#had to un-whitewash these too :)

[hanfocus]

_doolsetnet insta update / 250316 [edited]

[untitled5071]

Writing request where Lisa does get sent to a psych ward.

Thinking a little angsty there, huh? I hope you don't mind the direction I took it, I just couldn't resist. I hope you enjoy!

Tw: allusions to suicide

🪦🪦🪦🪦🪦🪦🪦🪦🪦

Lisa hadn’t spoken in a week and a half, and it was doubtful that she ever would again. 

The last words she had said had been desperate pleas for help, screamed at the top of her lungs in the hopes that someone, living or dead, would come to her rescue as she was dragged towards the transport van for Serenity Manor. But no such help came; her father had only watched her be dragged away with sad eyes, and her wicked stepmother was smirking, eyes flashing and victorious. Taffy was at cheer practice, and her absence meant the loss of Lisa’s last line of defense. 

It had all been Janet’s doing; after Lisa smashed the bathroom mirror, she had decided that enough was enough and pulled her influences in the hospital to get her admitted to the psych ward, citing incidents of Lisa being a dangerous, reclusive vandal and needing residential treatment. Lisa didn’t even have time to protest her case before the guards had pulled up to the front door immediately after she returned from her shift at Wayne’s, and she suddenly found herself being wrestled into the white vehicle for the whole nosy neighborhood to watch. 

And watch they did; the last thing she saw before the car doors closed on her was the sea of Brookview citizens, all staring with wide eyes and harsh whispers as the Swallows girl got taken away “like she should have from the beginning”. 

And then her world was dark, and it didn’t get much brighter when they arrived at the facility. 

She was silent through the entire registration and rooming process. Janet had clearly been chomping at the bit to get her out of the house so most of it had been done for her ahead of time, but she refused to speak as they handed her a new, dull grey set of linen clothes to change into, cut her nails so she couldn’t scratch herself, and fitted her with special socks, ones meant to keep her from falling or running away too fast. 

She knew, in some deep, long locked away corner of her mind that she should be fighting, be protesting, standing up against this, but the voice of outrage was drowned out by the tidal wave of hopelessness that swelled inside her and refused to subside, nearly drowning her as they led her down the hall by her arm. . 

Her room was a bland thing with whitewashed walls, bars on the windows and a bed too low to the ground to hurt herself on or with, and as the attendants closed the door for “lights out” oh her first night she hadn’t even bothered to make it to the stained mattress; she just sank down onto the floor where she was standing and cried soundlessly. 

The routine hadn’t deviated much from that in the coming days, nor would it for the foreseeable future. 

Though she got out of bed when they told her, she hardly woke up; she ate her tasteless food without blinking, she sat in the recreation areas during the several hours of unstructured time they were given and stared ahead, waiting for the attendants to usher her to the next bought of mindlessness. She didn’t chat with the other patients, she didn’t answer the nurse’s questions with anything more than a miniscule nod or head shake when asked about her basic needs. 

She had overheard Taffy call her a zombie once, on the phone with her friends a few months after she moved into Janet’s house. 

She was most of the way there. Only one thing left to do, but the facility had made it impossible to complete the last step. Damn them. 

Speaking of Taffy, she visited as often as she could. Janet wouldn’t set foot in the place, and her father had stopped by once before making a hasty exit once he realized his daughter was back to being mute, but Taffy cut school and snuck over every other day. She was a welcome pop of color against the drab landscape of Lisa’s mind, though she did notice the dark circles under her eyes and the occasional flinch when far-off doors slammed. 

Her voice was more subdued as she whispered to Lisa about how many arguments she was having with her mother for Lisa’s sake, trying to bring her home and apologizing for not being able to say goodbye. She brought Lisa things, when she could; the photo of her mother, a tape player that got confiscated immediately, and posters from her bedroom with the corners ripped, which told her what she already knew. 

She was being erased. Janet was tearing up her room and throwing out everything she still clung to from the Before times, and even if she made it out of this goddamned cell then she would have nowhere to go, no one to miss her since to them, she was already gone. 

She might as well have been, for all the good living was doing her. 

She only felt remotely like herself at night, when she was able to lay on her back with her arms crossed like she was laying in her coffin, and dream. She lost herself in the labyrinth of her mind, thinking of her mother and how sheltered she had felt in her arms, writing new poetry that now went a few shades darker than ‘pitch black, and of Bachelor’s and her favorite grave. 

She hoped he missed her. At least then someone would. 

It was on one of these nights when the storm started, flashes of green lighting up her peripheries as she counted the spaces in between thunderclaps like her mom had taught her to when she was five. She was imagining winged figures getting strikes and spares when her imaginings were interrupted by another peal of thunder, this one sounding dangerously close by. 

She pulled herself out of her imagings so she could watch the following bolt of lightning, and in doing so she ended up locking eyes with the figure looming above her, their face completely obscured by a massive pile of mud and roots. 

Thunder boomed, and the being leaned closer, reaching out a hand to her and groaning. 

The next flash of unnatural green lightning perfectly illuminated her horrified face, and the thunder drowned out the sound of her scream. 

🪦🪦🪦🪦🪦🪦🪦🪦🪦

Lisa’s eyes shot open and she lay in bed panting as sweat pooled under her bangs, seemingly unable to move. She was breathing so hard that she was afraid her lungs were going to expand out her chest, and it took her several minutes both to calm down and realize where she was. 

She was in her bedroom, her wax carvings still on the walls around her in poetic fragments, her dark comforter was tangled around her legs and the bright red numbers on her digital bedside clock read 2:47. 

Her breathing started to come easier as her eyes fluttered closed in relief; she was okay. Janet was dead, she hadn’t been admitted, she was still in her room, still with-

A gentle touch on her arm made her startle, and she opened her eyes to see the figure of a man looming over her, the same one from her nightmare and yet distinctly different. Despite herself, she tensed, her sleep and adrenaline-addled brain warning her of danger and telling her to run before the figure was retreating slightly, leaning over to the other end of the bed. Her lamp flickered on and in the soft yellow light she could see her corpse companion, his eyes wide and brow furrowed in concern. 

She looked at him in the light, saw Janet’s earring shining in his left ear and the green stitches on the wrist of the hand that was hovering between them, saw his dark eye circles, the pink floral nightgown she had given him and the worried dip of his mouth, and she sighed shakily, the pressure in her chest alleviating. 

He groaned at her, clearly trying to ask what was wrong and if she was okay, but his ability to speak still hadn’t returned to him. She understood him perfectly though, and she grabbed his hand and squeezed it while she ran her fingers through her hair. 

“It’s alright, I’m okay. Just a nightmare, that’s all. They haven’t been that realistic since my mom died. It just rattled me a bit, I guess.”

He hummed in sympathetic understanding, and his eyes flickered with uncertainty. She tilted her head at him as he took a breath, making a decision before reaching out with his other hand, eyebrows lifted in a way that clearly said, ‘May I?’

She nodded, her heart skipping a beat as he pulled her to him, running his hands up and down her back and arms as he rested his chin on her hair, her head tucked neatly into his chest. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, the air hitching in her lungs as it escaped. Her undead partner began to hum quietly above her, the sound echoing around his empty chest, and she cuddled closer. 

She felt him squeeze her tighter in a comforting and protective way, and the last remnants of her fear melted away. 

How could she have ever been afraid of him?

[berrymascarpone]

A Brief Tour of Seireitei

So I’ve been reading the Soul Society Arc again after finishing the Bleach manga a while back and now that all the plot tension has already been resolved, I’ve found myself looking at the scenery. And by scenery, I mean the architecture and city planning of Seireitei.

Now, the good thing is Ichigo and co really get around a bit in this arc, not to mention the cuts to the captains and lieutenants doing there thing in the background, so here’s a brief tour following along with them.

The first thing we notice about Seireitei is that clearly they spend much more on infrastructure in the city than in Rukongai. That is where all your tax money has gone folks, to nice tiled roofs, whitewashed walls, fancy windows.

But also, considering the magically appearing wall that just straight up falls from the sky when you go near, it’s probably a good idea to have some way of demarcating where you have to stay away from in order to stay un-pancaked.

(Also electrical wires? Just what era is their infrastructure from?)

It looks like there’s a pretty open layout here, but later on, the streets get more labrythine, with long walls splitting the space into narrow roadways.

However, from above, it appears that these complicated halls are actually just blocks of mazes, separated by normal roads. Are they compounds? Is this just the geography of that particular area? Are they individual houses? Who lives there?

And although the streets look pretty narrow from these angles, another ground angle shows that they are actually pretty wide. But also, you might run into something like, uh this.

We all knew the Gotei 13 was pretty fucked up, but uh, yeah. Makes me wonder which earlier generation captain had this installed.

Anyways, after destroying many of those walls, Ichigo and Ganju eventually make it below the uniformly tiled floors to make it to the sewers (or are they storm drains? They feel very tall for sewers.

These remind me somewhat of the Tokyo Metropolitan Area Outer Underground Discharge Channel, which I had to look up once for a fic, so that makes me think it’s more of a stormwater system. Also, apparently they don’t mark their manhole covers in Seireitei? And it looks kinda fragile too, what with only that tiny little ledge to hold up such a big board. What happens when a particularly heavy person (and we know there are some real big boys in the Gotei 13) steps on one of these tiles and falls through? I imagine Komamura and Zaraki Kenpachi have learned to memorize the locations these manhole covers, or they accidentally step through the floor every few blocks.

Once we exit the underwater canals, we arrive at Sōkyoku Hill, the most scenic view of Seireitei, and also where they lock up and execute their prisoners. I guess they would at least get a good view before they die?

Not only is it on a hill, but the architecture takes quite a brutalist turn. All square blocks and flat tops (except for the nice little row of towers up there? And also a few sky bridges, for the scenic view.)

As a side note, this area appears to be surrounded by several warehouse-like buildings. Not sure if it’s actual warehouses, and this is the prison/industrial district of Seireitei, but interesting to note.

But also, when Ichigo and Renji absolutely wreck a few of these buildings in their fight they appear to contain…absolutely nothing?? Like not even some broken furniture, or debris.

Anyways, after a bit of regrouping back in the underground waterways (which also have some room-like areas a bit further away from the water…for…reasons…) our heroes finally venture forth into brutalist architecture wonderland.

I assume this area is a prison complex, since, judging by the texture, it appears to be made out of Sekkiseki, the reiatsu-suppressing stone. Also interesting to note, the buildings appear to be placed haphazardly, at odd angles. Is this to confuse invaders and/or escaped prisoners? Is it because their city planning consisted of Yamamoto scribbling out something on a napkin? Is it because this hill was one big sekkiseki deposit and they had to carve buildings out from the ground, so their planning had to follow the natural contours? And why is there absolutely no one here? Like the empty warehouses, this area seems to be abandoned. Are there not enough prisoners, or did the last crisis in Soul Society wipe out enough people that there aren’t enough to fill these houses? Is it like those fake buildings that are actually subway stations and the top part is just for show?

Anyways, it seems like I’ve hit the limit on the number of images I can add on the mobile app, so I’ll continue in a part 2 once I get around to it.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Sean Durns

A United Nations agency has been caught helping Hamas. The Washington Post, however, is here to help both the genocidal terrorist group and the corrupt organization that shares its ultimate objective: the destruction of the Jewish state.

A Jan. 30, 2024 Post column entitled “Biden’s cutoff of Palestinian aid is inhumane and strategically stupid” was a veritable whitewash of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), whose employees took part in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led invasion of Israel, the largest massacre of Jewish civilians since the Holocaust.

On Jan. 26, Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA’s commissioner-general, acknowledged that Israeli authorities had provided the organization with “information about the alleged involvement of several UNRWA employees in the horrific attacks on Israel.” Lazzarini stated that he had “immediately terminated the contracts of these staff members.”

Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin noted that “12 U.N. employees in Gaza” allegedly participated in the attack, noting that, “if found guilty” they “deserve no sanctuary and no mercy.” He also said that “UNRWA has big questions to answer about this and other instances of some of its 13,000 employees seeming support for violence against Israelis.”

But Rogin declined to elaborate on what some of these “other instances” were. No additional facts were given. Instead, Rogin devoted most of his column to calling Biden administration cuts to UNRWA “cruel” and counterproductive. Cuts to UNRWA, he warned, “will have ripple effects that will make solving all of the Middle East’s problems more difficult.”

It is far from certain whether solving “all of the Middle East’s problems” should be a US objective, let alone whether that is obtainable.

However, what it is certain is that eight decades after the end of World War II, UN employees helped carry out the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. And far from being outliers, their behavior is reflective of UNRWA itself. The UN agency’s support for murdering Jews is endemic. It is also extensively documented. And Rogin declined to provide examples that were already in the public domain.

Indeed, as The Wall Street Journal reported before Rogin’s column ran, intelligence reports indicate that no fewer than a dozen UNRWA employees “had connections” to the Oct. 7 massacre, and at least six took part in the attack. At least two others helped kidnap Israelis, and others “were tracked to sites where Jewish civilians were shot and killed.” The Journal also noted that “others coordinated logistics for the assault, including procuring weapons.” UNRWA vehicles and facilities were also used.

Far from a case of “a few bad apples,” as both UNRWA and its apologists in the press would have the world believe, UNRWA’s complicity is extensive. Intelligence estimates shared with the Journal indicate that no fewer than 1,200 of its employees in Gaza “have links to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, about half have close relative who belong” to these US-designated terror groups.

Put another way: how many UN employees aiding and abetting the systemic slaughter of Jews is too many before US taxpayers quit the footing the bill?

[dearweirdme]

https://www.tumblr.com/dearweirdme/744229316524638208/httpswwwtumblrcomdearweirdme7441242442675322?source=share

I know you're a relatively new fan, Rain so this isn't aimed at you or anyone who wasn't here then or took a different stance than the one I'm calling out (including OP if it applies) but I wonder where all these voices where when we were calling for a boycott when Bang decided he was going to piss all over BTS work with the UN and take BTS to Saudi Arabia to help participate in the whitewashing of crimes there, especially those towards Yemeni people who BTS were campaigning for one minute and dancing for the benefit of princes and politicians committing atrocities against them the next.

Where have y'all been since then? What's keeping y'all from talking about and calling out that, even now?

If we're going to do this then can we at least expand the moral outrage to everywhere that it applies? Because the decision over Saudi would have been the prime time to cut the monsters head off before it got too greedy and gained too much power but it was near impossible to have our voices heard back then without facing vitriol, doxxing and abuse.

I really hope this boycott works, I do, although I fear it's too little too late at this point because this fandom in general already sent Bang PD a big fat message that anything goes when they shut down protest over Saudi Arabia.

HYBE doesn't give a flying fuck about our opinion because they know they don't have to. I don't judge anyone who feels like the machine is too big at this point or that protests and boycotts won't land where they should and hurt the people they should because its ARMY who have already long laid the foundation for that kind of perspective and not only built the sandpit for men like Bang PD but guarded the gates for him to play in it. Now I see a lot of blame shifting towards newer fans who came into this shit already jaded and knowing what kind of company they were dealing with and at a time when that company has already grown way out of control because fans who had a better chance of forcing a difference before HYBE got to big for their boots didn't want to act.

So if you're a fan reading this or responding to these asks who was in the fandom back then and weren't calling for the same response or are STILL not acknowledging what it meant for BTS to perform in Saudi Arabia then you're a hypocrite and you are in no place to be throwing stones at glass houses now about how people do or don't act. Not until you accept your own responsibility, at least.

And I know y'all hypocrites exist because I've seen some very familiar names on socials calling for action now who were very active in telling the rest of us to shut up and stop complaining then.

And if you were here for the Saudi controversy but are surprised now then I fail to see how because the writing has been clear on the wall since then that Bighit, HYBE and everyone behind the BTS machine were never willing to put their money where their mouth is and the charity work was performative, from the company perspective at least.

If you really got shocked and swerved over Palestine and HYBE getting into bed with the likes of Sc**ter B*aun then you haven't been paying attention to exactly who you've been giving your money to all these years since.

You've already been helping to expand HYBE's greed and influence and whitewash genocide in Saudia Arabia with every album or bit of merch you've bought since. Sc**ter didn't infect HYBE with some sort of 'not giving a shit' disease...birds of a feather flock together. That's how the entertainment industry works in general. If you're looking for clean hands or wholesome billionaires then you're looking in the wrong place. You might as well boycott everything you own and consume that isnt produced by a small or independent business. If you thought that's what you were getting with HYBE even before Sc**ter then...lol.

If y'all want to criticise, try accepting your own complicity and inaction in letting it get this far in the first place.

I personally haven't been buying BTS content for a while now because I don't agree with HYBE's corporate model but if you are one of those people reading this and seething on your Apple Iphone, writing a response from your Apple Mac Computer while sipping a Pepsi and wearing your fave sweatshop sweatshirt that you bought from Amazon who were telling us to sit down and shut up when it came to Saudi Arabia then I hope you are feeling pretty shitty right now because what HYBE has been allowed to grow into and is beating people with an even bigger stick is partly your own fault so who TF are you to criticise anyone from your perch when you had a much clearer perspective of their long game?

Hi anon!

Thanks for this contribution. Army has its own history aside from BTS, and it’s way harder to grasp that in its entirety because it’s not documented clearly (as opposed to BTS).

On this note I’ll leave this discussion for now.

[starlightkun]

hiiii mel <3 i’m.. thinking of starting to write for nct.. mostly jaemin.. and i more or less have an idea for formatting but it’s been a really long time since i’ve had to do graphics for fic’s (like the banner and stuff!) and i was wondering if you had any tips for that? like where to find good pictures (solid backgrounds seem like the best choice for not clashing with the lettering, a problem i ran into unfortunately…) and also is there any particular place you get your fonts from? if you aren’t comfortable answering that (or any of this!) then that’s totally ok and feel free to just give general advice or ignore this completely :]

now i leave you with renjun… https://www.instagram.com/reel/C117-m9JGuo/?igsh=aXI1YmZ6M2YycHg1

hiii! under the cut!

so you've already got a good idea with using solid backgrounds for fic headers to make it easier for the text to show up! i source pretty much all my images from the groups/idols' official social medias. i just caution you not to take screenshots of say, instagram uploads, because this will degrade the quality of the image. either download it from twitter or wherehaveyou, or from an updates account like neocatharsis or wayvment here on tumblr! another word of caution: DO NOT DOWNLOAD TEASER IMAGES/PHOTOSHOOT IMAGES FROM CONTENT CREATORS WHO MAKE EDITS TO THE IMAGES, SUCH AS CHANGING THE COLORS, UN-WHITEWASHING, ETC., WITHOUT THEIR PERMISSION. THAT IS THEFT FROM OTHER FANS. updates accounts like neocatharsis and wayvment simply reupload the original images posted by the entertainment company/idol in the exact same form without making changes to them. editors make alterations to the image and that new image is their own creative work, separate from the original one posted. you need the editor's explicit permission in order to use their edited version as a fic header.

i do all of my editing on my phone for my fics (except for the thin section dividers that i use, which i make in pirated photoshop cs6 so i can get specific dimensions, 540x2 pixels, and make the gradients super quick in a way that i know how to do. there may be a super easy way to do this w an app on ur phone too, that's just how i know how to)

anyway, if i have a photo that i really like, that i just knowwwww matches with the image of the guy in the fic in my head or smth, that i just rlly want to use but has a busier background, sometimes i'll use the portrait editing settings on my phone to blur the background a little bit and that makes the text a lot more legible (i have a samsung but im 99% sure iphones can do this too)

i typically don't bump it past 1 or 2, or the edges of the blur start looking a bit harsh, and i find that i don't really need more than this for the text to pop against the background anyway!

as for putting the text on the photos, i've the used the app phonto for years! it's completely free, doesn't put any watermark on your photos, comes with a bunch of fonts pre-installed, isn't super ad-heavy (it has a rlly small banner ad all the time at the top, and only shows u a skippable 10s ad when u save a finished photo), and you can download fonts from the internet to install straight into the app!

my favorite free font website is dafont.com, i literally will spend hours just browsing on there looking at fonts to download lmao. anyway here's how i find fonts for stuff and download, install, and use them with dafont and phonto:

once you have phonto downloaded, open dafont.com

up at the top, it has a bunch of different categories of fonts. for this example, i chose fancy > groovy, and then on this first page, i liked this font called "lostar" (there's also a search bar up there, but it only searches font names, not kinds of fonts, so if you're looking for a groovy-feeling font and you searched "groovy," only fonts with the word "groovy" in the name would come up)

i then press download, and open in my browser (i use firefox btw, which is why it looks like this lol). make sure you're opening the .zip file with the phonto app (it opens directly into into phonto on my phone, you may have to choose to open the .zip file using the phonto app from several options, instead of your phone's file explorer or some other app on your phone)

in the phonto app, you have to click install, then install again (it gives you the option to rename it, but i just keep the original font name bc why would you rename it?).

that READ THIS.txt file is a message from the font maker, it's the personal use license for the font (most of the fonts on dafont.com are free for personal use ONLY, and these .txt files that are contained in the .zip files are notes from the font makers telling u what u can and can't use the fonts for. generally, as long as ur not a business, u should be good this is not legal advice, please read them. also there's usually little thank you notes from the font makers in here as well!)

click ok.

then you've got to slap some text on an image. you can choose an image from your camera roll, use one of their plain images, or open a pre-saved work-in-progress. for this example i used one of their premade gradients to make it easy

type whatever it is you want, click font. the left tab is the pre-installed fonts, the middle tab is the fonts that you've downloaded from elsewhere. here's the lostar we just got!

oh can't see it.

there we go! how fun! i'll probably use this in a fic header in the future. download button in the top right.

[abla-soso]

Yup.

And it's extra funny when they think we as Muslims need to defend the late Muslim empires or whitewash their crimes.

As if our own Prophet didn't predict these empires and warned us about them and called them corrupted and tyrannical, lol.

Islam has few general guidelines when it comes to political theory and no fixed rules. Some Muslim Empires used this as an excuse to copy some tyranical practices of the Roman Empire. They justified copying the unjust, un-Islamic practices of the Roman empire through the excuse that "Islam allows political adaptation and we should learn from others to protect ourselves".

I have no problems acknowledging and even highlighting the many wrongs done by Muslim empires, especially when they've copied the model of non-Mulsim empires and engaged in un-Islamic practices (Arab slave trade comes to mind), but I'm not gonna accept the lies spewed by guilt-ridden Westerns when I do so. I will not entertain any disinformation just to project a flashy pretense of "fairness'.

I didn't realize why so many Western historians so desperately wanted to accuse Muslims of brutal colonization, but now it's clear as day. If there was a single empire that didn't need to engage in colonial depravity to thrive economically, politically, and culturally then their whole excuse for their depravity collapses.

They are far too comfortable asserting that the brutal colonization of Western empires had an overall net positive effect on the world because of all of its amazing developments, mostly through asserting that the atrocities of colonization were a necessary step to achieve said developments.

Muslim conquests were the mirror exposing those lies, because Muslim empires - for most of their history - didn't need to wipe out the natives, destroy their cultures, force them to assimilate or exhaust them to death to exploit their labor on mass to achieve amazing developments.

Whatever definition of "colonization" you use, being ruled by outsiders is a very different experience depending on whether they: a) want to take your land and get rid of you (settlement); b) want to change your identity and destroy your culture (integration); or c) simply want to exploit your labor (empire).

Muslim conquests - for most of their history - did not apply any of these definitions as a stranded policy towards native populations.

And so, historical lies had to be told and the concept of colonization had to be altered and broadened.

Racists, western chauvinists will trick themselves into believing any bullshit just to ease their guilt and appear better in comparison.

Edit: here is an important clarification.

I always knew white Amaricans and Europeans deliberately engaged in disinformation and even lied about the history of Muslim conquests (the lies told about "forced conversions" and "wiping out the natives and their cultures" were pure projection), but I did not know until today that they wholeheartedly believe that white colonisation was less brutal than Muslim conquests and had more positive results!!! 🤡🤡🤡

White racists would trick themselves into believing any bullshit just to ease their guilt, lmaooo.

[lemonade-baby]

(Un)friendly reminder: DONT SEXUALIZE THE CAST OR CHARACTERS IN YOUR ART!!!!!! MADI IS 16 MOTHERFUCKING YEARS OLD AND THE CHARACTERS ARE SUPPOSED TO BE AROUND THAT AGE TOO!!! THATS GROSS AND WEIRD DUDE!!! IN ALL HONESTY YOU SHOULDN’T DO IT TO CHARLIE, OWEN, OR JER EITHER!!

Another (un)friendly reminder: STOP WHITEWASHING AND SLIMMING MADI/JULIE DOWN!!!! SHES PUERTO RICAN, SHES GOT A BOXIER FRAME, SHES GOT A TOOTH GAP FOR FUCKS SAKE!!!! DRAW HER LIKE THAT

I know @reggiescrookedteeth already made several posts about this which she SHOULDN’T HAVE HAD TO MAKE ARE YOU KIDDING ME ITS COMMON KNOWLEDGE

Same goes for writers too!! AGE THEM UP IF YOURE GONNA BE LIKE THAT

[scarlet--wiccan]

So I was reading about Gloriana/Meggan Braddock now. She’s Romanichal born and raised in the UK but she only looks the way she does because she automatically shapeshifted into what Brian Braddock found attractive when she fell in love with him. Which is a blonde white woman.

I know it’s supposed to be automatic but they had a Romanichal character whitewash them self…?

I feel like I am the only one that wants Meggan to change to what she should actually look like without her mutation shapeshifting her to be what her white English upper class cis husband finds attractive!

Well, I just want to say upfront that blonde and fair-skinned Romani people obviously do exist, and reiterate that there is no right way for a character like Meggan to look. It’s entirely possible for someone of Meggan’s background to look, more or less, exactly the way she looks— the problem is that we know this isn’t her natural form. It’s an assumed form that she got comfortable in, and decided to keep. As far as I’m aware, she doesn’t have a normal human base form at all— her true aspect is as a sort of faerie creature, and that’s fine, but the human-passing presentation which Meggan affects is deliberately not based on what her parents, or anyone else in their community, looked like.

Why does she become an image of white beauty? It may be because she learned it from TV, or because she picked it up, empathically, from others, namely Brian. It may be patterned after Brian himself. None of those explanations really matter though, because the true answer is simple— the writers and artists used a white, blonde, slim body as visual shorthand for Meggan’s true, inner beauty. If her trauma and negative self-image make her into a monster, then, of course moving past that hurt will make her beautiful— and beauty, of course, is a skinny white girl.

Anyhow, this is, apparently, Meggan's true form-- an elfin, fae appearance with almost alien proportions that sometimes, um, glitters. Various writers have indicated that she is a faerie or has faerie heritage, but I don't believe that anyone has ever fully explained that.

N: "This is your true aspect, bright child."

R: "[...] Meggan? Why have you changed back? This is what you wanted-- to know what your really look like."

M: "I'm used to this form. It's how everyone is used to seeing me... but more importantly, it's how I choose to be." Excalibur #46

We've see this faerie form in other scenes, without all the flashing lights, but her coloring is white and blonde there, too. Perhaps, then, her assumed form is just a toned-down version of her true form. Well enough, but one must still consider the optics of Meggan, a child born to poor and seemingly ignorant Romanichal parents, being born with special powers that make her magically white. Whenever other "gypsies" are brought up in Excalibur, they're dark haired and sometimes rendered with markedly ethnic features. It is Meggan, alone, who affects such white and Eurocentric beauty-- and it is Meggan, alone, whose beauty and gifts allow her to rise above her circumstances and leave her life as a Romani girl behind so that she may be a faerie princess and marry a rich white man.

If you can't tell, I don't like this character very much, but it's not her, it's everything about how she's written and drawn. It does not sit right with me, at all. Anyways, I'll leave you with this strange little gem:

"It's my face Brian, they must be my features. But you're right, I have been shapeshifting, whether I wanted to or not-- I wonder if it's significant that I stabilized with this? Oh, Brian-- you should have been there to see the whole game! I was doing so well, I wasn't using my powers to help, I was playing those men on their physical terms-- and I won! I didn't know I could do that! Stand up for myself, by myself, as myself-- I never dreamt it would feel so good!" Excalibur (1988) #8

At this point in early Excalibur, Meggan's shapeshifting is an instinctive camouflage reflex-- she borrows traits from other people around her, but she doesn't have any real control over it. In #8, Meggan spends the day wandering about NYC on her own and meeting various people. The high point of her day is when she joins a game of pick-up basketball and, in playing, find herself more present, grounded, and un-self-conscious than ever before. The appearance that she has adopted is not her true form, but a mimic of the Black folks that she was hanging out with--you'll notice, however, that she doesn't immediately revert to her blonde appearance, even around Brian, until he calls attention to the fact that she's not her "usual" self. Am I supposed to think that this blonde form is more natural or authentic to Meggan than the various Black and brown appearances she's taken on? Because I'm not convinced.

[ccohanlon]

shallows

Thoreau had his pond. This is mine.

It is not a pond, really, but a pool, an ovoid sump of water in a tangle of brackish tidal furrows that dry to black mud at low water. It is, at most, half a fathom deep and a couple of cables in circumference, just enough for a small boat to lie at anchor, undisturbed, afloat.

Around it, in every direction, salt marsh, brittle reeds and desiccated grasses, all shivering in a cold, autumn easterly carrying a saline haze and intermittent showers from the sea.

Carried my boat and me here, too, this morning.

I was a mile offshore when the wind rose. The sea concertina'd into a short, steep swell that clawed at the gunwhales and crawled over the un-decked bow to lift the burden boards beneath my feet. I was forced to heave-to, reef, then run towards an unmarked gat and the shelter of low, mutable banks that resisted easy definition as 'shore'.

I sailed and sculled further inland on the last of a flooding tide. Neap high water, a few inches deeper than my boat's draft, allowed me to thread shallower reaches — green tendrils of drying creeks and swashways on my out-of-date Admiralty chart, unreliable data for a passage through this expanse of shoal water, sand, mud, and yellow marshland.

I was not unprepared.

My boat is small, just 14 feet from stem-post to stern, but sturdy — clinker hull, hand-sawn, copper-fastened mahogany planks on oak frames — even if it has seen better days. A loose-footed, red canvas lugsail hangs from varnished, timber spars.

Stowed aboard:

An old boat compass, in a weathered, grey teak box, wedged between frames behind the centreboard case.

A sounding lead, eye-spliced to a coiled length of frayed, three-stranded cordage, each fathom marked by strips of red or plain canvas sailcloth or leather.

Two metal thermoses, both filled, one with tea, one with soup.

An oiled canvas rucksack — in it, a change of clothes, sneakers, a folded Ordnance Survey map, a marine hand-bearing compass, a stainless steel folding knife with shackle key and marlin spike, a large note book, two HB2 pencils, a bar of chocolate, an apple, and a plastic box of peanut butter sandwiches.

A pair of long timber oars, dressed with hand stitched leather sleeves and collars.

Ten fathoms of lightweight braided rode bent to a small anchor that I have just laid from the bow to hold the boat's head to the tide.

To the east, a church spire — marked by a cross on a spill of yellow defining dry land on my chart. North of it, a sliver of red metal rooftop over white timber, and close by, the whitewashed pylons of a timber public jetty. There is an outline of buildings on the chart that might be a village but I can't see them. I'll make towards there a few hours before the next high water.

I am in this pool, this pocket of sequestered sea and I want, somehow, to fix it, to give it substance. I take a bearing on the spire and draw its line across the Admiralty chart, circling the point at which it intersects my anchorage, a speck of blue — half a fathom noted at mean low water springs — amid the green of drying flats and banks. There are no other useful points of reference. Without a cross- bearing, 'X' cannot mark the spot.

Henry David Thoreau was a self-taught surveyor, probably because, like writing, it was a way of imposing order, some sense of godliness, on raw, unruly nature. One of his earliest projects was a plan of Walden Pond, dated 1864. Thoreau lacked talent as a draughtsman but he made up for it with diligent attention to calculable data. He took to the water to plot lines of soundings — noting the greatest depth, 102 feet — and hiked the pond's 1.7 mile shoreline, carrying a theodolite on a timber tripod, to measure its circumference and area.

I remember my first experience of hanami, decades ago, strolling through Tokyo's Ueno Park to view the rows of blossoming cherry trees. I remember the Japanese woman who had taken me there telling me, "It is beautiful, yes. But I am not a nature person."

I am not a nature person either. I cannot name any of the grasses around me here, nor any of the birds, other than gulls and shearwaters. I am incurious about them. But my vocabulary for wind and water is as rich and nuanced as an Inuit's for snow and ice — I study the interplay and antic shape- shifting of these elements every chance I get.

And I take care not to talk about what I observe in anthromorphic terms: The sea has no mood, an old sailor once told me.

The sea isn't cruel. It isn't anything at all. It is just the sea.

I am afloat on what is left of it here, sitting amidships on the bottom of the boat, back against the thwart, squinting up at thin stratus, a nacreous scrim across a pale sun. The wind backs north-east. The boat swings around on its rode. Jittery water laps the timber planks beside me.

In the old days, the bottom of a plummet — as a sounding lead was sometimes called — was packed with greasy tallow before being swung from amidships. When the plummet touched bottom, mud, sand or gravel adhered to the tallow, giving the navigator an idea of the ground. If it was rock, the tallow came up clean.

Everywhere here is mud, dark, oleaginous sludge that resists light and turns shallow water a murky charcoal grey.

The tide turns as the sun's passage to the western edge of the marshes, obscured by cloud and haze, appears to accelerate. There is a faint burble — the first thin runnels of flood spilling across the swashway and through the gats to fill the narrow creeks.

A couple of hours pass. The boat lifts a little as my pool begins to swell. I stand up, balance myself against the thwart and hoist the awkward lugsail and its angled yard. Then I weigh anchor, jerking the rode a few times just before the flukes reaches the surface to shake off fistfuls of mud. A chalky residue swirls along the hull as we begin to make way.

I steer from the pool into a narrow creek leading west. What will I do if it is a dead end? The waterways within this sea of mud and grasses are a maze. Long stretches are unnavigable, even at high water — little more than waterlogged ditches and furrows.

Wind and tide make retreat impossible. Inland is the only course.

I squint into the sun under the foot of the sail, trying divine the depth and flow of the water ahead, gauging my heading on the distant church spire, almost unseeable in the glare. I will the angle between it and the boat's stemhead to close, to reassure me that I'm gaining some northing as we hurry further inland on the flood.

North and south, the marshland has turned a rich ochre. I will be ashore by dusk.

The boat has run too far ahead of the flood.

A quarter of a mile from the jetty, just before this skinny reach carries us into a patch of deeper water — another, bigger pool — the keel bumps into a muddy shoal, which holds it. I draw a deep breath and wait for the flood to lift us off.

It doesn't.

I stand up and shuffle amidships. With two hands, I angle an oar over the gunwhale to probe the bottom. I try to pole the hull sideways into what might be deeper water, adjusting my weight to heel the boat and reduce its draft.

She is stuck fast.

I study my out-of-date chart for reassurance but the drying height for this channel is unmarked. Without a tide table to give me a range for today, I can only hope another hour of rise will be enough to float us.

I toy with the idea of stripping off and going over the side to lighten the hull and push it into deeper water. But I have learned through gelid experience to avoid getting wet aboard an open, unsheltered boat. Nothing to do, then, but trust to time and tide. I prop my rucksack against the sternsheets, and lie my head on it, stretching my legs forward along the burden boards.

I close my eyes and listen — to the wind, what little there is of it now, to the water scurrying along the hull strakes, to the faint suck and scrape of mud around the keel. Patience is a necessary virtue for a sailor.

The first lesson of sea navigation is that you never sail to anywhere, you sail towards it, a semantic caveat that takes account of the uncertainty of every sea passage, even across sheltered waters, and defines a sailor's readiness to adapt to whatever befalls their vessels — unexpected calms or squalls, contrary tidal streams, a seabed's topographical drift.

In the ill-defined, liminal water/land of these marshes, even less can be relied upon. I wait.

First published in Place 2020, via The Centre for Place Writing, UK, 2020.

[whatdoesshedotothem]

Monday 9 September 1839

6 40/..

10 10/..

very heavy shower about 5am fair and fine at 6 40/.. F63° now at 7 ¾ - breakfast over at 10 ¼ - a man came to offer 1 80 3/4///100 rouble per dollar banco – sent John again (he had been just before) to the banker merchant to say this - .:. the clerk (Mr. K- himself not in town) said he would give ½ copek [kopek] more i.e. 1 rouble 81 cokeps [kopek] per dollar banco – sent John with the money (300 dollars banco) to be changed at this price while I went to the bookseller – out at 11 10/.. to our banker

Mr. Abraham [Krŭgelŭr]: Åbo Mr. Muralt our Pasteur went chez

Mr. N.D. Indren Restaurateur. Åbo of the [?] [?] church at St. P-

Mr. K- keeps a large shop – woollen (coat) cloth – china, glass etc. etc. – very civil and useful – in correspondence with Tottie and Aufwedson [Arfvedson] Stockholm – gave 1/81 per dollar banco and let us have what small money he had and [someone] gave us a letter to Helsinfors [Helsingors] to get the value of what would not pass on road – said 10 wersts = 1 mile. one horse 60kop. per mile above an hour there – home about 12 ¾ - looking over money – paid the custom house officer – 1/75 très content – grumbled at the landlord’s charging for lodging 5 rigs dollars – c’est une volée – off at 1 ¾ nice partly foresty partly well farmed corn and grass land – Sweden like – pretty picturesque drive – at 2 ¾ pretty lake in sight right – at 3 8/.. Rungo small low neat single house but picturesque little hamlet or village scattered at a little distance and by and by pass pretty picturesque village church – picturesque rounded wooded hills, or if sometimes bare, mammelonné granite – mossy – very picturesque – nice clean farming – all the corn almost housed – a very little in stook –

at Rungo pay 5Kop. per horse bridge-toll for bridge to come – just from here 1st observation the narrow rosemary lowered low willow poor land but tho’ warty here and there yet well cleared and farmed chiefly Scotch fir and no old wood – quite young in general pretty picturesque drive from Rungo –

Pay by west, 6Kop. per horse from single house stations and double from towns

SH:7/ML/TR/13/0026

September 1839 country very picturesque the little unpainted cottages scattered about and little unpainted windmills scattered here and there – the good new wooden bridge now at 4 20/.. that we paid toll for at Rungo – and now a minute after another less wood bridge and soon pass by neat little whitewashed village church right and several fields of corn in stook – Swedish like fences – just like a pretty picturesque good repetition of Sweden – fine day – fine afternoon and charming drive – little chesnut horses and cows grazing in the stubble – generally left as long as we at H-x even leave shorn wheat – peas-holm hung out high stakes and railing to dry as in Sweden and Norway – much potato here as there – a few cottages red with white chimneys the effect of this at Åbo Gotheborg [Gothenburg] etc. etc. and everywhere picturesque and pretty –

Wista at 4 32/.. pretty picturesque neat little red low station house the village scattered picturesquely about – and in 5 minutes enter forest – the wood here often cut down there can be no timber – capital road all along from Åbo – the rye 6 or 7 inch high beautifully green – much taller and greener and better looking than we have anywhere seen it before – Grotzas’ news was that there were several Scotch farmers about Åbo within reach of who had land under government on long leases for next to nothing as in America – the scattered farms and cottages, and barns very picturesque – our average of changing horses seems about ¼ hour and our speed about 7 wersts per hour – think of stopping at the next station – having done 42 ½ wersts from 1 ¾ to

good deal of birch all along little else except fir – generally broad lands hereabouts 8 or 10 yards broad and sometimes much more with deep broad drain-like furrows – road good and a few steeepish [?] but as good and little hilly so from Götheborg [Gothenburg] to Stockholm – but at this moment

September Monday 9 (6p.m.) a little bit of forest and road rather sandy and mossy rock among the firs as in Norway and north of Sweden – soon out of the forest and at Keala [Kealanoja] at 6 10/.. – nice nice little wood single house yellow with white window frames and red roof – and a pea-green red painted roofed wing, and coachouse on each side – we stay all night like Handbook – on the square heard of the red post in front of the house

Keala [[Kealanoja]

till

Helsingforss [Helsingfors]

167 2/3 werst

till

Kaewola 22W.

till Sala [Salo] 12 2/3 werst

till

St. Petersburg 577 2/3 werst

till

Wista 15 1/3 werst

till

Åbo 42 1/3 w:

A- sketched – the house but had not time to do much for our dinner served at 6 50/.. – 2 roast coqs de bois (as at Österby near Dannemora) and pancakes and bread and butter and preserved [Lingboer] (cranberries) – enjoyed it and sat long over it – had not done with Grotza till after 9 – very fine day F64° now at 9 50pm. taking my chronometer at 1 ½ hour too late +3/4 hour put forward at Roeskilde [Roskilde] in Denmark = 2 ¼ hours earlier time here than in London  

[uncloseted]

What are your thoughts on critical race theory and how it's being taught or should be taught in schools? Everyone seems to have a different idea of what is being taught and it's hard to keep up. I've heard extreme stories about certain schools but I've also heard that those are mostly people on the right exaggerating. Thank you for answering these political questions and giving such well thought out responses!

Okay so... there's a lot to unpack within the discussion of "critical race theory". I'm going to give a primer of what it is, how it is (and isn't) being used in schools, what the controversy is, and then I'll give my opinions at the end.

What is Critical Race Theory?

"Critical Race Theory" is a previously obscure academic concept. It's an approach to studying US policies and institutions and is typically taught in higher-education institutions like law schools or schools of social work. It's been in use since the 70s, when law professors began considering how racism shapes American law. Basically, Critical Race Theory states that intentional and unintentional racial bias are baked into the way our institutions and legal system functions. CRT is a way of examining how "racism is sustained more through law, policy and practices than through individual bias and discrimination," in the words of Boston University law professor Jasmine Gonzales Rose. It's focused on shifting our attention away from individual people's bad actions (what we commonly think of as being "racism") to instead center how systems uphold racial disparities.

Where did the Controversy about Critical Race Theory Come From?

After the murder of George Floyd last year and the resulting Black Lives Matter protests, these same topics were introduced to public consciousness. Is our police system racist? Are people of color disproportionately likely to be arrested and imprisoned for crimes, even though white people commit crimes at the same rate? (The answer to these questions is yes, just so we're clear). Are there ways in which racial bias is baked into our legal system? There were a lot of people around that time who became aware that our systems are discriminatory, and, as with everything, a lot of people who pushed back against anything actually changing.

Here's where the whole thing gets a bit convoluted. The debate over "critical race theory" can be traced to just one person- Christopher Rufo, a fellow at a conservative think tank. On September 2nd of 2020, Rufo appeared on Fox News's show, "Tucker Carlson Tonight". On the show, Rufo claimed that "critical race theory" had "pervaded every institution in the federal government" and called on President Trump to ban "critical race theory" in federal workforce trainings. It's somewhat unclear why he thought this to begin with. In that same conversation, Rufo deemed "critical race theory" "divisive, un-American propaganda". From there, this idea that "critical race theory" (used as "a catchall phrase for any examination of systemic racism" or even as a catchall phrase to denote anything advocating for social change, as opposed to the principles of Critical Race Theory that are actually used in educational institutions) is infiltrating our government took off on Twitter.

By September 17th of 2020, Trump was denouncing "critical race theory" and had created the 1776 Commission to "promote patriotic education". The 1776 Commission was in direct opposition to the 1619 Project, a Pulitzer Prize winning, long-form journalism project developed for The New York Times, which aims to explore American history through African-American perspectives. The 1619 Project was being used as a tool in public school curricula to help students understand the impact of slavery on modern society. It's important to note here that at no point was Critical Race Theory being taught in schools except at the university level, and that the 1619 Project is not based in Critical Race Theory. When discussing the 1776 Commission, Trump said, "we want our sons and daughters to know the truth. America is the greatest and most exceptional nation in the history of the world. Our country wasn't built by cancel culture, speech codes, and crushing conformity. We are not a nation of timid spirits."

To recap: Rufo introduces this concept of "critical race theory" to the conservative media on September 2nd. In his context, "critical race theory" has no real definition and has been divorced from actual Critical Race Theory. 15 days later, Trump adopts "critical race theory" as a major theme in his campaign, using the 1619 project to justify his claims that "critical race theory" is being taught to "our children" in schools, and he founds the 1776 Commission to provide an alternative narrative of American history. Conservative media outlets jump onto the "critical race theory" debate, but without a clear idea of what Critical Race Theory is (which is why it seems like there's a lot of different ideas about what it is and what's being taught) in an attempt to push for limits on teaching practices relating to racism.

In 2021, Joe Biden dissolved the 1776 Commission, but bills were introduced in Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas to "restrict teaching critical race theory in public schools". In some cases, these bills single out the 1619 Project in particular, even though it is not based in Critical Race Theory. Other bills have an even larger ban on programs that involve social justice in general.

I'm not familiar with any "extreme stories" about "critical race theory" being taught in K-12 schools, but if you want to send ones you come across my way, I'm happy to discuss the veracity of those claims.

As for my opinion, I think it's good that students are being introduced to the ways in which our country's history has impacted the way our country's systems are built, and it's good that they're being introduced to the ways in which those systems are discriminatory. 48% of Gen Z are POC. 50%(ish) of Gen Z is female. 15.9% of Gen Z is LGBT. We're becoming more diverse as a society, and so the ways in which people are discriminated against are more visible, even to kids. It's important that kids understand (in an age-appropriate way) what discrimination is, why it happens, and what they can do about it.

Kids who are POC or female or obviously gender-divergent don't get the luxury of being able to ignore discrimination. Black kids are aware of "critical race theory" (the way that society systemically discriminates against them) from the get-go. Nobody is arguing that we should be telling white six year olds that they're evil for being white or that their parents are evil for being white. They're saying that a white six year old will notice that they're being treated differently than their Black best friend, and they'll know that's unfair. It's better to respond to their questions about fairness with an acknowledgement that things aren't fair, but we can work to fix them, instead of insisting that there is no problem, and that we are the "Greatest and Most Exceptional Nation In The History of The World".

Our current educational system does a lot of whitewashing when it comes to US History. Just think back to any celebration you had of Columbus Day or Thanksgiving in school, where they make it seem like the colonists and Native Americans were friends. It's important that instead of whitewashing our history, we acknowledge that many people were, and still are, hurt by that history. It's important to center non-white voices in those curricula, because without them, the story we're telling isn't true. History classes should not be a stage for American nationalist propaganda, and yet that's what they become when we insist on only teaching about the "good" things we've done.

Do I think that the 1619 Project is the way to go about that goal? Not necessarily. There are legitimate criticisms that can and have been made about that project, and I agree with some of them. Likewise, I think actual Critical Race Theory is too advanced for your average K-12 student, and it's not the best framework for teaching these topics. There are educators much smarter than I am who can (and have) come up with age-appropriate curricula to talk about these topics. But it's important that we allow for and encourage discussion of those topics, and putting a blanket ban over anything social justice related isn't going to make that happen.

[rayfive]

The American idea of default “Korean face”:

-Narrow eyes, round face, huge cheekbones, low nose bridge. Always this particular face type. It is kind of obligatory.

-Tan

-Shittiest possible makeup that makes your eyes look as swollen as possible & your overall face like a burning sweet potato. Literally the shittiest makeup you can humanly come up with

-Bad fashion sense

-Long pin-straight hairstyle regardless of your face type because you’re Korean or something. As if it is a symbol for “Korean”.

And when actual Koreans, who often do not look like this nor do this to our faces, get out of this box of arbitrary-af racist stereotype, they call us “whitewashed”.

This applies not just to white people but also (or even mainly) to POC who want to throw shit in our direction for all sorts of petty, competitive, misguided, or straight up malevolent racist reasons.

This is one of many reasons why I oftentimes don’t sympathize much with Asian Americans (...along with other Americans, not just them to be fair lol). They sort of act as if this is the ‘correct representation’, otherwise it’s “toxic beauty standards”.

This notion is racist as hell.

When an American company had a chance to present a Korean female skater from South Korea, they used this shitty makeup method and made her face look manifestly darker than she actually is to fit her into their racist box. It is not too much unlike an Asian equivalent of ‘blackface’ except they did it on her own face. Needless to say they were not successful with their business here.

In their region, I think it is lowkey considered obligatory to distance an Asian person’s look and representation as far away as Caucasians as possible just for the sake of affirmative action. The result is that only the polar-opposite of the so-called “Caucasian face type (I have a problem with this term)” is allowed to be represented as a positive and proper Asian face. Another result is that the overlapping elements (a high nose bridge or light skin for instance) are obligatorily assigned to the white race, giving them a monopoly over these facial features. Asians are not allowed to have those features because it is supposed to primarily belong to white people and to represent Asians with that kind of look would be considered catering to “Eurocentric / toxic beauty standards”.

From white people’s point of view, they do the same thing because they accentuate the aspects of Asian face that are different or polar-opposite from their own as much as possible with a self-centered tendency. This can be seen especially clearly from the way they oftentimes draw Asians. They tend to draw in accordance with a series of fixed codified notions on what Asians are supposed to look like, and these codified notions tend to revolve around ‘what is opposite from them’. The result includes things like unnatural tan skin tone or selectively un-stylized eyes portion of the picture (just to accentuate on their notion of what it should be) that would’ve otherwise just equally be stylized as the rest of the image. A stylistic choice in and of itself is not problematic, just that it is worth pointing out their particular way of stylizing Asian image shows that their notion revolves around what is ‘Not Caucasian’.

I wouldn’t be as lowkey disgusted by the repetition of this selective race-agenda-driven representation if it wasn’t for them getting out of their way to call us walking toxic beauty standards just for existing with better makeup, fashion sense, and in a different climate, where ice-fishing exists in the winter, with a highly sedentary lifestyle. We are not bound by the political necessity to ‘distance our representation as much as possible from Caucasians’ appearance’ either. The result is we don’t give a fuck whether it “overlaps with white people or not” we don’t care and we don’t think about white people much. We are not obsessed with white people nor race in general. The result is we don’t have the same agenda as them, and these race-obsessed Americans blame us for our skin color or facial features or the representation thereof calling it an incorrect or toxic representation for all the wrong (and highly regional) reasons. When they can’t call it that because it’s just a passer-by and not a tv representation, their next step is to call it fake or bleached, debating on whether that person faked their skin color. (Because they can’t call a regular, accidental passer-by a “toxic” “REPRESENTATION” anymore.) They take away elements of natural spectrum of Korean appearance from its rightful ethnicity by dismissing them as white features at the slightest resemblence and call them products of cosmetic surgeries aimed at looking like white people. Never have I seen such thorough, all-out, un-reserved pathological white worshippers as these people, yet they throw around this accusation that squarely belongs to themselves. What they are doing is elevating white people on a pedestal while putting us under their feet by stealing Korean facial features and offering their ownership to white people. I couldn’t think of a better real-life manifestation of white-worshipping than this even if I tried on purpose. My grandfather is not “whitewashed” for having a nose bridge as high as Caucasians. He is fully, thoroughly Korean. My entire family is not “whitewashed” for having double eyelids. I’m not “whitewashed” for having a skin lighter than a huge chunk of Southern Europeans.

So when it comes to this image agenda, both groups (POC and white) basically see us as a ‘race’ before humans or individuals. They see us either as a tool for their regional agenda, or the burning sweet potato stereotype rather than humans or individuals. It is disgusting.

I was already aware of this racist flow before a black American IRL asked me to fill out a survey on “beauty standards in South Korea”. Which sort of worked like a last drop in the bucket for me and I started to lash out on this issue, frankly with full justification. I know they have unique political needs in their region so I didn’t criticize anything in this regard in the past, but the story changes when they get all up on our faces telling us we are walking toxic beauty standards.

Multiculturalism is a failure and they don’t just stay as a regional failure but bleed onto my country as well. They go racist on us, attacking us with their regionally-generated pathological viewpoint.

I am not a walking “toxic beauty standard”. You are racist.

You can’t call people “white washed” or “bleached” for being “whiter than whites” when they are born this way, and this is simply not debatable. If you have a problem with living people’s skin colour, there is a simple solution for you : Jump off a bridge, or quit living on this planet. That way you can avoid dealing with this ‘problem’.

[eynsavalow]

WARNING: A lot of the characters I write for have either done shitty things or have had shitty things done to them and I’m going to acknowledge those things in terms of their backstory and not erase it. (Within reason, I’ve had people try to push overly negative headcanons or interpretations about characters I write which is a no go).

This blog will deal with a lot of heavy topics including but not limited too incest, assault, violence, child abuse, etc. I myself have been the victim of emotional abuse for much of my life and will always treat these topics with the weight and respect they deserve. I will also try to tag my posts accordingly if/when these topics come up. If these topics are too much for you please feel free to unfollow/block/ soft block me. Your personal health and comfort are important to me regardless of whether or not we’re mutuals.

PLEASE NOTE I WILL NOT RP THESE THINGS but will reference and acknowledge the effect of these events on the characters.

I don’t/ am not going to be RPing with people who are under 18 just for my own comfort levels and given how much adult content can be on my blog can be at times.

Do not follow me if you are racist, sexist, homophobic or transphobic. If I see anything in rules downplaying or ignoring these subjects or whitewashing I will block you on sight. No exceptions.

Read my about pages for any muses you want to play with especially given a lot of my muses are heavily headcanon based. I promise to do the same for you. (I am not going to require you read everyone’s page obviously).

I do practice headcanon fluidity. I know all my headcanons can be intimidating but I want my partners to feel free to discuss things with me and know I am willing to compromise certain aspects if they don’t fit with their personal headcanons or comfort levels.

I’m not a big fan of having starters sent through my ask box especially if we’ve never interacted before. That said you’re welcome to ask questions if I reblog a meme or I give you explicit permission to send something.

I’m okay with making corrections if I made a mistake or you have a problem with one of my responses. Roleplaying is about collaboration so let’s pursue that.

I would also like to point out here that I am white and several of my muses aren’t. If I ever do or say something in regards to these muses that makes you uncomfortable or feels problematic I would appreciate it if you’d point it out to me as that is never my intention.

On the subject of Celtic/Greek mythology/History etc. While I try to do what research I can for all my muses I’m also a full-time film student, who works long hours so don’t ever treat me or assume I’m trying to act like any kind of authority on any given subject. If you are curious I will happily provide any of the resources I might use concerning my muses or writing.

I will do my best to tag things that might be considered triggering. If I miss something or you would like to see something tagged let me know.

No Forcing of Ships

Don’t approach me for shipping simply based on my FC I ship based on ic/ooc chemistry nothing else.

No God Modding/Meta-Gaming

No Passive Aggressive-ness, if you have a problem just talk to me don’t play games expecting me to guess.

MESSAGE ME IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS- I’ve been RPing on Tumblr for years now and there have been times it got really un-fun because of some of the shit that went on. And I really just want to enjoy myself and make sure those I rp with do the same so its best if communication happens sooner rather than later. I promise I don’t bite. <3

[millennialdemon]

VK was badly written. The purebloods, esp. Kaname were way too overpowered, and it felt like besides Zero (who is extra special) every other hunter was useless. So many plot holes too, why are there so many level Es running around when there are only like a few purebloods? Are they each turning 100 humans per day? The manga is even worse b/c the author tries to whitewash Kaname's crimes by turning him into a martyr. IMO, some of his actions are even worse than the actual antagonists'. (part 1)

Kaname's actions are worse than Shizuka's, considering she had actual reason to take revenge on Zero's parents since they killed her lover (not saying what she did was right, but at least she didn't do it on a whim). Kaname on the other hand was the one who intentionally released her to go after the Kiryuus, just for the sake of turning Zero into the "ultimate hunter". And to make it worse, he knowingly lets Zero take the blame after he kills Shizuka and takes her power LOL  And among his other actions, Kaname goes around killing random purebloods who didn't even do anything to him. If he truly cared about humans and vampire society, he should have done more to protect the humans, but the whole anime and manga, his entire character just revolved around Yuki, a teenage girl. Its scary to think how someone with so much power is able to abuse it so freely w/o consequences. No wonder even Asato, an aristocrat, wanted to get rid of the purebloods, SMH. (End)

You're Right, and you Should say it!!

To be honest, there is so much badness -- BAD writing, bad framing, bad tone, bad intentions -- in Vampire Knight that I can hardly parse it all and have to watch 2 minutes and stop just to process the new, awful information. Hence it taking 400 years for me to watch just seven episodes, and with barely any commentary...

It's genuinely frustrating to watch a story that presents such atrocities and characters, that then goes on to sympathize with and romanticize the characters that commit those atrocities. It's un-be-lievable! that Zero exists as he does in this narrative, and the framing ISN'T entirely sided with him. Even aside from constant questioning of the logic of the universe and characters, emotionally, I find Vampire Knight to be completely bankrupt. It renders characters I was neutral about into characters that are unforgivable -- Yuki in particular, allowing and forgiving the horrific things vampires did and still do to Zero, as if that is her prerogative?! -- and what criticisms I have of the logistics of such a contrived narrative are drowned out by the constant question of what the point of the suffering even is, when Cross just goes chibi x3 and insists Zero just get over his ~vampire reverse-racism~ a few minutes after he tries to kill himself because of trauma caused by vampires. 

The mundane cruelty of it all. I'm not against tragedies, but Vampire Knight doesn't treat itself as the tragedy that it is. If it did, Kaname would be a bonafide antagonist, and so would Cross. Because they are complicit in tremendous human suffering, if it serves their needs, even if they think they are noble (they are not, ha!). And so would Yuki, if she followed the current trajectory of loving Kaname regardless of the things he does and says to the people she supposedly also cares about. But that's not the case in Vampire Knight -- instead Kaname is an ~enigmatic bishie~ and Cross is righteous in his decision to take in a boy whose family was killed by vampires as a sick experiment in seeing if even someone who went through what Zero did can "see the light" and Live Peacefully With Vampires, and Yuki pointlessly angsts about Kaname maybe being kind of not great, but then deciding no, I'm wrong, Kaname is amazing and I love him anyway!

LIKE... SAY SIKE RIGHT NOW..

Additional commentary from my dear friend Nessa who knows a lot more about Vampire Knight than I do, because she’s big and strong and somehow watched the whole thing: 

they're right and what upsets me most about kaname is the don draper affect - how he can go around doing these objectively terrible things and still be defended by the author and fanbase when, if he were less attractive, they'd all turn on him. if he looked like asato ichijou when he confessed to orchestrating the kiryuu parent's murder or when he went on a pureblood killing spree than people would hate him. and everything kaname canonically is responsible for is ignored/downplayed by the author and fandom because of literally informed character traits.

yuki's got the worst case of protagonist centered morality I've ever seen and the audience follows her cues, so it doesn't matter that kaname is as bad as sara, shizuka, rido because he's got a 'tragic backstory'. which isn't even that tragic when you consider that the real kaname kuran died as an infant because of rido and that the fake kaname is an ancestor of the kuran family who lived a full life and loved another woman before he met yuki

the story tries to compare his story with zero's because they both lost their 'parents' but it's not even applicable because those weren't his parents. kaname is at least ten thousand at the end of the last arc before he throws his heart in the furnace and people still act like he's a minor. he was always an adult living in a child's body and he developed the same fixation that rido had for juuri for yuki. he's no better than him tbh, I don't know about the new reawakened kaname yet but holding the regular kaname accountable? he went on a killing spree to 'cleanse the world' for yuki and he planned the murder of her best friend's parents. he kept her in his house and didn't let her see yori or the chairman and only let her out when it was time to make a political appearance. the best thing he ever did for her was throw his heart into the furnace.

[lizzieraindrops]

Your chance to make the sun rise thrice (Chapter 3)

that a garden will grow (11,143 words)

"There are no happy endings, because nothing ends." - The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle That does not mean that there is no joy.

Veera is alive.

Also on AO3  |  Playlist soundtrack  |  Aesthetic sideblog

Happy autumn equinox, everyone.

When I started this story as a oneshot back in 2016, I had no idea that it would turn into a series spanning four years of new life for these characters, much less that it would end up taking me nearly the same amount of time to write it.

I wrote the first part during the darkest yet time of my life as an abstract fantasy of being in a better place. I finish writing it today from a better place, physically, mentally, emotionally, and even spiritually. If I've learned anything from this, it's that your own creativity saves you and is powerful enough to call the better things that seem so impossible into existence.

This is my tribute to Veera as a character and everyone like her and anyone who has identified with her. She changed my life. Even with all OB's many, many flaws (dear god there are SO many), without the explicit representation of Veera's neurodivergence in the Helsinki comics, I don't know how I would have figured out that I'm autistic. That has been both the biggest hurdle and the greatest blessing in the trajectory of my healing. Since it's been so central to this story and its writing, I've included a link to some resources for autism spectrum self-diagnosis.

Part 1: Herbs on the windowsill

Part 2: Someday colors

Part 3: Your chance to make the sun rise thrice  |  Chapter 1  |  Chapter 2  |  Chapter 3

***

Veera wakes gently, early, unexpectedly so. As she sits up, her weighted blanket slips off and crumples around her waist like a shed skin. Bands of muted morning coming through the blinds slide over her as she rises from the plane of the bed. The summer sun has still risen first, of course. True dark never falls here in the summer, at this high a latitude. But right now, its light is softened and diffused by a thin veil of cloud over the city. Listening, the others aren’t up and moving yet.

Slight shifting of her relaxed limbs makes the softness of the sheets into an extravagance. She’s in a rare, delicately balanced state, one where her senses have sharpened just enough to turn ordinary sensations exquisite without overwhelming her. She’ll have to spend some time listening to music – and with Niki and Beth. That was the plan anyway. But the others aren’t up yet.

Today, there’s a restlessness in her. Most days, she gets up slow, simply waiting until her body is ready to go about the day. Yet a quiet kind of discomfort has made a home in her core, nudging her to get moving. The feel of it is neither full nor hollow, not exactly painful yet nothing like comfort. It’s just there, a subdued directionless yearning.

But her mind needs to go at its own pace waking up. Inertia drags at her when she tries to move too fast or cut corners in her daily ritual. Subtle distress quickly follows that inertia if she tries to press the issue. It shows in the incrementally increasing fine tension of her muscles, slowly winding her up like clockwork. So she sits with the feeling. Motionless except for her breath in the middle of her bed, she thinks.

Light. Leaves. Home. Hunger. She should eat soon. They’re out of cereal, though. There’s a farmer’s market a few blocks away that should have fresh summer fruit. She could go. She does, sometimes, early in the morning like now, before Niki wakes up, and just wanders around. As long as she keeps it short and doesn’t talk much, she should be able to manage it without giving herself a headache.

Twenty minutes find her feet traversing muted pink granite. Neat rectangular stone cobbles pave the street below her living room window. The rumble of a loud truck passing right by close makes her flinch, but she manages to shake the discomfort out of her neck and shoulders easily enough once it’s gone. Other than that, the streets are unusually peaceful. Most people like get out of the city this close to midsummer.

She steps lightly over the stone in snugly laced canvas shoes, toes touching down first. There’s some sort of bird hidden in the trees lining the street, singing two repeated notes on a slow loop. A flycatcher, she thinks.

Being in motion somewhat soothes her restlessness as she slips through broad swathes of clouded morning light between the shadows of buildings. The persistent sensation is nothing so strident as the hypervigilance that used to keep her so high strung. But its subtle company has been constant, lately. She can tell she’s internally processing something, but she can’t quite pin it down. Maybe that’s why she’s been waking up so much earlier than normal.

Lately, a strangeness has been gently tugging at the edges of her mind. In part, she knows it’s a growing awareness of how much things have changed since four years ago. It’s happened so gradually. It was nigh invisible until she cast far enough back along the path of her own footsteps to see how far she’s come. She almost died, but she didn’t. She’s no longer in a desperate race to survive. Now, she’s alive. The question of who and what she is now is an unnervingly open one.

These days, she wakes within a body that is soft and scarred. She is both a wounded creature walking this world with strange steps and a thing healing yet already whole. More often than not, she finds her shoulders loose and her chest open, instead of curled tight into a semblance of stone. They can still seize up when her fears circle back around to worry at invisible scars. But it’s not an endless anxious state. It isn’t everything she is anymore.

Likewise, her nightmares don’t spend as many nights haunting her. Weeks pass between them, sometimes. When they do steal back to the surface of her psyche, the quiet fear they stir up saps all her energy and trails lazily through the daylight hours like an oilslick. She spends those days baking something sweet in the apartment’s warmly lit kitchen. Or she takes inventory of the shapes and textures of the leaves that hang suspended in the air of every familiar room.

It helps, even if dreams or memories linger smoldering in the back of her mind the whole time. The sensations and sense of space keep her grounded, both within herself and outside of the fickle fear and pain that flares and fades and keeps returning. Of course, nothing is so immediately comforting as the presence – and, in this searingly ephemeral moment, presences – that remind her she is not alone. But even when they aren’t there, the space itself reminds her that she lives with and in this place she’s chosen to call a home.

The apartment is the first home she can remember that feels the way she suspects one is supposed to. It fits around her, small and enclosed enough to know every inch without uncertainty scratching at the bounds of her awareness. Tucked away up on the third floor, it nests in a quiet old brick building that’s as comfortably worn in as her favorite hoodie. Its wide windows spread big and bright in every room, reminding her to breathe freely. She is no longer a creature caged. Shadows are soft in this place, and the sunlight is as much a part of it as the walls. Its radiant forms lance through glass and smile through aches, never failing to wrap her in warmth.

Leaves unfurl gently in every window. She likes to run the living silken or waxy greenness of purposeful growth between her fingertips. Perhaps their green faces are outnumbered by all the strangely familiar human ones in the photos along the whitewashed walls, marking where friendships have germinated. But then again, perhaps not. It’s a close call, and there’s always more of both growing. They’re still something of a miracle to her, after so long alone.

Low murmurs of outdoor conversation bring her back to the pop-up stalls of the market hovering just ahead. She’s there.

There are somewhat fewer visitors than normal, but the market still appears to be proceeding about business as usual. Early on, this Saturday market tends to be quieter than the Sunday one, not quite as full of people. It's that perfect balance of un-crowded enough that she can keep to her own internal world without interruption, but bustling enough that she doesn't stand out. She's just another woman at the market. Once in a while, gazes will slide over the scars on her cheek, or her upper arm if she’s wearing short sleeves (not her leg or ankle, as she never wears anything except pants). Her skin begins to remember to crawl - but then the eyes keep on sliding past, on to the peppers or the green beans or the fresh cut flowers.

Weaving her way into the dispersed crowd, she heads for the egg stand first, just in case they run out. They often do. With a dozen blue and brown eggs in tow, she roves about until she finds a stand with peaches she can smell from several paces away. Their sweet tang fills the air as she picks them out. She also gets some fresh apricots, brushing her fingertips over their velvety little coats of fuzz. She tucks the stonefruit and eggs safely into the backpack she brought and keeps moving. A yeasty oaf of fresh bread for picnicking later joins them. The rounded tip of the long loaf pokes out the top of the zippered pocket, hovering just behind her ear. She leaves the top of its paper wrapper open so it stays crisp.

Live music rolling out from the street corner captures her, pulling her out of her trajectory mid-stride to swing toward the unadorned sidewalk stage. The resonance of shimmering metal strings and singing wood flows over her and through her, and she simply sways with it, part of it. It sparkles over her skin and hums along her bones, making her flutter her fingers in pleasure, and it’s blissful. After everything she’s been through, the long gauntlet of near misses and fires and nightmare flames, it still seems wrong somehow for things to be this okay, to feel this good.

That’s why, when visceral self-consciousness swoops down on her again without warning, its familiar fear is as much something like relief as it is a thorn in an old wound. Nothing even causes it, really: just a stray passing glance from a stranger that slid over her hands instead of her scars and didn’t even linger. But it makes her remember the oddness of the ways her hands move, when she’s happy, when she’s stressed. It makes her stand out if she doesn’t make the effort to hide them – or if she takes a little too long to think in a conversation – or if she lets on that she can be hurt so easily by the smallest, normally inconsequential things.

In more dangerous times, standing out could have ended very badly for her. The feeling of being hunted might have retreated to the back of her mind, but it has never truly left. In moments like this, she still snaps back into old habits. Her fists clench into stillness, her mind into sharp wariness, her whole self into the ache of immobility except for consciously calculated movements. It’s not quite the old full-body taut-wire tension of terror. Nonetheless, it’s a painful tender twisting inside, pulling things skewed and wrong in her chest.

The thing is, she knows she’s one of the lucky ones. For so many people, the fear never gets to recede at all. Either the danger remains ever-present in the casual cruelties of the world, or their wounds never get the care they need to heal. Not everyone can be set free by toppling a single old castle of corruption into the sea. Veera gets to try to heal, as impossibly hard as it is and always will be. She has support to fall back on now, kind hearts that hear her, arms that will hold her when she hurts. Though they’re rare, she has days where she doesn’t feel like she has to hide at all. It’s so strange. Even before the Helsinki fire, she spent so long becoming acquainted with the wariness of attracting too much attention. She’s still trying to understand who she even is if she’s not hiding.

That’s why she’s doing the work she does with CYGNet. They’re all muddling their way toward healing from their one-off odd brand of hurt, but the support system they’re building could be useful for so much more. In her mind, they’re just the beginning. One day, maybe they can expand to help even more people beyond the Leda project. The Beths with different faces but surviving the same family history. The Nikis with different nightmares but recovering from the same betrayal. The Veeras with different scars who are just as overwhelmed by the everyday world, but deserve just as much of a chance to experience it without having to hide their truth in shame and become someone they’re not.

Well. Maybe one day. For now, one thing at a time. She has to take care of herself and her own healing if she’s going to make any progress down that distant path. Sometimes, the path she’s on right now still seems to stretch so much further ahead than she can fathom.

Eyes closed, Veera takes a breath into her tense stillness. To her own fragile heart, she whispers, It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay. She breathes; it passes.

Giving herself a few minutes more to listen to the music, she waits until the grip of physical memory lessens. The sound is still lovely, even if she can’t quite fall back into the two-piece symphony the way she did mere moments ago. She calms further as she carries herself onward again down the tent-lined street. Under the surface, though, in the same hollow where her restlessness lives, her heart remains sore where something still won’t settle into place.

Fortunately, there are other good things at the market that help soothe the ache. Even for someone like her who needs to limit her exposure to overstimulation and crowds, they make it worth braving all the bustle now and again.

A small smile tugs at the corner of her mouth at the sight of a profusion of green fronds leaning out from beneath the awning of the stand up ahead. It's bursting with foliage in more shades of green than she knew existed, and chock full of rows of those knobbly little succulents she loves so much. The vendor is a quiet man with a ponytail and a kind face. He merely smiles at her whenever she comes by. He’s one of those strangers who are friends by the shared appreciation of silence. Sometimes words get in the way.

He nods at her in recognition as she ducks into the stand to avoid a loud group of shoppers. Though there are people in there, something about the vendor and the greenery keeps things calm. The tiny forest is an island in the flow of people. It’s nearly on the opposite end of the market from where she started, and it always provides a brief respite where she can recover a little before heading back. Besides, she likes to look over the lacy ferns and trailing philodendrons and all the tiny succulents in every color of the rainbow, even if she already has too many.

She still leaves most of the houseplants to Niki to look after. But to her own surprise, she’s quite good at taking care of the succulents. For the most part, she leaves them somewhere sunny and ignores them. They love it. Sometimes they even treat her to little shiny-papery flowers in brilliant pink or yellow.

Ranks of mini succulents line one of stall’s tables. She’s barely skimming her fingers over the surfaces of a row of flat, stone-like lithops when she sees it. One of the tiny pots is filled with what appear to be little green spheres like peas. Looking closer, they’re round, succulent leaves attached to thin trailing stems. Sprouting from the end of one string of them is a long, spindly stem curving up to a closed flower bud that bobs in the breeze. She’s never seen anything like it.

The man running the stand notices her looking at it. Veera points at the plant and tilts her head in a question. He smiles and extracts a sheet of paper for her from a messy pile half tucked under the cash box. Its a care sheet for Senecio rowleyanus, or string of pearls.

Veera did promise Niki she’d stop bringing home so many succulents. But the plant man’s pressing the little pot of pearls into her hands, waving her wide eyes away with a smile when she reaches for her wallet. This one will have to be an exception. Her small smile and wave of thanks receive another nod in acknowledgement and farewell. Cupping the pot in both hands, she ventures back into the mid-morning river of people to take herself home.

On the way back down the street, the plant cradled against her chest draws smiles from the crowd. They often transfer to her as well. Something about the green thing in her arms softens people’s expressions, even when they see her scars. It makes it easier to walk softly, and to carry her dull ache of residual fear just as gently.

As if struck, she stumbles when she remembers that today, she gets to go home to her two best friends in the entire world. The ache that knowledge calls forth is just as arresting as the kind that comes with the clinging oilslick fear, yet different. This is far stronger and far sweeter, its truth a soft clarity. Veera clutches her plant close to her chest with one hand as she catches her balance on a fruit-covered table with the other. A handful of little oranges roll off as she bumps into it.

Stammering apologies, Veera scrambles to gather up the fallen fruit. A nearby woman browsing the citrus in a purple sweater kneels down to help her. Veera wasn’t planning on buying mandarins, but she can hardly knock them all over the ground and run off. She hopes she has enough cash left. Straightening up, she looks for somewhere to sit the fruit down so she can check her wallet.

But the woman in the sweater holds her hands out for them. She’s already put the ones she picked up in a canvas bag.

“I’ll take them,” she says. “I was gonna buy some anyway.” Her sweater is a few shades bluer than the warm purple of Veera’s own hoodie.

Veera blinks at her. “Are – are you sure?” She holds out one of the mandarins, showing its dented skin, fragrant with released citrus oils.

The woman gives her a small smile. “Yeah. I’ll eat that one first.”

“Oh. Um. Okay.” Veera delicately hands three more mandarins over. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Don’t worry about it.” The woman’s voice is like her smile: small but kind.

Veera whispers her thanks again, then hurries home before she can be waylaid by any more painfully kind gestures from strangers.

***

Veera’s so relieved to walk through her own door into the kitchen that she doesn’t realize someone’s in the living room, not until she hears a soft sob. Her head snaps up. Niki’s on the couch with her face in her hands and Beth next to her with an arm around her. Alarmed, Veera drops her bag on the kitchen counter and begins to make a beeline for her. But she hesitates. She’s used to offering Niki comfort whenever she can, but is she interrupting?

Too late. Beth makes a small sound of surprise when she notices Veera hovering halfway into the room. Niki looks up too, but she wipes her eyes and gives Veera a watery smile. It’s okay.

Niki holds a hand out as Veera makes her way over to the couch. Gladly, Veera takes it. As Veera stands there before the scruffy secondhand sofa in the hazy light from the window, the three of them are briefly an interlinked chain. Beth watches the other two with soft, understanding eyes, her arm steady over Niki’s shoulders.

Niki heaves a shaky sigh. Then she gives Beth’s knee a thankful squeeze and uses Veera’s hand to lever herself up to standing. She briefly embraces Veera, who returns the gesture. “I’m okay,” Niki whispers. Veera nods. Then Niki slips away into the kitchen and starts bustling around, half-seen behind the half-wall that divides it into an alcove off the main room. Presumably, she’s taking a moment to collect herself while unpacking Veera’s groceries. She does that. Niki doesn’t mind if Veera sees her cry – or Beth, apparently. But she always takes a moment alone afterward to put herself back together.

Veera shakes her head to clear away the traces of her second unexpected fright of the morning. In its wake, the empty spot on the couch is too inviting.

She flops onto the cushions next to Beth with a sigh and goes limp. Maybe going to the market was a little too ambitious for today. She’s already had too much excitement this week with Beth visiting, and she hasn’t slept well because of it, which only saps more of her limited energy. Even good things can be so exhausting. She knows she needs to get more rest than most people do, especially when there’s so much happening. But that’s so hard to remember when she knows that this moment is such a rare blessing. Both of her most important people are right here with her right now. It’s so hard to not throw herself completely into every possible joy she can have, in this transcendent sliver of time.

She rolls her head where it rests against the back of the couch to look at Beth sideways. “I got breakfast,” she offers.

“Looks like you wiped yourself out doing it.” Beth leans against the arm of the sofa to look at her. “Morning.” Her own tired eyes twinkle.

Veera smiles. She tries to fix this moment into memory: the wisps of Beth’s unbrushed hair catching the light, the wooden clatter of Niki opening and closing cabinets in the kitchen.

“Are you okay?” Veera asks.

Beth runs a hand through her hair. “Yeah. We were just talking, about,” she waves a hand around, encompassing all the faces in all the photos on the walls, “everything. We’re so different. But some of the stuff, it’s the same. The things we’re all going through. You know?”

Veera does.

The kitchen clatter intensifies as Niki starts moving pots and pans around and clinking them down on the stovetop.

“How many eggs do you want?” Niki calls, voice more steady now. When Veera and Beth come over to investigate, she’s already got a skillet out and is debating with herself whether to start a pot of porridge, too. Veera’s always in favor of porridge no matter what, and Beth’s never had proper Finnish porridge before, so that settles that.

Niki starts scooping the mixed grains into the pan without measuring, like normal. She fills it with an unknown amount of water from the sink with some arcane skill of estimation that Veera has never understood. It always turns out fine. As Beth gets to work slicing some of the fresh fruit, Veera sidles up to Niki and lays a light hand on her arm.

Niki meets her questioning eyes. “I’m okay,” she says again. But she leans into Veera’s touch and stays there. Veera says nothing, just strokes a thumb over Niki’s shoulder and holds the space. Oats and rice swirl in the saucepan as Niki stirs them into the water with a wooden spoon.

“I was talking to her about what happened with Aleks, and mum and dad.” Niki’s voice goes soft, but not hushed. Her words aren’t directed at Beth at the other counter, but they’re not hidden from her, either. “How it made it so hard to trust anyone anymore. Especially Suvi, ‘cause she was there before. And you know how that gets me all... ugh.” She twiddles her wooden spoon in the air. Then she leans even more into Veera, into the arm that curls around her in half an embrace. To think, that Veera is someone who offers such gestures now with hardly a hesitant thought.

“She just gets it, you know?” Niki continues. “Not that you don’t, but it’s different. Like, you understand about how people are always expecting things from you. People see what they wanna see, and only take you seriously if you play along with it. It’s so frustrating. And it’s bullshit! I’ve never met anyone who understands that better than you.” She stirs the porridge again.

“And Beth... she was telling me some about her dad. She knows about having someone close to you just pull the whole rug out from under your world.” Niki pauses her stirring, and looks at Veera. “I’ve always been amazed, how you just landed on your feet and hit the ground running, when you found out. I couldn’t have done that, if I was alone.”

Veera shrugs, incidentally squeezing Niki sideways. “I never was very close with Matti.”

Watching her, Niki’s face falls a little. “I’m glad he didn’t hurt you that way. But I wish... I don’t know. I wish you’d had someone who was there for you, then. Everyone deserves that.”

“Huh.” Veera blinks. “I’d never thought of it that way.”

Arms suddenly wrap tight around her middle, a face tucked into the crook of her neck and shoulders. The handle end of a wooden spoon presses into the muscles between her shoulderblades.

“Niki!” Veera exclaims softly.

“Hey, look.” Her voice is sniffly again. “I’m having a day, okay, let me just –” She holds Veera tight.

“Nikiii,” she cajoles. “I’m fine.” Her eyes flick toward Beth over Niki’s shoulder. Her hand hovers over a peach on the cutting board as she meets her eye. Veera tucks her head down a little, embarrassed. But Beth’s smiling, if also looking a bit watery.

“I know,” Niki says into her shoulder. “I know you’re fine. You’re wonderful. But I’m here, okay? You’re always here for us. But we’re here for you, too.” Niki reaches an arm out blindly toward Beth until her fingers make contact, then gathers her in as if calling in backup. Beth gladly lays down the knife and joins the impromptu embrace next to the stove.

“Um.” Veera automatically relaxes under the extra pressure. It’s nice. But she’s still flustered. And the vociferous burbling of the porridge is getting a little concerning. “I think the porridge is going to boil over.”

Niki releases her with a groan. Veera’s sure she’s rolling her eyes, even though she’s a little too overwhelmed to look at either of them.

“That doesn’t mean you’re getting out of letting us be nice to you,” Niki says as she returns to the stove. Soon, the porridge is placated and eggs sizzle in the skillet, providing a crackling accompaniment.

When the food’s ready, they crowd around the table squeezed into the little kitchen nook below the window as if they do this every day. They pick slices of ripe peach and apricot off a cutting board in the middle. Spoons click in bowls as they do their best not to elbow each other. Stonefruit and cinnamon mix in the air with the light sulfur of fresh eggs and the pervasive aroma of the basil in the windowbox.

After a languid breakfast and a long morning spent simply enjoying each other’s company, the cloud cover is well on its way to burning off. The three head out to the nearby park, determined to make the most of the sun while the two Finns show off the splendor of the Helsinki summer to Beth. They pack up the fresh bread and cheese and the rest of the fruit for a picnic later.

Veera’s companions’ eyes are bright and animated as they leave behind the crisscrossing tracks of the train station and step into the shelter of the park’s old trees. Boughs bend and leaves whisper lazily in the light wind breathing over the bay. Veera follows them. With the hood of her jacket pulled down, the cool and verdant breeze caresses her short hair. Shade and sunlight dapple the grass between the footpaths and spatter the old blanket that they throw over the green, the one that usually lives on the couch that Beth’s currently taken over. They’re exposed to the open sky and anything else that might wander the earth with them. But branches lace and lattice across the blue, and the handful of other park-goers are too immersed in their own summer reverie to pay them any mind.

It’s surreal, almost. Niki basks like a lizard, looking like she needs nothing else in the world to keep her happy. Beth keeps running over to stick her toes in the salt water of the little bay. She takes every deliberate step into grass and gravel as if both she and the world are fresh and new. Peace settles into Veera’s bones. She spends half her time watching the others while reading an old fantasy novel in the shade. The other half, she looks upon the scene as if watching herself, absolutely bewildered by the way she both sees and cannot see the pain that still lives in the three of them, even as she still feels the scores it left trailing across her heart.

It's a long and lazy afternoon in the best understated way. By the time they return home sunwarmed, though, Veera’s starting to feel the effects of having been out all day doing too many things. Her skull is beginning to ache. But it’s familiar and cool and quiet here. She can rest.

Once they unpack the remains of their picnic, Niki makes good on her earlier threat of not letting Veera get out of being fussed over. She chivvies the other two into the living room and onto the couch. To Veera’s mild bemusement, Niki sits next to her, across from Beth, looking far too pleased with herself.

Then Niki pulls all three of them into a cuddle pile with Veera caught in the middle.

Veera lets out a little squeak of surprise as she’s smothered in limbs and warm laughter. Beth’s only too happy to help Niki tag-team her, the traitor. She squeezes Beth’s wrist in retaliation, but all that gets her is Beth slipping out of her grip just enough to tangle her fingers with her own.

With a little shuffling, Veera ends up with Niki pressed comfortably up against her side leaning her head on Veera’s shoulder. Niki also tucks an arm around her, as natural and necessary as breathing. Curled up against her other side, Beth backstops her. She lets Niki play with the ends of her long dark hair with the hand that reaches around Veera’s shoulders. Beth’s still holding onto Veera’s hand, steady like she’s never planning on letting go. The intense late afternoon light slants into the room, sending stars refracting off of the glass bottles on the sill that trail green-leaved vine cuttings.

Veera doesn’t know that she’s ever been as happy as she is right now. She watches herself in half-believing wonder, then stops. She breathes. She feels the others’ breathing like her own. She reminds herself to just be here, just exist.

But the restlessness that she awoke with doesn’t cease, even now with the two presences she treasures most on either side of her, tucked almost as close to her body as they are to her heart. It still aches and whispers in her ear with a soft insistence. Something about the fragile intensity of this moment calls to that unknown quantity like its own.

This little apartment on the edge of the city was never meant to be more than just enough for her and Niki to carve a safe space out of a terrifying world. And it has been that. But then there was more. There were the herbs keeping the kitchen and the succulents dotting the shelves. There were the colors covering the floor in rugs and memories covering the walls in photos. There was ample quiet to replace chill silence, and the fullness of kind words spoken like truth. There were pancakes. There was sunshine. There was Jade and Justyna and Janika and Sofia and Sarah and Helena and Katja and Aryanna and Danielle and Alison and Cosima and Jennifer and Tony and Femke and Fay and Krystal; and there was Beth, and there was Niki, and there was her.

Perhaps that’s the strangeness that keeps plucking at her mind. Not only have her situation and surroundings strayed so far from what her life used to be, but she herself is someone different now. She emerged changed out the other side of the two fires that consumed her entire life. Maybe the flames were bookends. She doesnt remember anything from before the first, and the space between them was long and lonely. The person she became during that in-between time is still fused into her foundations.

And yet, so much of the structure of her self has shifted. New parts of her unfurl daily. Being within her own body feels both utterly familiar and completely new. She can look back at the strange girl she once was and still recognize parts of her as the strange woman she is now. Now, she’s someone who gets called Veera with a voice full of love and Mika with sense of wonder and Leda with mild curiosity, and they are all her.

The unexpectedness of being given so many names still leaves her bemused. There’s a surprising intimacy to them, the way people speak them like they’re describing the shape of her in so many other lives. She’s unaccustomed to it. As difficult as people can be, what she has now is... good. When she thinks on it too hard, it makes her ribs feel like they’re closing in on her heart even while her lungs expand to take in the whole sky in an single endless exhilarated breath.

She’s thinking about it now. It’s not just a thought. It’s a longing and a fulfilling, an ache and a balm, a memory and a future, a call and response. It becomes all of her in this moment, and she shivers with its intensity. The shiver ripples into the bodies nestled on either side of her. Only a few years ago, she could never have imagined being so close, or wanting to. Sometimes it’s still too much, even with Niki – even with both of them, now, who are both so inexplicably easy to be around. The companionable solitude bathes her soul like the green breathing of a forest in eternal spring. She thinks about the unlikeliness, the flouted impossibility of it all. The feeling that it calls into bloom from her seed of a heart is almost too much.

“Veera?” Niki turns to face her in response to the shiver, her golden head catching and holding the gilded afternoon light.

“You alright, Veer?” She blinks at the new sound of the new name spoken in Beth’s softest-leather voice. It fits, too.

Veera inhales to speak, but words evade articulation. She releases the breath again to its own wordless purposes. The hand that’s been interlaced with hers squeezes gently as Beth makes a little questioning sound like a cat and shifts the comfortable weight of her knees in Veera’s lap. On Veera’s other side, Niki leans even further into her than she has been and rests her chin on Veera’s shoulder.

The press of their affection and concern envelop her in dearest aching, and it’s so much. She wants to stay right where she is. But she’s hardly slept for the past two nights and she’s tired and aching from overextending herself and her words have left her again. The immensity of feeling blooming inside her on top of everything else is just too much. She won’t be able to stay like this much longer. She needs to be by herself, to quietly sort through the backlog of everything she’s experiencing that’s stacking up faster than she can process it.

First, though, she needs them to know how much this means to her. Her ears pick up every breath and brush of smallest movement, and her world is filled with little strokes of sound that fall across her skin and hum in her chest as if painted there. They’re closer and dearer to her than anyone has ever been. Veera lifts Beth’s hand with her own and sweeps Niki’s hand into her grasp as well. Then, she presses both of them hard against her heartbeat. She bends her head down and locks her arms over her own chest to hold them there. No sound escapes her except a minute whimper.

Wordless murmurs and small shufflings to stay close tell her that they understand what she can’t say right now, and tell it back to her twofold. She sniffles a little, then begins to untangle herself without yet letting go. She doesn’t want to leave. But if she doesn’t, the waves of overwhelm that currently shove at her will become a tide that pulls her under and leaves her head pounding.

Niki’s voice, low. “You getting overloaded?”

Veera nods.

“Okay,” she says gently. “Go wind down. We won’t be loud.” Niki’s always been so understanding, right from the very first moment she’d shared her strangeness. Secret for a secret, she’d said, guarding Veera’s like her own and holding her trust like a treasure.

“Take care, Mika,” Beth says, mimicking Niki’s tone. Beth’s never been here here for this before. But Veera has texted with her at length numerous times in the past, when she can’t bear conversation out loud but still wants company. Veera can still hardly believe that Beth’s really here, proving herself as compassionate through soft sounds and touches as through a keyboard. “Don’t worry,” she adds as Veera still hesitates to let go. “We’ll be here later.”

Veera breathes out and nods again. She manages to stand, still holding one hand in each of hers. She squeezes them one more time, one after the other. Then she picks her way around the blue-and-brown mess of clothes spilling out of Beth’s suitcase onto the living room floor and steps softly into her own room. She closes the door.

With the blinds half shuttered against the afternoon light coming through the west-facing window, it’s cooler, dimmer, quieter than the main room. Veera likes it that way. She needs its restful seclusion as much as she needs the sun-glazed warmth of the rest of the place. Filled with muted purples and greens, there’s no dizzying array of photographs here. The only picture on the walls is a large cream and gray poster of a detailed sketch of the moon with all its craters arcing over its surface. Stubby succulents dot the heavily book-laden shelf and her cluttered desk in front of the window. They sort of glitter in the sunlight. The beams catch the water stored in the overlarge cells of their chunky little leaves, brightening their soothing shades of green, grey, dusty lavender, and mauve.

Nerves spangling, she changes out of her jeans into something softer without looking at what she’s doing. Sometimes, even just looking at things gets to be too tiring. Her hands know exactly where she keeps everything stashed in her dresser drawer, and her fingers are familiar with the texture of nearly every piece of clothing she owns. She doesn’t need to see them to tell them apart.

Veera sinks into the soft give of the comforter spread over her bed with a sigh. When she pulls the weighted blanket at the foot of it over herself with the rain-like rustle of plastic beans in its quilted pockets, it wraps her in gentle even pressure from above and below. The heaviness of it flattens out the frayed edges of her nerves. Laid out flat on her back with her arms floating loosely on either side and her elbows bent upward, the blanket covers everything except her face and hands.

As the creeping tension begins to trickle away, another sigh escapes her lungs. It’s a slow process. With how large her emotions are now, and with all the excitement and exhaustion of the past three days, it will take a few hours to wear down the worst of it. The tightness of her shoulders and the pinched feeling in her neck will fade. But they won’t completely disappear for a day or so – and that’s if she does nothing but rest her body and mind. The strain is mental as much as it is physical. Her brain just does what brains normally do, only sometimes slower and sometimes faster, and getting there via unorthodox roads. When rushed, the process only gets backed up, the road blocked, the paths tangled. Pushing it is like trying to run with a twisted ankle. It only makes it worse.

At times like this, it’s even easier than usual for the world to turn into sandpaper on her soul and senses. Overexposure to the riptide of existence all around rubs her nerves raw, living faster than she can think and burning brighter than she can bear. Sounds become ocean waves with weight behind them and lights fill her eyes with their intense brilliance. Gentle touches catch her skin like fire, while firm pressure forms a gravity well that could either pull her into a stable orbit or sling her satellite round reeling. It’s so easy for her to get overwhelmed by pain and pleasure alike. The line between them is faint and fluid.

To some degree, that vibrant intensity was always going to be part and parcel of the way she experiences the world. She was always going to be strange. Maybe if she hadn’t been put through two fires, it wouldn’t be quite so overwhelming quite so often. Probably. But she doesn’t know where the scars end and the inherent self begins, because they’re the same now. Whatever the cause, the person she is now is someone subject to both exquisite sharpness and terrible softness, captivated by so many infinitesimal pangs of ache and grace. It’s a lion’s share of pain and wonder across a lamb’s shoulders.

She wouldn’t change it, if she could. She didn’t choose it, but it’s hers. It’s her. It’s given her an unprecedented ability to be gentle in just the right ways with the people who need it most. That comes in handy considering how many traumatized Ledas she works with. Besides, she’s found all sorts of unusual yet efficient ways to do what she needs to do, because the normal ways don’t work for her. Sometimes that results in really neat new things, like the advanced cyber-security system she personally designed for CYGNet. It hasn’t been beaten yet, and if her constant updates have anything to say about it, it never will. If she ever gets tired of co-running the organization with their board of Ledas, she could always actually go into the tech field.

Right now, ever leaving CYGNet seems such a remote possibility. After a couple years of a reduced workload so she could actually finish school and take a few courses in database management to supplement her work, she’s finally returned in her full capacity. It feels good. Between her responsibilities managing the sheer volume of information DYAD had surrendered to them and protecting both it and their secure communication network, she has plenty to keep her mind busy and satisfied.

Now that Sofia and Aryanna take care of most of the administrative work, things run a lot smoother, too. Sofia’s steadied into tenacious steadfastness as her confidence grows, and she’s got a level head and a killer knack for budgets. Aryanna’s a great project manager and she’s got plenty enough charisma to handle the public-facing parts of CYGNet that Niki used to wrangle.

Niki’s stepped back a lot from CYGNet since Veera came back full time. She’d only been involved out of circumstance and necessity in the first place. For years, Niki had been the smiling face of Leda to the world, giving their story the life it needed to be told. Veera doesn’t know how she’d ever have done any of it without her. But really, all Niki wanted was a quiet life with the people she loved. So now that things were steadier and the world’s scrutiny had moved on, she was taking more time for herself. She worked part-time in a cat café downtown a few blocks away from the park, went on dates with Suvi around the city, and came home smiling to Veera and their little apartment.

Niki seems softer these days, happier. It’s like she’s settled into her natural gentleness, rather than defiantly clinging to it like a lifeline after the fire tried to burn it out of her. Her recovery is a thing of beauty. Sometimes Veera is stricken into stillness at the sound of Niki humming to herself in the next room, or at the sight of her smiling to herself while reading in a patch of sunlight, her legs stretched out on the couch. Sometimes, the memory of almost losing her so soon after finding her four years ago floats forth, casting Veera’s current joy in a sickly shade.

But they’ve talked through that fear they both have, many times. They’re both here, alive. They both care too much about the closeness they’ve created to ever choose to be too far apart. Anything else that might separate them will just be the ebb and flow of life, and that’s always true for everyone. Veera tries not to worry about it too much. She’s lucky to have Niki in her life. And these days, Veera’s gotten better at believing her when she says she wants to stay.

She finds her mind going unfocused, her body gone heavy like she needs a nap. It’s been an eventful day. Veera curls up on her side under the blanket, burying the rough texture of her scarred cheek in the softness of her pillow. To see her now, anyone might assume she was one of the others, marked only invisibly. Instead, a chapter of her story is written all down the right side of her body in curlicues of too-light ridges and and too-dark indentations, dappled from face to elbow to ankle. People don’t always read past that page to reach the rest of her. Much of the time, she still can’t, either. But at least there is another chapter now. It’s right here where she’s living in this strange new moment.

Her already heavy limbs go slack. Thoughts shift and sift and slip over each other half-defined. Maybe there will be more chapters she can’t even imagine yet, even better than this half-healed, aching glory.

***

When she wakes once again, Veera finds evening falling in its long, slow descent. It’s late. The sky glows with that particular kind of soft, omnipresent golden glow that only comes with the midnight sun at the height of summer. Niki and Beth have probably gone to bed already. They’re both early risers, and Beth is adjusting relatively well to her jetlag. As usual, the evening belongs to Veera.

Evening here is a half-seen time, gilded in twilight in the summers and shrouded in restful darkness throughout the long winter. Her eyes get a reprieve from the sharp definition of day among the soft placement of shadows. Even in winter, she rarely turns on the lights. Navigating the familiar space is easy by the sound of her feet on thin carpet and linoleum, by the brush of her fingertips on the matte whitewashed walls. She’s usually the only one awake.  Even when Niki wakes up with bad dreams and seeks her out for comfort, they don’t talk much. Voices are kept low. Most of the time, it’s a space for her to be alone with her thoughts, turning them over and laying her experience of the day to rest before she sleeps.

Cautiously, in case Beth’s asleep in the living room, Veera pries her door open so it doesn’t clunk in its uneven frame. Sure enough, Beth’s curled up in her nest of blankets on the couch. Niki’s bedroom door is ajar, and through it she can just catch the barely-heard sounds of an occupied room, the imperceptible breath or rustle of presence simply felt. It’s the difference between quiet and silence. It's subtle, but worlds away from the dullness that permeates an empty space. Having grown up roaming two floors of dim, silent rooms with only the click of the keyboard from ‘uncle’ Matti’s office for company, Veera is endlessly familiar with that emptiness. This is something else: a living seed hidden under the soil; a flower that’s closed its petals for the night.

Pulling the hood of her well-loved purple hoodie up to shield her ears from the mechanical hum of the fridge, she slips out of her room and heads into the kitchen. Things are less sharp now, but she's still unusually sensitive, especially her ears. Retrieving a tall glass of room temperature water and a tin of chicken soup tipped into a bowl takes only a minute. She doesn’t heat it. The quiet is worth more to her than the warmth, in this comfortable stillness. She retreats to her room with the bowl clutched in her hands and curls up at the foot of her bed for a quiet dinner.

She’s far more relaxed and grounded now than she was earlier. But, checking the clock, she’s just woken up from one of her exhausted five-hour recovery naps. She’s too awake, if in a mild and focused sort of way, to go to sleep like she normally would around now.

Well. Though she’s mostly taking the time Beth’s here off from CYGNet work, she has been checking once a day just to make sure nothing critical or time-sensitive has come up. She hasn’t done that yet today because she was absolutely and completely passed out and dead to the world for half of it, so she might as well get that done now.

She cracks her door partly open so that the presences of the others can better keep her company at a distance. Then she boots up her computer and dials down the display to a dim setting in the endless dusk.

Everything looks fairly normal. There’s nothing of note in the security reports, just the usual bots automatically blocked. Other than that, there’s only two messages in her inbox that have been flagged for immediate attention by her custom filters.

The first is a notice of identity confirmation for Jennifer Fitzsimmons in the States. She filed a request not long ago for all her information retrieved from DYAD to be destroyed. It’s one of the solutions they originally came up with to make sure CYGNet didn’t just replace DYAD as a repository of excruciating detail. The whole point of the organization was to help them all reclaim the autonomy that had been stolen from them. That meant making sure every Leda had full control over their own records. CYGNet couldn’t do much for those who didn’t contact them except seal and guard their data in case they wanted it someday, which Veera did dutifully. But they could make sure that anyone who heard about the organization knew they had the option to cut that unauthorized tie.

Veera was surprised how few chose to do so - only 34 of the 113 Ledas in contact with CYGNet. Many seemed to simply consider it a comprehensive if unnervingly detailed medical history that they could refer to for their own use. Others, like herself, saw the data as a window into otherwise lost parts of their lives. After she’d decidedly parted ways with Matti, she had no one to tell her anything about the times she was too young to remember. Still others, like Beth, wanted nothing to do with their records, but chose to preserve them as proof of their ordeals.

On the other hand, a minority including Jennifer had made contact for the exclusive purpose of requesting their data be destroyed and didn’t seek any engagement with it. CYGNet verified their identities to make sure the files in question pertained to the one who was actually making the request. But they made a point of doing the verification by traditional means. They’d all had enough of blood tests and lab rats.

It was more common for people to decide to delete their data after actually accessing some of their records, the way Niki did. After confirming the identities of her monitors, she’d wanted nothing to do with any of it. She said all it did was hurt. She’d already experienced enough of the sharpness of betrayal without knowing the prickly details of every last lie. Her DYAD records were the first ones they erased. Veera deleted the digital files, and Niki burned the hard copies herself, her smile strangely grim yet satisfied as she set them alight with shaking hands. She seemed lighter, after, and less wary of the warmth of flames.

Veera spends a few minutes completing the second half of double-authorizations for Jennifer’s digital and physical record destruction (permanent removal needed confirmation from two board members) before initiating file deletion. She watches the progress bar creep toward 100% while sending the requisite forms off to Danielle in record storage. She’ll put the hard copies in the incinerator. Set to its lowest volume, Veera’s computer gives a small congratulatory bloop as Jennifer’s digital data disappears for good.

Finally, the only other thing that needs her attention is a request for the general Leda health packet from a new sender, dundorsetsilver@webmail.com. Piquing Veera’s curiosity, it specifically asks after the packet’s chapter on the autism spectrum and common comorbids, even though the sender “would hardly deem it necessary, but my new psychiatrist wants to be thorough.”

As she delves further into the odd letter, it hurts a little to read. It’s laced through with the kind of disdainfully certain air of superiority that reveals just how deeply someone has internalized the cruel views that the world holds of certain ways of being. Veera’s found that this attitude is particularly common in people who actually are on the spectrum, but have been taught since before memory, consciously or unconsciously, to suppress every natural expression of their own differences from the norm. They’re more likely to notice and disparage any deviations in others, specifically because they’ve spent so long trying to disavow their own. They’ve gone so long unsupported, learning to see support only as a weakness instead of as a natural and too-often-denied necessity.

It’s heartbreaking, because Veera’s recognized so many of her own eccentricities in so many of the others, and hardly any of them know what it probably means. She sees it again and again, over CYGNet video conferences and at the occasional Leda meet-ups. Cosima’s hands dance while she talks in much the same way that her own flutter when she’s nervous. Tony’s always blasting his music like his life depends on it, and as far as sensory regulation is concerned, it probably does. Rachel deliberately tilts her head in just such a way that Veera can tell she’s masking, trying to remain poised while she takes an extra moment to process and adapt to a situation.

It’s not that surprising, really, since they all share the same genetics. Most people don’t notice, though, because they only know the broadest and most inaccurate stereotypes. That’s why Veera had insisted on adding the neurodiversity chapter to the health packet.

Veera lightly skims her fingers back and forth over the keyboard without pressing down, thinking. The clicks of the barely jostled keys clatter out a tiny rhythm. Normally, they’d want new contacts to establish a secure CYGNet account. This email’s tone and its throwaway address, though, suggests that it’s either from someone who either isn’t comfortable making contact, or who is struggling too hard with internalized shame to ask for help without doing so anonymously.

It’s an easy decision. Veera attaches the health packet PDF to her reply and sends it along with just a few words of her own.

 Hey,

 Here’s the health packet, including the neurodiversity chapter. Whether or not any of it applies to you, I hope it helps you find your way closer to yourself. We’ve all got a long way to go if we’re going to build lives we can call our own.

Veera’s fingers hover over the keys. She wants to somehow tell whoever this is that it’s okay. It’s okay to wonder, to look into their own strangeness, to perhaps embrace it. But they’re probably not ready to hear it.

 If looking into neurodivergence ends up being a path you need to walk to do that, you’re not alone. I’m here, and so are a lot of the others. You know where to find us.

She signs off as merely MK, hoping that whoever it is might feel more comfortable with another semblance of anonymity. That’s all she can do, and for herself, that’s enough.

All at once, weariness weighs her down. Synthesizing such a delicate appropriate response takes so much effort. She’s gotten better at it, especially when she has time to compose and distill her thoughts. But such nuances don’t come naturally to her. She sags, shoulders loose. Though the light is still golden, it’s actually past midnight now. She hadn’t realized how long she spent trying to craft her words into the right shape. She folds her laptop away and sits on the end of her bed, opening the blinds to stare at the glowing amber of the summer night sky.

Now that her senses are less flooded than they were this afternoon, they itch in the way that means they’re craving some kind of input to regulate them, to calibrate her back into balance. Her vast collection of shared music is her go-to for that. There’s really nothing for it quite like becoming a song for a little while. It lets a steady measured flow of clean water smooth down the troubled riverbed of her nerves, torn up by the passing of the flood.

With her headphones on, she’s bathed in a swell of sound that washes over her like the cool sea on a warm day and just as refreshing. Her widely varied tastes change from hour to hour and minute to minute, but she always comes back to metal. The density and intensity of it literally drown out everything else with that single symphony of sensation. Now, she sways to its current in much the same way she wanted to at the market earlier – was that just this morning? Except now she can because she’s alone, and the only people near are the ones she trusts most. She lets herself dance in it, soothingly rock herself back and forth within its waves, shake out her hands along its endless ripples. She forgets the passage of time for awhile, existing only in the sound and the single present moment.

She emerges from her reverie far more relaxed and substantially more grounded. Setting the headphones aside and stretching her spine out along the bedspread, her limbs have gone soft and slow. Even with her long nap earlier, her overload was exhausting enough that she can probably manage to sleep again til morning. The thought is barely formed before she’s already drifting off.

***

She knows what’s different, when she wakes in soul-deep stillness. Lingering tendrils of vague golden-glazed dreams might just be yesterday’s memories. They retract from her consciousness like opening petals, only to birth her into that same sunlight. She can see the brightness without even opening her eyes, warmth flooding into her room through the door she’s left open.

It’s not just that she’s different now; it’s that she’s actually okay, sort of. And even after years, she’s also clearly not. And somehow... it’s enough.

The truth of it holds her in stillness for a nascent moment, like gentle hands around the wings of a bird about to be released into the sky. Then her eyes open to a room washed in brightness. Her neck and shoulders still ache, but her sight is sharp and clear. The bedroom is the same it’s been for years now, furnished simply, with a mess of cords spilling over her desk to the power strip and the too many favorite books crowding the shelves. But she can see it now, the way it’s filled with life in a way that these traces only barely begin to show. It’s not alive because she moves things around and grows plants in it now. She grows plants in it because she is vulnerably, tenaciously, heart-breakingly alive. She is what is filling the space.

Her life is now full of joy in ways she once could never have imagined. Her happiness feels strange because she is not used to it. She is healing, but she is also just beginning to understand the shape and nature of the scars on her heart and mind. They are just as deep and real as the ones on her skin. They may never truly leave her, and she has made peace with that. But that has done absolutely nothing to stop beauty from seeding her life and springing from every fracture like grass from cracks in concrete.

The restless discomfort that’s been plaguing her has been nothing more than her own hesitance, holding back from fully inhabiting this current joy. Some part of her must still believe that it’s undeserved, or that it’s impossible until she is completely okay.

But it’s not. It’s right here and already making itself hers, as broken and whole as she is. She’s been looking at every new leaf wondering if she’s allowed to love it, even while it’s sinking roots into her life and breathing life into the air.

Few people like her get the opportunities she has; to heal, to help, to grow. She’s already trying so hard to give back as many of those chances as possible, even if it's just to the handful of Ledas she’s been able to help. But that doesn’t change the fact that these opportunities are hers; and yet she’s still half holding back.

She could take them. Not from anyone, but for all of them – and for herself. She could choose it in the unknown names of all her people who have been so lost and alone and longing, the ones who never will be found and the ones who are still hoping. She could believe for all of them that she deserves the joy right in front of her. Maybe this whole time she’s been trying to help the others, she’s been trying to heal herself.

It's a terrifying prospect. But maybe doing right by people like her means doing right by her self, too. Maybe it’s as simple, as impossibly hard, as just letting herself be where she is.

With a shock that catches her breath, she realizes that she’s already made her choice. Somewhere deep inside, something has already shifted like a flower turning toward the sun. She has changed.

It’s never going to be easy. She is going to be healing for the rest of her life. Not to mention, she’ll have to do it in a world where she knows all to well that people are often cruel. But there are also people it’s easy to be around. People like her, and unlike her, but kind people, understanding people, even strangers like the plant vendor at the market and the woman with the oranges. Perhaps she needs to mourn the fact that it took her so long to find any. But now... oh, now.

She tumbles out of bed in yesterday’s clothes. She makes her way out of the room past the crusty soup bowl that she left on her desk last night. Brushing past the great glossy leaves of the swiss cheese plant like a forest creature through the undergrowth, she steps into the central room that’s blazing with light and color and life.

As she enters the kitchen, she ignores the twin cries of greeting from the stove. She casts about for her new little pearls plant. Looking around, she spies it in the kitchen window half hidden under the canopy of the basil. She marches right up to it and into the vault of sunlight streaming in.

One by one, each round little bead of a leaf leads up to the stem holding its spindly floating flower - and it's actually a compound flowerhead. It’s opened up several miniscule pinkish-white flowerets with five pointed petals each. They’re giving off the most incredible, intense smell that fills that whole corner of the kitchen and seems like it couldn’t possibly be produced by something so tiny. Her hands flutter near her shoulders in absolute delight. As she breathes in, the little flower’s fragrance mixes with the pungent aroma of the herbs growing next to it. She drinks it all in deeply, breathes in the smell until it fills her lungs. Sometimes she feels as if she could survive on the richness of such things alone, like a hummingbird subsisting on nothing but nectar.

Nonsense. Her world is so much larger than she ever thought it could be, and she wants it, chooses it. Unlatching the window, she flings the shutters open wide to the trees just outside dancing in a kaleidoscope of green and brown and gold and the sunny city beyond and the blue sky above. The summer breeze that rushes in ruffles her messy hair with a wonderful effervescent sensation.

She laughs out loud, then turns around and practically throws herself at Niki and Beth with arms outspread. She seizes them both in a messy hug that somehow manages to include that wooden spoon again. Veera still laughs, and she feels tears on her cheeks, too.

“Whoa! Hey, girl.”

“Oh, shit! Hi Mika.”

“Hey, Veera, are you okay?”

No. Yes. Always. Never. She finds herself crying harder than she’s ever cried in her life. But she’s still smiling, steeped in a deeper kind of joy and certainty than she’s ever felt before. Someone threads their fingers through her hair and strokes her head until the tide turns and sets her free. And then, still, she is held.

None of this will last. Nothing does. There is more elation and agony and monotony and uncertainty and wonder up ahead. And yet, they’re still here, and she’s beyond grateful. She’s never stopped being here. Maybe this really is exactly where she needs to be. Maybe all she needs to do is tell the garden of her heart that it doesn’t have to stop growing.

When she can, Veera breathes in deeply, her ribs pressing against the arms circling her. She feels the way her exhale blusters soft and warm in the small space between her face and the shoulders she leans it into. The yielding soft pressure of the embrace engraves itself into the very bones of her arms, and she will never ever be able to forget the ache of it and will never want to.

Fuck the fires – this is what’s real now. She wants this to be what makes her who she is. This dance of joy in strangeness can be the story she makes of the rest of her life. All she needs to do is remember her choice, and make it, again and again and again.

“Hey, there, hey... there you are,” Beth murmurs. “You’re here. I’m here. We’re here.”

She is; they are.

They are.