this too. This is a battle I choose to fight because I value tim, I want to do my best to help him salvage his relationship with his fam. But if it’s anyone else, I wouldn’t have been so submissive and willing to give such views and opinions so much airtime. But what does that mean? Do I really even know what I believe in if it’s something that can be compromised? And if I chose not to, do I even value my friends? It’s very difficult to consider all these issues all at once but there’s also no way to separate them from one an another. And that scares me, because things only get less clear as you walk closer to them. There is no clarity when you are neck-deep in things, there are only struggles and dilemma. 

Again all these reminds me of things at home. I think I might have felt scared because my diy family has been shaken, the same issues at home has slipped their way into the peripherals of my chosen family. And that sucks. I never felt like I had to justify I was a good person, never to anyone else other than my immediate family members. It feels more hurtful and even slightly offensive to be put in this position by my friend’s parent. I justify to my parents because I have no choice, I have my roles, I have to fufill filial piety. But what do I do when I don’t actually have to do it? When in a way I have no direct obligation towards them? How do I handle and negotiate this? It’s werid but tbh I think issues like this will come up again and again with different people. Especially if I choose to continue with doing art. It just, why do I have to justify that I am a good person. Can you not spare me some attention and just watch me? And if I am not then by your standards, why do I have to change to fit your ideals? Will you then be responsible for my life? Will you then grace me with peace and happiness? This whole thing about me being the only one who will be accountable and responsible for myself my whole life, makes it difficult to rationalise why we feel that we have to subscribe to other people’s expectations and ideals. Why do we still do that? Why do we allow ourselves to be affected by that? It doesn’t make sense when I think about it this way. But also I always enable and perpetuate this way of thinking and living.

Actually, at this point, I don’t even know what I am talking about anymore. But this incident has shaken me up a bit and it’s making me rethink things I have stashed away and avoided. And honestly, I don’t know how to navigate through these things. But I hate feeling guilty, I hate second-guessing, I hate insecurities and I hate anxiousness. It’s very tiring to carry these emotions around or to have them as the undertone of your life. And deep down I feel like it’s not fair, but it’s a choice that I made for myself, even though I can’t quite phantom how to control that yet. It’s scary to realise that agency and your own identity is something that can be so easily taken away from you just because someone else is in a position with more power or money. It is something that needs to be actively groomed and defended fiercely. But why?

Much to think about and I guess we really aren’t as formed up as we thought. Everyone is a messy, fear and ignorance are really very very powerful and destructive states of mind. I must try to avoid this. 

wobuzhidao.

[dalanmendonca]

Decadence & The End

Snap back to reality

So this was the final term and things started with a bang. I used the term break to go on a trip to Rajasthan.This was my first proper ISB trip. I’m a complete laggard in this matter. A lot people travelled the surrounding hillscapes like there’s no tomorrow, before placements and much more after placements. I loved campus a bit too much and didn’t want the (apparent) hassle of travelling. Rajasthan was warm and fun. It was a new experience visiting forts and palaces, seeing old weapons and finding out that the Rajas smoked a lot of hash! A Desert Safari and tent stays in Jaisalmer were fun too. The warm(er) weather was good break from the chills of Mohali. And soon I was back.

On the academic front things were as cool as they could be. Over-loading on courses earlier meant that I had to study only 3 courses and had plenty of time for socialising, fun and … co-ordinating my marriage!

My courses for Term 8 were ENVC (Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital), MFIN (Micro-Finance) and MKAN (Marketing Analytics).

ENVC was about the world of startups and venture capital. It was taught by Professor Francis Kim who is a former (successful!) entrepreneur and covered both sides of the table; we learned how to value a startup company and also about what kind of ideas succeed and what it takes to be an entrepreneur. The most amazing (and useful) part of the course was the simulation. Many academic courses use a simulation to show you how markets evolve, and how a manager has to respond. These are usually computer-based simulations, so they don’t feel all that real. In ENVC, the professor divided the class into 24 teams, 8 of these were VCs and 16 were ENs (entrepreneurs). All the entrepreneurs competed in the same market (“Edtech in India”). Every class entrepreneurs would present to VCs and half of them would get eliminated. Watching the simulation progress and observing the economic + human dynamics play out was a real treat. Initially, all but a few teams had over-lapping ideas. As rounds progressed and teams observed who died/survived, they started learning from each other and incorporating each others ideas. Every VC had 15 sticks to invest. As expected from economics, one team (mine! 😉)got a disproportionate share of the total funding in accordance with a power law distribution. Politics played a huge role too! Many couples put themselves into complementary EN-VC pairs; so that they could support each other! People called upon friendships and other niceties to get funded; objective judgement RIP. It was a faithul simulation of the ugly truth that is human life.

MFIN was about a still emerging branch of the finance that deals with facilitating the development of the poor/not-so-well-off. Here are the core ideas: To make people well-off we want to give them income sources, the simplest of these is running a small business. To start that business requires some inputs/capital. These inputs are beyond the means of these folks (else they would’ve started these businesses already!). So we can just lend money to these folks, right? Wrong. All of lending works on the idea of collateral, the poor being poor don’t have any collateral in the first place! All is not lost, this challenge has been confronted head-on by social entreprenuers, most notably Mohammad Yunus of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh and replicated in many countries world over. Their weapon of choice is group lending, where you start by lending to a group of people who keep each other from defaulting. Initial loans are small and grow with time. Because these banks can’t take the easy (and impersonal) way out when it comes to lending, banks like Grameen Bank have innovated on multiple fronts to make finance accessible to a whole new section of society. For example, repayment happens daily/weekly (as opposed to monthly) as this keeps the borrower engaged and aware of their loan. Loan repayment is a social process done in front of a group, thus adding social pressure to avoid shirking on a loan repayment; some wonderful uses of human psychology these are. Grameen Bank is the posterchild of the microlending/microfinance movement and a huge chunk of the economic and social development of Bangladesh has been attributed to it. An interesting concept I encountered was the double bottom--line (we measure only the financial impact of a business, business should also evaluate their social bottom-line and their impact on society). The course was taught by Shamika Ravi, who is a fantastic teacher (and a member of the Prime Ministers Economic Advisory Council); I really felt like I was understanding the core economic concepts as their immediate applications throughout the class.

Finally there was MKAN. MKAN was using the now available glut of data to apply age-old marketing principles of Segment, Target, Position. We used the now classic tools of clustering, regression, etc to do everything from segment customers to predict sales. The course was a good blend of hands-on tool driving while keeping marketing principles in mind. The classes happened at 8 AM in the morning, and hence I scarcely have much to say about this course. That wraps up the acads front.

Offer letters started pouring in for a few people with proactive companies. The gym was finally a thing for me. Some attempts were made in a bid to get skinny before the wedding. The attempts weren’t very successful. However, I’m glad that I got rid of my unfamiliarity anxiety about the gym. One of my reasons for not going to the gym is that I just don’t know what to do there, fortunately the ISB gym has two full-time trainers available 24x7 to guide you. It was my first honest attempt at gyming after trying in the 11th standard, and I’m now comfortable doing basic weights and using the machines. ISL continued its march in March (shitty line, I know). I remained blissfully ignorant.

Yearbook awkwardness continued. People scoured the land for places to get their yearbook photo clicked. Some people came with highly representative ones. It was also time to write yearbook testimonials for people. You had to nominate 3-4 of your friends to collectively write one testimonial for you. Here is where your true friends were revealed! This became just another group assignment with 1-2 people leading the charge for every testimonial.

CS and AoE sessions: A small segment of brave laptop warriors rekindled the joys of multiplayer games. And given the amount of free time available, a lot of kindling happened until the the wee hours of the night. I earnestly tried to join the fun by watching AoE tutorials, but then AoE on my PC kept crashing. And then I was like, why isn’t this in a browser?

SLC calendar

The Student Life Council went into beast mode, driving a ton of events on campus.

These events covered everything from Food fetes (like a giant potluck) to SV wars (which was basically student housing buildings competing to see who can throw the best party). The Food fete really brought the campus together, with everyone either cooking or helping or eating! The dishes students cooked up turned out to be better than expected – not everyone is an amateur in the cooking domain!

This period being a sort of end-of-days, for us all meant that people were extremely enthusiastic about partying. The winter had started relenting a little and spirits were uplifted.  SV wars and the usual birthday parties that happen on campus meant that there was a party every other day, but you couldn’t say no to the next party because this was the last time this would happen.

Which brings us to the most epic party after all the other parties. Holi! The Holi was lit and was the best party I’ve attended in my life. The SLC provided gulal and pichkaris and a giant inflated swimming pool and a DJ and a raindance area. In addition, there was bhaang-laden thandai and bhaang-laden bhajias. It was a warm(er) day compared to others. People were excited and in good spirts, going about throwing colour on friends, enemies, everyone. Then throwing friends, enemies, everyone into the inflated swimming pool. Then dancing and losing their shit after having bhaang. The post-holi post-bhaang time warp in which I struggled to get back to my room and ended up bathing for what seemed like an eternity is something I will never forget.

This concluded formal student life on campus, … or did it?

D-week

The conclusion of ISB life happens through two events - one formal and one informal. The formal one is of course graduation day – the hat toss, the tassel turning, the address to the graduating students by the guest of honour, etc. The informal one, unique to ISB, is what we call D-week, short for De-orientation week, the evil twin of O-week, that happened at the start of the year. Feeling the need to make the final week of ISB life super-duper-ultra-goddamn fun, I joined the D-week team to plan some events.

The D-week happens after ISBs academic session has wrapped up i.e. after the last exam has been written and before the graduation ceremony. Students officially have nothing to do, which adds to the pressure of planning some nice long events. Obviously, students are also free to leave campus and travel around, so making the events awesome and crowd-pulling becomes a must.

This D-week we had a game night, a “hotbox” party, a stand-up performance along with a roast of the GSB, a sundowner party, paintball, sufi night, an awards night along with a prom (the last party). The last event was the distribution and signing of yearbooks.

The events where I contributed to the most were the standup/roast and the awards night.

I gave the longest standup performance of my life (and emerging comedic career), lasting more than 20 minutes. I cracked jokes on every aspect of ISB life and proceeded to crack a few general ones. The auditorium was FULL, as the entire batch had turned up. It was my honour (and pleasure) to entertain these folks laugh; they laughed, a lot, which was a very inspiring and proud moment for me. Fortunately, this time the performance was recorded (by multiple people!).

Me and a handful more folks planned the awards and content for the awards. The winners were decided by live public voting which made the event really fun; thus the winners were a surprise to us too. Lots of controversial awards were given out. To add to the fun, we played jingles related to every award when the winners came on stage, adding to the cheery vibe of the vibe of the evening.

All D-week events were accompanied by some party or the other. I didn’t partake much in the daily drinking, however I did partake hugely in the daily eating. It was such a tough choice between indulging in end-of-days hedonism & trying to get in shape for my wedding. Both sides had a strong case.

On the last day, students gathered in “The Hub”, a small lawn in front of our main building to collect and sign yearbooks. This was fun few hours, writing messages to each other and recollecting memories. With this informal student life at ended.

Graduation

Graduation was a moderately long drawn out affair. Over the course of two days, we had a rehearsal of the graduation, “The Deans Dinner”, the ISB award ceremony, the official graduation ceremony followed by the Deans lunch.

For starters, it was complicated to wear graduation robes. While it’s fun to look like you’re in Harry Potter, wearing a gown is moderately difficult, especially the ISB gowns which have multiple moving parts. I’ve graduated before and it wasn’t so difficult :P. Also, ISB follows the tradition of turning the tassel - when you receive your degree, you turn your tassel from the right side of your hat (“mortarboard”) to the left indicating your successful graduation.

After the rehearsal we had the batch photo clicked followed quickly by the official ISB awards night. I am happy to state that I won awards for winning competitions, being a torchbearer (i.e contributing to student life + the brand of ISB) and finally also won a giant gold trophy for best club. Winning best club was thrilling to say the least. Just before the awards night could start, my Mom who was travelling all the way from Bombay arrived, coincidence? divine providence?

The awards night was followed by the Deans dinner where only the elite (like Deans listers, Club presidents, etc.) were invited. Yours truly was invited too, and he watched the awkwardness of socialising unfold for the umpteenth time.

That was it for pre-events. As I had dinner that evening, it was with my mother instead of the usual coterie of friends/students, it really started to sink in that things were coming to a close, whether I was transformed or not, a whole year had passed by. A year quite different from those before it.

I dropped my mom off and wished her goodnight. Tomorrow was going to be a momentous day.

Graduation day started early with breakfast opening at 7. Me being an eternal early bird, arrived promptly at 7. Then came the … waiting, students, who were all gown-ed up, waited in the academic block in a neat line so they could walk in a procession into the convocation hall. The convocation hall was a newly setup airplane hangar-like structure on the lawns. After a long wait that involved lots of photo sessions and false starts, some orchestral music was played and we all went into the hall in a glorious procession. An invocation was sung, our GSB president gave a speech followed by a few more addresses. We were told that our placements had been the best ever, and thus we were a great batch (Thanks!). The guest of honour gave a really boring and uninspiring speech, lots of people slept off or got busy on their phones. This was followed by announcements of the best professor, best academic associate. Finally we came to the graduation, students were called on stage one by one, in alphabetical order, except for those who received any sort of ISB honours, they went on stage first. My row got up all together, I waited for my moment, my name was called, I walked towards the center of the stage, shook hands with everyone present, grabbed my degree, looked at the camera, smiled, click, and walked out. As I walked out, I remembered to turn my tassel and officially become a graduate. Ah! Long journey. Then I sat as the degree disbursal wrapped. Finally, we all stood up, did a royal hat toss, smiled, laughed, cheered and walked out of the hall as graduates together. It was a fun ceremony. Then there was my favourite part, lunch

Since I had a plane to catch from Delhi, for which I had to take a 4-5 hour cab ride, I was in a rush! There was sadly no time for pleasantries and ooh-aahing. I wrapped up all my exit formalities, packed my bags a proper and took one last look at ISB, a place and people that I did indeed feel a little fonder towards.

This was the end. Of one sort.

I had come here with few expectations, for me B-school was just a brand and a network, these benefits come to after you graduate, I thought (back then) that this was mostly not relevant, I just had to get through it. But I was in for a lot of surprises, mostly pleasant. Apart from discovering news branches of knowledge, made new friends and newer perspectives, headed a club, won competitions and honours (in a far cry from my undergraduate days), tried standup comedy, gotten a kickass job and more. It felt like an eventful and significant year had gone by.

The transition from student to alumnus is most stark when you turn in your student ID card and receive your new Alumni ID card, it is precisely when the feeling of “shit, it’s really over” sinks into you. I wasn’t too emotional as I left, I had come prepared for this end. Back in Bombay, when I was packing for ISB, I packed quite lightly knowing that this was just a year, a temporary stay; and I could also save myself a lot of effort in moving stuff around. My past self had seen my future self which was now my present self and done it a favour! Cool, right?

The fun wasn’t over. Members of the drama club got together and gave every student leaving the campus a proper tear-filled and emotional vidaai; while I left early and couldn’t get one, it was a very sweet gesture.

But there was no time to be chill, my wedding and honeymoon were oncoming!

And so ended #LifeAtISB

[evilelitest2]

100 Days of Trump Day 60: 1984

     Welcome back to 100 Days of Trump, where we try to sum up WTF happened in 2016 in 100 recommendations.  Today we are going to talk to the ganddaddy of them all, 1984....and let me just get this out of the way.  Orwell was a Socialist, he was extremely left wing, his criticism of communism (and it is more than just communism he is critical of) wasn’t coming from a right wing place.  Now one of Orwells main theory was actually disproved, if you don’t have a word for something it doesn't keep you from articulating it, usually by making a new word via language drift.  When Mao Zedong created Simplified Chinese he deliberately tried to remove certain phases and concepts from the language...but very quickly that failed, the Chinese just used new terms or loan words.  But what I do want to talk about with 1984 is the co-option of language, yes I am banging that drum again.  

    See the regime Ingoc is specifically said to lack any real ideology, its most defining traits is its inconsistency, “We have always been at war with east asia”  But a political regime must have ideological rhetoric, even if it has no ideology itself, and so lacking any core beliefs, they instead latch upon other ideas and concepts and co-opt them for their own purpose.  And the Far Right (though not necessarily the more ‘moderate’ right) doesn’t really have a coherent political ideology beyond vague “I oppose these things” when you leave them alone to make their own theories it just turns into absolute shit.  And the greatest irony is that if you look at their writings, not only do they all sound like each other with no discernible difference, they all use the same phases over and over again, like cuck.  But the thing I find interesting is...almost all of those phases are leftist terms they just stop (not cuck obviously).  Here let me give a list of their mindlessly parroted phases that the Neoreactionary Right just can’t get enough of

Politically Correct

This was originally a socialist/communist term used by people like Orwell and Troskey against Stalinist style communists, politically correct mean that they followed the party line mindlessly without questioning.  If you used the word in its originally meaning, then you’d be using it against republicans who put aside previous objections in order to work with Trump.  Then it came to mean basically “Corporate works trying to pretend to be progressive without actually being progressive” a decidedly left wing charge.  But the right got it so not it just kinda means “Giving a shit about social justice”   Speaking of which

Social Justice Warrior 

This was actually a left wing term, I’m serious, I remember when it was first spreading around left wing internet and I was like “god damn this is a useful term”  And holy crap did that get co-opted fast.  SJW originally was a word to use for leftists who advocated a much more militant and “Us vs. them” mentality, basically for the modern day Marat or Robespierre.  This time of liberal disagreement goes back for quite a long way, the question of reform vs. revolution, and its not necessarily an ideological difference as it is a practical one, and it was nice to have a term to those people who fetishize the idea of violent revolution utterly ignorant of its results (spoiler warning, it doesn’t end well).  But not it is just a blanket term to mean “people I don’t like”

White Knight

Man i remember when this was a feminist term, it was a great term, it basically referred to men who try to defend women out of a desire for sex, which is a creepy thing that happens all the time.  Problem now is that any man who like...doesn’t think that Anita Sarkeesian is trying to take over the world is a white knight by default.  

Virtue Signalling

Basically this is when somebody obstains from doing something horrible and then calls attention to it so that everybody will value and respect them, social justices entirely for the praise.  Good term, we have all met that one guy who does that.  Problem is now that anybody who is like “Man, it is really awful the way women are consistently harassed on the internet” and the immediate response is “well you are just virtue signalling”.  

MLK

MLK’s entire existence has become one giant use of Rightists misusing him to support their argument, and then in response leftist pretending he was somehow  a violent revolutionary cause that makes sense. 

Regressive Leftist 

This one originally means to people who are supposedly left wing but actually seem to hold really non left wing views 

Ethics in Game Journalism

This might shock you but long before Gamergate was the glimmer in Ejoni’s empty souless eyes there were a lot of people talking about how corrupt games journalism is, because it fucking is but guess what? Most of them didn’t join up with GG, in fact many like Jim Sterling actually opposed GG and none of them were talking about indie devs interacting with games journalist for good reviews, they were instead talking about giant corporations buying adds on gaming journalist sites to get good reviews, the giant corporations that GG didn’t spend its time talking about in favor of how an indie game developer and a youtube feminist are somehow responsible for everything wrong in a multi billion dollar industry.  

Orwell himself

And of course, Orwell himself suffered this, despite being, I will say this again, a socialist, you see the term orwellian used to refer to the very same ideology Orwell held, its fucking maddening.  You have folks online like RedbloodedAmerican who literally say “Socialism has never produced anything of value ever” and then use the term Orwellian without any bat of irony.  

Part of this is that when these terms of defined, they are usually only defined in what they are, not what they aren’t, which makes them very easy to co-opt, after all the original definition didn’t not mean this right? Good hint for future leftist term makings, when you make something up, very specifically say what it isn’t.  Orwell would have done better I feel if he had very specifically made it clear what his regime was not as much as what it was.  

but we don’t just see this in a political context, I mean take the term 

Mary Sue

It is suppose to mean a character who is way too powerful for the narrative and around whom the narrative revolves because they are always correct, and now kinda means “thing I don’t like” 

But the right doesn’t just always co-opt the left, they have lots of neat little terms that instead exist to sort of hide to themselves and others how utterly abhorrent the whole lot of them are.  I mean when you say 

Family Values

When being homophobic or anti feminist, it basically doesn’t mean anything, I mean....what do families as a collective unit produce universal values?  All of them?  I mean the Judeo Claudians were a family should I take advice from them?  What defines a family? What if a family disagrees?  How does that mean anything at all?

Intelligent Design

This literally exists to make creationism sound less stupid than creationism, but of course every single person who believes in Intelligent Design is of course a creationist. 

White Nationalist 

Rather than just saying ‘I’m a nazi” they use this cute little term instead, because their beliefs are basically the same as the nazis except Pan European rather than just German.  

Spengler

This one honestly confuses me, because Spengler was right wing I mean did any of them actually read Decline of the West

The point is that we just see words used not for a method of communication, but instead as a way to create a larger point 

    The list goes on and on but I want to get to my main point, I want to talk about the psychology going on with this constant revisionist of language, it isn’t because they are stupid (I mean it is but that isn’t the main point) its about keeping people angry, about creating a constant sense of anger and embittered paranoia.  Because here is the dirty little secret of the Far Right, if you actually calm them the fuck down and don’t have an enemy to oppose....they don’t really have all that much in common.  IN fact a lot of them have beliefs that are actually really left wing.  Again and again we have found that if you poll Americans based on specific issues like “Should healthcare be affordable”and “Does this country have too much of a wealth gap” and “Do the rich not pay enough in taxes” and a lot of hardcore republican suddenly sound like socialists.  CGP Grey noted that if you abstract enough and talk to people about the electoral college they will almost uniformly come out and say “Wow, that is awful” but the moment they realize that they benefit from it, they will instantly start to change their tune.  Because to a lot of Republican voters, it isn’t actually about the issues, its about fucking over “The enemy” which in this case is the democrats, and as long as people are fucking pissed, they don’t really fully listen to the whole platform of the guy they supported.  I had this issue with Obama/Clinton supporters where their supporters just stopped listening when they got to things they didn't’ like about the candidate, because it isn’t actually about the core issues, its about fear and hatred of the other side.  But maintaining that level of hatred is actually pretty difficult, because the moment people calm down a tad and go home, watch TV and find out the world hasn’t ended, they start to realize that you are kinda hyperbolic and most importantly, might become vulnerable to leftists pointing out that they actually agree on most issues.  So you need to keep them mad, constantly perpetually mad, just endlessly angry, so that they never really have that moment of calming the fuck down and actually thinking about the issues.  And Angry people aren’t famous for rational decisions

Yet again reminder of why Hitchens is an utterly worthless pseudo intellectual who reminds me a lot of Alex Jones, who is basically the result of a human being who has been angry for decades and has never calmed down.

  This is also why these buzzwords are so important, they distract from the issue as a whole, because family values...I has family, and I don’t wants family to change gah.  Rather than sitting them down and talking to them about what a changing modern society actually means for a family they just kind of vaguely panic because they aren’t in a head-space where they are ready to reason (This is worse for single issue voters).  Like i’ve spoken to people about the Iraq War and once I get to “So how do you win a war on terror” they suddenly kinda stop and go “Huh....wait”  or “How do you win a war on drugs” if they aren’t viewing in from the lenses of a culture war, they  become more receptive.  So the point of the right (who i remind you, have interests which most of the country doesn’t like, as Trump’s supporters are finding out right now).  I mean literally at this moment, we are seeing people go “Well I like the ACA I just don’t like Obamacare” when they are the SAME FUCKING THING  

And that is where the Right wing Media empire comes in and by that I mean the two min of hate, where you can take all of your collective insecurities anger and frustrations in life and everything around you and blame it on one nebulous force of “Them”.  Huh where have I seen that before?

If you watch folks like THunderfoot, Sargon or other anti feminists, they fixate a fucking tone of attention on this extremely standard video series, it is notably shocking how much time they spend talking about really basic theory level stuff and then you realize....Anita, Zoe Quinn, Brianna Wu and Hillary Clinton are literally the whole feminists they know.  Like they haven’t read any of the material, they don’t know any of these people, they don’t even know what feminism is other than a vague “bad thing” that that they don’t like and blame for all their problems.  This is why so called “Free speech” advocates” are totally ok with GSM folks having videos put down, why devout Christians vote for a man who admitted to sexual assault, why people who hate the Eastern Elites are always getting in bed with Goldman sachs or why the working class voted for Trump, it isn’t actually about the issues, its about screwing the other guy.  

It is into this environment that Trump thrives, because pointing to a vague, undefinable, conspiratorial other is where he thrives and he serves as the culminate conductor of rage (that should be a title of a book on this subject honestly)

[hasansonsuzceliktas]

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, Shall I Let You Cry Some More?

Six months ago, I gave birth to a wonderful baby whom we named Helios. During these six months, I’ve literally lived for him and him alone. I stopped working and exercising. I saw friends only occasionally. I ate fast, like really fast. I even felt like I didn’t even breathe anymore sometimes. I guess I needed to do everything that I ever told my students and other people who came to me for advice. As a first-time mom, however, it’s not so easy with my little star. Maybe you’re thinking that I should have read some books about parenting first. I actually read many books about parenting, sleep habits, and so on, but if I’ve learned something valuable in these past six months, it’s that every baby is unique and parenting is not something that comes with a manual. Let’s start from the beginning shall we? I had a wonderful pregnancy. (Some of you may have read my previous articles about it.) I was as healthy and as energetic as ever. I continued eating healthily, exercising regularly, and sleeping well. I didn’t experience any of the common problems during pregnancy, and I even worked out on the day I went into labor (two hours of walking and 45 minutes of Pilates). I had hoped to have a natural delivery without an epidural, but life is not always so accommodating. After some three hours, I was so tired that I asked for the epidural (my dilation was at five), because I came to believe I wouldn’t be able to push when the time came. The wise lady also told us that without it, it would take at least another five hours before I was completely dilated, so I followed her advice. The epidural in itself was very painful, but I could at least then finally rest a little. Two hours later, I was ready for the delivery, but I also started to feel the contractions, so I asked if it was possible to have a little more medication if the delivery was too painful. The wise lady recommended against it so I could feel the pushing, so I again followed her advice, and it was really easy to manage the pain. After a few minutes, however, she came and administered some more medication anyway! It was not just a little either but rather a complete dose! From that moment on, I didn’t feel anything at all, not even my toes! This meant I couldn’t push the baby. I was so frustrated and disappointed in myself. All those delivery preparation classes I took had been for nothing! What’s more, the doctor said the baby was positioned too high, so he needed to use forceps. This was a real disaster for me. Finally, the baby arrived with no health problems, but mommy was not fine at all. Three days after the delivery, I still couldn’t walk. Every time I tried, I just bent over double. I started to feel severe neck ache as well. A few days later, a nurse told me I had a breach in my spinal cord due to the epidural! My options were clear: I could stay like this for lord knows how long, or I could undergo a blood patch. This procedure resembles the original epidural, but instead of medication, the patient’s own blood is injected into the spinal cord to repair the breach. I chose the blood patch, and two days later, I was finally sent home! During these five days in the hospital, I would lie on the bed while my husband cared for the baby. He changed his diapers and learned how to wash him. All I could do was to breastfeed him. Following the delivery, Helios stayed with me, skin to skin, for some time. The nurses later took him away for an examination, and when they returned, they placed him in a crib so I could rest as well. He slept and didn’t eat for a long time. Around midnight, he woke up and started crying. I fed him, but he continued crying. The nurse suggested he was realizing that he was separated from his mommy, and this was why he cried. I therefore took him into bed with me and since then, we always slept together. Whenever I tried to leave him in a crib, he would wake up. He just couldn’t sleep alone, and I have some theories about why: I was so disappointed at not being able to push during the delivery that I wanted to at least keep him close and help him sleep. He became stressed when separated from his mommy during the blood patch procedure, so he now wanted to stay with me constantly. He was abandoned in one of his previous lives, so he is afraid of being abandoned again and wants to stay close to his mommy. His father is so afraid he might die of cot death that he doesn’t want to be away from his baby, so Helios senses this anxiety. We have what we call a family bed, and the three of us slept together in it. Helios had his own room with his own crib, and there was a co-sleeping crib next to our bed. None of this mattered, though, because he always wanted to sleep with his mommy. I can see the situation evolving now, however. At first, he couldn’t be apart from me for more than five minutes, even when he was awake. He hated his stroller, so I used a sling to walk with him. Someone else had to hold him so I could eat. Today, he can sleep for 30–120 minutes alone, at least if I settle him down first. By his fourth month, I had started putting him in his crib during the day. If he didn’t want to be alone, I never forced it but rather lay down with him. He also likes his stroller as well now, so we can walk for hours without any complaints. For all these improvements, I had to be very patient. Most times, it meant I couldn’t do anything other than sit on the couch with him sleeping in my arms. Of course, I later started to have serious back problems, because sitting for so long is very dangerous. I then started to sleep with him instead. I sometimes had the feeling I did nothing other than eat and sleep. Last week, however, I started to get back on track: I now do yoga and Pilates regularly and teach my Pilates classes again. I also write articles and study for my nutrition courses. I admit that I didn’t enjoy all those hours sleeping and sitting. I was mildly depressed for a couple of weeks, and during this period, I read much about baby sleep problems and techniques to help them sleep. Here is some of the advice I found: Cry it out: Kiss the baby and say “Night, night” before placing him in his crib. If he cries, don’t come back but rather ignore it. He should stop and fall asleep eventually. Reduce parental presence: Place the baby in his bed, with you either sitting on a nearby chair or lying down with him. Each day, pay less attention to him, stay less with him, and try leaving the room before he sleeps. Come back before he cries, however, to show that you can be depended upon. In the end, he will learn to become more comfortable and fall asleep. The 5-10-15 method: Put your little one in his bed before leaving the room and closing the door. Five minutes later, come back to say you love him and tell him it’s time to sleep. Do not stay more than a few minutes with him. Your next visit will be in 10 minutes time, with another one 15 minutes later. Even if he cries, you should not go to him before it’s time. This continues until he falls asleep. Routine: Whichever method you decide upon, you should first set a predictable sleep routine for your baby. It might involve singing a few songs, taking a relaxing bath, or reading stories to him, basically anything you enjoy that will calm your baby. With this routine, he’ll come to associate it with sleeping time. The predictability will also reassure him. You should also set a wake up routine to start the day. Put your baby to bed when he’s drowsy but not yet sleeping: Whatever you do, do not let your baby sleep in your arms. Put him to bed when he’s drowsy enough but not yet asleep. This way, he’ll know how to fall back to sleep if he wakes up. After reading all this, the only thing we did was to set bedtime and wake-up routines. Helios takes a bath or watches me shower, and then his father gives him a massage and changes his diaper. I then feed him and sing to him. We also sometimes dance a little before the final song because he just loves the motion. After a while, he falls asleep in my arms with my breast still in his mouth. I’m sure the other advice works fine for many babies and parents, but it just didn’t fit with Helios and our family. We are Mediterranean folk. Where I grew up, mothers have coaxed their babies to sleep for centuries. Maybe it takes hours to nurse a baby in the arms, on the legs, or on a swing, but the mother never leaves the baby alone until he or she is sleeping. This is also how I see it: A mother nurses her baby to sleep. As for Helios, even when I tried putting him to bed while sleeping, he always immediately woke up. How was I supposed to put him to bed drowsy and expect him to fall asleep on his own? He is the kind of baby who doesn’t cry unless he feels pain, but he complains a lot when we let him play on his mat. He simply wants to move, but he can’t on his own for the moment. The complaints very easily turn to crying, and he can keep this up for some time. This crying is the main subject of this article! Letting a Baby Cry Causes Stress Imagine that you had an accident and couldn’t talk or walk. You would need someone to take care of you, right? You are all alone in your bed, and you want your nurse to come and help you with something, but you cannot call out. What would you do? You would cry of course! If your helper still didn’t come, and you knew he or she was nearby, you would get angry and cry louder. Now, would you still trust this person? How would you feel in this situation? You would likely become distressed. This is exactly what happens to babies every time they cry but nobody comes to help. When our friends learned about how we slept with Helios and never let him cry, they said he needs to cry in order to learn about frustration. However, the first three months of a baby’s life can be regarded as the fourth trimester of pregnancy. This is when a baby gets to learn about his or her new surroundings. Babies come from their mothers’ womb of course, which is a warm, cozy place with many sounds, motions, and an abundance of food and no need to even breathe. Then we ask then to change all their habits and become what we want, to sleep quietly without contact from momma or poppa. They need to ask for food when they are hungry, but they shouldn’t just cry for it. How would you feel if you were forced to sleep in a strange place, were fed less, and could never ask for more? You would surely need some time to adapt, and it’s just the same for your baby. Babies need time to get used to their new surroundings and living conditions. Holding them in your arms is just welcoming them as they deserve to be, and by sleeping with them, the smells they remember from the womb comfort them (breasts have the same odor as the placenta). After three months, you can start teaching your baby new things, but I preferred to be as gentle as possible until then. Why on earth would I want my baby to learn frustration? Here are some things Helios would learn if we let him cry: Momma and poppa don’t care about me, and I can’t trust them! I’m alone on this strange planet where I don’t understand anything. No one listens to me, not even my parents. Maybe I should cry even louder and force them to listen to me if I need something… Anger, sadness, disappointment, fear, loneliness are some of the feelings that result when you ignore babies and let them cry. Moreover, when parents are tired from the grind of everyday life, they lose patience very quickly. Instead of calming their babies, they sometimes shout at them: “I’ve had it with you! Stop acting so spoiled! You cry for no reason, and you never do what I tell you to. I don’t want to hear you anymore.”  Stress is the inevitable outcome of all this. Stress Is Toxic for an Organism Stress triggers a flow of adrenaline, noradrenalin, and cortisol. Adrenaline and noradrenaline are released by the adrenal glands. In normal amounts, an individual feels very energetic. When the amount increases, however, the same person grows anxious and/or angry. He or she becomes filled with fear and the body becomes hyper-vigilant, ready to attack or retreat. Cortisol, likewise, is very useful in moderate amounts. It increases the amount of glucose (sugar) in the blood, calming a stressed body. A higher amount of cortisol, however, creates a feeling of powerlessness, discouragement, sadness, and insecurity. A prolonged elevation of cortisol can also modify the metabolism and the immune system. This can then lead to autoimmune and other chronic illnesses like diabetes, polyarthritis, and so on. If you think about the undeveloped brain of a baby or young infant, the damage can be very severe. The secretion of these three substances also explains the behavioral changes in our little ones. They lose confidence as they feel threatened by the world and the people around them. This distrust leads them to become depressed, to isolate themselves, or to become aggressive and antisocial. Fortunately, the body also secretes an anti-stress hormone called oxytocin. This anxiolytic (something that prevents anxiety) is secreted when a person is in a positive situation, decreasing the secretion of cortisol and calming the person. When your baby is in contact with you, such as sleeping in your arms if he or she needs it, his or her body secretes oxytocin. My husband and I do our level best to keep our son full of this hormone. Sleep Is a Complex Phenomenon Think about yourself. How do you sleep? It’s really a complicated issue. In order to sleep, you need to relax and let your body go. For that, you need to feel safe in your environment and trust the people around you. You need to feel secure. These feelings can take some time to cultivate in a baby whose brain is not yet developed. Letting a baby cry could only make things worse. In many cultures around the world, parents sleep with their babies for a long time, even a year or two. What’s more, think about African women working in the fields. They keep their babies with them constantly. These babies get to be with their mothers all the time. In Western culture, we try to rush things. It’s ironic how we want babies but expect them to behave like adults and adopt the routines and behaviors we promote to them. We want babies, but we want to get away from them as soon as possible without giving them the time to construct a healthy relationship with their new surroundings! We let respect and love rule in our family. We do not try to enforce behaviors and habits on Helios. We accept that he has his own personality, even just after birth but more so at six months, and we help him like we would an adult. I wouldn’t let an adult cry if I could help, so I also don’t let my son cry alone. (If he happens to cry while he’s with us, we try to understand why and demonstrate how we care.) If he wants to sleep with me, I’m happy to let him. What do you think the early humans used to do? Did they hide their babies away, so they could learn to sleep alone and become independent? Am I too traditional? If so, so be it, but I will never let you cry, my little star Read the full article

[tragicbooks]

Here's what actual trans military voices have to say about Trump's ban.

An estimated 15,000 trans people currently serve in the military.

In June 2016, the U.S. secretary of defense made a long-overdue announcement: The military was ending its ban on transgender service members.

With the 2011 end to the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy banning gay, lesbian, and bisexual people from serving, allowing trans people to serve openly seemed like the logical next step.

As then-Secretary of Defense Ash Carter explained, “Our mission is to defend this country, and we don’t want barriers unrelated to a person’s qualifications to serve preventing us from recruiting or retaining the soldier, sailor, airman, or Marine who can best accomplish the mission.”

Fast-forward a year, and President Trump has undone that progress, tweeting that "the United States Government will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. military."

He cited "tremendous medical costs" as the reason behind his decision despite the fact that a RAND Corporation study found that the total additional cost of allowing trans people to serve in the military is $2.4 million-8.4 million. (For comparison, in 2014, the military spent more than 10 times that on erectile dysfunction medication alone.)

After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow......

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017

....Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming.....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017

....victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017

But maybe Trump's decision wasn't about cost at all. According to Axios reporter Jonathan Swan, a Trump administration official was quoted as saying the move "forces Democrats in Rust Belt states like Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin, to take complete ownership of this issue."

"How will the blue collar voters in these states respond when senators up for re-election in 2018 like Debbie Stabenow are forced to make their opposition to this a key plan of their campaigns?" Swan quoted the official as saying.

In other words, Trump's decision doesn't seem to be about readiness, cost, or any of the other reasons frequently tossed around by opponents of trans inclusion in the military. Instead, it's just a game of politics, with trans lives as pawns.

There are currently an estimated 15,000 trans people serving in the military. What do they think of Trump reinstating the ban? We asked them.

Amanda Clark was discharged back in 2007 after coming out as trans. While she says she's ambivalent about military service, she sees this as a matter of basic civil rights.

"I can’t possibly fathom what openly out trans people in the military are feeling right now. Hell, I feel scared now just being a trans person in the civilian world. It feels like the f*cking fascists who run this country are coming for us, and openly serving trans people are next. I’m sure a lot of officers/[non-commissioned officers] are going to be thrilled to get involved in paperwork hell discharging folks."

Kristen Carella, who served on active duty 2001-2005 as an intelligence analyst stationed in Germany, pointed out that many U.S. allies (18 in total, including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom) allow trans people to serve without issue.

"Here was an opportunity for this country to move forward, recognizing the sacrifices transgender people have ALWAYS made in the armed forces, by allowing us to serve openly. [According to Human Rights Campaign] stats 26% of the trans community serves in the military at some point during their lives, that is TWICE the rate of the general population. Trump's decision is a stunning reversal that can be taken only as a slap in the face, personally to every transgender person who has ever served. It accomplishes nothing more than making sure transgender people remain a demonized and hated target that right-wing politicians can target to scare their base and push their agendas. Of course, all of this demonization ensures that the ignorant violence which leads bigots to murder transgender people in the streets (particularly trans women of color) will continue."

Penelope R., an intersex trans woman who served in the Air Force for six years before leaving to pursue transition, says "members are going to die" because of this new policy, and she urges those who might not generally support the military to care about this.

"[The] American military, despite its many infelicities, has always been a reliable space for many kinds of marginalized people to hide out in. This is why trans people are disproportionately represented in the military. Enlisting was always a last resort for me — I've known I was trans since I was a child, and knew going into the military meant carving away parts of my identity I cherished, but at the time the alternative was death. Just death. I chose to live, and as a result I met my wife, found a chosen family that makes the sun rise for me, made enough money to afford transition, and qualified me to receive transitional health care from the Illinois VA. ... The military helped make my life worth living. And now it's all gone to shit for everyone. Despite what he says, there's nothing Trump can say or do to stop trans people from serving — he can only get rid of those he knows about. It will only go back to how it was before, with trans service members confined to the closet at the risk of their careers."

Then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter lifts the ban on trans troops on June 30, 2016. Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images.

Landon Wilson, who served in the Navy and was the topic of a widely read 2014 Washington Post profile about trans people in the military, points out that the  ban means "honorably serving people" will be removed from service, "effectively weakening our country."

"It's a heartbreaking shame that the President of the United States is choosing to ignore the sacrifices of transgender service members, particularly at a time where so many have proven their dedication to this country. A diverse military makes a strong military; by removing honorably serving people from service, the President is effectively weakening our country, both as a fighting force and as a leader in civil rights."

"Even when we've taken the uniform off, our service never stops." - @HiBoriPrincess #VeteransDay #OpenTransService http://pic.twitter.com/mBdneUM1Sv

— TransMilitary (@TransMilitary) November 11, 2015

Vivian Wise, an information systems technician on active duty in the Navy, came out to her shipmates the day President Obama and Secretary Carter lifted the ban in 2016. She disagrees with President Trump's assertion that trans people serving in the military is a "disruption."

"To say that my service has been a 'disruption' is an outright lie. My Commanding Officer, immediate superiors and co-workers have all been fully supportive of me. I am one of the senior technicians within my division, responsible for training our new sailors and managing our day-to-day and week-to-week work list. I was, until just now, being groomed to lead one of our division's two watch teams for our upcoming deployment, beginning late next year. In that capacity, I serve a critical role in my work center. Summarily discharging me from military service, for nothing more than petty bigotry and electoral politics, is the disruption. The GOP as a whole, and the Trump administration in particular, are degrading my unit and hundreds if not thousands of other units across the armed services by taking away valuable people. We, and the American people, deserve better than this."

Cisgender allies, activists, and experts are voicing their concerns, as well.

In an email, TransMilitary co-director and executive producer Fiona Dawson (who, in 2015, documented the story of two trans service members who fell in love) weighed in on the move, saying she hopes Trump will actually take the time to meet some of the trans personnel he deems unfit for service.

"Donald Trump's assertions against transgender service members are baseless. Science and ethics determine there is no rational reason why the thousands of transgender women and men who have been defending our country and fighting for our freedom for hundreds of years should not be permitted to continue doing so."

Former Secretary Carter offered his opinion on the reinstatement of the discriminatory policy as well, saying that it "has no place in our military."

Ex-DefSec Carter: "To choose service members on other grounds than military qualifications is social policy & has no place in our military." http://pic.twitter.com/Y1SjfYK7Ug

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) July 26, 2017

Advocacy organizations and civil rights groups across the country are issuing press releases, denouncing the tweet on a number of grounds.

The Palm Center called this "a worse version of 'Don't Ask Don't Tell'" and hit Trump over his claims of "tremendous costs."

"As we know from the sad history of that discredited policy, discrimination harms military readiness. This is a shocking and ignorant attack on our military and on transgender troops who have been serving honorably and effectively for the past year. As former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen stated yesterday, their service must be respected. The Rand Corporation has estimated that the cost of medical care for transgender troops is approximately one one-hundredth of one percent of the military annual health care budget, or at most, $8.4 million per year. To claim otherwise is to lie about the data."

Tyler Deaton of the American Unity Fund, a conservative LGBTQ organization, criticized Trump for going back on what he saw as LGBTQ-friendly campaign promises in a statement that is long but worth reading in its entirety:

"President Trump promised to protect the transgender community. As President, he said he was 'respectful and supportive of LGBTQ rights' and would 'protect the community from violence and oppression.' But President Trump has broken his promise and, coupled with his administration's efforts to roll back protections for transgender students in our nation's public schools, he is developing an undeniable pattern of anti-gay and anti-transgender policy while in office. ... As conservatives and advocates for LGBTQ freedom, AUF calls on President Trump to reconsider his comments, and stand with all of our soldiers, including those who are transgender."

Former Justice Department official Vanita Gupta, currently president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, slammed Trump's move as "yet another broken promise to the American people."

"President Trump doesn't understand that our military is stronger when there are no discriminatory barriers to service. The civil and human rights community will continue to loudly and proudly stand up for the rights of all who are willing to protect the security of our country, including the thousands of transgender people currently serving in our military."

And of course, there was pushback from a number of Democratic and Republican politicians alike.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-California) commented on the sad irony of Trump's decision to increase discrimination on the 69th anniversary of President Truman's order to desegregate the military.

.@POTUS has shown his conduct is driven not by honor, decency, or national security, but by prejudice. https://t.co/PHTlXMhEJg http://pic.twitter.com/X9rYhn5Jic

— Nancy Pelosi (@NancyPelosi) July 26, 2017

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York) announced plans to introduce legislation that would overrule Trump's decision.

This morning, transgender service members put on uniform and showed up to their military duties...

— Kirsten Gillibrand (@SenGillibrand) July 26, 2017

This new decision is harmful and misguided. It weakens—not strengthens—our military. And I’ll do everything in my power to fight it.

— Kirsten Gillibrand (@SenGillibrand) July 26, 2017

Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-New York) highlighted the number of trans people serving in the military.

To @POTUS: Don't tell me #trans military service members who serve this country are any less courageous or deserving b/c of who they are. http://pic.twitter.com/XNQKKTnWw5

— (((Rep. Nadler))) (@RepJerryNadler) July 26, 2017

Rep. Illeana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Florida), who has a transgender son, spoke out against it as well.

No American, no matter their sexual orientation or gender identity, should be prohibited from honor + privilege of serving our nation #LGBT

— Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (@RosLehtinen) July 26, 2017

Rep. Joe Kennedy III (D-Massachusetts) offered to stand in solidarity with trans soldiers.

To the thousands of #trans men+women bravely serving our nation in uniform: Thank you. We do not take your patriotism for granted. https://t.co/bguuL4tx0f

— Rep. Joe Kennedy III (@RepJoeKennedy) July 26, 2017

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said "transgender people are people, and deserve the best we can do for them."

Senator Hatch's full comments on the issue of transgender Americans in the military. #utpol http://pic.twitter.com/EDS6JRXJaj

— Senator Hatch Office (@senorrinhatch) July 26, 2017

And Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) called trans service members "patriots."

Transgender Americans are serving honorably in our military. We stand with these patriots.

— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) July 26, 2017

Trans people exist in the world and have every right to engage in the same activities and occupations as anybody else.

This is a big deal, and it's not just a distraction. Nobody should be discriminated against for who they are — not in the military, not in education, not in housing, not in employment, not in health care, not at all.

[tragicbooks]

Here's what actual trans military voices have to say about Trump's ban.

An estimated 15,000 trans people currently serve in the military.

In June 2016, the U.S. secretary of defense made a long-overdue announcement: The military was ending its ban on transgender service members.

With the 2011 end to the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy banning gay, lesbian, and bisexual people from serving, allowing trans people to serve openly seemed like the logical next step.

As then-Secretary of Defense Ash Carter explained, “Our mission is to defend this country, and we don’t want barriers unrelated to a person’s qualifications to serve preventing us from recruiting or retaining the soldier, sailor, airman, or Marine who can best accomplish the mission.”

Fast-forward a year, and President Trump has undone that progress, tweeting that "the United States Government will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. military."

He cited "tremendous medical costs" as the reason behind his decision despite the fact that a RAND Corporation study found that the total additional cost of allowing trans people to serve in the military is $2.4 million-8.4 million. (For comparison, in 2014, the military spent more than 10 times that on erectile dysfunction medication alone.)

After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow......

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017

....Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming.....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017

....victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017

But maybe Trump's decision wasn't about cost at all. According to Axios reporter Jonathan Swan, a Trump administration official was quoted as saying the move "forces Democrats in Rust Belt states like Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin, to take complete ownership of this issue."

"How will the blue collar voters in these states respond when senators up for re-election in 2018 like Debbie Stabenow are forced to make their opposition to this a key plan of their campaigns?" Swan quoted the official as saying.

In other words, Trump's decision doesn't seem to be about readiness, cost, or any of the other reasons frequently tossed around by opponents of trans inclusion in the military. Instead, it's just a game of politics, with trans lives as pawns.

There are currently an estimated 15,000 trans people serving in the military. What do they think of Trump reinstating the ban? We asked them.

Amanda Clark was discharged back in 2007 after coming out as trans. While she says she's ambivalent about military service, she sees this as a matter of basic civil rights.

"I can’t possibly fathom what openly out trans people in the military are feeling right now. Hell, I feel scared now just being a trans person in the civilian world. It feels like the f*cking fascists who run this country are coming for us, and openly serving trans people are next. I’m sure a lot of officers/[non-commissioned officers] are going to be thrilled to get involved in paperwork hell discharging folks."

Kristen Carella, who served on active duty 2001-2005 as an intelligence analyst stationed in Germany, pointed out that many U.S. allies (18 in total, including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom) allow trans people to serve without issue.

"Here was an opportunity for this country to move forward, recognizing the sacrifices transgender people have ALWAYS made in the armed forces, by allowing us to serve openly. [According to Human Rights Campaign] stats 26% of the trans community serves in the military at some point during their lives, that is TWICE the rate of the general population. Trump's decision is a stunning reversal that can be taken only as a slap in the face, personally to every transgender person who has ever served. It accomplishes nothing more than making sure transgender people remain a demonized and hated target that right-wing politicians can target to scare their base and push their agendas. Of course, all of this demonization ensures that the ignorant violence which leads bigots to murder transgender people in the streets (particularly trans women of color) will continue."

Penelope R., an intersex trans woman who served in the Air Force for six years before leaving to pursue transition, says "members are going to die" because of this new policy, and she urges those who might not generally support the military to care about this.

"[The] American military, despite its many infelicities, has always been a reliable space for many kinds of marginalized people to hide out in. This is why trans people are disproportionately represented in the military. Enlisting was always a last resort for me — I've known I was trans since I was a child, and knew going into the military meant carving away parts of my identity I cherished, but at the time the alternative was death. Just death. I chose to live, and as a result I met my wife, found a chosen family that makes the sun rise for me, made enough money to afford transition, and qualified me to receive transitional health care from the Illinois VA. ... The military helped make my life worth living. And now it's all gone to shit for everyone. Despite what he says, there's nothing Trump can say or do to stop trans people from serving — he can only get rid of those he knows about. It will only go back to how it was before, with trans service members confined to the closet at the risk of their careers."

Then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter lifts the ban on trans troops on June 30, 2016. Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images.

Landon Wilson, who served in the Navy and was the topic of a widely read 2014 Washington Post profile about trans people in the military, points out that the  ban means "honorably serving people" will be removed from service, "effectively weakening our country."

"It's a heartbreaking shame that the President of the United States is choosing to ignore the sacrifices of transgender service members, particularly at a time where so many have proven their dedication to this country. A diverse military makes a strong military; by removing honorably serving people from service, the President is effectively weakening our country, both as a fighting force and as a leader in civil rights."

"Even when we've taken the uniform off, our service never stops." - @HiBoriPrincess #VeteransDay #OpenTransService http://pic.twitter.com/mBdneUM1Sv

— TransMilitary (@TransMilitary) November 11, 2015

Vivian Wise, an information systems technician on active duty in the Navy, came out to her shipmates the day President Obama and Secretary Carter lifted the ban in 2016. She disagrees with President Trump's assertion that trans people serving in the military is a "disruption."

"To say that my service has been a 'disruption' is an outright lie. My Commanding Officer, immediate superiors and co-workers have all been fully supportive of me. I am one of the senior technicians within my division, responsible for training our new sailors and managing our day-to-day and week-to-week work list. I was, until just now, being groomed to lead one of our division's two watch teams for our upcoming deployment, beginning late next year. In that capacity, I serve a critical role in my work center. Summarily discharging me from military service, for nothing more than petty bigotry and electoral politics, is the disruption. The GOP as a whole, and the Trump administration in particular, are degrading my unit and hundreds if not thousands of other units across the armed services by taking away valuable people. We, and the American people, deserve better than this."

Cisgender allies, activists, and experts are voicing their concerns, as well.

In an email, TransMilitary co-director and executive producer Fiona Dawson (who, in 2015, documented the story of two trans service members who fell in love) weighed in on the move, saying she hopes Trump will actually take the time to meet some of the trans personnel he deems unfit for service.

"Donald Trump's assertions against transgender service members are baseless. Science and ethics determine there is no rational reason why the thousands of transgender women and men who have been defending our country and fighting for our freedom for hundreds of years should not be permitted to continue doing so."

Former Secretary Carter offered his opinion on the reinstatement of the discriminatory policy as well, saying that it "has no place in our military."

Ex-DefSec Carter: "To choose service members on other grounds than military qualifications is social policy & has no place in our military." http://pic.twitter.com/Y1SjfYK7Ug

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) July 26, 2017

Advocacy organizations and civil rights groups across the country are issuing press releases, denouncing the tweet on a number of grounds.

The Palm Center called this "a worse version of 'Don't Ask Don't Tell'" and hit Trump over his claims of "tremendous costs."

"As we know from the sad history of that discredited policy, discrimination harms military readiness. This is a shocking and ignorant attack on our military and on transgender troops who have been serving honorably and effectively for the past year. As former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen stated yesterday, their service must be respected. The Rand Corporation has estimated that the cost of medical care for transgender troops is approximately one one-hundredth of one percent of the military annual health care budget, or at most, $8.4 million per year. To claim otherwise is to lie about the data."

Tyler Deaton of the American Unity Fund, a conservative LGBTQ organization, criticized Trump for going back on what he saw as LGBTQ-friendly campaign promises in a statement that is long but worth reading in its entirety:

"President Trump promised to protect the transgender community. As President, he said he was 'respectful and supportive of LGBTQ rights' and would 'protect the community from violence and oppression.' But President Trump has broken his promise and, coupled with his administration's efforts to roll back protections for transgender students in our nation's public schools, he is developing an undeniable pattern of anti-gay and anti-transgender policy while in office. ... As conservatives and advocates for LGBTQ freedom, AUF calls on President Trump to reconsider his comments, and stand with all of our soldiers, including those who are transgender."

Former Justice Department official Vanita Gupta, currently president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, slammed Trump's move as "yet another broken promise to the American people."

"President Trump doesn't understand that our military is stronger when there are no discriminatory barriers to service. The civil and human rights community will continue to loudly and proudly stand up for the rights of all who are willing to protect the security of our country, including the thousands of transgender people currently serving in our military."

And of course, there was pushback from a number of Democratic and Republican politicians alike.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-California) commented on the sad irony of Trump's decision to increase discrimination on the 69th anniversary of President Truman's order to desegregate the military.

.@POTUS has shown his conduct is driven not by honor, decency, or national security, but by prejudice. https://t.co/PHTlXMhEJg http://pic.twitter.com/X9rYhn5Jic

— Nancy Pelosi (@NancyPelosi) July 26, 2017

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York) announced plans to introduce legislation that would overrule Trump's decision.

This morning, transgender service members put on uniform and showed up to their military duties...

— Kirsten Gillibrand (@SenGillibrand) July 26, 2017

This new decision is harmful and misguided. It weakens—not strengthens—our military. And I’ll do everything in my power to fight it.

— Kirsten Gillibrand (@SenGillibrand) July 26, 2017

Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-New York) highlighted the number of trans people serving in the military.

To @POTUS: Don't tell me #trans military service members who serve this country are any less courageous or deserving b/c of who they are. http://pic.twitter.com/XNQKKTnWw5

— (((Rep. Nadler))) (@RepJerryNadler) July 26, 2017

Rep. Illeana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Florida), who has a transgender son, spoke out against it as well.

No American, no matter their sexual orientation or gender identity, should be prohibited from honor + privilege of serving our nation #LGBT

— Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (@RosLehtinen) July 26, 2017

Rep. Joe Kennedy III (D-Massachusetts) offered to stand in solidarity with trans soldiers.

To the thousands of #trans men+women bravely serving our nation in uniform: Thank you. We do not take your patriotism for granted. https://t.co/bguuL4tx0f

— Rep. Joe Kennedy III (@RepJoeKennedy) July 26, 2017

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said "transgender people are people, and deserve the best we can do for them."

Senator Hatch's full comments on the issue of transgender Americans in the military. #utpol http://pic.twitter.com/EDS6JRXJaj

— Senator Hatch Office (@senorrinhatch) July 26, 2017

And Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) called trans service members "patriots."

Transgender Americans are serving honorably in our military. We stand with these patriots.

— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) July 26, 2017

Trans people exist in the world and have every right to engage in the same activities and occupations as anybody else.

This is a big deal, and it's not just a distraction. Nobody should be discriminated against for who they are — not in the military, not in education, not in housing, not in employment, not in health care, not at all.