#fucking hate to live in this world full of bigots with power sometimes

[freedarick]

I've been on a binge watching yuri anime and 99% is bait/you have to read the manga to actually get the yuri

[piratewithvigor]

My first thought in regard to every band that gets played on my radio station

ACDC: Every dad’s favourite band

Adams, Bryan: Every mom’s favourite singer until Michael Buble came along

Aerosmith: haha they thought Vince Neil was a lady

Alice Cooper: he’s a Game Of Thrones fanboy and I have proof

Alice In Chains: my sister doesn’t like them because she decided AC were Alice Cooper’s initials ONLY

Allman Brothers Band: good music for dropping acid to

Allman, Gregg: That’s too many Gs for one name

Animals: House Of The Rising Sun, or who even cares

Argent: Sometimes Hold Your Head Up is really catchy

Asia: Tuesdays

Autograph: one of the members went on to be a pharmacist

Bachman-Turner Overdrive: There are just so many pop culture jokes about Taking Care Of Business that whatever I say won’t be as funny

Bad Company: with their song; Bad Company, off their album; Bad Company

Benatar, Pat: Always getting her confused with Patti Smith

Black Crowes: I like them for Lickin, but it doesn’t seem to exist outside of one shoddy video on youtube and my old CD

Blackfoot: this band name feels kind of racy

Black Sabbath: Dio was not better or worse than Ozzy; just different

Blondie: I like Call Me, but Blondie confuses me stylistically

Blue Oyster Cult: MORE COWBELL

Bon Jovi: Hello, childhood trauma, I missed you

Boston: ONE GUY. ONE GUY DID IT ALL AND NO ONE KNOWS

Bowie, David: Don’t let your children watch The Man Who Fell To Earth, or David Bowie’s will end up being the third penis they see in life

Browne, Jackson: Another musician ruined by Supernatural

Buffalo Springfield: Jack Nicholson was at the riot they sing about

Burdon, Eric: no ideas, brain empty

Bush: ditto

Candlebox: ditto once more. Who are these people?

Cars: This band feels so gay and so straight at the same time, I can only assume they’re the poster children of bisexual panic

Cheap Trick: I played Dream Police on Guitar Hero so fucking much because it was the only song anyone who played with me could keep up with

Chicago: Chicago 30 exists, but they do not have 30 albums. Fucking riddle me that

Clapton, Eric: 6 discs in one Greatest Hits is too many. That’s called “re releasing your discography”

Cochrane, Tom: For some reason, everyone thinks Rascal Flats did it better

Cocker, Joe: Belushi did it right

Collective Soul: who?

Collins, Phil: If his biggest hits were done by MCR, they would be emo anthems, but because he’s 5′6″ and from the 80s, they’re not

Cream: *Vietnam flashbacks on the hippie side*

CCR: *Vietnam flashbacks on the war side*

CSNY: David Crosby; meh

Deep Purple: THEY’RE SO MUCH MORE THAN SMOKE ON THE WATER

Def Leppard: the only music for when you’re a heartbroken bitch but also a sexy one

Derek And The Dominos: Clapton and ‘Layla’ broke up

Derringer, Rick: Tom Petty if he was from the midwest

Dio: You thought it was an anime reference, but it was me, Dio

Dire Straits: You can tell how bigoted a radio station is based on how much of Money For Nothing they censor

Doobie Brothers: I have yet to smoke weed, but I listen to the Doobies, and I think that’s pretty close

Dylan, Bob: I take back everything I said about him in my youth

Eagles: Hotel California isn’t their best song, but the memes that come from it are second to none

Edgar Winter Group: @the--blackdahlia

Electric Light Orchestra: Actually an orchestra and sound a fuckton like George Harrison

ELO: I really hesitate to ask what happens with the 7 virgins and a mule

Essex, David: no prominent memories of him

Fabulous Thunderbirds: cannot spell

Faces: Who on earth thought that was a good album name?

Faith No More: I got nothing

Fixx: One Thing Leads To Another is a damn bop

Fleetwood Mac: I ain’t straight, but I’m simply not enough of a witch to enjoy them to full potential

Fogerty, John: He got sued cause he sounded like himself

Foghat: Slow Ride slowly becoming less coherent feels like a drug trip

Foo Fighters: He was just excited to buy a grill

Ford, Lita: deserved better

Foreigner: dramatically overplayed

Frampton, Peter: a masterful user of the talk box

Free: dramatically underplayed

Gabriel, Peter: leaving Genesis changed him a lot

Genesis: if someone likes Genesis, clarify the era, because yes, it does matter

Georgia Satellites: sing like you have a cactus in your ass

Golden Earring: Twilight Zone slaps, but it doesn’t slap as hard as this station thinks it does

Grand Funk Railroad: Funk

Grateful Dead: I like their aesthetic more than their music

Great White: there are so many fucking shark jokes

Greenbaum, Norman: makes me think of Subway for some reason

Green Day: the first of the emo revolution

Greg Kihn Band: RocKihnRoll is literally the most clever album name I’ve ever seen

Guns N Roses: They have more than three good songs, but radio stations never recognize that

Hagar, Sammy: I’m still trying to figure out where he lived to take 16 hours to get to LA driving 55 and how fucking fast was he driving beforehand?

Harrison, George: He went from religious to rock, and if he had continued rocking, he would have gotten too cool 

Head East: I respect people who use breakfast foods as album names

Heart: Magic Man and Barracuda are played at least once every goddamn day. They’re not even the best songs!

Hendrix, Jimi: I have both a cousin and a sibling named after Hendrix references

Henley, Don: Dirty Laundry gives me too much inspiration

Hollies: Somehow sound like they’re both from the 60s and the 80s at the same time

Idol, Billy: he’s doing well for himself

INXS: Terminator vibes

Iris, Donnie: knockoff Roy Orbison

James Gang: too many funks

Jane’s Addiction: if TMNT had a grunge band representative

Jefferson Airplane: *assorted cheers*

Jefferson Starship: *assorted boos*

Jethro Tull: The only band to make you feel not cool enough to play the flute

Jett, Joan: icon

J. Geils Band: I requested them on the radio once and it got played

Joel, Billy: he really did just air everybody’s business like that

John Cafferty And The Beaver Brown Band: literally wtf is that name

John, Elton: yarn Elton sits in my basement, unstaring. Please someone take him from me

Joplin, Janis: Queen

Journey: Stop overplaying Don’t Stop Believing. It takes away from the rest of the repetoire

Judas Priest: literally started the gay leather aesthetic

Kansas: another fucking band Supernatural stole

Kenny Wayne Shepherd: the man confuses me to the point where he isn’t in the right place alphabetically

Kiss: Mick Mars and I will simply have to disagree on the subject

Kravitz, Lenny: runaway vibes

Led Zeppelin: Fucking fight me if you don’t think they’re the most talented band (maybe not the most talented individually, but collectively, no one comes close)

Lennon, John: My least favourite Beatle for reasons

Live: I got nothin

Living Colour: slap a decent amount

Loverboy: do you not get TURNT the fuck up to the big Loverboy hits? Who hurt you??

Lynyrd Skynyrd: Sweet Home Alabama is a Neil Young diss track

Marshall Tucker Band: no opinion

Manfred Mann’s Earth Band: VERY STRONG OPINIONS THAT THEY AREN’T GOOD

McCartney, Paul/Wings: Power couple

Meatloaf: I have nothing but respect for a man who willingly named himself Meatloaf

Mellencamp, John: voted cutest lesbian of 1987

Metallica: I liked their appearance on Jimmy Fallon

Midnight Oil: I get them confused for Talking Heads a lot

Modern English: who?

Molly Hatchet: Hollies vibes, but also Georgia Satellites vibes

Money, Eddie: DAN AVIDAN, IF YOU SEE THIS, COVER TAKE ME HOME TONIGHT

Motley Crue: Stan Mick Mars and John Corabi. They’re the only ones who deserve it

Mott The Hoople: no one loves them except for David Bowie

Mountain: props for naming an album ‘Climbing’

Nazareth: I want to make a John Mulaney joke here, but I can never come up with one

Nicks, Stevie: witch queen

Night Ranger: I get them confused with Urge Overkill

Nirvana: Kurt Cobain was the ally grunge needed

Nova, Aldo: he’s Canadian, at least

Nugent, Ted: *serves a ghost as jerky*

Offspring: nothing here

Osbourne, Ozzy: this bitch crazy

Outfield: Your Love is kind of a sketchy song, but it slaps hard

Palmer, Robert: low quality Eddie Money

Pearl Jam: *grunts in Eddie Vedder*

Petty, Tom: I have so many feelings about Tom Petty and they are all good

Pink Floyd: which one is Pink?

Plant, Robert: solo career is a crapshoot, but his voice is unparalleled

Poison: I want them to write a song called ‘Alice Cooper’

Pretenders: I want to say good things, but I have nothing to say

Queen: A doctor of astrophysics, a screaming girl, a disco queen and a diva walk into a bar. It’s Queen; they’re there to play a gig

Queensryche: neutral opinion

Quiet Riot: they got big because of a song they hated. I love that

Rafferty, Gerry: the second-sexiest sax opening in all of music

Rainbow: Ritchie Blackmore created something very magnificent

Ram Jam: one good song and they didn’t even write it

Ratt: I’m sure they have more than Round And Round, but I don’t know it

RHCP: funky, but if you have paid money to hear them, you’re going to The Bad Place (I don’t make the rules)

Red Rider: basically Golden Earring

Reed, Lou: Walk On The Wild Side would be such a cool song if it wasn’t so dull

REM: American Tragically Hip

REO Speedwagon: Props for having a dad joke as an album title

Rolling Stones: Never in my life could I imagine the drummer being named anything but Charlie

Rush: How to make being uncool the coolest fucking shit

Santana: The world needs more Santana

Scandal: There’s something really funny about The Warrior being my brother’s “song” with his girlfriend

Scorpions: Was Wind Of Change written by the CIA? Only the spotify podcast I got an ad for once could say

Seger, Bob: A different variety of Eric Clapton (frankly a better variety, but that’s just me)

Simple Minds: we ALL forgot about you

Skid Row: Sebastian Bach is prettier than all of us

Soundgarden: music that makes you feel like you dunked your head underwater

Springsteen, Bruce: my arch-nemesis. Maybe someday, he’ll find out about it

Squeeze: according to my friends, the stupidest band name ever, but they’re theatre kids, so you know

Squier, Billy: If he can make it through 1984 alive, you can make it through whatever bad day you’re having

Stealers Wheel: Yet another band who I always mistake for George Harrison

Steely Dan: my house’s nickname for the Robber in Settlers Of Catan

Steppenwolf: Either makes me think of Jay & Silent Bob, Jack Nicholson, or that time I had to cut 6lbs of onions

Steve Miller Band: when you’re in the right mood, they slap hard

Stewart, Rod: my soundtrack to summer 2015

Stills, Stephen: Love The One You’re With Is Catchy, but the lyrics are questionable

Stone Temple Pilots: the only band to write a song about goo you smear on yourself

Stray Cats: an obscene amount of merch is available for them

Styx: Supernatural would have ruined them for me too if I hadn’t been into them previously. 

Supertramp: I hunted for Breakfast In America for two years and it was worth every hunt

Sweet: I will never understand my two-month obsession with Ballroom Blitz when I was 15, but it was legit all I listened to

Talking Heads: you may find yourself in a pizza hut. And you may find yourself in a taco bell. And you may find yourself at the combination pizza hut and taco bell. And you may ask yourself; ‘how did I get here?’

Temple Of The Dog: I keep confusing them for Nazareth

Ten Years After: somehow still relevant

Tesla: not the car or the dude

The Beatles: Evokes a lot of opinions from people. Mine is that I love them

The Clash: I showed my sister the ‘Lock The Taskbar’ vine ONCE and it still kills her

The Doors: evokes teenage terror from deep within my soul

The Guess Who: Canada’s answer to confusing question-themed band names

The Kinks: kinky

The Police: wrote the theme of 2020 and everyone somehow forgot it was about a teacher resisting becoming a pedophile

The Ramones: playing all of their songs in a row wouldn’t take more than 2 hours

The Romantics: you don’t think you know them, but if you’ve seen Shrek 2, you have

The Who: If someone can explain Tommy to me, I’d be glad to hear it

The Zombies: I think they happened because of the 60s

Thin Lizzy: Could the boys maybe leave town?

Thorogood, George: blues, but make it modern

Toto: the most memed song behind All Star

Townshend, Pete: just makes me think of the end of Mr. Deeds

T-Rex: Mark Bolan is an icon

Triumph: The no-name brand of Rush

Tubes: like the yogurt

Twisted Sister: they did a christmas album and my mom does NOT hate it

U2: U2 Movers; we move in mysterious ways

Van Halen: RIP Eddie

Van Morrison: honestly, who’s named Van?

Vaughn, Stevie Ray: Steamy Ray Vaughn

Walsh, Joe: The Smoker You Drink The Player You Get

War: Foghat, but even groovier

Whitesnake: the most successful band to be named after a penis

Wright, Gary: the 90s thanks him for writing the song every movie used for the “guy sees cute girl and it’s love at first sight” scene

Yes: To Be Continued

Young, Neil: The best part of CSNY

Zevon, Warren: the album cover of Excitable Boy makes me deeply uncomfortable for reasons I don’t understand

ZZ Top: has been the same three guys since 1969. Lineup unchanged. 

3 Doors Down: They feel a little modern to be on a classic rock station, but whatever

38 Special: Why 38?

[mfs-research-institute]

I know this is not the case, I mean until this point the information we have got from the series is that Alder may be responsible for the surge of the spree but not directly. Yet isn't it a little bit fucked up that in someway Alder ( or the witches in general) needs the spree and the caramilla to justify their existence, like if they don't exist, if there is not a tangible enemy, witches are not necessary and sometimes I think that Alder plays a major game manipulating the perception of these enemies with the purpose to keep the army necessary, cause civilians are the true and biggest enemy of witches and maybe ALders the only one who knows exactly what happens when civilians turn against witches.

Oooof this is a loaded question! Let's see what people are thinking:

-----

Dan on our Discord: My first instinct is that isn't that the basic vibe of all major conflicts? Both in the MFS Universe and our own timeline? Armies only exist to 'protect' nations from other countries and vice versa, which only in turn creates more conflict in its own fucked, self-sufficient cycle.

--

@Jalehh: Yes, Alder and her actions in Liberia (forcing dodgers to conscript, them resisting, Alder deploying Sgt. Nicte Batan's new work and making surrendered people kill themselves) seem directly responsible for the formation of the Spree to me.

It also seems like America in this 'verse still has colonies (the showrunner called the conflict in Liberia a colonial war) and is a major player in world politics with India and China being at different stages of rivalry. Even if there aren't open wars among nations, and no asymmetrical conflicts like with the Spree, a well-maintained military will help to secure a powerful position on the world stage... plus you never know who wants to be the next bully on the world stage. Si vis pacem, para bellum. Pretty sure there would be enough to do for witches... even if it's 'just' training exercises or civil aid works done by the military or some 'good' old gunboat diplomacy.

Of course, it would be nice to prepare for peace and maybe transform the witch army into a peace or technical relief corps. But, being the Army/Armed Forces seems to have given at least some witches quite some power - Alder and Petra Bellweather come to mind and with the past they had (Burning Times) - and anti-witch sentiments still very widely accepted, I understand why they would be afraid to give that up. Plus, witches in the army are organized and no longer scattered all over the land... which makes them a bigger target, but also allows for a strength and unity that would otherwise be lost.

--

@baby-horse: Same coin but different side - I wonder if the civilians want to keep the army around, purely because it puts (almost) all the witches in one spot; easily handled. I think it's mutually beneficial, but not necessarily for the obvious reasons.

That kind of answers the question as to why the civilians don't just abolish forced constriction for witches, since they're so upset about their 'daughters' being taken. Because the obvious answer to "not our daughters" is to just get rid of that law. But once you do that, then witches would be in the community, which is Bad News.

I guess the question of 'what happens when the world discovers they no longer need witches' is being answered this season. Spoiler alert = it's not good for witches.

--

@crazyintheeast: Personally, I was wondering about a different direction. If civilians would actually be in favor of witches. We know little about the general attitude of people. Yes of course there is the Camarilla and we know of others bigots like the guy who got into Tally's face. But we have also seen another side. The man who proudly gave Tally his ticket, the women who came to Raelle for healing and were extremely grateful, the large parades in honor of witches. Even with the protest against them I felt that only some of them were actual bigots while the others merely hated the army and didn't want their daughters enslaves.

I would find it really interesting if a significant portion of the civilian populace is actually in favor of witch liberation. Some out of moral principle because they oppose slavery but also many out of purely practical reasons. Imagine if instead of being limited to the military they had Fixers in every hospital who could save countless lives. We already know that witches assist in disaster areas but they could do even more if allowed. Witches actually being a part of society instead of being isolated in the military could be something that many want.

But also, I was left with the impression that China and not Spree are the main adversary and not all nations are in The Hague. I am not exactly sure, but I always saw Spree as merely assisting local witches in various countries rather than leading themselves. Similar to how CIA would train various guerrilla fighters and try to destabilize countries.

But I could actually see a full-blown civil war emerging. The current situation in the MFS strongly reminds of the historic situation of the Ottoman Empire where their slave army had become so powerful that they had serious influence on all rulers. And when new technology emerged the Sultan used the new tactics to attack his salve army and eliminate it.

Although, considering the existence of the Hague, this may even grow into a World War if Wade is removed from Alder’s influence and Silver becomes president. Maybe he’ll try to use the Camarilla and other troops to eliminate US witches? And without nukes to go full MAD this could be a massive war that has been building for a long time.

-----

Thank you for the ask! As always, if you would like to join the conversations on our Discord, please shoot us a DM for an invite!

[0aurelion-sol0]

SNK 134: Why we need to move forward.

Well...

That's horrifying...

Oh but whatever they are probably bad people in there. Thieves, greedy people, hateful mothers, men who beat their wives , liars, bullies, killers, murderers, rapist, child rapist and racist babies.

Yeah...

This is a rhetoric that has been used for ages and is currently being used in this fandom especially on reddit and 4chan.

The justification of injustice.

When George Floyd was slammed on the ground and died because he couldn't breathe anymore, conservatives and republicans at large ignored the police brutaliy leading up to that.

He was just a cocaine or drug addict who one day pointed a gun at a pregnant lady. So he was a criminal and deserved that.

Of course ignoring the racial segregation that happened from the very legalized slavery hundreds of years ago and how poor and racially stigmatized black people are being in America right now.

When the Uyghurs are being genocided by China, the world blinds itself because China is one the worlds necessary assets in economy as it basically produces a good chunk of what is being used in the world. Most made by children, " but it makes us live "... Apparently that's the only logical reason...

When Palestinians and Israelis are literally killing each other over some complicated non sense that no one ever really understands and also Israël basically doing Apartheid at this point,

When the totality of the Middle East has turned into a warzone because of the United States's violent imperialism,

When most far right or extremist group decided that Islam and Islamic terrorism are the same thing,

When xenophobes and racist always attack immigration,

"If she wasn't wearing that skirt, she probably wouldn't have been raped",

When we have homophobes, transphobes, LGBTphobes, telling us what's natural and always bragging about "\___-_-___/ God, Holy Jesus",

When you have people who tells you that poor people chose their way of living when there are a small percent of billionaires and soon to be trillionaires having such a gigantic amount of wealth,

When 6 millions Jews were genocided which was 40% of Jewish people at the time and 2/3 of European Jews,

When the prime minister of Israël is saying that the Holocaust wasn't Hitler's Idea but Haj Amin al-Husseini, (who was extremely anti semitic, don't get me wrong)who suggested it to him maiking the prime minister a revisionist but at the same time making his actions against Palestinians justified,

When around the world Christianic places of worship are being vandalized,

When entire SYSTEMS of segregations have made societies work,

When the South American continent has been attacked by the United States because of different political beliefs,

When people use their rape as a way to attack other communities of a specific religion or color,

When Black Panthers uses racism against White people because of the story of USA and are being anti semitic but essentializing a whole group,

When Nationalistic Israelis tells you what is a good Jew and what isn't a good Jew,

When dozens of groups have been forced to extinction,

Natives who were being murdered, yeah? YOU DON'T SEE THAT A LOT IN YOUR COWBOY MOVIES ?

When literal "feminist" calls for the destruction of men while they can't educate the kids about what to do and what not to do, OH, can also be transphobic apparently,

When you have entire websites who encourages pedophilia,

And pedophiles killed, left alone and live a life of endless torment while no one does nothing to help them and fight those who encourages it even in the highest places of our society,

Oh and Hollywood, that's all I need to say.

And let's not even talk about animal brutality and the destruction of ecosystems.

And there is more and more and more and more and more and FUCKING MORE,

All that because of reasons, reasons, reasons, reasons,

All stuck in a cycle of hate, violence and discrimination that just never ends.

The selfishness,

The greed,

And at end, everything is meaningless. There is just blood.

This is what this chapter represent the meaningless of it all. How everything goes to shit...

How everyone, whether it's the oppresor or the oppresed, will justify the violence, the injustice.

Society does nothing cause society right now runs for the entitled and the entitled only and creates it's own monsters.

I want to ask those people who defend the rumbling.

After everything we saw in this manga, after what the real world has commited, after how much these real events have inspired this story, how can you say it was the only way ?

After everyone hided Hange valuable informations including Eren who had information about KRUGER who was a spy in MARLEY. Who has created a civil war in Eldia and activated the rumbling while killing Eldian civilians in the way.

After seeing the mental breakdown of Bertolt, who we don't hear about anymore, Annie and Reiner's mental breakdown over GENOCIDING AN ENTIRE GROUP OF PEOPLE, by the way Reiner totally didn't develop another persona at that time to cope with what he was doing, HUH ?

After all the deaths, Carla, Grisha, Dina, Faye Marco, Levi's squad, Ymir, Erwin, Sasha, Hange, Hannes, Floch and many others, how can you go and be like "CHAD EREN, BEING DADDY, FUCKING HIS MEAT WAIFU, PHILOSOPHER FREEDOM SEEKER"

"104th crybabies... xDdDDDD Prfrpfr"

Come on...

This isn't serious at this point.

And for the H character, we're gonna come back for her but...

GODDAMNIT!

THANK YOU, DEATH.

This has sparked debates.

Some are thankful for this speech by the commander.

Others are finding it disingenous.

Others think it's too on the nose and not natural.

Others don't care.

On my part, I enjoy it but I take it with the context. Most of their airships have been destroyed and they are facing their doom upfront right now. It's more of a death plea at this point. Just like in the cave with Histor... GOD IT'S SO HARD SAYING HER NAME... with Historia who said truly horrible things at the point of an imminent death. At that moment, words like this can tell what you really are inside but even that is not enough to have a full picture.

It did have some interesting elements.

It is true, using, raising, breeding hate and shoving problems upon a group will always come bite you up the ass someday.

Marley in their extensive and violent coloniaslistic, imperialiatic behavior towards Eldia creates only weaknesses for them on an international field and create this monstruosity that is right now Eren.

Eren, a soldier who suffer from trauma and PTSD, who has terrible insecurities and everything to lose after losing so much and possibly in my book being influenced by another entity decides to kill them all.

But...

In no way does that justify Eren's actions, in fact it goes against it.

He is just as angry and hateful as they were back then but instead of destroying the system, he decides to genocide.

Essentializing the whole world as your ennemy and problem, and deciding to get rid of it is just continuing what has been started and continued for hundreds of years before.

No one ever thinks about the simple families, the innocent children, the homeless...

What about them Eren ?

What about the people who faced discrimination like Ramzi ?

What about the other groups that are almost extinct just like yours ?

What about the groups that tried to support the Eldians but were considered freaks ? HUH ?

What about the babies and innocent children ?

Isayama is even spelling it out for you this chapter.

Is he not worth it ? To stop all this ?

He was born into this world just like every other baby.

Look at that while everyone, is trying to jump off, their trying to save the baby. Even if it's probably impossible. That's humanity right there.

And... jesus christ...

I literally saw people who said that the mother was dumb to give it to the people because titans were behind them.

I can't even...

Imagine if Eren is the daddy of H's Baby and that he completes the genocide, killing his friends or even persuading them and at the end he is saying you are free to this baby.

So this baby is worth more than this baby ?

He is more legitimate to live than him.

I can't even imagine what the arguments would be like with the Eren stans:

"He's protecting his friends."

While literally challenging them to fight and right now trying to kill them.

"Well, you know the Rumbling is horrible but they got what was coming for them. They did nothing to help Paradise."

While forgetting the complexity of human nature, how banalization of these acts of violence have come to be BECAUSE...

These just like me and you are just simple people. With simple lives and not too much power who can't do anything about it.

Most of the people today sees all the suffering in the world, they just don't have the power, nor the will to go against such complex geo-political conflicts.

Would you be able to just resolve the Israelo-Palestinian conflict ? I don't think so, so shut your ass down with this argument.

These people can't change the world with power that they have and the one that has the power to change that, is killing them right now. BRAVO.

" Well, uh, the child is a child, parents might be racist and uh... child maybe is racist or will become racist..."

God...

Just because someone has done horrible shits or is an horrible shit doesn't mean he should die like this.

Here it is people, how we work as human :

Fuck redemption and possible solutions, let's kill everyone who did something bad.

Y'all would have been perfect during monarchies time.

And like... having an argument on a baby should face genocide is just fucking disgusting.

AND DON'T GIVE ME THE BULLCRAP OF FICTION DOESN'T EQUAL REALITY!

That you are interested into what could bring the Rumbling in terms of thematics and story is fine.

BUT ENDORSING IT ?

Do y'all even hear yourselves sometimes ?

You just sound like every racist, bigoted, fascist and violent person that has ever existed.

You're just excited to see someone die because he commited something wrong, sadistic pricks.

You're no different. Perhaps the guy who was talking to Grisha in chapter 97, who was a Marleyan and gave serums to Eldian is right. When he was talking to Grisha, Isayama use it to break the fourth wall and talk to the readers.

Why do we watch this, all this violence ?

" Because it's fun!"

" People take peace for granted!"

" Of course we're abnormal in society's eyes."

" We wish to exterminate all eldians!"

" Your sister did nothing wrong. Shame she was an Eldian!"

The fun fact is that this guy is a racist fuck but he dies pushed by Kruger and killed by his very own creation: a titan.

Why do people endorse genocide ?

" Because it's justice!"

" They got what was coming for them!"

" Isayama is just showing us that genocide is not really wrong if you just understand the concept of morals. Puritans."

" Humanity can die, they deserve it!"

" I'm sad for Ramzi, he didn't do nothing wrong but you know... maybe he didn't have good ideas about Eldians."

While also saying why children could deserve genocide. \____@-@____/

Of course I found most of these on Reddit and 4chan, the nazi propaganda website. Tumblr is a little free of it.

Babies....

Literally babies...

That remind me of somethin'...

OH YEAH!

QUEER NO MORE.

*put gloves on*

PUUUUUUUSSHH!!! COOOOOOOMMEEE OOONN!!!!

Breathe...

I SEEEEE THE HEAAADDD, IT'S HEREEEEEE!!!!

Natalie, bring the bucket, quick!

Of fuck she shitted on herself a little bit!

_________________________________________

So ?

Y'all like my fanfic ?

It's about how Erehisu is canon and how Historia is actually thinking about Eren right now because she is blushing.

But also about how Historia actually looks good and sexy while being pregnant and how she looks so happy!

She also is a lesbian that turned straight.

I'm so proud of my work.

_________________________________________

In all honesty...

This is... dissapointing and an insult to Historia fans. Why ? What is the purpose or the reason ? Being tragic ? To show how far Historia can go to protect her loved ones ? A female Eren so ?

I always leaned towards the fake pregnancy even if I don't know how something like that could be really pulled. I didn't understand this choice for his storytelling. The others I understand but this one...

O_o

What the fuck ?

So she really is pregnant ? But nothing leading up to it makes sense.

The character whose thematics still rings too much true for this arc is put in the background and as a breeding farm on top of that.

It even came to a point I started people to stop asking about her.

I had faith in her presence in the final arc. That she would have a role play.

But now ?

/\/\/\

For people who don't understand why this aspect of story is wrong, we have to break it down.

First off, Historia one of the first queer characters with Ymir in SNK. Others are suspected but these two are the few that holds a definitive representation as queer.

Most often in media or in real life, LGBT people have been forced into a situation that requires them to fall under heterosexuals lives. Here Historia is forced to be pregnant, yes in a way she agreed because of her people, but at the same time she didn't really want it.

For queer people, like me, this still rings true. Too much true. People literally forces you to go for your opposite sex everytime, to have a family.

No, stop forcing your view of your own life or desire of life on other people.

The fact that the fandom rationalizes that and says that she is happy and in love with Eren is just so fucking weird.

It either is blind ship following, heteronormativity or not understanding the story.

And I saw people saying she might be bisexual. This doesn't change anything. Also ignoring the fact that she hasn't shown any attraction to men other than women in the story.

If she is bisexual, it doesn't change anything, she is still queer. Not semi-straight AND EVEN IF SHE WAS A WOMAN WHO HAPPENED TO BE STRAIGHT, SHE IS STILL FORCED INTO SOMETHING SHE DID NOT WANT.

Bisexual is not semi-straight, semi-gay.

It's bisexual.

Bisexual, Straight and Homosexuality are not the same thing.

And if she was straight, that doesn't make it acceptable. It's just sick.

Just because you're a straight woman doesn't mean you are going to be more happy or have god like duty to have kids.

I just don't understand it...

A manga who was so progressive with his female characters reduces Historia to this.

Imagine...

Just imagine...

Eren is the father. I would shoot myself in the face. A forced straight relationship at the end for the pleasure of shonen readers and heteronormative readers.

" What if I have baby, Eren ?"

" Only if it is from me. I want him to live and have FREEDOM!"

" It's open bar, honey." *saying this after hearing the guy says he's going to genocide which goes against her own values and actions as queen*

Ew... Just ew...

And even worse she wasn't supposed to give birth right now, she was supposed to give birth in a few months.

She could DIE. SHE IS 19. This is dangerous.

Everyone is like this is normal.

THIS IS NOT NORMAL. *sigh*

This goes against what she is supposed to have as a character development.

The fact that she would be okay for genocide while as a queen she reached out to the most weak and in need is fucking incoherent.

No. This doesn't make sense. Even Eren said that Historia's action as a queen were to help others. How could she be okay sitting at her house ? Telling no one about what Eren was going to do ? And becoming a breeding farm ? What is the logic in that ?

Why make it suspicious than ?

The only thing that was able to make any logical sense to me was that the person we are seeing here isn't Historia.

I know if my theory is right, it's sick, even more sick.

The only times we saw Historia after the timeskip was during flashbacks, the reveal at 107 and possibly at the end of 123.

If this is her at the end of 123, I want to ask you why is she all prepared, why is she all dressed up and why is she wearing the same clothes in 134 that she is wearing 107. Something doesn't add up.

She is young, small-petite, blonde and her belly and face are hidden.

I was only able to go through the theory that this is a fake Historia. Than who it is than ?

Well, I searched for female characters who look like her or who could look like Historia right now. From all the characters that we haven't seen coming coming back and that has interacted with Historia, there is only one.

Rico Brzenska.

For those, who don't remember her : She was a Garrison Member who helped Mikasa and Eren during the Trost Arc and also helped Historia while she was exhausted during the Clash of the Titans Arc.

She hasn't appeared ever since the start of the Return to Shiganshina Arc unlike many of the older characters.

She is the only one I see who could pass as Historia I think.

I know this is still sick. But this is the only way I would be able to make Historia get out of this crappy storyline and play some relevance in the story. And if we look at Rico and Historia in 107, they kinda look the same. They have the heart shaped face, they are both small and they both have this sort of closed eyelids.

One line that just stuck with me of Rico was:

"Hiding/Lying about Eren's rampage in the report wouldn't have benefited humanity. "

This was during Eren's trial before joining the Survey Corps. What was discused was when Eren lost control of himself during the Trost Arc and attacked Mikasa.

The second line that struck was the one where she holds Historia who is exhausted in her arms:

"Wow! Who is this girl, is she okay ?"

I don't know why it just pushed that theory. And I kinda believe it now, because no one can make me believe that there is something satisfying coming out of this. Why would she sacrifice herself for Historia ? Well, I don't really know but Rico was always a little wary of Eren, even after the Trost Arc but yeah ultimately for Rico being able to give her own life for Historia. I don't know about that. But with this manga you never now. It is a very dark and twisted theory but this is the only logical thing I can see right now since no answers have been provided.

Monkey is BACK

Zeke is back and like most of us predicted, Eren dragged him with him. And I'm not gonna lie, the way he was attached to the spine was pretty badass.

He is used as a puppet which reinforces the theory for me that all three of them: Eren, Ymir and Zeke are being used by the Attack Titan.

I cannot understand Eren's illogical behavior especially after seeing the train scene where he says he wants them to live long happy lives and than having him kill his friends.

Ymir the first being free and having eyes to returning to having no eyes just like before and Eren.

And Zeke would have never agreed to the Rumbling. And we can't see his eyes either.

And...

Thank you, 104th for existing.

Because...

After how much shit they have gone through and after how much the fandom, not just the Eren stans, have mocked them. Like the fandom has been the biggest asshole to the the Alliance while they were the ones who were able to survive through the sentence " Genocide is wrong!" that so many people seems to find to be so hard to say.

I will root for them until the bitter end, I don't care. They are the one who are fighting. You can call Cringevengers all you want but I am glad they are winning.

They all suffered like Eren but they didn't prioritize their own and only feelings above everything else and they stood by for the values they fought for since they joined the Survey Corps. Even if I have to admit they have, for most of them, conflicted feelings with what they were doing and have done things like trying to talk to Eren while it's obvious he wasn't going to talk and that in a situation like this I don't think someone would try to stop Eren by just talking.

Levi, and it would be foolish to not recognize it, is being consumed by his promise but he is restraining it and still is able to think about the bigger picture.

There's one thing I really like about this is Armin asking Eren:

"Eren... I'll ask you one last time... "What part of you is free" after we rip you out from there... "

Hehe... yes... what part of you is free ?

To be honest, there's many things I don't want for the ending.

A Lelouch Ending, it was all Eren's plan. Literally wouldn't make sense. No one would be questionning his free will and he wouldn't have these weird shits happening to him.

A Code Geass ending, why would Mikasa have to kill Eren, what does that add to her as a character ? More tragedy ? No she doesn't have the scarf, it's pretty telling what place she's at right now.

Eren being the daddy. NO, JUST NO.

Everyone dies, genocide is the right thing. You know all the worst shit that can happen.

But most of all I want important plot points to be explored and moved over because ever since the timeskip, there has been no important plot points out the way. Eren's behavior, Ackertalk, Bertolttalk, Historia's Condition, Paths stuffs, answers!

Whatever... Trust me Peace is not something I take for granted. Being proud of myself and having a life with the least conflict and problem is something you fight for. Having rights, being recognized as a human.

Never lose that, fight for it. But never with injustice, be smarter and stronger. Cause at the end what unites us is not only what we have in common but what the perspective of what we have not in common can make a bigger picture of what we are as humans. We all are different and have a different story with similarities but in the end, we are human and born into this world. And in that, we must move forward. In the present, because of the past and for the future.

We all wish for the problems to go away but if it's for the solutions to be rigged with injustice, it will not work. No one has acheived with genocide and never will.

It's kinda sad that this long of a post has to say this. Did y'all see that ? Pretty inspiring what I wrote. Oh well you know what ? If they can be bigoted why can't I myself.

Here's a song I wrote:

(Fuck everyone and you.

We hate women

There are only 2 genders, the breeder and the breeded.

Everything is degenerate.

We hate brown, Arab and Muslim people.

Genocide is cool

And Hitler was too.)

I know but you know what, at least if they want a spy for Nazi Germany someday. They'll know not to give it to me because I'd laugh at the stupidity of the people just like you and I are doing with the rest of world cause for all the shits it gives us, it's entertaining.

[cannibalisticapple]

Okay, so I have some thoughts on Kurikuri’s decision to delete a large number of her fan fics, and on fan fiction as a whole.

For those who don’t know, Kurikuri (@letaizawarest) is a popular fan fiction author with numerous popular Erasermic fics, along with other fandoms. Around the end of May/start of June she deleted a large number of her stories, specifically those that featured either police, or those set in the My Hero Academia universe where they work as Pro Heroes.

To quote her post:

as you may have noticed, roughly half of the fics on my ao3 have been deleted.

i’ve deleted all my fics about police officers. also, after some thought, i also deleted my non-AU bnha fics, because although they might not be “cops” in name, they are law enforcement. i do not want to be a part of the system that glorifies the police. 


at the moment i haven’t deleted other profession AUs and high school era fics, but i will continue to reflect on their relation to the source material. even if you enjoyed the deleted fics, please do not circulate them in other formats (PDFs, EPUBs, etc). 


i also encourage other writers to think about cop fic they’ve written. while it may be fun and escapist for you, it still encourages the idea that antiblack and killer cops are just “bad apples” and that good cops exist. let’s dismantle that system of thought.

I have some very, very mixed feelings on this.

To start: I respect her reasoning, but I don’t agree with it. I fully agree that it’s not just a bunch of “bad apples”, there’s a serious issue with the system and how the police operate in the United States. I’ve always been bothered by how the police let other officers get away with horrible BS, even as a kid, and that rage has only grown as I’ve grown older and found out more about how screwed up it is on every single level.

But the way that last paragraph is written rubs me the wrong way because you can’t paint every single person in an entire career field as unequivocally corrupt, bigoted and all around callous murderers. Good cops DO exist. Plenty of people go into the career hoping to fix things, or just genuinely want to help their community in whatever way they can. But the thing is, they’re fighting a losing battle because the system is working against them. When they DO speak up against the corruption, bigotry, violence and other issues, they tend to get fired and blacklisted from the field. Or sometimes, they get outright murdered and it’s treated as a “suicide.”

A shitty fact of life: sometimes, the people who are more willing to resort to underhanded tactics and willing to turn a blind eye to corruption are the ones who climb up the career ladder furthest. And in the case of the police, it’s deep-rooted enough that it can’t be fixed internally anymore. But that doesn’t make literally every police officer corrupt.

I’m not posting this to make some political point or argument though. I obviously disagree with Kurikuri’s opinion, but I respect it. I can even respect her decision to remove the stories featuring the police, or even the ones heavily focusing on the characters’ jobs as pro heroes. I can see how heroes are just another version of law enforcement, because honestly, they are.

As a writer and a reader, I fully respect that it’s ultimately her choice to delete her stories. It’s not my place to make demands. She’s the one who created it, and as a writer I know the hard work and time that goes into crafting stories, so I believe she has a right in how it’s used and shared. The fact she shared it in the first place was something she didn’t have to do.

But the thing is, she DID share it, which is why I have this conflict.

As a writer, I’ve always believed that fiction can be more powerful than fact.

Fiction can give readers a window into mindsets you’d never imagine before, because you can connect more easily with fictional characters than real people on the news. That’s why Uncle Tom’s Cabin was so critical in the battle against slavery: it didn’t just gave a face to slavery, it let readers experience the characters’ lives directly. People got to see the struggles and suffering firsthand, feel the rising crescendo of hope each time freedom is in reach, and the soul-crushing despair every time that hope gets dashed by outside forces.

Fiction may not always be “true” or even “accurate,” but it can help us understand other people, see them as fellow humans, in ways that nonfiction just can’t. It can evoke emotions, empathy and familiarity in a reader that a news story or biography can’t capture because it draws you directly into their world.

And it’s that part—the part where readers enter this fictional world to connect to characters they’ll never meet—that leads to the other power of fiction that many people overlook:

Fiction has the ability to help readers persevere.

How many people reading this have used books to get away from trouble in their lives? To take a breather from all their anxieties and stress, and dive head-first into this other world for just a moment, where nothing else matters? How many people reading this had their whole lives changed by reading a story where a character’s words resonated with them? Where it helped them come to an epiphany about how to do better, how to be better.

Sometimes, the world is too overwhelming and we need to escape it. That’s the beauty of fiction. It lets us go to a world where our problems just don’t matter. Even if the world in question is worse than our own, it can still be a relief and give us hope because hey, at least we’re not living in 1984 or the Hunger Games, right? Stories are what keeps many people going through the hardest time, what gives them hope that life isn’t utterly hopeless.

And even after a story is finished, whether it’s fan fiction, a book, a show, or any other medium, that story will have a special place in people’s hearts. Many people will go back to those stories years later when they’re faced with immense stress and need a break from the real world, so that they can dive into the world that helped them persevere the last time they felt so bad. Just having a copy of it on hand can be a source of comfort even if you never read it again.

I want to highlight one phrase Kurikuri used in her post to describe how people feel writing stories about police and heroes: "fun and escapist”. That’s honestly so accurate, those stories are escapist, and that is why I’m so conflicted.

Stories about superheroes, while technically revolving around themes of law enforcement, are a form of escapism FROM police corruption.

There’s a reason that superhero comics are so popular in America. Superheroes appeal to a natural desire for justice because as so aptly pointed out, the real world doesn’t always HAVE that justice. It gives an ideal for people to aspire to, a glimpse of what could be, what should be. (Come to think of it, that’s probably why I hate the DC cinematic universe so much, it’s skewed way too much to favor the villains/antagonists and maximize suffering for the good guys.)

Right now, the world is full of more injustice than ever before. I can’t turn on the news without feeling my rage and stress boil over. Every day it gets worse and worse somehow, and I (and many others) genuinely fear that the United States may be heading towards a civil war this November. Donald Trump’s voice alone is enough to make my blood boil at this point.

I, and many others, turn to fan fiction so I can break away from reality because that amount of rage and fear just isn’t healthy.

I don’t have depression, or anxiety, or an abusive family, or a chronic illness. I’m not at risk of being made homeless anytime soon, nor do I need to worry about bills right now or going hungry. I’m a privileged white girl who has barely anything to worry about. What I’m saying is I’m fucking lucky and I know it, but I STILL can’t stand thinking about the state of the world and need to get the fuck away from it to take a breather for my own mental health.

And I also know that many people don’t have that option because their situation is so bad, they NEED to be aware of it at all times.

In the past when writing for other fandoms, I’ve had people tell me my fan fiction was the reason they did not commit suicide.

In my early college years I fell into the creepypasta community and was pretty active in it, especially on deviantArt. I don’t know if that particular fandom’s subject and focus makes it more appealing to teenagers going through rough times or what, but I swear, more than half the people I spoke to suffered from some form of mental illness, abusive or broken family and home situations, bullying, and every other way the world can screw someone over through means beyond their control.

During that time, a few readers left comments that waiting for my stories to update were what kept them going. They didn’t explicitly say that it was the only reason they didn’t kill themselves. It was more just remarks like, “Your writing is the only thing keeping me going.”

I’m not vain enough to believe my stories are so good, it made people decide to continue living JUST to see what happens next. Suicidal thoughts and urges are much more complex than that. But it’s still not something you expect to hear on something you write for fun.

I’ve thought about it a lot over the years, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it probably wasn’t because my stories were "just that good.” I think it was because they needed something to cling to in bleak times. That sometimes at the lowest point where all seems lost, people need just one little thought, just the smallest thing to push away those dark urges before they could fully overwhelm them. Something like, “If I die now, I won’t get to see how that story ends.” It’s such a small thing, but having something to look forward to can be so powerful in fighting off impulsive decisions.

It’s made me hyper-aware of just how powerful writing is.

To me, I see writing as a way of helping others. I give people that option for escape. It’s a large part of why I update on a regular, weekly schedule, and why I published extra chapters when the pandemic got announced and when the riots started. People need that comfort, that little break from reality to just sit and breathe so they can get through the rest of the day. I can’t do much to fix the world, but I can at least give people that.

Right now, people need that escape more than ever.

And deleting the stories is taking that escape away and causing MORE stress.

In times like this, people often turn to the stories they know will help most, and plenty of people in fandoms will first search up their favorite ships. They look for fluff, smut, angst... It helps people feel better to focus on these two people who are obviously in love as they work through their troubles.

Many times, readers will be more drawn to stories in the canon universe than radical AUs set in other universes. That’s how they were introduced to those characters. I myself can enjoy no-power and fantasy AUs sometimes, but what I really crave are how they interact in the canon world because that’s the world and versions of them I want to see the most. By deleting EVERY SINGLE STORY IN THE CANON UNIVERSE, that option was removed.

In many of the stories that were deleted, the characters’ careers were honestly a minor facet of the story. Some used it to establish the setting, such as treating injuries after a patrol. Some just simply used it to explain they work at UA, a school for teaching kids with superpowers. Some just had them work as heroes because it’s set in the canon universe, and never directly show ANTTHING about the work.

I’m not always looking for a story about how being a hero shapes and impacts their lives, and most of those stories that got deleted AREN’T about being a hero. That’s just one piece of their character, it’s far from the focal point. It could honestly be removed from several of them without changing the rest of the story.

I can get wanting to make a political point and I respect that, but by deleting those stories, you’ve taken away a key source of comfort from hundreds, thousands of people. By deleting the stories, you’re making the stress worse.

On Saturday night, I realized several of my favorite stories are suddenly gone. I knew Kurikuri had deleted a bunch of her stories, but I hadn’t realized just how many of them I liked. Some of them I’ve specifically sought out to reread multiple times in the past, never really paying attention to the author. Realizing they’re just gone caused me heavy stress because it made me paranoid about all these other stories I like to reread. I don’t expect those stories to be around forever, but I still didn’t expect them to vanish so suddenly. I never thought I’d need to download them to make sure I’d still be able to read them while the site is still up.

I spent hours searching out specific stories to see if they were written by her, and make sure they’re not gone forever. I have no way of knowing which ones she’d written and deleted because there’s not exactly a list out there anymore. My desperate search for those stories and one in particular (which I still haven’t found) contributed to the lack of sleep I got that night.

And I need to reiterate: I am mentally healthy and have no major stresses in my immediate life. And that’s why I’m hyper-aware of how this stress will affect people who AREN’T as lucky as I am.

If an author decides to delete their stories because they feel the stories themselves push harmful values or themes, fine. If they’re getting harassed, or it reminds them of a bad time in the lives, or they just don’t like that story anymore, okay. I can respect that and accept it.

But these stories were deleted for the EXACT reasons that people will be looking for them now more than ever, and that’s where I draw the line.

This applies to ALL fandoms.

If you as a fan fiction writer have more than, say, 100 kudos on a completed story or one-shot, there’s a good chance people will read and reread your story in stressful times. If you have a reasonably popular story that updates on a regular or even semi-regular basis, there is a chance that someone is using it as a lifeline to have something to look forward to while the rest of their lives go to hell. Maybe not because they specifically love it, but because it gives them something routine.

I want to make it clear that it’s not our job to care for other people’s mental health. Fan fiction writers don’t have an obligation to people, we’re doing it for fun first and foremost. We’re not some sort of saviors, and we shouldn’t think of ourselves that way or we can honestly screw people up worse. We’re not obligated to write these stories JUST for our fans.

At most, our stories are sources of support and comfort for readers. A little break from reality. If writing a story is causing you more stress than enjoyment, stop. Fan fiction, and all other fan media and stories in general, is ultimately created for the creator’s enjoyment more than anything.

Your own mental health comes first. Don’t set yourself on fire to keep other people warm.

But with how utterly fucked and unfair the world is right now, people need those stories now more than ever. So if you’ve got a story out there that’s fairly popular, please, please, PLEASE be mindful of your readers before deciding to delete it. Now is the absolute last time people need more stress trying to find a single story. And if you’re going to delete it, maybe give readers a heads up so that those who need it or have some powerful attachment to it for all the reasons I’ve discussed here can download a copy for their own personal use.

Don’t hurt your readers to make a point.

[xxladylovexx]

On Saturday, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling shared an article on Twitter, titled, “Creating a more equal post-COVID-19 world for people who menstruate,” adding, “‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?” For those of us who have been following as the word “woman” is erased from all womanly things — everything from periods to pregnancy to vaginas — we are well aware of what this code-phrase implies.

Referring to women as “people who menstruate” is no accident: it is to signal “inclusivity.” Who, you might wonder, needs to be “included” in the category of “people who menstruate” beyond, well, those who menstruate? That is to say, those once known as “females.”

Today, of course, words like “women” or “female” are taboo. Some women would prefer to be men and some men are women. There are “female penises” and “men who have babies.” It is a new time, and human narcissism has evolved beyond nature. What is biology, after all, in the face of a “she/her” Twitter bio?

In some ways, it is depressing to witness the level of celebration (sane) women relayed online in response to Rowling’s tweet. It is sad that phrases like “people who menstruate” have been so normalized that to question them seems revolutionary.

There was immediate backlash. Rowling was called a “TERF,” “evil,” a bitch, “scum,” and much more.

Model and trans activist Munroe Bergdorf accused the author of being “transphobic” and said Rowling and other reality-believers constituted “another branch of white supremacy.”

Ben O’Keefe, former senior aide to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, responded, “Shut the fuck up you transphobic fuck.” Rowling defended herself, explaining:

“The idea that women like me, who’ve been empathetic to trans people for decades, feeling kinship because they’re vulnerable in the same way as women — i.e. to male violence — ‘hate’ trans people because they think sex is real and has lived consequences — is a nonsense.”

She added:

“If sex isn’t real, there’s no same-sex attraction. If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn’t hate to speak the truth.“

It’s odd to feel one has to add a caveat to explain that understanding only women menstruate does not equate to “hate.” It’s almost more odd to have to say this at all, to grown adults who surely understand, at this point, how babies are made, and who have been through puberty themselves. Those of us who have been attempting to make basic statements of fact in public like, “Men are not women” and “It isn’t hate to speak the truth” know all too well the hysteria we can expect in response, though becoming accustomed to this doesn’t make it any less confounding.

I have never understood how anyone could stand by quietly and watch the existence of women be eroded, or say nothing while our friends and colleagues insist those who understand the dictionary definition of “woman” are bigoted. And it seems Rowling has finally gotten to the end of her rope.

The extreme backlash, hate, and misogyny has become the norm. The response to someone like Rowling demonstrates the extent to which trans activists and their allies are so accustomed to having the power to bully celebrities, politicians, friends, and family into submission, that they simply cannot accept a famous woman stepping out of line. It is shocking for them to lose their almost total grip on women and liberals who are meant to care more about being liked than stating the obvious. The religious doctrine sometimes referred to as “cancel culture” demands the confessing of sins and begging for forgiveness from our social media lords. It demands women have a “middle aged moment” rather than stand up for the truth and the other women under attack for doing so.

Even Harry Potter himself felt “compelled” to speak out, and publicly declare his faith, writing:

“Transgender women are women. Any statement to the contrary erases the identity and dignity of transgender people and goes against all advice given by professional health care associations who have far more expertise on this subject matter than either Jo or I. According to The Trevor Project, 78 per cent of transgender and non-binary youth reported being the subject of discrimination due to their gender identity. It’s clear that we need to do more to support transgender and non-binary people, not invalidate their identities, and not cause further harm.”

It is unclear how understanding only females menstruate harms “transgender and non-binary people,” but that’s not the point. The point is that Harry Potter is safe, having disassociated himself from the witch. He has dutifully thrown a log on the fire.

It has felt like we are all living a kind of bizarro world for some time now, wherein women who dare speak the truth are banished, and virtually burned at the stake. And while I’m no more interested in what celebrities say than intellectuals or the non-famous, I wonder if the response to Rowling will wake people up, and lead more to stand up and announce that the emperor has no clothes, and that those who say so are not evil or hateful, but sane. I wonder if this experience will lead Rowling to stand with the women fighting this fight in public or render her silent in an attempt to avoid further flogging. It should be all too clear that there is no winning with this crowd — no level of politeness, kowtowing, or rationalizing can ward off the virulence and misogyny leveled at women who push back against gender identity ideology. You either go full tilt or you surrender to twisting yourself into knots trying to adopt ever changing, evermore nonsensical demands, contorting your language in ways that should feel sacrilegious to a writer. The way forward seems obvious to me.

[andysnorwayaffairs]

Final Project

Pt 1; a perfect ending. feeling a rush of shared excitement - finally! just like me!

warmth, embraced, a queer kind of friendship. we sat in the grass and talked about how our lives were growing up, how our queerness was realized and how it affected the way we walk in the world. our stories are so similar yet so, so different. miles and miles of time away, you announce to your friends that you’re probably maybe gay. you start a spark in their minds, and soon after you’re deemed the trail blazer of coming out. you are brave, do you know it? you were the person who i wished for. so desperate for approval from others, and not meeting anyone like you, i took it upon myself to starve my queerness, the differentness, the part of me that i knew i could definitely be hated for. and i can’t stand the thought of being hated. and a part of me hated myself for who i was. i was taught that i couldn’t love like that, that it wasn’t *real*, that anything other than normal is impossible, wrong, destructive. so i listened, and i believed them. not completely, that is also true. that’s why i never stopped immersing myself in online queer culture, why i desperately searched for any sign of queerness in the online personas i followed and in the fiction that i read. we talked about this too, how we’d entrench ourselves in media and later realize that we were part of the group we were so obsessed with. finally... just like me

you opened your heart so quickly - your friends, they tell me that they’re so happy that you’ve met me. you open a window into your life and lend a hand to help me hop in. i see how you love others, and how they love you. we run through the lawn of a backyard riddled with ripe fruit and laugh like children at how sweet the juice is. we share a meal and spend hours talking about nothing and everything. i sometimes stop and listen to the chatter, and i feel complete warmth even when i cannot understand what is being said. we read the cards i brought and i learn how each of you sees love. i see the way you interact with your loved ones, the way you so deeply care to spend time with them. letting go, giggling in giddy joy, acting like absolute fools. finally, just like me

cried a farewell last night

thank you for offering me a bizarre, unfair amount of kindness

thank you for showing me a glimpse of your life, your entire world

thank you for extending a hand in friendship, in solidarity

thank you for being my friend

I feel like my time here, my glimpse into another person’s life, feels like a glimpse into an alternate timeline. A timeline in which I accepted myself from the beginning. A timeline in which I told a friend about my crush on Jen from Buzzfeed. A timeline when I refused to normalize myself, refused to uphold the boundaries that were unfairly placed on me. A timeline when I was brave. A timeline when I stopped being so damn scared. A timeline when I realized that my friends would still stay friends with me, and those who didn’t want to, I should let go of anyways. There will always be people who don’t match up with your values, your energies, your being. I won’t lie to myself and say that it wouldn’t hurt like a bitch, but it’s a hard fact of life that homophobes, transphobes, racists, xenophobes, ie bigots exist and there will be always be bullies and people who don’t care about you, who WANT to put you down, who want to hurt you. In a world of power, there will be those with some and those without. I was given a small window into my friend’s life and saw a life pathway built around friendships who learn and grow right alongside you. I’ve always thought about that – what if? What if I let go earlier? In my timeline, the forces around me were not as kind to me. I was told queerness was ugly, so utterly upside down. I didn’t have anyone to tell me otherwise. Perhaps if I had a positive role model to tell me that it WAS okay, that it was beautiful and wonderful. Perhaps if I had a friend like them in my life who was the first to come out and encouraged others by simply living their life the way THEY want to, perhaps I would have had the courage to do so earlier. I can’t change the past.

But I can think about how the events of my past shaped my present, and how my present shapes my future. Thank God - I DID let go! There’s no race to live your truth, but oh god it feels so good to do it NOW. I’m so thankful that I found the bravery these people I know now have embraced so many years ago. I feel like my own person, like an entire human soul. I don’t feel the need to please anyone. This queer experience, of finding yourself and maybe even fearing yourself, but, ultimately, coming to love yourself despite dominant society failing you, that is a queer experience. Regardless of any experience, something we all share is having to live in a world that ultimately does not accept us, does not want us.

An ode to knowing that although things are different here, and that there’s no possible way that I could have had a similar timeline just simply because of how different our spheres and worlds are... despite this, despite the fear and self hate and internal violence I was forced into because of the life I was born into, despite all of this, I was still able to find myself and love myself and find others who love me for my whole humanness.

There’s a lot of work to be done in the world, for our lives and our safety and our happiness. I think the friends I’ve met here are doing that work. Through their love for each other and thus their refusal to conform, to stay quiet, to accept the norms in place.

Meeting this special friend may have been completely chance, but I believe fate had a little bit to do with it too. To give me this window, to let me see what beauty it is to allow a person to be themselves. The sooner, the better.

____ DISCUSSION

Pt 3:

It’s funny to see how these ppl’s reflections of their lives fit in line with exactly what we discussed through our readings and class discussions. Norway may be progressive in law, but not necessarily in practice. Each of the queer people I asked this about, or asked them to speak about their queer experience, expressed frustration at there not being much of a strong queer community here, and how they still experienced everyday oppression (you may call these micro aggressions).

Nordic model of inclusion + welfare, making this a space where it is looked down upon to discriminate for someone’s sexuality

A different relationship to Christianity

In the U.S., I grew up in a heavily queerphobic, heavily strict and monitored environment where I was even monitoring myself, reprimanding myself for all of the gay content I was consuming but allowing myself to keep doing it because I was “outside” of the community and thus could not be associated with it or have to think of the consequences.

In middle school I was fully aware that I had strong crushes on gay female celebrities but was petrified of sharing that information with anyone.

I shut myself down immediately, but continued to consume gay, lgbt, and trans media for years and years after, allowing myself to do this because I could convince myself that I was just “a straight girl” who was a big fan of the community.

After coming to college and experiencing true freedom from the expectations and values placed on me, it took me less than three days to come to the realization that I was in fact, extremely not straight. It took me 6 more months to fully feel comfortable admitting to myself and claiming the label that I was gay. It took me another year to “come out” to all of my friends and folx I really cared about.

-talk about how this is a divide between my experience and the experiences of the friends I made here. L & their friends came out when they were extremely young, in middle school actually. Our timelines diverge here.

Only recently, I began to make friends on the shared experience of our queerness. Meeting my close friends now, sharing intimate + tender moments. Loving each other and supporting one another the way family might do. A queer kind of love shared in these emotional bonds. A kind of love I had not experienced before my full acceptance and life as a queer person. Tender, radical love.

Meeting L, sharing on our experience of being queer and trans. And not to say that their life in Norway is so much better. The Nordic model may allow for some general acceptance, but queerphobia still has its roots in other malicious ways. Many of L’s friends still don’t use their pronouns. A is called the slur version of the word lesbian, and she recognizes that being a lesbian is not favorable to society. She wants to be a prof of gender studies at her uni but told me that since there is already one queer person on staff, she’ll never be hired on.

M telling me about how even tho queer ppl are accepted on the outside, and in the law, in practice, not so much.

-A telling me that people hate lesbians

-in Norwegian, the word for lesbian is also really similar to the slur, “fucking lesbian”

CONNECTION TO THE FIRST ARTICLE WE READ

Norway’s state feminism and inclusion of queerness is heteronormative, only assimilating those that fit into the family, hetero model (thinking to naked sculpture park, extremely family oriented)

Same sex has to still be straight – family, private, culturally straight.

[firesofdainix]

all my wolves begin to howl, oh wake me up the time is now

Fragments of Jason's life before The Lost Hero.

.

His mother told him that she would be back, but it has been hours since he had last seen her and Thalia. He calls for them as he crawls through the Wolf House with his hands and feet. Then he starts to cry, and he feels his ordinary life, from his sister, his mother, tearing itself apart inside of him. As if his childhood is finally done, and a new life is ahead of him.

But still, Jason wishes to hold on, to hope that his mother and sister would come back for him. That fades when a lone howl pierces through his baby ears, and a figure steps out from the shadows.

Sadly, Jason wasn't afraid.

Sadly, Jason Grace was taken away from his old home to a new one with the wolves.

And the cycle continues.

Life with the wolves had been fun. Frolicking in the house where his mother and sister left him, spending the day in the woods trying to catch prey.

Lupa is quite a mother wolf, a strict one, but still a mother whom he barely remembers.

Finally, after months of training, Jason Grace at age three is now ready to face on the cruel world to find Camp Jupiter.

To say he didn't look back was not true. He did look back, to see another kid older than him being taught by the same wolves he considered as a family.

His family of wolves seem to have moved on like the family he barely remembered as a child.

They all look up at him, Jason Grace.

Jason Grace.

Son of Jupiter.

Jason Grace.

The King of the God's son, everyone says.

The son of a no good Dad, he wishes to say, but those words were stuck in his throat, refusing to come out.

He wonders if he'll just become like his father, which is his worst nightmare.

Instead of joining the First Cohort like everyone expected him to be, he joins the Fifth Cohort, filled with what they say, the sea of nobodies.

It's good to be a nobody.

The first time he got his mark, it hurts like Hades. There was a brilliant flash of light... and it's there now.

The eagle, symbolizing his father, the SPQR, and a line representing his first year.

The others say he'll get used to the pain.

He already did.

He just chooses to feel numb.

Being marked was supposed to be the most special time. It means that he is fully accepted into the legion, into the arms of the cohorts. He isn't a probatio anymore; he never is treated as one.

They try to make him join their cohorts.

Anything other than the Fifth Cohort.

And he just glares, because he knows they're not being any fair to the members of the Fifth Cohort.

Bigots.

Bullies. He hates them. He hates them all.

They think they're so high and mighty, picking on the younger probatios, but just one glare from Jason Grace and they'll be running another way.

Jason's just a kid.

A six year old.

Ten year olds run away from him.

Jason Grace tries to become a blank slate one time, resulting in him hearing most of the conversation of the bullies he had driven away.

"The Fifth Cohort thinks they're so powerful, just because Jason Grace is with them", one says.

"Just wait until Jason Grace realizes what he's done wrong and leave the Fifth Cohort", another one says.

Fury engulfs Jason. He didn't know what he was doing, unaware.

He didn't know he summoned lightning and killed three people on the spot.

He isn't a blank slate anymore.

Therapists are common in New Rome, of course. Some descendants of the gods had been involved in wars or had been put through many traumatizing moments throughout their life.

Jason thinks he doesn't count as any of those people.

He doesn't even know what war is supposed to be like.

No one here knows how much damage a war will cost.

"All right Jason", the therapist says in a warm voice, just like all the other therapists before her. "I want you to tell me what you have learned the past year in Camp Jupiter."

It was such a simple question. Jason didn't know where every thing went wrong.

"That the Fifth Cohort is the best cohort anyone has ever seen", Jason says nonchalantly.

The therapist nods slowly. Sooner or later she'll give up on him, like all the others. "Anything else."

"Everyone who tries to say other wise are bigots."

"Mister Grace, your language."

"What is even the point of this? To see if you think I regret killing those assholes a year ago."

The therapist nods. "Yes. You should be ashamed of yourself. We would've sentenced you to death-"

"But you don't want to, since I'm a son of Jupiter, is that right?"

The therapist doesn't reply.

It was his eighth birthday today, and everyone from all cohorts gave him a simple phrase of Happy Birthday.

No one asked him if he was fine.

No one dared ask him what happened in the ward.

He just wants to talk to someone, anyone.

He was elevated to a centurion of the Fifth Cohort, along with Dakota.

Together they kill bassilisks in the temples, and lead the war games with their comrades.

Jason is the reason why sometimes, the Fifth Cohort always win in the war games.

Twelfth Legion doesn't bring pride to Jason at all.

He has no idea to why everyone would be okay to be called 'the twelfth best legion'.

Now that he's a centurion, maybe he can change the minds of the campers of Camp Jupiter.

Rename it to First Legion, he says.

They're hesitant.

He knows why.

Only Octavian stands in the way.

He has no Roman pride.

He only has pride within himself.

Octavian was handpicked as the augur and it made Jason's blood boil.

How could he become an augur? Why had their praetors done this? Do they know how much political power and blackmail Octavian has?

Maybe that's why.

The praetors were also scared by his absolute power.

Jason cannot let him be a praetor given a time.

Then a marvelous and life threatening idea looms over his head.

Yes.

That's how it's going to be.

Jason is standing over Octavian's lying body, blankets covering most of it.

Jason was holding his ILVIS sword, tightly too.

He's going to kill Octavian.

He's going to do it.

He trudges over the legacy of Apollo's bed, but something stops him.

Jason regrets stopping because after that Octavian yells something about murder.

He jumps off the window and into the night.

Fuck you hesitation.

Reyna Avila Ramirez-Arellano.

That's her name.

A daughter of the war goddess Bellona.

That's nice.

She loves Diocletian as much as he does, and they'd stare at portraits everyday while getting lost at the subject of history.

That's good.

She's also his first friend.

That's the best news.

Reyna's been acting strange lately.

After that little quest, their relationship was never the same.

What did that woman do to Reyna?

Sure, they were still talking, but Reyna seems to be distant, as if thinking of something.

Being wary around Jason Grace.

But Jason tries not to give up, trying to still rebuild their friendship.

"So, you're Bryce Lawrence." Jason looks at the boy with the mix of disgust and indignance.

This-this no good son of Orcus really thinks that a little murder is entertainment.

He should've been dead, but his family is one of the most influential families in all of New Rome.

They can't just execute him and face his angry relatives.

But he was a goddamn psychopath.

Gods, Jason already hates him.

A lot of Roman campers have been missing lately.

The praetors said that they were rewarded a quest by the augur.

But they don't come back after a week.

Jason sighs as he flips his coin, transforming it to a sword.

He's going to find those campers and bring them back here.

Jason didn't know what got into him.

One moment, he was fighting a dracaena and another moment he was fighting one of his own kin, a demigod.

But the demigod isn't Roman.

He said he was a son of Hermes.

And he looks a lot like him.

Who is he?

And how could he do this to his Roman kind?

"Join me, Jason", he says.

Luke.

His name is Luke.

"Together we can tear Olympus apart stone by stone!"

Jason shoots lightning at him, but he seems unharmed.

At the end of the day, he fed the traitor Romans to the sharks.

Nico.

Nico di Angelo.

That was the Ambassador of Pluto's name.

People were wary of him.

Jason? He wasn't wary of Nico.

Finally, a cousin.

He seems secretive, but that's alright.

Jason has a lot of secrets.

And one day Nico brings Hazel, also a child of Pluto.

He cherishes them both.

There's a battle.

And he's in it.

Everyone is in it.

Against the Titan Kronos who has escaped from Tartarus.

He didn't tell anyone about that Greek demigod.

But before they go to New York, they have to face Krios first in Mount Othyrs.

It's going to be a long battle.

Their praetors are dead, and many are wounded.

Everyone is panicking, and Jason and Reyna tries to stop them from that.

Reyna comes up with battle tactics, and Jason is quite proud of her.

They march into Krios' domain, where they're faced with a dragon and the Hesperides.

Reyna kills them singlehandedly as the legion descends into battle.

Jason reaches Krios, and that is where it gets messy.

Hand-to-hand combat.

Why is Jason so impulsive?

His face burns.

His legs are tiring.

His right arm is broken.

And the entire legion is watching them, weapons ready.

They want to see if he lives or dies.

He looks up at the sky as he finally kneels for what felt like years, exhaling.

His lungs are burning.

His heart is beating too fast for his own good.

He feels blood on his face, and his eyes hurt.

He finally prays to his dad for the first time in his life.

And he's overcome with strength he had when he and the Romans scaled Mount Othyrs.

Krios is disintegrating, slowly but surely. He growls, but Jason just kicks him in the face.

"Who even are you?", Krios spits out.

Jason smirks. "I'm Jason fucking Grace bitch. And you'll remember me for centuries."

He watches Krios fully disintegrate with a self satisfied smirk.

And he faces his comrades, all full of amazement or intimidation.

Reyna starts to clap.

Sooner or later everyone starts clapping.

They made him and Reyna praetors of the first legion.

He dreams.

He dreams of his achievements, of his mother and sister, of his family.

But something is still missing.

In all his life, he never called anything a 'home', or a 'family'.

Even in Camp Jupiter, where it was supposed to feel at home, he never feels like it.

He finds Juno staring at him with a smile.

No.

He cannot be used as a pawn ever again.

Juno chuckles.

"It is your time now, little hero. Your destiny awaits."

No.

NEVER AGAIN.

Who is he again?

Where is he?

What is he doing here in a bus, in the middle of wilderness?

He feels something warm on his hand, and he looks over to see-

The most beautiful girl he's ever met.

And, suddenly, he feels a pang of hope, that maybe, just maybe, he will find a home and family.

Maybe is a strong word.

"Jason? Are you alright?"

[hanzi83]

This may be my last blog

I feel the end is coming near for me. I don’t know where to start because more and more they are suspending me from different platforms for being hateful, when it is clearly something bigger at work. I refuse to believe these social media sites who help let right wing bigoted assholes spew their views with no repercussions, but someone like me who is venting to get it off his chest and defending myself from attacks, where I feel these attacks are coordinated on purpose to fuck with my mind and instill more fear and paranoia. I literally don’t feel like I have anyone on my side, and even if I did have people on my side, I am sure I would just lose my fucking mind and accused them of being against me at some fucking point.

I think the problem lately I have not been able to express myself in my private thoughts and when my notes got deleted I have not felt like putting effort into doing it and normally it is full of wrestling analysis and what conspiracies are happening mostly and I am not even good at doing this anymore because so much thoughts poor into my psyche and I hope that it is somehow recorded by some advancement and is being extracted in some kind of manner and I am already getting bored with writing this because I have nowhere to start, so lately I have wanted to keep up with what is going on so I can have material from what is happening in the social landscape around the world, and then I figure it might be better if I react and retweet other people a lot smarter than me.

I have become a lot more aggressive with my irrational rants, and it feels like people push me to react this way and I feel I have to fight back, so if I do fight back, they can suspend me for telling someone to fuck themselves, or tickling themselves with a razor blade and if I don’t react then they get away with it. I have cried out for people within media establishment would help but I don’t know if they are allowed to do anything or even say anything, especially when it is Howard Stern, as irrelevant as he is in the lexicon of popular culture, I still feel I am being targeted by him. It is not a coincidence that he has gotten Leslee Dart to be his publicist for his book, who also represented Woody Allen, and I could bet money she is behind help censoring the online stuff and pushing back against the negative reaction to his book, not that I know for sure.

He has always had his own followers, who I feel are employed fans who bad mouth others and even bad mouth Stern as well, so it gives off this notion that the right wing contingent of the fan base is against him simply for being a little more liberal about his views, when I feel he is a neoliberal, and even people messaging me on twitter thanking me for being right all along because Alyssa Milano was promoted the book etc. These people are sick, they have dedicated a sub reddit to me, that has to be a sub reddit of another sub reddit which is Howard Stern, and that is done because they used to encourage that on their reddit, but now that I have called it out and put eyes on it, they have since then made another one and the people on the Stern Show reddit are “against” any Hanzi comments and pretend it is me, so now this troll who is obsessed with me, will project his feelings on me, and act like I am the problem.

I have no idea who this dude Gorilla Baconator is, but he will always post my periscopes and misrepresent what I am saying and because these periscopes are deleted afterwards, if someone goes online to look about things about me, they might seen the titles of some of these threads and not see it is being misrepresented. I always upload most of the scopes onto my public facebook page, but lately since I have been off twitter I have been on different periscopes that happen. I have met some cool people, and some people hated me. It is a variety, whether it is religious people wanting to pray for me, some wrestling ones, or women trying to get guys to pay for private shows while I just name drop I was on Stern Show and ask conspiracy questions. I do that because I literally have nothing else interesting about me, and also want to see if the trolls who stalk me, will pop out and I have caught some of them doing that, so I boasted about feeling better going on periscope and meeting new people, the trolls then have to say “Hanzi is stalking black teens” and I get if it was just a joke, but their goal to do this is for me to get in trouble, and because these people are paid to do it and have no soul, they will make me crazy even more.

One screen grab I put out was about them making insinuations that I am trying to pick up underage girls and that an arrest is eminent and even as untrue that is, it puts paranoia that they can control this narrative and I have no one to watch my back. I posted the screen grab on my facebook to show people how fucked up this is, and I like documenting it so people can see what kind of shit they are trying to misrepresent and character assassinate me.

I certainly cannot count on anyone I know because I think all my friendships and relationships have been strained severely with my subtle jabs because of my hatred for not being connected with my city over this Toronto Raptors thing. I have voiced my displeasure, as irrational as it is, and then valid displeasure came out because it was reported the owner of the Raptors wants to take the team to Israel, and anyone pushing back against that, is seen as an anti Semite since they purposely pile lump in criticism of Israel and Zionism in with the white supremacists who hate Jewish people. So this made me not want to root for the team, and it made me not want to care about it.

I couldn’t even go a day without social media where I did not see any footage of celebration, and as much as I think it is cool the Toronto team won a championship, it makes me overwhelmed because I see a lot of Canadian exceptionalism taking place and more and more it is like Toronto is becoming like the United States, and while the hatred for that is overwhelming, the fact that people I know are part of this type of shit it makes me regret even knowing these people, and the media can show a Sikh guy who owns his own car dealership and has gone to every game etc and then say “Hey look Toronto is diverse, we’re not as racist as the US” is horrible, I am happy that we are celebrating people uniting and feeling good about a sports team winning, but I can already see the pretentious cockiness about this and how smug people will become because of all of this and because I have not handled this well, and have been taking jabs at people I presume are in group chats, and people who have used my “fame” to get what they want systemically while I have to suffer and if I even say anything back to them, I really think people will plot to kill me or fuck with me.

People have hinted they sneak into my house and move shit in my house. I don’t know if it is all true, but if people are targeted I could see how they have “regular” people to become agents and do the bidding at the elite’s behest and I feel like they have done it to me and will continue, until they get me offline or until I attempt suicide and they will keep pushing me more and more. If I do a periscope to do air my thoughts out and don’t have any comments on, they will take it personal, if I take my anger out on them because they are adding to my mental stress, they will then carry on to fuck with me over everything.

I don’t think it is a coincidence I got suspended on twitter the week of the championship game, and now on facebook I have been suspended off of, when people are reporting my lives for being “suicidal” when it is clear I am not going to do anything and I can tell it is a plethora of people in my life who do that. It is scary to think that people I know, or people at the top are taking the time to fuck with me like this, and I don’t know what they are capable of and how they could kill me, since people can be bought off for the access in the elite. They will gossip about me constantly in group chats, posting whatever move I make, what I tweet out, what pictures is being put out there or whatever blog I post. I think they even shut down the Hanzi83 sub reddit, because they said they wouldn’t shut it down until the mission was complete. Are they disguising the truth under the guise of shit post, or they actually trying to instill paranoia in me. I would not be surprised because a plethora of whack packers are going down and are sick in the hospital, and it feels like sacrifices could be made, even though they would not officially expose that, and maybe my time is coming since I have to pay for the fame I got, even though I have paid the ultimate price for it, and instead of killing me, they will just imprison me even more mentally. I think the end is near for me unfortunately. This blog will only be seen officially by a couple of hundred people, because I can’t post this on facebook or twitter.

I think they will kill me. My parents are ashamed of me, and why wouldn’t they be? Look at me. I should have never been alive this long, but around my house I can sense this dark energy of silence and it feels like the elite have warned them about something that is going to happen. I could be wrong, but my life has been a fucking waste. I will never be able to trust anyone in my life, and they will never take accountability for anything and I feel people with power in the system will use it to fuck with others and bully them, without making it look obvious. Everyone in the system is corrupt and fucked up. Why would you let me be on this planet, I can never look at these people the same again, they all fucking hate me and sometimes I feel the same way and I never want to feel like that

I need to take a break from the internet and get active again. I have to try, because as much as I loved making new friends on Scope, and actually trying to have a connection on a human level because it is a fresh start for friendship, because I don’t think I will ever have a good rapport with people I already know because of the damage that has culminated and I always hoped I would be at peace with people now because whatever has been creeping on behind the scenes, I thought would be done now. I think I have become such an asshole and political about this Raptors shit, and maybe it is my insecurity of never reaching to do great things because I did not sell my soul, and I kick myself sometimes for not doing it because maybe I need to be praised and cheered on, and then I get back down to earth and just want a revolution to take place. I don’t know if I am going to be sacrificed. I feel people have used me and set me up, because I am going to have to be fucked with and put away in some hospital. I might have to decide to check in and disappear for a bit.

It is funny that I am a joke in my town, but in my fucked up head, I feel I helped get people their connections without even knowing it because of the alleged politicking that existed behind the scenes, and it fucks with me that so much has happened to me behind my back and now I am so hurt emotionally that I have no choice but to vent so I can get out whatever is in my head, but no one sees that. I really don’t mean harm on anyone. I just wish the world would just let me go because I will never fit in with anyone every again. I have angered the brass and their minions are hard at work trying to get rid of me.

Even if my twitter and facebook is restored, I should just get off. I can try deactivating it but time to time I would like to see what is going on in the world in the news since we are at a dangerous times, I feel that way. I just lessen the amount I take in because I am so hell bent to catch up on everything, I don’t have time to want to leave my fucking house. I have to get going and do something. Lately my desire to catch up with anything or even write has lessened but then when I want to go do something active I become worried I will not know things or get references because I still fancy myself a comedian in training, but never actually doing stage time, but still finding ways to creatively vent. I can feel them coming for me, I don’t know if they will further hinder my attempt at a career, and then it could just be that I suck. I don’t fucking know. Even if this is kind of funny, can I use this again? Or did I just waste material and left it open for anyone to just take from me, and I will never get any credit.

I apologize to people I have hurt but keep in mind you have hurt me and I will never get the answers because none of you would ever admit what you are supposed to be accountable for, or at least in my fucked up head, I wish it was not like this but this is all I have, to vent and I just rather act irrational. I should just take a break and work on my notes and at least save them for my own journal, and then gradually bring it out but even when I am typing in my own journal, I don’t think it is actually private because I feel these people are watching me. I am afraid of doing things because whatever I do, I wonder if people are paid agents and always meant to keep tabs on me, and it feels like there is literally no one to talk to about anything and that is why I have been addicted to periscope for the last week because I felt I was seeing all walks of life doing different things, whether it was shit talking, presumed sex workers trying to advertise themselves, debates about prison reform,  Christian women praying for me, it was just fresh of interacting with people, and also me trying to cram it in that I was on the Stern Show because there is literally nothing interesting about me, because of my limited experiences and knowledge, and only way to sound kind of interesting is having discussions of conspiracies and then tying it in that I might be the victim of a conspiracy and having great discussions about it. I am also worried because I would go in scopes where it might come across like women were being forced to do it, or maybe they are legitimate sexy workers, I did not indulge further than just dropping conspiracy talk and asking how old they were. But when I would go on random scopes of musicians or just regular people if they were underage or just barely legal, I would walk out of the conversation pretty quickly. Anyone within my age range I was never going on to these places to get off, and maybe that is because I am medicated so much that I don’t even have a sex drive anymore, so I was really looking for good conversation with people within my age range because I need some mature conversation. It was just good talking to different people, there are a lot black and brown people on there that I gelled with and even being made fun of and busting their balls back. I even got felt like someone important with a couple of people, whether they were just feeding my ego or genuinely interested in my story and the fact that I am kind of known, it felt good and maybe it was one of the best things that happened, because it has made me want to try and get my shit together. I don’t know if these people will come for me, and try to frame me for shit because of how much I have tried to speak up about the world and what my theories are, and they punish people like me for doing things.

I can see the disgust in people’s demeanors around me more and more. I really don’t feel like I fucking belong. I get fucking scared when there are certain things these people admit to and then act like it is for real but they know there is nothing for me to do about it because literally everyone is compromised and since I feel targeted, and it gets scarier when they spread horrible lies about me, and accuse me of being a pedophile when it is not fucking true, and it makes me think since they have my computer hacked and have showcased what they can do, whether it’s moving my keyboard, taking from my actual document on my computer and pasting it on reddit before I even posted it in the blog site I use, or stopping music being played on my device when it is somewhere else, or posting under my name on my public page with my personal account, there is no telling what they have done to my computer and even if I wanted to indulge to see if they did any funny business, what the fuck am I supposed to look up to know if anything shady is on my computer if anything at all. These people really love to mess with me. I might just have to check myself in the hospital, but I will probably get abused there or I will be put through torture or something. I don’t fucking know. I wonder if they want me out of commission it will be so I don’t have to be present for something people in my life can’t hide.

I am going through so many emotions. I need to break from twitter, even if it is restored, as attempting as it is going to be seeing the jokes about OJ getting on twitter and then me complaining how they are beating a dead horse since it is all planned out anyways because they needed to make twitter interesting before it completely becomes nothing, like it is WCW, “You know what will keep people invested with twitter? OJ SIMPSON”  I am already getting sick of the responding with a GIF movement that has taken a light of its own, and then people thinking the GIF chosen is such a genius move.

Anyways I am happy Raptors won but then I am not because it brings joy and I hate that I am not included in it probably. I really don’t know how I fucking feel. I know that putting that out there makes people come bust my balls, even subtly just to try and trigger me. Then if I go off on this shit, then people act like I am the guy who is treating people like shit so then I put people down for their tactics and how they act behind the scenes, and since this “fan base” is not getting paid by me, and maybe they would be a little more supportive if I did like anyone else with a fan base who pay their fans indirectly and do it with perks etc, in my opinion, but I don’t pay these people and they might be paid by other people to harass certain people, they will try to set me up by asking what they can do or what are the orders, even if it is something small. I tell people to act on their own.

Anyways this blog is out of control because I am doing random thoughts because I have not written much in my journal, so I am all over the fucking map, but who cares I am not credible and no one is going to read this, and even if they do, they don’t care. It does hurt that people who are leftist could be part of the group that decides I need to be put out of commission online as well, because some of them don’t seem to want to bring attention to it, and maybe their battles are limited, it is like wrestling, and any decent person would ask “Why aren’t the other good guys helping this dude who seems to being outnumbered with mental abuse as the referee continues to ring  the fucking bell” and it feels like that is what is happening, all the other good guys can’t help or I have been such a fucking asshole, that people don’t think I am worth saving, until the narrative changes then conveniently people will start fucking caring. I realize neoliberals wouldn’t help because we know they don’t care, and the republican types won’t care because they will justify it why I am the bad guy, but people are leftist, I would expect they would at least make mention of it, but even their word is limited, even though they are also speaking out on other evil, so maybe some fat delusional Pakistani in mommy’s basement is not high on their list. No one cares or it feels that way and because of that I will always feel aggressive with my shit talking because I am so hurt by no one seemingly caring and letting all this alleged harassment to go on and make me feel so fucking horrible, that I fucking want to die. When I speak with my case worker, I might have to really ask about going away for a bit. I know that is what you want anyways.

[marvmacdonald]

“she's fucking impetuous and daring, a little too bold and way too fucking fearless.”

MARY MACDONALD is 21 years old and works as an JUNIOR AUROR and is loyal to THE OOTP they were an GRYFFINDOR and are a MUGGLEBORN. SHE look like CHRISTIAN SERRATOS. 

CHARACTER PARALLELS: jessica jones ( jessica jones ), leia organa ( star wars ), arya stark ( asoiaf ), johanna mason ( the hunger games ), nancy wheeler ( stranger things ), rosa diaz ( b99 ), ellie ( the last of us ), raven reyes ( the 100 ), kat edison ( the bold type ), nina zenik ( six of crows ) AESTHETIC: red lipstick stains on drained cups of tea, leather jackets, cigarette bums crushed under doc martens, sitting down in the shower and letting time pass by, always wearing your gold cross necklace, messy ponytails, beer burps, laughter that’s filled with desperation, jean dungarees, screaming in your pillow, mud stained clothes, denim on denim on denim. LINKS: stats. pinboard. character tag. playlist.

history

mary had a little lamb? WRONG. mary had a little calf. because she was born on a dairy farm in the highlands of scotland ( laugh at my joke pls i worked hard on it ). she was born third to two muggles – a scottish father and a mexican mother, who loved each other deeply – and would eventually become their middle child. she could have become overlooked, but mary never felt discounted at home: while her parents were very often busy with the cows, their love ran deep.

her youth consisted of this: running through fields of grass, attending a muggle elementary where people sang songs at her ( old macdonald had a farm and mary had a little lamb, the former of which was, of course, accurate ), playing with the animals, building tree houses with her brothers and sister and playing football every spare moment she got. it was good and simple and wholesome.

of course, strange things happened, as they tend to with muggleborns: she’d explode her brother’s toy when she got angry, or let things fly around the room when she was laughing. when she found out she was a witch at age eleven, things fell in its place. and the macdonalds, while traditional catholics, accepted mary, which is the most important thing of it all. her parents were shocked, yes, but they squeezed her shoulder and promised to discover this all together.

which?? very much influenced mary greatly? because it went against a lot of things they – and she, too – believed in. magic was deemed evil by the church they attended. everything about this was supposed to be wrong, but her parents shifted their views because their love for their daughter was greater than their desire to cling to all the rules the church laid down for them, this has allowed her to have a faith in people, and while she may be cynical and bitter at times, that faith is still there.

i mean --- her parents accepted her, they were capable of openmindedness despite being traditional people in most other situations. other people can too.

hogwarts was as chaotic as home, and mary settled in quite nicely. sorted into gryffindor ( she guessed it was for her rambunctious nature, but who knew ), she found herself a second home and loved it. as it turned out, she was rather good with a wand as well – she didn’t do so good at essays, though – and genuinely liked learning ( except for history of magic. fuck that. ).

being a muggleborn had its downsides, of course, but mary never really allowed herself to feel discouraged. hurt? yes, definitely, but never discouraged. she wasn’t going to let it get to her, she told herself, but it did, especially when the harsh words turned into something more. it was during her confrontation with mulciber that mary felt true, harsh fear for the first time. she felt shut down, paralysed, depressed —– but then, after a while, she got up and took some important steps. she reported mulciber, which led to nothing, which caused her to feel angry, which in turn caused her to feel determination. if the system wasn’t going to be on her side, she’d just have to fucking change it, right? mary started throwing herself in her schoolwork, determined to join the dmle – hopefully as an auror, but any position would do. she suppressed her fear and the trauma that was there, and kept her head straight.

this entire situation is up for change and stuff when/if we get a mulciber! 

graduation rolled around and mary got the five required NEWTs to even apply. it was a nervewracking process, but once she got into auror training, she cried. like. for a full ass day. she was so proud of herself and she felt so determined and !! man. it was such a good, defining moment. around the same time, mary joined the order; she knew the ministry was corrupt, and that it’d not allow her to do everything she wanted to, when the order DID. mary had too much anger, too much determination to fight this bullshit to just stick with the ministry, and so the order seemed like the right place.

it’s only recently that mary graduated from her training and became a junior auror. it’s ... infuriating, at times, but also amazing. she hates the ministry and most of the people in it, feels paranoid in those walls, but knows that there are good people, too. people who want to better that place, like she does.

kaz brekker voice: brick by brick, i will destroy you.

also --- mary is ... very quite involved in the war. her time is divided between the order and work, and her dog. she’s determined to get this war to end. she doesn’t even care if she destroys herself in the process --- what does her life mean, if she could help save numerous people?

so right now, she’s fighting. she’s gritting her teeth and keeping her goals in the back in her mind and is focusing. and she does not always feel brave or confident or self assured, but that does not matter: mary macdonald always gets the fuck back up, and that’s what she will keep doing until she’s completely knocked down.

personality & tidbits.

mary is a human espresso. she’s so. damn. bitter?? despite the fact that she keeps on going and that she’s fighting her ass off, she’s tired and angry that things don’t seem to be moving in the right direction, she’s feeling bitter about the fact that this kind of discrimination is happening right in front of her eyes and that she does not have enough power to stop it. she feels powerless, which makes her feel bitter, which makes her cynical.

still! mary is not necessarily a debbie downer to be around. she keeps her bitterness ( and hopelessness, even ) carefully hidden in boxes in her mind. on the outside, she’s filled with quips and smiles and quick comments! just a sociable bean, but just a bitter one.

is a dog person and will fight anyone who prefers cats. has a cairn terrier called bowie. she loves him more than anyone.

obsessed with tea, tbh. her ma always said that ‘there’s nothing a cuppa can’t fix’ and mary definitely agrees with this statement.

though is also a ‘whiskey in a teacup’ kinda gal

can be spotted wearing either a rly nice ass blazer or a jean jacket, no inbetween. either office-fancy or farmer-chique

fucking loves muggle culture and loves fellow muggleborns and !!!!!! she loves it!!!

very much in a take-no-prisoners mindset at this point re: death eaters. it kind of scares her, tbh, but mary is very much capable of murdering a death eater, even if she could stun them — she’s just done. she’s very. done. with them. and this whole shbang? will only feed into this.

mary is ruthless, that’s what it boils down to. she’s a lot more than that, of course, but she’s ruthless — in small things ( football matches & boardgames ) but also in bigger ones, and of course the war is the main way it shows. mary is so angry. she’s so angry and scared and tired of feeling that way and tired of being scared to lose people and herself and of death and she’s so angry that people really are this way and that they really do these things — she wants it to stop. she wants the world to be right. and sometimes she thinks the ends do justify the means.

this is why she’s chaotic neutral and not chaotic good.

like ive had her turned to dark arts before just bc she’s so desperate to. fucking win. tbh i’m sure she has a growing interest rn. stop it mary :(

and she’s also like — mary doesnt care if she ruins herself? if she becomes a bad person who’s unable to live with the shit she’s done? as long as the world is better for it, as long as kids can go to hogwarts and feel safe and the world is a safe place for everyone. what does her soul matter in the grand scheme of things? she’d burn in hell forever if it meant the rest of the world changed for the better.

emotionally driven mess of a being

is catholic but struggles a lot with religion and feeling faithful, but she does still identify is a catholic, it’s just? complicated. it’s rly complicated and she hates it.

is a bit flighty when it comes to romance, def has a lot of one night stands/fwb situations though??? she’s just like??? i dont have time for romance its a WAR

has been trying to stop smoking for five years, but alas

a proud scot. a proud latina. proud proud proud. such a fucking lionness.

mary was a beater during her time at hogwarts and was Highly competitive. threw herself into the sport tbh after the mulciber incident. she still thinks football is superior, but you know, it isnt in the air.

she’s pan and out of the closet --- something that did put a strain on her relationship with her family. ( the fact that they could accept her magic but not her sexuality ... baffles mary, but bigots have never been very reasonable. ) she’s not very open about it at home, but otherwise ... she’s out here lovin everyone.

plot ideas!

roomies —– so mary is not Earning A Whole Lot Right Now but does not want to live at home any more because 1. its in the middle of nowhere and 2. most importantly, she’s afraid of endangering her family. she needs roomies! i’d love for her to live in glasgow/edinburgh/london/idk a city!!!

hook ups/fwb’s/etc —– mary is what the old ppl call promiscuous and she sleeps around. so ! let’s talk! former hook ups! booty calls! friends with benefits! etc etc etc!

party pals —- mary likes going to pubs and clubs in the muggle part of town bc it is a LIT way to escape the reality of the wizarding world and also, muggle clubs have better music. come party w her!!!!

in the dragon’s den together —- fellow ministry employees who side eye the ministry and whom mary can sip tea and judge their colleagues with

mudbloods club —- mary loves her fellow muggleborns and i would love some muggleborn friends that she can be buds with. ranting about dumb pureblood names and traditions and the fact that wizards dont have movies

general friendship ideas —- im just going to a bunch of ideas here: hogwarts friends, ride or dies, order pals, friendly exes, fellow tea drinkers that she can go on coffee/tea dates with, friends who are growing apart bc of the war (my fave), etc.

etc —- some other ideas i want to spitball: purists who h8 on mary’s life, fellow diagon alley employees, fellow order members, Annoyances, there is solidarity in being scottish, ministry connections, etc etc etc HIT ME UP

[spynotebook]

Photo illustration by Slate. Images by Sullynyflhi/Wikimedia Commons Roi/iStock/Getty Images Plus.

Slate has relationships with various online retailers. If you buy something through our links, Slate may earn an affiliate commission. We update links when possible, but note that deals can expire and all prices are subject to change. All prices were up to date at the time of publication.

Forget all those pandemic novels people have been praising for their prescience in the age of COVID-19: For uncanny relevance, no fictional crisis rivals the showdown in N.K. Jemisin’s new urban fantasy The City We Became. A valentine to New York City, The City We Became depicts a metropolis under attack by a malevolent, infectious invader, aided and abetted by the stubborn fears and self-defeating prejudices of those who mistrust the city’s polyglot nature. No doubt when she was writing it Jemisin thought of the novel as a reflection of city life under the Trump regime, but damned if she didn’t anticipate how the seemingly maximized tensions of just a few months ago could be raised even higher and sharpened to a lethal point.

The City We Became is both an expansion of “The City Born Great”—one of the best stories in Jemisin’s 2018 collection, How Long ’til Black Future Month?—and a riposte to the 1925 H.P. Lovecraft story “The Horror at Red Hook,” a notorious explosion of racist disgust. It’s also a sophisticated exercise in contemporary allegory (and I’m not one to use that term lightly). What it isn’t, at least not consistently, is a crackerjack piece of storytelling. Jemisin’s premise is so savory and persuasive that it sometimes doesn’t matter that she hasn’t found a narrative style worthy of both. The city she sings fizzes so joyously through the veins of this novel that anyone mourning the New York before COVID-19 will likely find The City We Became equally sustaining and elegiac, a tribute to a city that may never fully return to us. Maybe that’s enough.

In “The City Born Great”—which, in adapted form, appears as a prologue to The City We Became—a cheeky black street kid learns that he has become the personification of New York. As an older man and sometime trick named Paulo explains it to him, at a moment of critical mass, a great city achieves a life of its own, a pocket formed in the fabric of reality:

N.K. Jemisin.

Laura Hanifin

And in that pocket the many parts of the city begin to multiply and differentiate. Its sewers extend into places where there is no need for water. Its slums grow teeth; its art centers, claws. Ordinary things within it, traffic and construction and stuff like that, start to have a rhythm like a heartbeat, if you record their sounds and play them back fast. The city… quickens.

A full throttle paean to New York, this prologue levitates on the velocity of its nameless narrator’s guttersnipe lyricism. “I’ll starve to death someday,” he announces, “or freeze some winter night, or catch something that rots me away until the hospitals have to take me, even without money or an address. But I’ll sing and paint and dance and fuck and cry the city before I’m done, because it’s mine. It’s fucking mine.”

Paulo—who turns out to be the personification of São Paulo, in town to help New York through this crucial transition—informs him that once the process is complete, he will be both himself and a powerful manifestation of the city, able to channel its spirit but susceptible to attacks on its integrity. Also, while his new allegorical identity is burgeoning, he’ll be vulnerable to a predator that wants to consume “the sweet new life” he represents and destroy the city’s soul. That’s what happened to New Orleans, with Hurricane Katrina, and Port-au-Prince, with the 2010 earthquake; both events only looked like natural disasters. In fact, they amounted to the triumph of a city-hating entity from another dimension, one that bears a strong resemblance to Lovecraft’s elder gods.

New York does battle with this entity, which takes the form of cops, naturally. He lures its emissaries into traffic on FDR Drive: “one lane silver car two lanes horns horns horns three lanes SEMI WHAT’S A FUCKING SEMI DOING ON THE FDR IT’S TOO TALL YOU STUPID UPSTATE HICK screaming four lanes GREEN TAXI screaming Smart Car hahaha cute five lanes moving truck six lanes and the blue Lexus actually brushes up against my clothes as it blares past screaming screaming screaming…” He bombards “the Enemy” in metaphysical combat with “a one-two punch of Long Island radiation and Gowanus toxic waste … and to stretch out its pain, I salt these wounds with the memory of a bus ride to LaGuardia and back.” The primary real-world casualty in this battle—which New York wins but barely—is the Williamsburg Bridge, which collapses under the weight of giant tentacle.

Urban fairy tales thrive on mystery and omission, the richness of their metaphors blossoming in what’s unsaid.

The rest of The City We Became recounts the similar awakenings of the avatars of the city’s five boroughs: Manhattan (a racially ambiguous newcomer with a shady past and a sharp wardrobe), Brooklyn (a black former hip-hop MC turned elegant city councilwoman), the Bronx (an aging Lenape lesbian who runs an arts center), Queens (a South Asian immigrant and math whiz), and Staten Island, depicted as an agoraphobic Irish American dominated by her bigoted NYPD dad. Each character gives Jemisin the opportunity to elaborate on the personality of that particular borough, with scrappy Bronca, descended from the indigenous inhabitants of the area—a battle-weary but still game veteran of countless underdog struggles—the standout. While it’s bemusing that not one of the five boroughs is represented by a Jew, for the most part this makes for a thrilling conceit, full of imaginative promise.

Unfortunately, the plot Jemisin uses to explore this world is fairly generic and overly in debt to cinematic precedents like superhero films. Each borough gets a bit of origin story and is called upon to join the team so that the assembled five can wake up the original avatar for the entire city, their leader, who like Sleeping Beauty is conked out in a hidden corner of the city, recovering from that epic battle on the FDR. Only together, under the leadership of New York’s primary personification, can they find the strength to battle the Big Bad that threatens to annihilate the city—or even worse, the entire universe, etc. Jemisin forges some fruitful links to contemporary politics: A significant challenge involves persuading Staten Island to be less fearful and suspicious of anyone who isn’t from Staten Island, and the Enemy enlists such useful idiots as guys who make YouTube videos about how oppressed white men are. But the anemic predictability of the storyline doesn’t do justice to the splendor of Jemisin’s setup.

The City We Became also shows some signs of genre confusion. Science fiction and epic fantasy typically have lots of explaining to do, laying out the working of unfamiliar lands and histories, convincing their readers with the sheer breadth of the author’s imagined world. In this novel, Jemisin has created a premise closer to an urban fairy tale, a form that thrives on mystery and omission; its wonders are simply there, the richness of its metaphors blossoming in what’s unsaid. This is a tricky narrative mode, one that requires the storyteller to have faith in her audience’s ability to find meaning in a story’s symbols even when she doesn’t spell that meaning out—in fact, because she doesn’t spell it out.

Fantasy has in common with poetry the ability to summon the numinous using only the humblest materials of the physical world. Jemisin certainly can do this: When Queens realizes that she has become the embodiment of her borough, she experiences “a sudden and intense rightness, shivering through the trees of her building’s backyard and thrumming up through the old frame house’s foundation. Dust puffs through cracks in the walls. She inhales the faint scent of mildew and rat droppings, and it’s disgusting, but it’s right.” Nevertheless, Jemisin too often lets herself get bogged down in unnecessary exposition and transitions; characters are constantly explaining that knowledge has simply popped into their heads, that they just had a feeling that they ought to do this or that, go here or there. It’s as if Jemisin were under orders to spell out their every motivation to a dim-witted movie studio executive. I found myself wishing that she’d trusted more in the spell she’s cast, in magic as a manifestation of our deepest wishes and fears, rather than a coherent, explicable system.

Still, the spell never entirely dissipates in The City We Became, partly because we seem to be living through an alternate ending for the novel—one in which the avatars of boroughs and the city failed to fight off their assailant and the soul of New York hangs in the balance. (It only looks like a natural disaster.) The hallmark of great fantasy is that it feels true even when you know it isn’t, and The City We Became does that, especially right now.

[south-by-midwest]

do all the consonants you little shit

I greatly appreciate all these handpicked consonants you’ve asked me to do. It’s the time of my life. 

Also I realize my few hours turned into an entire day whoops but at least I’m now on my computer so this will look prettier than being on mobile. 

B. What is your first thought when you receive a message on tumblr, are you excited for the idea of someone from potentially the other side of the world wanting to talk to you or fearful that someone will criticize you?Ya know, I used to get really worried that all my anons were gonna be hateful, but then I realized that my blunt and sharp responses to anon bullshit make people not want to message me at all, so now I’m just shocked and amazed when someone sends me something. 

C. Have you ever looked down on someone because you thought your religious views were superior?I may have in my childhood because I was raised VERY religiously, but definitely not since I finished high school/went to college and realized largely that religion isn’t for me, so I don’t care what people do, as long as they’re not hurting anybody. 

D. Would you rather know everything the universe has to offer but in exchange lose all emotions or remain the way you are now?Who the fuck actually wants this? Who wrote this?? Y’all wild get out of my face.

F. If you could take on the exact body and form of anyone else on Earth, who would it be?Uhhhhhhh me c. 2012. He was a skinny fucker. 

G. Would you rather burn or freeze to death?Freeze. Burning to death hurts. There comes a point when you’re freezing to death that you actually feel warm as your body shuts down, so you don’t even know it’s coming and it’s more peaceful. 

H. If it meant it would solve all world hunger, war, disease and bigotry, would you spend the rest of eternity in Hell?The Christian Devil is a spineless bitch, send me the fuck down there. 

I almost did I, whoops.

J. Could you live without having sex ever (again) in exchange for eternal youth?Miss me with that eternal youth shit. I enjoy sex far too much to even entertain this question. 

K. Have you ever watched a full length pornographic movie?Uhhhhhhh I’ve seen a lot of softcore flicks, because I was a teenager with unlimited access to a DirecTV subscription, but no I’ve never watched an entire full porn video from start to finish who the fuck has the patience or time for that.

L. The Beatles or The Rolling Stones?I was raised on the Stones by my Dad, next question. 

M. If you could have the ability to manipulate matter or energy, which would you choose?You can use energy to manipulate matter, so uh, loophole. Real talk think about this though you can either just impress your friends by throwing shit across a room, or you could take over an entire power grid with a thought. You can control the massive oceans, the air, anything that has movement or momentum, you can take that energy and do whatever the fuck you want with it. That’s so badass and powerful. I’ll take energy. 

N. What was the worst nightmare you ever had?Bruh. I had a recurring one until sometime in high school, it’s hard to explain the details now because it was so long ago, but in it I would be running from some unseen force, and I could never get away. No matter how much I ran through the environment, that thing would always be just one corner behind me. The concept itself isn’t that bad, but the fact that it occurred so often and over a period of a lot of years that I dreaded that dream happening. Every time I saw that place again I’d panic. It was horrible. 

P. All the sequels/remakes/adaptations/rip-offs in movies nowadays, good or bad?To be honest I don’t pay as much attention to cinema as people normally do? I think It was fantastic, Kingsman is outstanding, and before that the last movie I saw in theaters was Dunkirk so like you tell me what’s out there because I don’t fucking know. 

Q. Would you rather be dirt poor and emotionally fulfilled in life or be rich beyond imagination and emotionally dissatisfied for life?Bitch I’ve been dirt poor AND emotionally dissatisfied my entire existence give me all that fucking money if I’m gonna be sad at least I’m not gonna be stressed about capitalism ruining my life. 

R. Do you have any (secret) feelings of bigotry to any group of people?Why the fuck are there parentheses around that word? This must’ve been written by a high school english student. If you’re a bigot, you’re a bigot. Like that’s it. But anyway, if I do still harbor any ill feelings towards people, it is residual from being raised by those who are extremely bigoted, and every single day is a struggle to unlearn all the things I was taught growing up. I sincerely apologize to anyone if I ever come across as being hateful and bigoted towards any people. 

S. Would you rather be the only person in the world that can read minds or have everyone else in the world be able to read minds except for your own?So basically this question is, would you rather be able to read minds, or not read minds? And to that I say, UH, DOT DOT DOT, YEAH?!?! Let me catch my enemies on their bullshit I’ll fucking end them. Also let me catch my faves on their bullshit I’ll be the best at birthday and Christmas presents ever and not have to speak a word to anyone. Bring that shit the fuck on. 

T. If everyone in the world would automatically only know one language, which language would you choose?The standard international language for aviation is English, so I’m gonna go with English. I know I’m boring, and I’m sorry. 

UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU souljah boy tell em

V. A world without religion, good, bad, neutral?Personally, I’m for it. People have been killing each other for thousands of years over religion, if you took that away maybe we’d be able to actually focus on things like our planet, and our universe, and we’d be a lot more advanced as a society. 

W. The men’s rights movement, legitimate cause or laughable, why?Did a fucking meninist write this? Our entire society was built on the premise of men having every fucking “right” they could think of, and keeping women from doing anything. Miss me with this shit. If you’re walking around claiming “my rights as a man are under attack”, you’re a worthless piece of shit and you need to take a very long walk off an incredibly short pier. 

X. You can eliminate one of your five senses to substantially strengthen the others, which one and would you do it?Oh you gave me the option to decline, so I’m gonna decline. Thanks for that. If I absolutely had to pick one though, it’d be smell. I need the other four to fly. 

Y. Do looks mean anything to you? Don’t lie, could you fall in love with someone you thought was ugly?No? If I don’t find someone physically attractive, things are not going to work out for us in the long run. As far as level of importance goes I value intelligence, personality and how someone makes me feel far above how they look, but if I look at someone and my immediate thought is “oh they ugly” I’m turning and walking away. 

Z. Can you understand the mindset and logic used by the opposite spiritual opinion? An atheist understanding the belief in a higher power and vice versa. Oh absolutely, I was raised as a Protestant Christian, but after I left home and learned to think for myself I distanced myself from religion because I found it to be far too divisive and superficial for how I understand the world. People want to believe in something higher than themselves, they want to have some comfort in an afterlife, or just some motivation to get through their toughest days. It’s a lot more complicated than the standard “praise God vs praise Science” argument that’s been thrown around for decades. People do whatever makes them feel better about life, and whether that’s going to a church every Sunday or meditating in a forest for days, that’s how they deal with life’s problems. It’s really not that hard to grasp. 

[scarffile0-blog]

Roseanne Should Know Being Racist is a Reverse Facial

Listen. I don’t use the word “ugly” but to describe people who are hatemongers. Racists are hatemongers and their outside seem to reflect it, as their insides spill out in the form of faces that are meant for radio: audio only please. It’s like your spirit just decays from all the prejudice you make it engage in. Like your entire being wrinkles from the core.

Note: if you are going to comment about me face-shaming someone, and kumbaya and high road, save your words. I don’t care. Calling racists on their ugliness is my form of resistance. Carry on. You’re welcome.

I’ve already talked about Steve Bannon at length. His soul rot keeps showing up in a way that his visage always looks like it’s on the brink of melting. Like halfway through melting, it found some resolve so the process paused. Seriously. Read my blog post on: Steve Bannon’s Face is the Physical Embodiment of Soul Rot. If shame had a human form, it would be him.

But the thing that kills me about racists is that their hate is so illogical, they end up feeling bold enough to call themselves superior. Or talk about what other people look like. Today’s asshat is Roseanne Barr, the Mother of  Proud Redneck Americans. It’s like the first MAGA hat was a fitted New Era and they used her head size as prototype.

Anywho, today, Roseanne felt herself feeling froggy and decided to tweet:

VJ refers to Valerie Jarrett, President Barack Obama’s senior advisor and powerful Black woman.

The sad excuse for a homo sapien, Roseanne, whose show just got rebooted almost just so she can spew her love for Cheeto Satan, fixed her fingers to compare a woman who is widely respected to an ape.

And I got mad. I was livid. For logic reasons. Even if one of my favorite pastimes wasn’t defending Black women for troglodytes. Let’s just talk facts here.

Roseanne making fun of someone’s looks is like Donald Trump aka Cheeto Satan calling someone’s hair “ridiculous.” Like, girl, you got ALL THE NERVE in the world. So much nerve. Peak nerve. Ultra nerve. The thing about racists is that their mirrors also lie to them. Or their eyes get cloudy with self esteem cataracts. Racism is a reverse facial and ain’t no amount of face peels or vitamin C serums to cure the effects of harboring so much hate.

N’an one of yall living right.

This fool trying to come for what Valerie looks like should let you know how truly STUPID racists are. Ma’am. You cannot challenge ANYBODY’S LOOKS. You just don’t have the range or the right. You coulda shut the entire fuck up for free. But alas… what’s a queen to a goblin?

Racists be out here looking like God put them together with spare parts and wanna have the nerve to talk about what other people look like. As if God had a few rough drafts He just let out cuz He wanted to see something real quick. I DON’T HAVE TIME. But I got time.

And the internet had time too. People been dragging her for her eyebrows since this morning.

I took to Facebook to fight the air and you know LuvvNation is undefeated. They had some things to say:

Sue: Whaaaat? Valerie Jarrett is just so poised and lovely all the time and Roseanne looks like someone who just finished cleaning out the garage.

Nicole: Sue, I think you’re being generous. She looks like she lives in the garage.

Maxine: Rosanne outchea walking around looking like a leaky bag of curdled milk. FOH

Aprill: The fact that it took her decades of continued plastic surgery to achieve an average face definitely makes this more appalling.

Lisa: Roseanne trying to insult somebody, out here looking like unwashed first cousin sex, high fructose corn syrup, and prices dropping at WalMart.

Biafra: Ol popped can of biscuits, bottom of the Cracker Barrell looking ass. Miss Mississippi Methhead looking ass.

Eva: When, after years of surgery, your neck still looks like lasagna edges, can you really talk about anyone? I say nah.

Mak: Roseanne looks like a pile of warm mayonnaise lightly sprinkled with dollar store black pepper.

Kara: often with a teeth-to-tattoo ratio that is not favorable…. 🤔

Shel: Oh dear, that teeth to tattoo ration describes my meth infested town to a T(eethless)! I repeatedly state that if you go into a bar, collectively the entire place has a full set of teeth.

Jasmine: Roseanne has a lot of nerve talking about anyone. Out here looking like curdled milk and melted candle wax. Stand down, madame.

Tata: Every racist I’ve ever fought with in Facebook comments or in real life be looking like they on their last horcrux

Dee: Sit yo’ refurbished lookin ass down!!!

Noelle: The thinner the lips, the worse the opinions…

Lana: My momma calls them Chicken Lipped Bigots.

Tanya: I found out Katie Hopkins is a few months older than me. I saw her picture and presumed they were talking about dog years not human years cuz clearly the years have not been good to her. She is proof positive that God don’t like ugly.

Katie Hopkins. This is a woman who SHOULD have a winning personality. For reasons.

Lynn: Look, I’m a full 10 YEARS older than her. I refuse to believe that she’s not a walking Dorian Grey portrait of some spectacular looking Hollywood actress.

Tanya: I saw her picture and was like what in the AARP geriatric dog yeared hell?!?

Shaquane: It’s always the sponge bob shaped, no lip having, stringy haired, yellow teeth having racist who have the most to say about someone’s look. You can’t be ugly and racist, pick a struggle.

Tisha: I swear God put those people together at 11:58pm on Saturday night cause he thought he was done early and was probably out celebrating when one of the Angels tapped Him on the shoulder and reminded Him and he was like “oh crap….I’ll just throw all these left over parts together and hope for the best

H Loretta: Kate Hopkins and Roseanne Barr out here lookin like a chewed on toothpick and sour milk got the nerve to be outchea talking people?

Isis: Be looking like relatives of the Crypt Keeper but always have something nasty and mean to say about other and how others look.

Dayyanah: Bannon, for one. Steve out here lookin like some hybrid produce… the looks of a potato and the shelf life of an avocado. 😒

Elia: Seems like it’s always the ones with little or nothing to offer that blab about everyone else being mean/ugly/inferior.

Patrick: Those racists don’t use 23andMe. More like 22andGodOnlyKnows.

Whittley: All the way outchea smelling like every thing wrong with wet dreams and built like sofas from a 90s sitcom. Lookin’ roughed up, ran through, beat down, full o’ funk, and sittin’ low. Just sad. Sad, sad, SAD.

Kendhra: Oh fa’sho. Looking like they were created at a hot dog factory.

Morgan: Lookin like a dusty leather bag on clearance talmbout ~superior genes.

I’m just saying. Today has been for one thing and one thing only: drag Roseanne. Nothing else I put on the list got done.

Wait. I did finish this blog post so I can cross that out too. And since it was essentially to drag Roseanne, DOUBLE CROSS OUTS!

All this dragging did serve a purpose, cuz with the entire internet on their tail, ABC had to act quick. They swiftly cancelled that foresaken reboot of hers. Roseanne is out of a job because she wrote a wrong ass check that her loud mouth could not cash.

If you need me, I’ll be over here cackling like a drunk seal. Sometimes, things go right. Roseanne losing these coins made today go right. Shoutout to Channing Dungey, the president of ABC Entertainment, who also happens to be a Black woman. She is now officially an Apollo legend for her work.

Y’all be blessed.

Source: https://www.awesomelyluvvie.com/2018/05/roseanne-racism-rot.html

[theconservativebrief]

Angels in America — Tony Kushner’s bizarrely beautiful, Pulitzer-winning gay fantasia, now nominated for 11 Tonys — is a play about the triumph of life over death, queer joy over bigoted hate, progress over reactionary politics. In the 1980s, when it was written, that meant that it was primarily concerned with the specific horror of the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, and the lasting trauma of what it did to a generation of gay men. But in 2018, as a new production of the seven-and-a-half-hour, two-part play burns up Broadway, the trauma at its center is evolving.

Then as now, the play concerns Prior Walter, who is diagnosed with AIDS in 1985, and whose boyfriend Louis promptly abandons him to take up with a closeted gay Mormon Reaganite. Prior’s defiant fight for life in the face of despair — sometimes in the form of a literal wrestling match with an angel, like Jacob fighting for his blessing — is the heart of the play’s two parts. Powerful reactionaries like the HIV-positive and wildly homophobic lawyer Roy Cohn (a real-life historical figure) may lurk balefully in the shadows, but Prior’s ecstatic, redemptive blessing to the audience — “I bless you: More Life.” — gets the last word.

The AIDS epidemic is still in the show and still an active and vital part about how it thinks about the world — but in the new production, directed by Marianne Elliott, the plague that threatens the world is populist nationalism. And Roy Cohn — the bigoted and bullying lawyer who died a horrible death, who was Trump’s mentor, who taught Trump how to fight dirty in the courtroom — is the first horseman of the Apocalypse.

Helen Maybanks

Halfway through Perestroika, the second of Angels’ two plays, the titular Angel delivers her furious, reactionary epistle to Prior.

She knows what has brought suffering to humanity, she says, and she knows how to stop it. The problem is change, and to fix it, we simply have to stop moving:

YOU MUST STOP MOVING! […]

Forsake the open Road:

Neither Mix Nor Intermarry: Let Deep Roots Grow:

If you do not MINGLE you will Cease to Progress.

Kushner calls this speech the anti-migratory epistle, and in The World Only Spins Forward, the new oral history of Angels from Isaac Butler and Dan Kois, he says that it surprised him to see how it played in a post-Trump, post-Brexit world.

“It absolutely hadn’t occurred to me how different something called ‘the anti-migratory epistle’ was going to sound,” he says. “I mean, I just have not thought, with all the endless talk of the travel bans and stuff, that suddenly there’s gonna be huge impact when those words are spoken. ‘Stop moving,’ specifically about not migrating.”

In the late ’80s, the Angel’s epistle served two functions: Emotionally, it was the anguished cry of Prior, who wanted the world to stop changing, to go back to the time before he had AIDS and his boyfriend left him. And politically, it stood for a reactionary culture that did not want to accept gay people, that wanted to leave them to die of a horrific plague.

But in 2018, with panic over Trump’s travel bans in full effect, the anti-migratory epistle resonates differently. It’s no longer just the outcry of a culture that wants to turn back the clock so that it can pretend that gay people do not exist. Now, it’s the outcry of a culture that wants to Make America Great Again, to turn back the clock so that no one outside a monolith can exist within its borders: not gay people, and not black and brown people either.

“This whole anti-migratory kind of thing is just fantastic to say,” Amanda Lawrence, who plays the Angel in the current Broadway production, says in The World Only Spins Forward. “Marianne [Elliott, the director] said in rehearsal, ‘The Angel and Roy Cohn are very similar. This disgust, this racism, this disgust.’”

And it’s via Roy Cohn that the shadow of Trumpism looms largest.

Brinkhoff & Mögenburg

Roy Cohn, who shares with the Angel and with Trump himself a certain fastidious disgust at the idea of intermingling, was in the ’80s a signifier of violent, hypocritical homophobia.

Cohn was instrumental in creating the Lavender Scare, the campaign to fire every employee of the federal government who was found to be gay, even as he himself lived in the closet. He died of AIDS in 1986, maintaining to his last that he was actually sick with liver cancer. “Roy Cohn is not a homosexual,” he tells his doctor in Angels. “Roy Cohn is a heterosexual man, Henry, who fucks around with guys.”

Roy Cohn is still a signifier of violent, hypocritical homophobia in 2018, but he is most remembered now for his time as Donald Trump’s lawyer and mentor. Cohn signed on as Trump’s lawyer when he was being sued by the Department of Justice for racist housing policies, and over the course of their relationship he would teach Trump how to work the press, how to fudge the question of his net worth, and how to use government connections for his personal gain. “He’s been vicious to others in his protection of me,” said Trump of Cohn in 1980.

In 2018’s production of Angels, Roy’s viciousness, his casual racism, the self-satisfaction he displays at his own corruption, have shivering and uneasy resonances. “Was it legal?” he says, of his involvement in the Rosenberg trial. “Fuck legal. Am I a nice man? Fuck nice. They say terrible things about me in The Nation. Fuck The Nation. You want to be Nice, or you want to be Effective? Make the law, or subject to it. Choose.” It’s a speech that sounds eerily like something that could have come out of Trump’s mouth.

And Roy’s vision of hell — a world of “big dance palaces full of music and lights and racial impurity and gender confusion,” where “all the deities are creole, mulatto, brown as the mouths of rivers,” and “race, taste and history [are] finally overcome” — is a globalist, cosmopolitan heaven. It reads like an elaborate version of the “this is the future liberals want” meme, and it’s the world that both Roy and today’s populist nationalists work tirelessly to prevent.

“I feel like we are in a bizarro Part 3 of Angels in America,” actress Jennifer Engstrom says in The World Only Spins Forward, “and the ghost of Roy Cohn is sweetly caressing the nuts of an American president who rides naked on horseback with Vladimir Putin.”

But Angels is still, ultimately, a hopeful play. “The play doesn’t describe a time of great triumph, it describes a time of great terror, beneath the surface of which the seeds of change are beginning to push upwards and through,” says Kushner in The World Only Spins Forward. “Apparently, nothing good is happening, but good things are happening.”

At the end of Perestroika, Prior demands “More Life,” and is able to live with his AIDS. He refuses to stand still. In 2018, as in the late ’80s, the world spins forward, and reactionaries are unable to turn the clock back.

Original Source -> How 2018 reshaped Angels in America

via The Conservative Brief

[firstjustgoin]

Going Down

3. Start with the shit going down. An event you’ve never witnessed. A moment in history that you wish you could have. A mystery that was never solved.

Her father’s health had been steadily declining for months now –– in and out of hospitals and doctor’s offices where he had been met with the thin-lipped mouths of professionals who saw people like him every day, wide-eyed and vacillating between disbelief and despair –– and so when Candace called her, her voice low and mournful, to get on the next plane and fly home, Tessa did so without needing to ask why.

She usually flew at the holidays when the halls of JFK or Laguardia or Newark, whichever airport had the cheapest flights, roiled with agitated parents dressed in faux cheer, willing even to push their own children out of the way in order to make their 6:00pm to Orlando. She hated airports for this reason and as chubby people in red and green sweaters squeezed by her on the moving walkway, she always imagined their planes falling swiftly from the sky as penance.

But it was early November and she breathed a deep sigh of relief when she arrived at Laguardia and saw that there was room to move without elbowing people like you’re digging yourself out of a trench. She bought a pack of unsalted peanuts and a Diet Coke and settled into a corner chair by her gate trying to block out the frantic sounds from the TV. She had a theory that CNN only really existed within the universe of the airport and it was all just a huge collective hallucination everywhere else, but here it was almost maddening.  

The president-elect stood at a podium wearing a red hat that screamed Make America Great Again. She still could not believe it; millions of people had voted for this moron, this misogynist, this bigot. Just two days ago she had met up with some friends at a bar in Brooklyn to watch the election results roll in. They drank whiskey sodas and progressively ate more and more fries as it dawned on them, this always possibility never probability, was real.

“Tell me something that will make me feel better,” Tessa whispered to her friend, clutching at the edge of the table until her knuckles popped white.

“I can’t,” her friend said back, and she knew in that moment that it was over. The unfiltered joy she had felt voting for the first female president just 12 hours earlier, how powerful and in control she exuded as she walked into her office that morning. Gone. The whiskey went straight to her head, now throbbing, and her whole body shivered at the shock.

Tessa trudged around the city the next day, mourning alongside millions of others doing the same. She loved the camaraderie in sadness that existed in New York City in those hours and days afterwards, knowing that everyone was spinning in circles too, their flags at half-mast.

But now she had to go home to Wisconsin. A state she abhorred, filled with overweight, undereducated people who clung to their conservative ideals with as much loyalty as their God. Just imagining the church service she would have to attend this Sunday made her stomach turn in disgust. Thank you oh Lord for blessing us with this man, for helping so many see the light of truth and righteousness. As if God, if he did exist, would go within several hundred miles of the White House once the president-elect moved in.

Tessa thought about calling Candace from the terminal a dozen times to wriggle her way out of coming home, but then she remembered her last visit around Christmas the year prior and how it ended. Her father had just been diagnosed and saw imminent death as a clarion call for an onslaught of his favorite brand of straight talk.

“You know, now that I’m going to die,” He said with a chuckle as he carved the turkey and Candace quietly sobbed and snotted into her napkin, “I think it’s time to finally buy that rifle I’ve been eyeing over at Jack’s. There’s no use in saving up that money for time that’s never going to come.”

Tessa rolled her eyes, always immune to her father’s self pity that had lived like a fourth family member in their house almost her whole life. Candace cornered her in the kitchen later that night as she was washing the dishes. “We’ve got to do something about Dad,” she whispered through gritted teeth. “This is literally the worst thing that’s ever happened and you’re not doing anything.”

“Literally, it’s not the worst thing that’s ever happened, Candy.” Tessa knew that her sister hated when she called her Candy almost as much as when Tessa projected her New York City sensibility on her. “The shit that’s been happening in San Bernardino a few weeks ago, now that’s the worst thing. Fourteen people dead. We’ve got a gun crisis on our hands and we’re all just sitting around pretending that owning assault rifles is some kind of American birthright.”

“Fuck, Tessa, can’t you just stop spewing this New York Times shit at me for one minute and focus on your own fucking family?” This made Tessa pause. Candace never swore. She had talked like a kindergarten teacher for as long as Tessa could remember. Just shy of three years older than Tessa, she always carried herself like the de facto mother neither of them could remember.

“Fine, fine. I’ll try to do something.” But both Candace and Tessa knew that she wouldn’t. She had moved all the way out to New York because she knew it was a place that neither of them would ever visit her. Candace had sent her a letter a few months into living in Brooklyn that just read, Looked your apartment up on Google Maps. God, Tessa, I don’t know how you do it. Don’t get hurt. Love, C. She lived in Fort Greene, for Christ’s sake. But there were some battles that just weren’t worth fighting; it seemed like she was battling on all sides these days.

Tessa had tried calling and checking in on her Dad, she really had. But as the humid spring gave way to a viscous summer and convention season began, she just couldn’t do it. She couldn’t listen to him laugh alongside Trump as he mocked a family of a fallen soldier or echo the stump speeches and one-liners he soaked up from hours of watching Fox News. Even as his words began to slur and memory faded, after Candace would call her in thick, obnoxious tears pleading for her to come home, Tessa found ways to avoid making that flight. “It just isn’t the right time. Things are crazy right now,” she would tell her sister before hanging up the phone and heading out to smoke weed and shoot picklebacks at a rooftop bar.

So she did not call to cancel now, much as she wanted to. Instead, she read Ta-Nehisi Coates on the flight and blasted Lemonade and stuffed dry peanuts in her mouth to prepare herself for the world she was landing into, a world where she knew that most of the people she had grown up with wouldn’t bat an eyelash if suddenly all of the water fountains and bathrooms and schools in town were Whites Only.

***

Early November in northern Wisconsin is a cruel time of year. When she landed in Milwaukee and drove her rental car forty-five minutes up to West Bend, the clouds hung low and gray in the sky like they were holding their breath for winter too. A steely wind slapped against the car as she drove and she found herself having to actively stop herself from turning the car around and flying back to the safety of her bodegas and beer gardens and discerning podcast listeners.

When new friends asked her where she was from she would give away information begrudgingly in small morsels: the midwest, near Chicago, Milwaukee-area, and, if she was unlucky enough to talk to a fellow Wisconsinite, finally West Bend. Sometimes she lied and said Madison so she could joke about it being an island amidst a sea of crazy but she had visited just once and could only wax poetic about the farmer’s market for so long before she was discovered.

On select occasions a look of recognition crept slowly on the listener’s face. “Wait, wait, I’ve heard of West Bend. Why does it sound so familiar.” Tessa would sit there, knowing full well what their brain was searching for, but unwilling to say it aloud. “Oh wait, yeah, I remember! Y’all were the people who sued your own library for having books with gay characters, yeah? With that church that wanted money for it being so ‘disturbing’, right?”

She would nod slightly, averting their eye contact, and pretending she could hear someone call her name from across the bar. “Uh, yeah,” she would say and then run away. She hated being associated even in passing reference to such ardent stupidity and she got a B.A. in Political Science from an expensive private liberal arts school in the Northeast as a defiant push against it.

When she arrived in West Bend, she saw with dismay that the red and blue TRUMP/PENCE signs littering almost every lawn had survived the recent sleet storms. Some were as large as the front doors behind them, waving arrogant and proud in the icy wind. It made her sick to think how many joyous celebrations were still taking place inside these lower middle class split levels; men drinking beers and watching the Packers while the women giggled from the kitchen, living comfortably in their gender roles.

Candace hated when she made these sweeping generalizations. “What good was that pricey college degree if it just taught you to hate everyone you grew up with? Everyone who loves you?” She had asked once when Tessa was home from her first semester. Like Candace contributed a cent to that college fund, she practically strong armed their father into not paying for any of it either. 

“It’s not us that hate everyone,” Tessa spat back. “We just don’t tolerate people who perpetuate white supremacy and systemic oppression.”

Candace sighed. “You learn all these big words that teach you to hate your own people. But when you’re in trouble, who’s going to take you in? Your black friends in the Bronx or wherever or your own family?”

That conversation rattled within Tessa for years afterwards, following her like a specter of a past and identity she could not shake. She couldn’t quite pinpoint why she had been able to escape those narrow mindsets her sister and father and classmates had all embraced so easily. But now that she knew everything that she knew, it was impossible to go back –– both intellectually but also physically, to enter the home that she had grown up safe and happy and healthy with anything but a thick layer of disdain.

***

She pulled into the driveway just as the last of the dull light faded in the sky. She could see the yellow lights from the kitchen window and a shadow of her sister, heavy-set and scrambling, and the flickering whites and blues of the television from the other room, likely with her father reclined and mumbling. She turned off the engine and closed her eyes, bracing herself before her entrance, not knowing whether she would be more saddened by the hundreds of pill bottles cluttering every counter and tabletop or the Make America Great Again poster hanging in the dining room. For a second, a flash of shame filled her like an electric shock; could she ever feel real pain for her dying father if she couldn’t let go of her pulsing contempt? At this moment, sitting alone in the driveway where he had taught her to ride a bike and lifted her up off the concrete every time she fell, she did not know.

Her father’s cancer had been slow but ruthless, crawling through and licking every surface it touched like an encroaching wildfire. When Candace first called her over a year ago, Tessa had been in bed with a boy she had met at a bar down the street. Frank, perhaps, or maybe Francisco, she couldn’t remember. He had spent twenty minutes going down on her and she didn’t stop him although his tongue flitted in and out of her aggressively like it was blindly trying to find the exit. She finally had coaxed him out of her vagina when the phone rang and her sister’s straight-toothed smile flashed on her screen. Moment over. She pulled up her panties and answered while Frank/Francisco heaved to the side of her bed.

“Yeah, Candace can I call you back?”

“T-Tess––” Then a cascade of sniffles. “Tessa. You’ve got to come home. Dad, he’s––” Another cascade, this time punctured by heavy sobs.

“God dammit, Candace. What? What’s up with dad?”

“He’s got,” Candace’s voice dropped to a whisper, “he’s got cancer, Tessa. In his bones. He’s got what the doctor’s are calling Osteosarcoma and he’s not going to get better.”

A ring had begun in Tessa’s left ear, a baritone hum that grew and echoed. Soon, it reverberated through the right ear too until Tessa let her head drop to her pillow and eyes pull shut.

“Uh, are you okay?” The boy whose tongue had been inside her just seconds ago pressed his finger to her arm tentatively. “Should I, um, go now?”

Tessa could not remember what she said to him, could not remember how or when he left, but the next time she opened her eyes, she was alone in her room, her mouth dry and eyelids crusted at the edges. She saw six missed calls from Candace and one from her father. She called him.

“Daddy?”

“Hey baby.” Tessa had spent the better part of her late teens and twenties distancing herself emotionally and physically from her father. She dyed her inherited blonde hair a dark umber and ran ten miles a day to outpace her father’s genetically poor metabolism; she policed her Wisconsin accent with its long a’s and o’s and dontcha knows, sliding into the neutral tones of transplants all over New York. But it took just those two words to catapult her back into her childhood home, sitting on the couch squeezed between her father and sister watching old Law & Order reruns.

“Daddy, I’m so –– I don’t know what to say. How are you feeling?”

“Well, I been better, sweetheart. But you know Candace, she’s got me set up with everything I’d need, like we’re going down into a bunker or something. I told her, ‘the doc said I gotta year to live, no need to treat me like infirm already.” He laughed quietly and fell silent. Tessa didn’t know what to say. She stared at the wall across from her bed, Gloria Steinem holding a sign that read “We Shall Overcome” stared back.

“Are you getting chemo? What are you going to do?” She felt like a puppy dog clawing at the toes of their owner, desperate for a resolution to their anguish they did not understand.

“I’m not sure, honey. I spent this whole day at the hospital squirming with Obamacare welfare junkies and whatnot. Not sure there’s much else those doctors can do for me. They got me on a whole cocktail of drugs, don’t worry, I’m going to be as loopy as the kids you hang out with in Brooklyn every day.”

“Okay, dad. I’m going to come home soon okay? I’ll see when I can get some time off of work and then I’ll fly out and we’ll figure it all out. I’ll be there before you know it.”

That was September, just as New York’s air had begun to deflate into a cool, short Fall. She didn’t go home until the end of December and by then, there wasn’t anything much left to figure out. Her father was dying and there wasn’t anything to be done.

Almost a year had passed since that last visit and now she sat in the driveway of her childhood home and practiced breathing exercises she had learned at Vinyasa Yoga classes.

Breathe in with the whole body and out. The tips of her fingers trembled in the cold. She walked up to her door and considered knocking for a second before twisting the handle. The house was cleaner than she had been expecting, teeming with the smell of lysol and simmering garlic tomatoes. She knew that smell well: a staple of her youth. Before it had been uncool, her friends loved coming over to her house for dinner: her father’s thick, creamy pasta sauces –– garlicky and herbaceous. He loved to cook for a crowd, sent her to school with plastic tupperware packed with last night’s feast enough to share with her whole lunch table. She was embarrassed by the assertiveness of the aromas –– how they overtook the room of Lunchables and peanut butter sandwiches –– but she slurped up each noodle anyways, loving how it warmed every inch of her mouth, throat, and stomach as she swallowed.

She turned the corner into the kitchen and saw Candace at the stove, slowly stirring the sauce as it splattered across the counter and up her forearms. She flinched and then saw Tessa.

“You’re here. Thank god. I was beginning to worry the food might get cold waiting on you.” Candace threw a roll of paper towels at her. “Now wash off all that plane grime and we’ll sit down to eat in a sec. Dad’s in the living room.” She jerked her head towards the other room as if Tessa might have forgotten where that was in only the year since she had been home.

“‘Kay. Nice to see you again,” Tessa said, waiting for her sister’s begrudging nod and smile before continuing to the living room.

“Daddy?” Tessa peered through the door into the dark room, the only light throbbing from the television screen. House Hunters played on mute. “Daddy, I’m going to turn on the lights okay?” She flipped on the lights and almost screamed at the sight of the room now illuminated. In the year since she had been home the living room had transformed from a clichéd, frilly, TV den with embroidered bible quotes on throw pillows and clean glass surfaces to a makeshift hospice. She could barely see her father embraced by a deep recliner and swallowed by wires attached to monitors and tubes attached to hanging bags. The floor was littered with old pill bottles, just as she had expected, but also with napkins stained with dried up blood and gray clumps of hair.

When she finally got a full view of her father, she had to do a double take. All of her life, her father had been an intimidating man –– scaring off prom dates and trick-or-treaters with his wide shoulders and thick gut. She had known that it would be bad; Candace had warned her –– “It’s metastatic, that means the cancer’s eaten out his bones and now has started eating other things too. His lungs, his throat…” She had trailed off then, or maybe Tessa had stopped listening. Either way, nothing could have prepared her for seeing her father look like the carved out inside of a man –– wearing the remains of his bones and veins and decaying muscles on the outside of his body.

She kneeled next to him and grabbed his hand. She hadn’t realized before that he was sleeping. “It’s me, Tessa. I’m here.”

He opened his eyes and parted his cracked lips into a half-smile. “Hi honey. You here for Thanksgiving already?”

“No, Daddy, it’s not quite Thanksgiving yet. I’m here just to visit you.”

Her father let out a gruff laugh, somewhere between a wheeze and a chuckle. “Oh dammit, don’t tell me I’m dying already. I was just dreaming I was golfing in Mexico again and I really thought I was going to do it this time.” Tessa rolled her eyes. How could a man that looked like an alternate reality version of her father still be so unmistakably him?

“You hungry? Candace made your special pasta.”

His mouth turned downward as he scrunched up his nose. “Not that filth again.” He lowered his voice to somewhere even below a whisper, “Don’t tell your sister this, honey, but she’s a terrible cook. I haven’t eaten in weeks.”

“Dad!” Tessa tapped his hand lightly. “You’ve gotta eat. No wonder you’re looking like the first guy on the food chain.”

He smiled. “That’s my girl. Good to have you home. Now bring out some noodles, no sauce and I’ll see if I can work some magic.”

She returned to the kitchen. Candace was scrubbing the pans in the sink vigorously, muttering a string of curse words under her breath.

“So, do you usually eat in the living room with him?” Tessa asked.

“Some days. Honestly, Tess, it’s been next level depressing to stay in there all the time with him. He won’t eat and I hate cooking, you know that. Sometimes I’ll just get so tired I’ll just take a plate up to my room and watch TV instead. You haven’t been here so you don’t ––” Tessa sensed Candace winding up for one of her soliloquies, so she walked over to her sister and rubbed her shoulder.

“You’re right. I haven’t been here. But I’m here now. Whatever I can do to help, I will.”

***

It didn’t take more than two days at home for Tessa to begin falling into a deep pit of equal parts fury and despair. It was bad enough that Candace had convinced herself that she must be her father’s nursemaid, attending to his every need with an exacting level of care that drove both Tessa and her father up a wall.

They would be sitting in the living room watching another rerun of Law and Order: True Crime, nearly bordering on a nice moment, when Candace would jump out of her chair with the inertia of an electric shock and run to the kitchen to find whatever pill their father had to take, all the while mumbling, “I can’t believe I almost forgot. I can’t believe it. If I had forgotten, who knows what could have happened. How could I forget?”

The stress Candace placed upon herself rippled out to poison them all. Every time an alarm went off on Candace’s phone, Tessa watched her father twitch and scrunch up his eyes in a kind of pain she had never before witnessed from him. He was a man transformed from the one she had known growing up. He had been a heavy, sharp presence in her life. The kind of man to yell at his children in restaurants for spilling their juice, to push them into playing team sports even if all they wanted to do was chase butterflies through the soccer field, to demand longform birth certificates from their boyfriends.

Tessa had spent enough time unpacking her father’s mind games during overpriced armchair therapy sessions in wide-windowed offices on the Upper West Side to know how this had affected her upbringing. Ladies with round glasses and high-waisted khakis would say cookie-cutter phrases like, “It sounds like you still harbor a lot of resentment about your father,” and Tessa would laugh all the way to the bar.

When she told Candace that she was seeing a therapist, her sister’s voice had dropped to whisper. “Don’t tell dad,” she said, “You know he thinks therapy is a liberal conspiracy.”

She did and she loved telling her therapists about her father’s conspiracy theories, as if the only reason she paid $200 a session was to give them a well-rounded character arc. Sometimes, although she would never give her sister or father the satisfaction of knowing this, she wondered if therapy was indeed some kind of machination on the part of a government that wanted to fill its people with an unending supply of self-doubt. She bought it in bulk from Whole Foods alongside the kale smoothies that would also likely give her father a conniption.

Now that her father’s sharpness had melted along with his beer belly and thick jowl, revealing a softer, calmer man, Tessa thought that maybe she wouldn’t have to have the conversation with him that she dreaded the most. She had been home for nearly three days, with just passing mentions and references made to the recent political shift in the country, before they stumbled upon it head-on and must as she attempted to pivot away, it was too late.

They had just finished up lunch –– tuna fish for her, mashed potatoes for him –– when he looked up at her with his shrunken face and asked, “So how is your snowflake island dealing with the latest reality check?” For a man with nearly no muscle on his body, he sure didn’t pull his punches. This was the father she had slyly avoided for the last nine years; the man who demanded a recount at her elementary school class president elections when the girl who campaigned on building a compost heap won, the man who created a facebook page just to share articles he found on Conservative Daily.

She thought about saying nothing, biting the insides of her cheeks until they burned like she had so many times in her childhood. Unlike when he would say things like this over the phone, she could not just roll her eyes and make up a quick excuse to hang up. She had to say something.  

“Well, we’re not doing so great, dad,” she said, her eyes bouncing across every surface in the living room to avoid her father’s eye contact. “I’ve never seen so many people cry in public than on November 9th. On the bus, in the streets, waiting in line at the pharmacy. People think their lives are in danger.”

He sighed and shook his head. If he had been the man he once was, he might have raised his voice, but he couldn’t anymore. He could only mumble. “Danger from what? The only people who are in danger are those who don’t deserve to be here anyways. I honestly don’t understand why you can’t get that. It’s like you’re pretending that the first eighteen years of your life never happened. Like nothing I said mattered at all.”

Tessa knew she shouldn’t be shocked anymore by the things her father said. Nothing should shock her, and yet. “No, I don’t even want to have this conversation with you. How is it up to you to decide who deserves to be here or not? Why do we deserve to be here just because we’re white?”

“White! This fucking liberal arts education I shelled out for really did a number on you, Tessa. Paid $200,000 for you to hate yourself and your own family. This has nothing to do with being white and you know that.”

There was no arguing with a brick wall –– this was the logic she had used to squirm and sidestep her way out of confrontation with her dear, dying father for the last year. He was a brick wall, now cemented even further in righteousness due to the victory of his belief systems personified.“I can’t, anymore,” she said and held her hands up and walked away.

***

Her father didn’t die, at least not right away, like Candace thought he would. He lived from day to day, breath to breath. In the early mornings when frost crept like spidery fingers across the window panes, Tessa would wake up and touch his shoulder lightly, half-expecting him not to open his eyes. But he kept living –– angrier and more hollow every day.

A month into being back at home, Tessa spent most of the interminable hours of the afternoon when Candace was at work and her dad slept scrolling through flights and trains and rental cars she never booked. The longer she stayed, the more her feet sunk in the quicksand of her childhood home. She knew she’d suffocate soon, but she couldn’t get herself to move.

Headlines pierced the vortex of everyday life: CIA concludes with 'high confidence' Russia tried 'to help Trump get elected'; Trump chooses fossil fuel industry ally to head EPA; Trump attends 'heroes and villains' costume party as himself. Outside of the vortex, the world churned.

After he could not keep down his lunch, she wiped the vomit off her dad’s chin. When he fell off his chair trying to get the TV remote, she picked his bones back up, horrified at how easy they were to lift. As she walked by the living room one day, she pretended that she could not hear his brittle, aching sobs. It didn’t take four weeks for her to come to wish that she wanted him to die. And she soothed her own aching sobs by assuring herself that he likely wanted to die too.

Candace, meanwhile, was quickly unraveling in her own way. She had stopped doing the dishes and keeping the rest of the house clean, so soon the maelstrom of the living room infected every other room too. Although she only worked four hour shifts these days at Kohl’s on Main St., she wouldn’t come home until well after dinner –– usually plain noodles, rice, or cereal these days –– and arrive with her hair matted and eyes darting, making up lazy excuses about a broken exhaust pipe or customer service emergency. Tessa thought that perhaps this was Candace’s way of exacting revenge for not being there all those months of spoonfeeding and doctor’s visits and chemotherapy.

One thing was certain: each of them were completely alone. Her father –– empty, dying, boorish eyes in the body of a house of cards, falling but not fast enough to the end. Her sister –– one knot atop another, bloody fingertips, a mind meandering off the ledge. And Tessa –– the one who finally came home and stayed, but still every morning awoke with a jolt to notice that she was back in her childhood bedroom. The world spun on while they spun out.“You know I love you, right?” Her father said one day as they sat, for hours in silence, watching the wind thump against the branches of the bare willow tree in the front yard.

She pondered that for a moment. Maybe she hadn’t known. “Yes, of course, daddy,” she said instead, reaching out to pat his hand, pulsing with thick, purple veins. “And I love you too.”

He smiled and put his hand over hers and they sat there in silence once more for another two hours.

A week later her father was dead.