#harassment for broaching the same subject matter

[ladiablesse]

hm :///

[heartshapedcreaturefromcriptoon]

Person clogging the tags: "I need more people to see this ..."

The This: "I'm WORRIED about Hazbin Hotel!"

Me: *laughs in 'I Survived The Star vs. The Forces of Evil Fandom' and shames the self admitted "click baity" commentator for being yet another grown adult male bullshit artist with a youtube partner checkmark who loves mixing their viviziepop commentary with clips of unrelated kids shows and Marvel and comparing Hazbin to Steven Universe, while he whines about the voice actors changing and Millie, because I know the REAL problem with this fandom is that much like Star vs. , it's essentially already been bronified and taken over by gamer incels who talk about cartoons too much and to the point where they're the only ones talking about Medrano's work, aside from like, one actually queer male Disney Adult who's honestly equally boring to listen to and distractingly just looks like Gay!Rob Walker, so like, any other video trying to talk about the *actual external issues* this fandom is facing, like the minors invading what is supposed to be ideally an adult space, harassment, death threats, and sui bait and bullying, gets boggled down by the fact that the majority of these videos that try to broach these subjects are being made by these disconcertingly right leaning creepy men who use all these random shooting games modded to have Hazbin and Helluva characters killing each other as a backdrop to these videos at worst, and at best they have a bunch of Disney Cars and Marvel clips at the beginning of their video while they sit there, surrounded by a bunch of Star Wars or some shit, and maybe some of us are just Adult Queer Femmes, trying to make Adult Spaces for ourselves outside what is ultimately a failed attempt at having what was supposed to be an "Adult Fandom"... But we still want to share our joys about Hazbin and Helluva with our adult queer/femme friends outside the fandom but we can't do that because any space to share any information about Hazbin and Helluva as projects or explain the controversy surrounding them, are just overrun with a bunch of chuddy click bait geeks who don't know what they're talking about and don't even know well enough not to use the dollar sign when they' try to trash Kesha for being a supposedly shitty voice actress because they have no personality outside of "critiquing' children's cartoons on their shitty YouTube channels and blogs and mixing all that in with Medrano's work like it's the same, to the point where some of you can't even handle swearing or being called pet names like "honey" even when you're a girl and it's by another girl, and so maybe some other adult queer femmes are just embarrassed to be around y'all and are just here for Medrano's art that y'all steal for your shitty blogs and monetized youtube channels instead of just making or using your own every time some new "content" comes out, and maybe some of us don't wanna be sharing your shitty "vivziepop drama explained" youtube videos with your shitty gamer shooter backdrop around in an 18+ adult space full of hot queer people who actually fuck, because maybe some of us are embarrassed about your cringe arses being the loudest voices "representing" the fandom and the environment you've created and vibe you've created in it, and for anyone on the outside looking in, for that matter, and maybe the problem isn't actually Medrano, but the "fandom" that thrives and makes money and gets notes off of feeding off of her "dramas" and nothing else, and maybe, this is the only REAL PROBLEM we have here that just wouldn't exist if we had more ADULT Queer and Femme people honestly covering Medrano's history and her work, instead of, whatever the fuck it is we have now... And maybe some of you need a motherfucking woman to tell you that.*

[trueshellz]

@regs09

I hope this is okay! I tried to show her as helpful as possible but a little sparky too. They're not all the same length but I tried to use different scenarios too.

Kuroo

The first time he saw you, you were surrounded by 2nd years pestering you for your phone number and he truly felt sorry for those guys. You couldn’t have had a bigger ‘fuck off’ face even if you tried. As he walked over, he was getting ready to set them straight when he overheard you.

“If you don’t get away from me in the next 10 seconds, I will rearrange your face.”

He’d never seen boys run away apologising so fast in his life, his signature laugh being heard by everyone, even Kenma gave him a WTF look as they walked together down the corridor.

“Oya? You seemed to have put them right in their place.”

Still annoyed at the situation, you whirled around and glared at him, hands placed on your hips. You knew Kuroo Tetsuro, everyone knew Kuroo Tetsuro. Third year, Nekoma volleyball captain, signature smile and absolute flirt.

“You wanna go as well, pretty boy?” You huffed as he held his hands up in mock surrender, grin wide across his face.

“Woah there, sparky. I was coming over to help you.”

Hiking your bag up your shoulder, you purposely walked between him and Kenma. “I didn’t need your help.”

The second time he saw you, he was grabbing a book from the library and he saw you sat with one of the 1st year girls. Exam week was around the corner so the library was busier than usual, he could see some of his teammates in the back too, knowing full well if they failed exams they could be pulled from the upcoming games.

He could see the girl was stressed out from the way she was flailing her arms, her face red as she pointed at her books. He saw you smile as you leaned over, pointing to something before taking out a mini whiteboard and pen from you bag. You giggled as she held her arms up in the air, she must have got the answer right. He was momentarily stunned by your change in demeanor and he could feel himself smile as you clapped for your student.

When you were dating, Kuroo was more than aware of how people perceived you. He had the same issue to some extent, being perceived as a harsh captain with a scheming personality meant some students were often scared to approach him. But when you were alone, you would often curl up to him on the sofa and often acted cute in front of him especially when he came home after a game to help cheer him up. Packing bento boxes for his lunches with cute cut out fruit and animal shaped onigiri and leaving cute notes in his bags and books.

You would always come near the end of Nekoma practice matches with drinks or healthy snacks for his team, who loved you for this reason. Yamamoto more so than the rest, a huge flirt who tried to hug attack you every time only to get yelled at by your boyfriend and given clean up duties as punishment.

"Tetsu, he just wants a hug."

He mock pouted as he looked at you, his lip stuck out almost comically. "Those hugs are mine, he can't have any."

The manager and you got along well too, you would help them by sweeping up after the boys or tidying away the equipment. A few times you helped Lev out when he tore his uniform falling over or tripping on his long legs as he got used to playing volleyball. He would feel so bad too, looking at you like a lost puppy as you sewed up his hem or patched a hole he had in his shorts or t shirt. The one time he managed to rip the stitching of his t shirt up to his arm pit when he skidded across the floor trying to save the ball. Needless to say, it didn't end well and you were glad you had taken to carrying a sewing kit with you when you went to watch them practice.

"I'm so sorry!"

"It's fine, Lev. Don't worry about it."

Kuroo knew the saying: Don't judge a book by it's cover, but he didn't realise how true it was until he met you. He could have missed out on one of the best people in his life.

Bokuto

Bokuto was known for having a cheery outlook on life, yes he had his emo moments but it took a lot to get him down generally. But you always baffled him, whenever he saw you it seemed as though you were angry or annoyed. In class, no matter the task or who you worked with, you looked fed up. After school when you were walking home, you seemed frustrated. At lunchtime, you sat with friends but you seemed like you'd had enough. You were a conundrum to him.

After school one day, he was walking towards the local shop to grab some snacks and he saw you crouching on the ground, your face was a mixture of awe and sadness as you looked at a box on the ground. As he neared you, he could hear small whines and the scratching against the box and when he peered over your shoulder he could see some puppies in the box.

"Someone left them here alone?"

You jumped as you heard his voice, looking up to see him standing over you, he had his bag slung on his shoulder and was still dressed in his volleyball gear. You'd seen him around school, he sat on the opposite side of the classroom to you so you never worked together. You knew he was the captain of the school's volleyball team but didn't know much else about him.

"Yeah, it's so cruel. They're only babies too."

And that was how you two became started friends and eventually dating, bonding over your love for animals and disdain for the situation. He accompanied you to the local animal shelter where you dropped the puppies off, not being able to take them home. He was enthralled by your change in demeanor, you would always smile at him and act a lot more animated. You would help Akaashi get him out of his funk when he had a bad day or one of his moves didn't go to plan. He had taken to buying you the famous octopus plushie too and would use it to gauge your mood, you found it hilarious. If you were sad or angry, he would come bearing snacks or gifts and if you were happy, he knew he was able to hug attack you and smother you in kisses.

Attending every game, you would always dress in his team number and cheer the loudest for him. After school, you would help him unwind, either spending time giving him a massage or just cuddling on the sofa together. You would lay on him, arms and legs intertwined as you watched television or playing with hair as his head was in your lap. Even going as far to sometimes climb into the front of his hoodie so you would be skin to skin with him. You loved the feel of his heartbeat against your ears and his breathing would calm you. You spent more time in his lap, head buried in his neck than sat alone as you lived feeling his body heat against you. Thankfully, Koutaro didn't mind, he loved the attention and having you close to him.

Who knew such a angry little bean would become such a cute little sloth?

Osamu

Every weekend like clockwork at lunchtime, you would walk in and order 2 meals. One to eat at the time and one to pick up at the end of your meal and take away. You always sat in the corner by yourself, flicking through your phone. You weren't rude or anything, but you had an aura of 'leave me alone' or else which usually kept people away from you. As Osamu watched, he couldn't help but wonder about you and your background.

He tried talking to you first, but apart from polite conversation you didn't seem to want to talk to him. He tried broaching lots of subjects but you just gave minimal answers. He was quite frustrated to say the least, Atsumu didn't help with his idea either. They just seemed to be annoying or potentially harassing, neither a great choice.

It was the end of the day when he was packing away, you had just left the restaurant and Osamu was packing all the left over food in boxes to give to the homeless people around the restaurant. He didn't like wasting food, not being one to be ungrateful and decided early on to donate it to those who were less fortunate. Carrying the snack packs, he started his usual journey down the roads and handing his packages out to anyone who was in need.

As he rounded the corner, he saw you leaning down speaking to an elderly lady who had a small child. She looked tired, her cheeks red from exhaustion and cold, the child looking equally cold in this weather too. They had been selling fruit from what he could see and he stared in fascination as you not only bought their remaining stock but gave them the second meal you bought that day.

"No, no. You always do this. It's not fair, we'll exchange. You give me food for my fruit."

"Auntie, no. You know very well that I don't expect payment for this. Its a gift. Take the food, go home and eat. Use the money for your daughter."

Nearing to you, he bowed quickly before leaning down and handing the child some onigiri. She smiled up at him, all toothy and he felt his heart warm up seeing her munch away at the rice ball. Looking at you, he could see the broad smile on your face as you bantered with the woman, seeing you like this was such a contrast to your usual stoic attitude.

This routine continued for a few weeks, eventually you would help Osamu out with his packing. Carrying some of the lighter packages to hand out to everyone, your conversation becoming more and more in depth the more you spoke to one another. You had more in common than you thought, including your selflessness you both had similar taste in music and movies.

One thing led to another and soon you found yourself dating, Osamu didn't realise how cute you were in real life until you moved in together. He remembered how shocked he was when you bought matching Pikachu onesies to wear and would take lots of selfies with him. His phone was full of cute pictures that he got during the day with little messages and lovey dovey quotes. The apartment was full of couple things like matching slippers and the progression of your relationship through little mementos strewn across the wall.

You would spend any spare time you had at his shop helping him, or trying to as you seemed to get distracted by how pretty your boyfriend was. Or you would come behind him and attach yourself in a backhug, Osamu wouldn't be able to get much done with a limpet attached so you compromised on a only doing that when he had a break.

What started as a fascination ended up being one of the biggest surprises of his life and he couldn't imagine his life without you in it.

[butterflyinthewell]

RPF…

RPF, for those who don’t know, stands for Real Person Fiction.

This is meant to spark discussion, so anyone coming in with bad faith takes like “why do you wanna draw p0rn of minors so bad” will get blocked because I actually don’t want to draw anybody and I’m hoping to see nuanced discussion about RPF itself since it’s a bit controversial.

Personally, RPF weirds me out because it feels voyeuristic, and the idea of minors being written about that way freaks me out a lot. It’s the main reason I avoid RPF stuff. I don’t harass people who make it, I just don’t want to look at their stuff.

I’ve nudged in RPF a little bit with my fics by having real people appear in them as characters, but it was more a case of real people being injected into fictional worlds and not stories about them specifically. That’s about as far in as I personally am willing to go in creating it.

I feel like this subject is almost impossible to discuss without censorship being brought up and I’m not sure how to broach it, so I’m going to spill my thoughts on the matter.

“RPF” in the form of major media stuff (ie movies like The Theory of Everything, or historical figures popping up on a time travel show like Doctor Who) is one thing because I’m sure it has to go through a lot of approval about what is and isn’t okay to portray about that person before it can get made, whereas fan creators can just create it and post it.

If it’s a teenager writing a smutty fantasy and it’s the awkward teen stuff you see in typical fanfiction written by young teens, that’s one thing, that’s just a teen being a teen. I would be a lot more bothered by an adult writing about a celeb minor with intense focus on things like their developing bodies/genitals, where it’s obvious they’re turned on by the fact that they’re drooling over a child’s body.

At the same time, there’s also the recognition that writing about doing something to somebody and actually physically doing it to them are very different things. Writing about a real child that way is disgustingly creepy, no argument there, but it’s still not the same as someone actually putting their hands on that child.

If they haven’t seen that celeb naked, their portrayal may be totally inaccurate. (Maybe they don’t have freckles there, maybe they shave certain areas, etc.) Still, it’s imagining a real living child, not an imaginary character like Rin or Shippou from Inuyasha. I feel like that’s where the fulcrum of this is, and, again, I don’t know how to discuss it without censorship being brought up.

There is also the possibility of the person being written about stumbling into it and being horrified, and I think they should have the right to issue a takedown of that story regardless of age.

For obvious reasons, any sexual images drawn of any celebrity child is CSEM because that’s drawing a real, living child in a sexual situation and that’s never okay.

I feel like the line is clearer if someone is drawing fanart of, say, Izzy from Transformers 5 naked because that is still the recognizable likeness of Isobel Manor, a real person who was a minor in that movie. That would be CSEM even if you drew her with Bumblebee in the background because she’s a real, recognizable person.

Obviously, drawing a character like Ed Elric from FullMetal Alchemist or Lextington from Gargoyles are different because they only exist as drawings with actors supplying voices. Personally, I’m uncomfortable with it, but I leave it alone because they’re not real. I look away.

The line blurs when we consider characters played by minor actors in heavy makeup, like Deep Space Nine’s Nog character (Aaron Eisenberg) where he looks very different without his Ferengi makeup. We have no idea what Ferengi look like under their clothes, so someone could give him a totally alien body that’s unrecognizable from the person wearing the makeup on set. Where is the line there? I would be bothered by it, but that’s my own opinion.

(If it helps, I wouldn’t be bothered at all by an image of Odo or Worf portrayed sexually because Rene Auberjonois and Michael Dorn were/are adults.)

What about someone wearing lighter makeup, perhaps playing a Vulcan? Their face is still recognizable, all that changes are the hair(sometimes), the eyebrows and the ears.

So where is the line? It’s fairly clear with drawn art, but it’s still not crystal clear.

With writing, it’s even blurrier.

I think the written RPF issue feels like a discussion with several layers of nuance specifically because there’s that barrier of it being written and not drawn, so it’s not immediately visual.

I wish AO3 had an unlisted option like YouTube where people could only see a fic if they had a link, because that would minimize the number of eyes on questionable stuff while the legality and morality of it get figured out. (Also, it can give authors ways to share works that could minimize harassment.)

I hope I stated my thoughts clearly. Again, I stress that I don’t harass people for their content and I don’t want to associate with people who do. I’ve seen some division about RPF and am curious about your thoughts on it.

Discuss.

[imagine-loki]

Pride and Prejudice

TITLE: Pride and Prejudice CHAPTER NO./ONE SHOT: Chapter 53 AUTHOR: wolfpawn

ORIGINAL IMAGINE: Imagine Loki was raised on Jotunheim as Laufey’s son after the war, but an agreement was then made that he would wed Odin’s daughter so Odin could secure the alliance of Jotunheim through the marriage. Loki, in turn, was raised to be king of Jotunheim, but how he views Asgard is far different from how Odin’s daughter is raised leading to a clash of cultures as well as uncertainty between the pair of betrothed youths.     RATING: Mature   NOTES/WARNINGS: Forced Marriage, not all fun and games. My first real step back into the Loki scene in over a year.

The amount of comments I have received this week have really fed my inspiration to get my ass in gear and write. Thank you for them. The more I get, the more I love to write.

Tags - @skulliebythesea @asimovethroughthisworld @blackcherry26-blog @we-shadowhunter2901

Loki felt himself fill with guilt. He could see now what Odin had meant when he demanded to see who Ella spoke with through her days when she had gotten ill. He had never seen her so animated with anyone as she was currently with the group of women he knew from the momentary displays she gave him in his mind to be her old ladies-in-waiting from Asgard. She laughed and smiled through every sentence said. Her attention was always on who was speaking though it seemed that she was the centre of the grouping throughout. Beside her, a slightly unsure looking Greta sat, though it was clear that her being introduced to the grouping by Ella meant that she was to be included in every manner and though there was clear uncertainty at first, she was indeed being accepted. Seeing Ella in this manner, he could see how darkness and loneliness consumed her when he, the only person she did interact with for those first few months because she had not known the formalities of introduction in Jotunheim, ignored her entirely bar the few moments in her company in which he tried to get her pregnant. He swallowed at that thought, grateful no child ever became of it. The idea that they could have created a child in such a manner shook him to his core. Looking at her now, fondly placing her hand to her stomach as she spoke, he knew this child would be healthy and happy, loved fully by both of his parents, created willingly which he now realised made it all the more special. 

As Ella and the other women laughed joyfully, he wondered and partly feared what they were speaking about. 

*

“So, they aren’t all too different?” Mya asked. 

“No, entirely the same in most manners,” Ella informed her. “Eat, fight and brag for the most part. Those traits are not realm specific, are they, Greta?” 

“Apparently not. Though, Helbindi is more eat than fight,” The Jotnar responded. 

“Be grateful, Volstagg is both. He would eat for the realms and fights too,” Lena scoffed. 

“Can you both even fit in the bed these days? Who even takes up more room?” Mya scoffed playfully, referring to Lena’s stomach which was protruding almost as much as Ella’s. 

“Do not start,” Lena rubbed her forehead. “He does but I am getting worried as he does not seem to recall I am carrying his child and it is growing continuously.”

“For the record,” Ella leant towards Greta before indicating to Volstagg. “That is her mate.” 

Greta eyed Volstagg for a moment before looking back at Lena. “I have to ask….how?” 

The other women erupted in laughter. “It’s easy to see how Ella and you became friends,” Tiana, another laughed. “We all thought the same but none said it.” Greta looked worriedly at Ella, silently asking her if she had done something wrong. Ella simply smiled back. “We don’t get insulted, trust me. There’s nothing you could say here that we would be offended by.”

“Really?” Greta did not think that possible. 

“Remember the day Kristoff tried to hurt my feelings?” Ella reminded her. 

“You tore him apart,” Greta argued. 

“He insulted my mate and our son, of course, I did. But his words never once bothered me in reference to me.” Ella smirked. 

“And with regards to ‘how’,” Lena smiled. “I am just thankful he prefers me on top.” 

“I don’t think that’s a preference as much as it is a necessity, you literally are half Light Elf, any other option would kill you.” Ella pointed out which led to more laughter. “I should also mention that this is not an attack on Volstagg’s weight, but the very important fact that Light Elves are far less dense than Aesir mass wise, so to us, Volstagg is a normal weight, something we could endure, to Lena, he is the equivalent of something almost as heavy as an Ice Beast,” Ella explained to Greta. 

“‘Bind told me of the density situation, that is why I needed to ask how she came to be with child.” Greta eyed Volstagg for a moment. “It is odd to see such burly beings though.” 

“Aesir are far differently shaped to Jotnar, it’s true,” Tiana commented. “But all men are the same when they are lying down.” She leant forward. “Though I am curious, those ridges of body markings, are they present on all areas or just some?”

“All.” Ella and Greta replied at the same time, knowing exactly what Tiana was asking. 

“You usually need to pay extra for such features on toys.” Mya sighed. “Lucky you. No wonder you both smile so much.” 

Greta did not know what the other woman was referencing and looked to Ella for some form of explanation. Rather than try and explain it to her, Ella used her seidr to give Greta a vision of what Mya was referencing. On seeing what it was the other woman had been speaking about, Greta’s eyes widened. “But that...we don’t have that.” “Mores the pity for you. Though you all have the ability to wield ice, don’t you?” Greta nodded. “Do you ever make instruments with those?” 

Greta could not gather what Lena was asking for a moment before she realised and her face fell. “I never even thought of such a thing.” 

“By the way, that book Helbindi has been all but begging you to harass me about?” Ella leant in close to Greta as she spoke. “Lena retrieved it for me. I will give it to you this evening. Read through it, any questions you have, one of us can answer. I am not as well versed as some women on most.” 

“That’s because you decided to be a good girl and wait for a husband, sorry, mate.” Tiana corrected herself. 

“We all know what you mean.” Ella dismissed, not bothered that her Vanir and Aesir friends were not using the Jotnar terms. She knew it was not out of malice. 

“You were….” Greta looked somewhat startled, not certain of how to broach the subject with Ella. 

“A maiden? Yes, I was.” Ella looked down at her stomach. “It’s safe to say that that is long gone.” 

“Last to lose her virginity, first to get pregnant.” Lena joked. 

“I am nothing if not proficient.” Ella laughed back. 

“But you assisted in explaining certain things to me?” 

“I know the theory for many a thing, I simply am not versed in the practical method.” Ella shrugged. 

“Really?” Tiana looked over at Loki who was speaking with Arden and Býleistr on a matter across the room. “He doesn’t seem like he would be boring. He looks like he’d actually be up for some fun.” 

“It’s not like he hasn’t learnt a few things over the years,” Greta commented before she realised she had spoken aloud. “Before you, obviously.” She clarified to Ella. 

The other women looked between themselves awkwardly at those comments. 

“Loki had a few experiences before me, this is not something I was unaware of,” Ella explained. 

“It sounds like more than a few.” Mya pointed out. 

“Fine, he was incredibly promiscuous but he has not been disloyal to the agreement we made not to take another so I don’t think about what came before me. As I stated to one previous female partner, I am grateful to them, they trained him up. I have yet to be left wanting, so I see the positives in it.” Ella smirked as she took a drink. “So he doesn’t kiss, considering he knows everything else a woman could want, I see it as a win for me.” 

“Wait, no kissing?” Tiana looked appalled. “Really, you’re not lying, Ella, he doesn’t kiss, why?” “They don’t do it here,” Ella explained. 

The other women looked at Greta who nodded. “We don’t. Well, ‘Bind and I do because we like it but others don’t.” 

“Norns, that sounds so boring. I’d hate it. I won’t even lie. No, thank you.” Tiana shuddered. “I wouldn’t mind, but I had it on good authority you were good at that.” 

“Really? How is Liuilf, Ti?” Mya shook her head. “Whatever happened to not taking your friend’s ex-lovers?” 

“I didn’t even touch him, I swear but firstly, he was not Ella’s lover, she didn’t let him touch her, and secondly…” Tiana noticed someone else coming to join the conversation and silenced immediately. 

Ella could tell from the manner her friend ceased speaking who was standing close by. Smiling, she turned to face her mate. “Is everything alright?” Loki stood close-by, his face as politely neutral as he could muster it to be. He had a suspicion that the females would speak in a manner that would be like as Ella had shown them to speak in the past. They were indeed the same females as she had shown him in her old memories but hearing one of them speak of Ella doing the act of kissing with the soldier hurt him in his gut and sent a searing heat through it that he loathed entirely. He knew the woman had said that Ella did not allow the soldier to touch her but it still felt odd to think of her do something like that with him. “I am incredibly sorry to intrude and I know I have yet to be properly introduced to you all, something I wish to rectify very soon but I fear I must ask to speak to my mate in private for a moment.” 

“Of course, excuse me, Ladies. Do not scare Greta too much in my absence,” She warned playfully as she rose to her feet, stretching slightly as she did. She followed Loki out of the room and down a hallway she knew was rarely used. When he opened a door to a room that was all but barren of any form of furnishing, she wondered what needed to be so urgent. “I take it that this has nothing to do with the coronation?” Loki’s nostrils flared slightly. “I don’t think you even wanted me for something, did you?” His eyes darted to the side. “You simply reacted to the words you heard?” No response. “I have had to listen to you ridicule my virtue as well as multiple accounts of you as a sexual partner but one reference to me kissing someone causes you to react like this?”

Loki inhaled a shaky breath. He walked over to her and stood looking down at her apprehensively before leaning in. At first, Ella thought it was going to gently place his face against hers but then she noticed the way his lips moved and pulled back. “What are you doing?” 

“Apparently you are somewhat proficient at it.”  

“Do you want to kiss me because you genuinely wish to, or some other reason?” She studied his face. “You never wanted to do this before, why now? We literally were in bed together last night, having sex and you did not think to do it then, why now? Is it because of what Tiana said or is it because you genuinely wish to do it with me because if it is the former, no, I will not kiss you and please don’t lie to me, please.” 

Loki could not lie to her so he pulled back. “I’m sorry.” 

“Why?” “I just came over to say hello but I reacted on hearing her say those things.” He admitted. 

“At least you are honest.” Ella conceded. “I am not going to kiss you for that reason. It means more to me.” 

Loki frowned. “But you never tried.” “With you? No. You made it clear on Vanaheim that it is repulsive to you. Since we did nothing we personally liked before that but instead merely took part in sex for solely procreational purposes, of course I would not attempt that.” 

“But you did with him?” “I cared for ‘him’ at that time. That was a long time ago. As Tiana pointed out, I never allowed it further.” 

Loki felt the other meaning behind those words, she had been honourable and never taken another, something he had not been. She also had been forced more than once to hear of his actions but she never showed any sign of being overly bothered by such. Part of him thought that were she to care for him, she would be more bothered by it as he was hearing about her actions in the past but she did not seem to be in any manner upset by it. “But I did.” “And I never say anything other than it was before me so I have no right to say anything.” “But if you were to say something?” “You do not wish to know.” Her face turned slightly angry at that. “Now, was there a particular reason you came over to us to begin with?” “I came to introduce myself. Those are your friends from Asgard so I thought it polite to say hello.” 

For a moment, Ella thought him to be lying, but seeing his features to be honest, she smiled. “Thank you, for making that effort. They were my ladies, as I tried to explain at the beginning, it was never about them being my servants, just confidentes. I have missed them so much. Part of me wishes they did not come because it reminds me of how much I miss them.” 

Loki swallowed. He had been forced to change some aspects of his life for the agreement, and the only aspects he did have to change had turned into something better than he could ever ask for. Ella, on the other hand, was left to create an entirely new life on Jotunheim, no friends, nothing and a mate that had neglected her, yet she still tried. He walked over to her again and looked at her, noting the apprehension in her face, he gave her an empathetic look. “I am so sorry you feel so and for my behaviour just now.” He leant down, only this time he did not try to force a kiss but placed their foreheads together as he tended to do. “I know you miss your friends but I hope you are happy here.” 

“I am.” Her voice was quiet. 

Loki sighed contently at her answer and the swiftness in which she answered. 

[adriensaltprompts]

"You First" [1] When Chat won't stop harassing Ladybug about wanting to know who she is behind the mask, she finally snaps back at him: "You first." When he naturally balks, she presses -- if that knowledge matters so much to him, why *wouldn't* he go first? What's the problem? For all his insistence, he should be more than happy to get that ball rolling and take the first step... unless, of course, he realizes just how dangerous exposing themselves would be.

Effectively, she's calling his bluff. Challenging him to put his money where his mouth is. He can't keep pestering her to reveal herself to him if he's not willing to expose himself as well -- and the fact that he doesn't want to exposes that he understands why it's such a bad idea. The danger's far too great... and if he won't put himself on the line, then it's completely unreasonable for him to expect HER to do so. It's put up or shut up, Chat.

Of course, the deeper irony here is that the biggest reason Adrien doesn't want to reveal himself is entirely self-centered: he relishes the anonymity of being Chat Noir far too much. And he HATES that his lady's sticking to her guns on this. Whenever he tries to broach the subject again, he gets the same response: "You first, Chat." He won't risk it, and she refuses to do so just to satisfy his curiosity.

_____________________________________________________________

It gets even worse when you remember that Adrien’s father is the super villain.

If Adrien’s identity is compromised, his family won’t be in danger. Adrien himself probably wouldn’t even be in danger. Gabriel’s more likely to try to recruit him than attack him. (and honestly? with getting his mother as an offering the bribe of the wish being used to make Ladybug fall in love with him and the idea that his family can go back to being happy again??? it would be....distressingly not out of character for Adrien to side with his father.)

(The whole Chat Blanc thing was in a completely separate universe if you hadn’t noticed. Marinette’s hair was down the entire time. We don’t know when the two timelines diverged but it was way before she left him the gift. That Gabriel might be fine with kicking his son into the Eiffel tower, but this Gabriel was willing to give up the Ladybug Miraculous if it meant his son could be safe.)

If Marinette’s identity is compromised, she and her family would most likely be killed.

Rules for the blog - send a short prompt - send a long prompt

[wolfpawn]

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 53

Story Summary - Based on an idea I had that I submitted to Imagine Loki. Imagine Loki was raised on Jotunheim as Laufey’s son after the war, but an agreement was then made that he would wed Odin’s daughter so Odin could secure the alliance of Jotunheim through the marriage. Loki, in turn, was raised to be king of Jotunheim, but how he views Asgard is far different from how Odin’s daughter is raised leading to a clash of cultures as well as uncertainty between the pair of betrothed youths.

Chapter Summary -  Ella spends time catching up with old friends which goes well, until Loki hears something he doesn't want to hear.

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NOTES -  I have this written since Friday but I was so ill yesterday, I never got to post it. I cannot put into words how grateful I am that people are commenting on this, it has meant that I have flown through writing more for it. The amount of comments I have received this week have really fed my inspiration to get my ass in gear and write. Thank you for them. The more I get, the more I love to write.

Loki felt himself fill with guilt. He could see now what Odin had meant when he demanded to see who Ella spoke with through her days when she had gotten ill. He had never seen her so animated with anyone as she was currently with the group of women he knew from the momentary displays she gave him in his mind to be her old ladies-in-waiting from Asgard. She laughed and smiled through every sentence said. Her attention was always on who was speaking though it seemed that she was the centre of the grouping throughout. Beside her, a slightly unsure looking Greta sat, though it was clear that her being introduced to the grouping by Ella meant that she was to be included in every manner and though there was clear uncertainty at first, she was indeed being accepted. Seeing Ella in this manner, he could see how darkness and loneliness consumed her when he, the only person she did interact with for those first few months because she had not known the formalities of introduction in Jotunheim, ignored her entirely bar the few moments in her company in which he tried to get her pregnant. He swallowed at that thought, grateful no child ever became of it. The idea that they could have created a child in such a manner shook him to his core. Looking at her now, fondly placing her hand to her stomach as she spoke, he knew this child would be healthy and happy, loved fully by both of his parents, created willingly which he now realised made it all the more special. 

As Ella and the other women laughed joyfully, he wondered and partly feared what they were speaking about. 

*

“So, they aren’t all too different?” Mya asked. 

“No, entirely the same in most manners,” Ella informed her. “Eat, fight and brag for the most part. Those traits are not realm specific, are they, Greta?” 

“Apparently not. Though, Helbindi is more eat than fight,” The Jotnar responded. 

“Be grateful, Volstagg is both. He would eat for the realms and fights too,” Lena scoffed. 

“Can you both even fit in the bed these days? Who even takes up more room?” Mya scoffed playfully, referring to Lena’s stomach which was protruding almost as much as Ella’s. 

“Do not start,” Lena rubbed her forehead. “He does but I am getting worried as he does not seem to recall I am carrying his child and it is growing continuously.”

“For the record,” Ella leant towards Greta before indicating to Volstagg. “That is her mate.” 

Greta eyed Volstagg for a moment before looking back at Lena. “I have to ask….how?” 

The other women erupted in laughter. “It’s easy to see how Ella and you became friends,” Tiana, another laughed. “We all thought the same but none said it.” Greta looked worriedly at Ella, silently asking her if she had done something wrong. Ella simply smiled back. “We don’t get insulted, trust me. There’s nothing you could say here that we would be offended by.”

“Really?” Greta did not think that possible. 

“Remember the day Kristoff tried to hurt my feelings?” Ella reminded her. 

“You tore him apart,” Greta argued. 

“He insulted my mate and our son, of course, I did. But his words never once bothered me in reference to me.” Ella smirked. 

“And with regards to ‘how’,” Lena smiled. “I am just thankful he prefers me on top.” 

“I don’t think that’s a preference as much as it is a necessity, you literally are half Light Elf, any other option would kill you.” Ella pointed out which led to more laughter. “I should also mention that this is not an attack on Volstagg’s weight, but the very important fact that Light Elves are far less dense than Aesir mass wise, so to us, Volstagg is a normal weight, something we could endure, to Lena, he is the equivalent of something almost as heavy as an Ice Beast,” Ella explained to Greta. 

“‘Bind told me of the density situation, that is why I needed to ask how she came to be with child.” Greta eyed Volstagg for a moment. “It is odd to see such burly beings though.” 

“Aesir are far differently shaped to Jotnar, it’s true,” Tiana commented. “But all men are the same when they are lying down.” She leant forward. “Though I am curious, those ridges of body markings, are they present on all areas or just some?”

“All.” Ella and Greta replied at the same time, knowing exactly what Tiana was asking. 

“You usually need to pay extra for such features on toys.” Mya sighed. “Lucky you. No wonder you both smile so much.” 

Greta did not know what the other woman was referencing and looked to Ella for some form of explanation. Rather than try and explain it to her, Ella used her seidr to give Greta a vision of what Mya was referencing. On seeing what it was the other woman had been speaking about, Greta’s eyes widened. “But that...we don’t have that.” “Mores the pity for you. Though you all have the ability to wield ice, don’t you?” Greta nodded. “Do you ever make instruments with those?” 

Greta could not gather what Lena was asking for a moment before she realised and her face fell. “I never even thought of such a thing.” 

“By the way, that book Helbindi has been all but begging you to harass me about?” Ella leant in close to Greta as she spoke. “Lena retrieved it for me. I will give it to you this evening. Read through it, any questions you have, one of us can answer. I am not as well versed as some women on most.” 

“That’s because you decided to be a good girl and wait for a husband, sorry, mate.” Tiana corrected herself. 

“We all know what you mean.” Ella dismissed, not bothered that her Vanir and Aesir friends were not using the Jotnar terms. She knew it was not out of malice. 

“You were….” Greta looked somewhat startled, not certain of how to broach the subject with Ella. 

“A maiden? Yes, I was.” Ella looked down at her stomach. “It’s safe to say that that is long gone.” 

“Last to lose her virginity, first to get pregnant.” Lena joked. 

“I am nothing if not proficient.” Ella laughed back. 

“But you assisted in explaining certain things to me?” 

“I know the theory for many a thing, I simply am not versed in the practical method.” Ella shrugged. 

“Really?” Tiana looked over at Loki who was speaking with Arden and Býleistr on a matter across the room. “He doesn’t seem like he would be boring. He looks like he’d actually be up for some fun.” 

“It’s not like he hasn’t learnt a few things over the years,” Greta commented before she realised she had spoken aloud. “Before you, obviously.” She clarified to Ella. 

The other women looked between themselves awkwardly at those comments. 

“Loki had a few experiences before me, this is not something I was unaware of,” Ella explained. 

“It sounds like more than a few.” Mya pointed out. 

“Fine, he was incredibly promiscuous but he has not been disloyal to the agreement we made not to take another so I don’t think about what came before me. As I stated to one previous female partner, I am grateful to them, they trained him up. I have yet to be left wanting, so I see the positives in it.” Ella smirked as she took a drink. “So he doesn’t kiss, considering he knows everything else a woman could want, I see it as a win for me.” 

“Wait, no kissing?” Tiana looked appalled. “Really, you’re not lying, Ella, he doesn’t kiss, why?” “They don’t do it here,” Ella explained. 

The other women looked at Greta who nodded. “We don’t. Well, ‘Bind and I do because we like it but others don’t.” 

“Norns, that sounds so boring. I’d hate it. I won’t even lie. No, thank you.” Tiana shuddered. “I wouldn’t mind, but I had it on good authority you were good at that.” 

“Really? How is Liuilf, Ti?” Mya shook her head. “Whatever happened to not taking your friend’s ex-lovers?” 

“I didn’t even touch him, I swear but firstly, he was not Ella’s lover, she didn’t let him touch her, and secondly…” Tiana noticed someone else coming to join the conversation and silenced immediately. 

Ella could tell from the manner her friend ceased speaking who was standing close by. Smiling, she turned to face her mate. “Is everything alright?” Loki stood close-by, his face as politely neutral as he could muster it to be. He had a suspicion that the females would speak in a manner that would be like as Ella had shown them to speak in the past. They were indeed the same females as she had shown him in her old memories but hearing one of them speak of Ella doing the act of kissing with the soldier hurt him in his gut and sent a searing heat through it that he loathed entirely. He knew the woman had said that Ella did not allow the soldier to touch her but it still felt odd to think of her do something like that with him. “I am incredibly sorry to intrude and I know I have yet to be properly introduced to you all, something I wish to rectify very soon but I fear I must ask to speak to my mate in private for a moment.” 

“Of course, excuse me, Ladies. Do not scare Greta too much in my absence,” She warned playfully as she rose to her feet, stretching slightly as she did. She followed Loki out of the room and down a hallway she knew was rarely used. When he opened a door to a room that was all but barren of any form of furnishing, she wondered what needed to be so urgent. “I take it that this has nothing to do with the coronation?” Loki’s nostrils flared slightly. “I don’t think you even wanted me for something, did you?” His eyes darted to the side. “You simply reacted to the words you heard?” No response. “I have had to listen to you ridicule my virtue as well as multiple accounts of you as a sexual partner but one reference to me kissing someone causes you to react like this?”

Loki inhaled a shaky breath. He walked over to her and stood looking down at her apprehensively before leaning in. At first, Ella thought it was going to gently place his face against hers but then she noticed the way his lips moved and pulled back. “What are you doing?” 

“Apparently you are somewhat proficient at it.”  

“Do you want to kiss me because you genuinely wish to, or some other reason?” She studied his face. “You never wanted to do this before, why now? We literally were in bed together last night, having sex and you did not think to do it then, why now? Is it because of what Tiana said or is it because you genuinely wish to do it with me because if it is the former, no, I will not kiss you and please don’t lie to me, please.” 

Loki could not lie to her so he pulled back. “I’m sorry.” 

“Why?” “I just came over to say hello but I reacted on hearing her say those things.” He admitted. 

“At least you are honest.” Ella conceded. “I am not going to kiss you for that reason. It means more to me.” 

Loki frowned. “But you never tried.” “With you? No. You made it clear on Vanaheim that it is repulsive to you. Since we did nothing we personally liked before that but instead merely took part in sex for solely procreational purposes, of course I would not attempt that.” 

“But you did with him?” “I cared for ‘him’ at that time. That was a long time ago. As Tiana pointed out, I never allowed it further.” 

Loki felt the other meaning behind those words, she had been honourable and never taken another, something he had not been. She also had been forced more than once to hear of his actions but she never showed any sign of being overly bothered by such. Part of him thought that were she to care for him, she would be more bothered by it as he was hearing about her actions in the past but she did not seem to be in any manner upset by it. “But I did.” “And I never say anything other than it was before me so I have no right to say anything.” “But if you were to say something?” “You do not wish to know.” Her face turned slightly angry at that. “Now, was there a particular reason you came over to us to begin with?” “I came to introduce myself. Those are your friends from Asgard so I thought it polite to say hello.” 

For a moment, Ella thought him to be lying, but seeing his features to be honest, she smiled. “Thank you, for making that effort. They were my ladies, as I tried to explain at the beginning, it was never about them being my servants, just confidentes. I have missed them so much. Part of me wishes they did not come because it reminds me of how much I miss them.” 

Loki swallowed. He had been forced to change some aspects of his life for the agreement, and the only aspects he did have to change had turned into something better than he could ever ask for. Ella, on the other hand, was left to create an entirely new life on Jotunheim, no friends, nothing and a mate that had neglected her, yet she still tried. He walked over to her again and looked at her, noting the apprehension in her face, he gave her an empathetic look. “I am so sorry you feel so and for my behaviour just now.” He leant down, only this time he did not try to force a kiss but placed their foreheads together as he tended to do. “I know you miss your friends but I hope you are happy here.” 

“I am.” Her voice was quiet. 

Loki sighed contently at her answer and the swiftness in which she answered. 

[blancheludis]

@ironhusbandsweek @rhfenovemberbash Day 7: Forbidden Love, Steam Punk

Fandom: Marvel, Iron Man Characters: Tony Stark/James “Rhodey” Rhodes, Pepper Potts Tags: Secret Relationship, Fake Marriage, Steam Punk, Love, Angst and Fluff Words: 3.312

Summary: "We should marry," Tony says one quiet evening. Even before Rhodey replies anything, his expression clearly says he is not going to agree. "I don't think this is such a good idea." Of course. It all comes down to what the rest of the world says. That they love each other is apparently not enough to be worth the hassle. 

---

The halls of the mansion are mostly empty when Tony makes his way through them. It is dark outside, so he guesses it is night or early morning. Time flies by when he is in his workshop, although his father insists he comes up for air once every day. The Lord’s heir is supposed to be seen.

Right now, Tony does not strike an imposing figure. He is in his work clothes, covered in soot, with a few fresh burns sticking out in an angry red from his hands and arms. Steam is a tricky thing to master, and some days it eludes him. Tony is not discouraged by failures, though, no matter how personal his father seems to take them.

He walks the halls with purposeful hurry, even if habit makes him look over his shoulders every now and then. They live in a world where eyes are everywhere, even in their own home. Tony knows how to act right, how to hide his thoughts. Sneaking around in the middle of the night negates all of that, however. It makes him automatically suspicious.

When he arrives at his destination, Tony hesitates to knock on the door. He has no idea how late it is. Someone was bustling in the kitchen when he passed by it, but that does not have to mean anything.

Finally, he shrugs. He is eccentric and keeps odd hours. People have to be used to that by now. Tony’s knuckles barely graze the wood before he saunters into the room.

The lights are still on to his relief, and Rhodey sits at his desk, bowed over some paperwork. He is not wearing his armour but is not in nightclothes either. It cannot be that late, then. He looks up when Tony enters, smiling as if he waited for him.

Long strides take Tony over to him, and before Rhodey can offer a greeting, Tony leans down to kiss Rhodey. He inhales and feels instantly at home when the mixture of horse and leather and steel hits his nose.

“Good evening, mylord,” Rhodey greets, and while there is humour in his voice, he emphasizes the honorific with some sharpness, surely a reprimand.

“Good evening, Colonel,” Tony shoots back, allowing a small grin on his face, although he is always a little displeased when their difference in standing is mentioned. Tony is not even the Lord yet and all it does is give him more trouble.

Mindful of the soot on his clothes, Tony takes a seat on the bed. The poor staff is hard-pressed to keep his own sheets clean. If they found the same mess in Rhodey’s bed, their game would be up within days.

It is always a real struggle not to pull Rhodey down on the bed and forget all about the outside world for a few hours but contrary to what people think of him, Tony knows all about restraint. He just chooses to keep that private. That makes it easier to fool people.

Rhodey opens his mouth, no doubt to ask about Tony’s day, to make plans for them to sneak away later this week, but Tony is tired of the ever same circles they are moving in.

“We should marry,” Tony says, already a hint of confrontation in his tone.

This is not the first time Tony has broached the subject, although he is usually less brazen about it. They have been through the dozens of reasons why it is a bad idea, why Tony cannot just say something as incriminating like this in his father’s house, where anyone could be listening in on them and get the wrong idea. Or the right idea. If Howard found out, neither of them would be allowed to live the rest of their lives on their own terms.

Rhodey sighs as he turns his chair around completely to better face Tony. Rejection has never needed so few words. “I’m not saying no,” he says as if it is not written all over his face, “but I don’t think it’s the best idea.”

Of course, it is not. Otherwise, they would have already done it instead of spending the last years in misery, so close to each other and yet not allowed to touch in the open.

“Because of my father,” Tony says, bitterness coating his tongue. There is nothing Howard Stark has ever made better, apart from destruction. Stark men tend to constantly create new ways to make others miserable.

“Yes,” Rhodey admits softly, sounding apologetic. “And because of who we are. You’re –”

Nodding impatiently, Tony says, “Going to be the next Lord.” That has never done him much good. Quieter but no less grumbling, he adds, “They should stop pushing their noses into our business.”

Tony being the Stark heir is not the only reason, of course. There is also that Rhodey, at the moment, is responsible for his safety, which apparently makes Tony vulnerable for coercion. Although the same could be argued the other way around. Who could say no to Howard Stark’s heir? Then there is the fact that Tony is rich, that Rhodey’s skin has the wrong colour, that they are both men. The reasons not to love each other are endless.

Rhodey tries to smile, but it falls horribly flat. “You know they’ll never stop gossiping.”

Since his entire life is spent amongst these people, Tony knows that far too well. He runs a hand through his hair, not meeting Rhodey’s eyes. “And you can’t afford any more bad talk.”

That is the worst thing. If Tony is found sleeping with Rhodey, it will be a scandal. Tony will get an earful from everybody, might either get shunned by polite society for a while or harassed for details. Things will blow over. Rhodey, on the other hand, might lose his livelihood, everything he has built for himself, just for loving the wrong person. Tony cannot do that to him.

“I’ve risen through the ranks too much already for someone without any actual standing,” Rhodey explains, although Tony knows all this, has searched for loopholes for years. “If we marry, too, they might just throw me out of the Army, claiming I only got here because of you.”

“Then that would be the ultimate proof that they’re stupid,” Tony snaps. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to them.”

Everybody remembers the tantrum he threw when his best friend left for Army training. If anyone had listened to Tony back then, they would have sent Rhodey right back home. Then, of course, they would not be in this situation because Rhodey would have never forgiven him, would have never fallen in love with him.  

“And none of that will matter if we cause another scandal,” Rhodey says. He is always surprisingly acceptant of the discriminating moods of people assuming they are his superiors. It hurts him, Tony knows it does, but he does not rail against fate. He just makes the best of it.

It has always sat wrong with Tony. That is what he later blames it on, that he pulls his shoulders up and sneers, “I’m just a scandalous affair for you then?”

A beat of silence follows in which Tony is already ashamed of himself, staring at his fingernails because he does not dare to look at Rhodey.

“Tones,” Rhodey chides quietly, tiredly, “don’t do that.”

“I’m sorry.” Tony is so afraid of losing Rhodey that he sometimes forgets himself. “This is just frustrating.”

“I know.”

Getting up, Rhodey comes over to the bed, sitting down close enough to Tony, that their thighs and shoulders touch. Tony immediately melts into Rhodey’s side. When Rhodey opens his arms, Tony wants to warn him about the soot on his clothes, but Rhodey shushes him and the thought of being held is too enticing for Tony to argue.

They are in a horrible situation, but tonight, Tony has come prepared. The excitement from earlier has mostly vanished, but it is still a plan.

“I guess I’ll have to marry Pepper then.”

Silence answers him, while Rhodey’s arms stiffen around him. A sigh caught in his throat, Tony draws back so he can look at Rhodey’s face, which is carefully blank.

“That’s –”

“Unfair to her, I know,” Tony says quickly before Rhodey can come up with suitable counter-arguments. “But my father’s constantly laying into me to secure the bloodline. My mother is sending explicit invitations to other nobles to bring their daughter to the next ball. It doesn’t matter how often I say no, they just keep hounding me.”

It is expected of him and he has always known it. Lately, it has started to feel like a cage because his feelings for Rhodey are definitely not going away. On the contrary, they are constantly growing.

“You don’t have a problem with telling people off about other matters,” Rhodey says, almost changing the topic.

“What? You mean my problematic drinking behaviour or the constant explosions down in my workshop?” Tony asks, lips pulled into a sneer. Quieter but no less insistent, he adds, “This is my life, Rhodey, and everybody is haunting me to give it meaning by taking some simpering noble as my wife.”

Tony knows that they cannot go public with their relationship. That would only make problems for everybody. But Pepper is their friend. She is safe and pragmatic. The way Tony looks at it, she is their only hope that they will not end up unhappy.

“It will die down again,” Rhodey says, but obviously does not believe it himself. The older Tony gets – the older his parents get – the more an heir is needed for the Stark line.

“Yes, once I marry,” Tony says stubbornly. He scoots a bit back on the bed so that Rhodey’s arms fall completely off him. “And if you won’t have me, Pepper will.”

Rhodey looks tired, his hands twitching by his side as if he wants to hide his face in them or shake some sense into Tony. He keeps them where they are and just looks at Tony instead.

“Have you talked to her about this?” Rhodey asks, not any closer to giving in but likely just trying another approach.

“Yes.”

Tony is aware that this will change all of their lives. It will not mean an end of the constant hiding. In fact, they will just pull Pepper into this. They can trust her, though. Of all the people in this place, she might be the only one.

“Why don’t I believe you?” Rhodey shakes his head, lips pulled into the hints of a smile, even while there is no amusement in his tone.

Tony drops his eyes, uncomfortable with the fact that Rhodey can see through him. “Well, she said something along the lines of always being there for me if I need anything to make this easier.”

That is not a carte blanche, but it is a beginning. They can negotiate something that works out for all of them.

“Tones,” Rhodey says, clearly not of the same opinion.

“What?” Tony snaps, tired of running into more problems no matter how many corners they turn. “This makes perfect sense. My parents get a suitable daughter-in-law. The people get a Lady who actually knows what she is doing and can handle politics much better than I ever could. Pepper gets enough money to make a name of herself without having to plead with Howard for it. And we get our alibi.”

It does make sense. It is the most promising plan either of them had since they realized that their time is running out.

“Pepper is not just an alibi,” Rhodey counters, his face and tone stern as if he does not know that Tony cares about Pepper as much as he does.

“But she’s pragmatic. She knows we love each other.” Apart from the late Jarvis, she is the only one who does. “When I told her about proposing to you, she actually had the same reaction as you.” Tony bites his lip, then adds much less firmly, “If she finds her great love, she can either bring them in, or we can get a divorce as soon as my father is dead.”

Rhodey reaches out for him, but Tony dodges the attempt. He gets to his feet and starts pacing. Sitting still when there is a problem in front of him that he cannot solve is pure torture. He only ever manages it when he is held by Rhodey and he does not want that right now. He does not want to be mollified. He wants solutions. Preferably one that leads to their happily ever after.  

“It’s not as easy as that,” Rhodey says as if in answer to Tony’s thoughts.

Nobody said it would be easy, Tony thinks. Out loud, he says, “Not if you keep making it difficult.”

It is not like him to be the optimistic one. He wants to be, though.

“Tony,” Rhodey says, as if invoking Tony’s name has ever worked to make him see sense.

“Don’t Tony me,” Tony says sharply and comes to a halt in front of Rhodey, several feet between them. “What’s your solution then? To cut our losses and safely go our separate ways?” It does not bring him any satisfaction to see Rhodey flinch. “I love you, Rhodey,” he intones, allowing all his desperation to rise to the surface for once. “I know that we can’t go public with it, although I’d be willing to weather that storm if that is what it takes. But we can at least make it a little easier for us.”

That hits home. Rhodey has always had a weakness for hearing Tony tell him he loves him. With visible effort, he stills shakes his head. “Marrying Pepper will not make anything easier.”

Sharp laughter rises up Tony’s throat and he does not hold it in. It rings between them, too loud, too bitter.

“Of course, it will,” Tony insists. “For one, I’m going to move out with her. We’ll take one of the smaller properties, do a prolonged honeymoon, build our own lives. You’ll be our security.” Tony cuts off Rhodey’s protest with a sharp gesture. “Of course, you’re a bit too high-ranked for that. But we are childhood friends. I’m not going to deny that too. We’ll take only staff that we can trust. We can be together.”

That is the one thing nobody can take from them. They are friends. It caused gossip for years, but by now it is mostly accepted that the two are going everywhere together. It was a hard-won victory, but it works in their favour now.

For a long moment, they just look at each other. Tony brimming with restlessness and hope, Rhodey doubting but just as eager to find a way for them.

“What if someone finds out?” Rhodey finally asks.

Tony pushes down the urge to shout in victory. He has not won anything, but if Rhodey has stopped his immediate protest, he might be on his way there.

“Why would they?” Tony answer, perhaps too eager. “Pepper’s not going to talk. It’s not like I’m going to tell her what to do with her life. Dozens of nobles have their head of security living with them. Happy lives here.”

Rhodey does not say anything, just looks on. And Tony, who does not do well with silences, fills it eagerly.

“I’ll build secret passages so no one will notice us sharing a room,” he offers, only half-joking. It would make life easier and keep him occupied for a while. “Also, even if someone found out, there are more scandalous things happening than a happily married couple taking someone else into their bed for a while. It would probably be more suspicious if we didn’t.”

There are hardly any nobles who are not sleeping around. Mostly the lords are cheating on their wives, of course, but there are some more adventurous couples. Tony does not mind becoming an oddity. He already is, considering his hobbies and blatant disinterest in politics. It would not cost him anything to become even less conventional.

“Where’s all that suddenly coming from?” Rhodey then asks. It is still not a refusal, although Tony guesses it is too soon to celebrate.

Sighing, Tony steps closer and cups Rhodey’s face with his hands. “I’m tired of hiding, Rhodey,” he says and presses a kiss down on Rhodey’s forehead, gentle like a promise. “Tired of doing Howard’s bidding and playing nice with a dozen noble daughters when I’m only interested in you. I’m tired of living a lie.”

Rhodey’s arms snake around Tony’s waist, pulling him in. Tony lets his hands wander down Rhodey’s back, holding tight. It is unfair that fate puts so many obstacles in their way. Everything is so much better when they are together. Life could be perfect if only they would be allowed to be who they are.

Almost too quiet to hear, Rhodey then says, “I’ll talk to Pepper.”

Startling, Tony looks down, afraid he has misheard. “You will?” Tony asks.

Even, so, he knows exactly how that conversation will go. Tony’s had an idea again, Rhodey will start and then they will immediately work on doing damage control. He usually loves them for it, but this is not a problem they can make go away. Not like this.

“I love you, you know that?” Rhodey says in lieu of answering, but Tony takes it willingly. These are the most beautiful words in the entire world after all.

“I do. I love you too,” Tony replies quietly. Because he can never let things rest, though, he adds, “This is why I’m pushing this.”

Lips quirking up into a smile, Rhodey nods. “We’ll figure a way out.”

That is what they have been promising for years. They have to do something now. Tony cannot marry a stranger, some simpering noble girl who does not understand him and will rat them out the first opportunity she gets.  

“Great,” Tony says, even though he does not believe it. He lets his head drop until it is propped against Rhodey’s. “I had better get going now so nobody gets suspicious.” Too innocent, he adds, “I know for a fact that Pepper’s not busy tomorrow morning if you want to get right on it.”

A chuckle sends tremors through Rhodey’s body, wandering right into Tony’s. “You’re impossible.”

Tony knows that. People never tire of telling him, although none of them says it with the same fondness as Rhodey. Usually, he does not mind. These days, however, he wishes things would just be a little more possible.

Still, he smiles down at Rhodey. “How about you tell me in great detail just how impossible I am tomorrow? Two in the afternoon? We can take my new steam carriage for a spin. It’s not running as smoothly as I want it to, so nobody will be surprised if it breaks down in the middle of nowhere and we’ll miss dinner because we’re stranded out there.”

This time, Rhodey outright laughs. “You’re not just impossible but a menace too.”

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Tony says, smiling. He tips up Rhodey’s face so they can kiss. It is a chaste thing, so they will not get carried away. With much regret, Tony pulls away. “Goodnight.”

How wonderful it would be to never have to separate again. For Tony to be able to lie down on Rhodey’s bed, not caring for leaving traces of soot behind, to spend the entire night together, to wake up together with the morning sun bathing them in gold.

“Goodnight, Tones,” Rhodey says, sounding just as unwilling to let go as Tony is. “See you tomorrow.”

Tony has dreams, and most of them involve Rhodey. Tomorrow, consequences be damned, they will get a step closer to them.

[xtruss]

The Top Reason I Hate Masks Is They Force Me To Live By Lies

Being forced to wear a mask is being forced to communicate that I support treating COVID-19 as if it should take priority over everything else in life. That's not only false, but evil.

— By Joy Pullmann | September 8, 2021 | Source: The Federalist

Throughout the last year, I’ve read a lot of masking arguments but none that broached my top objection: mask mandates force me to communicate what I believe are very dangerous lies.

Even if masks ultimately do provide some small reduction in coronavirus spread without imposing additional harms, a contentious claim, to me that is almost beside the point. The point is the security theater, which assumes that drastic government micromanagement of our lives and indefinite curtailment of our liberties are not only ever acceptable but in fact the moral thing to do.

I’m not talking about high-risk situations like nursing homes or hospitals or the homes of cancer patients, where I am willing to mask and sanitize and so forth for the chance it may indeed protect highly vulnerable people. I’m talking about in normal life, in public settings. Despite what people have been shanghaied into assuming, these are low-risk environments and should be treated as such.

Far above and beyond any health considerations, masking is a symbol. It is a talisman, a ritual, a communication of premises that I utterly reject. Being forced to wear a mask to me is the equivalent of being forced to wear a T-shirt that supports legalized abortion, which I believe is mass murder.

Wearing a mask communicates that I accept the premise that everyone should wear a mask, even if vaccinated, even if possessing natural antibodies, even if a child to whom the flu is more dangerous, even if an adult who believes living with risk is part of human life and that attempting to eliminate risk is more dangerous than accepting it. It communicates that the entire world should look like a hospital, a fearful and sad place where people are desperately sick, even if they don’t know it.

It communicates that I believe harassing the living hell out of Americans is a justified response to a disease with a 99.5 percent survival rate or better for those younger than 65. It communicates that it is reasonable to worship health as an idol, and to control citizens with fear. Well, I simply don’t believe any of that, and I’m not going to be forced to communicate that I do.

Yes, I could be wrong both about abortion, masking, and every other thing I believe. But it used to be considered an American thing for others to “defend to the death” my right to express what I believe, even by those who vehemently disagree with the content of my beliefs and speech.

Now I’m told by people who identify even as libertarians that I do not have the right to my own opinion about the post-totalitarian COVID regime, or that if I may hold my opinion privately I certainly cannot live in accord with my beliefs. Clearly, America has fundamentally changed. I oppose that fundamental transformation, too.

I’ve recently been reading and rereading communist dissident Vaclav Havel’s famous essay, “The Power of the Powerless,” in an attempt to make more sense out of how to live in our time. I find myself applying his insights to multiple current issues, including this one.

Havel famously uses the example of a greengrocer putting the Marxist slogan “Workers of the world unite!” in his shop window to analyze the power dynamics in what he calls a “post-totalitarian” society. It was a little startling to me how closely his observations of living in a Communist Bloc country paralleled my daily experiences under the COVID regime.

Havel makes it clear that whether the grocer believes the slogan is immaterial. Probably, he says, the man does not. But he conforms to the demands made of him, even when they contradict reality and good sense, because if he doesn’t he will be punished.

In posting signs of affirmation of their regime, “The greengrocer and the office worker have both adapted to the conditions in which they live, but in doing so, they help to create those conditions,” Havel writes. “…Quite simply, each helps the other to be obedient. Both are objects in a system of control, but at the same time they are its subjects as well. They are both victims of the system and its instruments.”

As with the masks, whether “Workers of the world unite!” is true is beside the point. The point is signaling compliance out of fear, not an honest discussion of the evidence, or persuasion, or any mechanism respecting the informed and open consent of the governed.

“The greengrocer had to put the slogan in his window, therefore, not in the hope that someone might read it or be persuaded by it, but to contribute, along with thousands of other slogans, to the panorama that everyone is very much aware of,” notes Havel. “This panorama, of course, has a subliminal meaning as well: it reminds people where they are living and what is expected of them. It tells them what everyone else is doing, and indicates to them what they must do as well, if they don’t want to be excluded, to fall into isolation, alienate themselves from society, break the rules of the game, and risk the loss of their peace and tranquility and security.”

This is what mask mandates achieve — a false signal that dissenters don’t exist, that everyone buys into the indefinite suspension of our rights “because COVID,” no matter how much it harms people, nor how weak its alleged rationales. This was confirmed for me when my governor finally let his mask mandate lapse. Suddenly, after I had been for months nearly the only person I ever saw without a mask, now almost nobody wore them.

And it wasn’t because everyone was vaccinated, as government statistics show the majority are not. So it was clear that the vast majority of my fellow citizens were obeying the mandate simply because it was a mandate, not because they fully supported it. Yet their compliance communicated the falsehood that the COVID regime had mass support. And that is exactly the point.

Citizens’ assistance to a lying and oppressive regime, Havel says, changes those who corrupt themselves in this way: “they may learn to be comfortable with their involvement, to identify with it as though it were something natural and inevitable and, ultimately, so they may — with no external urging — come to treat any non-involvement as an abnormality, as arrogance, as an attack on themselves, as a form of dropping out of society.”

In other words, falsifying reality brings about more of that falsified reality. It’s the same dynamic as gang initiations requiring initiates to commit crimes. Once people have compromised themselves, they are more likely to identify with their compromise, because it’s embarrassing to admit you were wrong. So instead, people double down. They heap onto their initial cowardice the additional cowardice of refusing to admit they could have been wrong.

This also helps account for the viciousness with which people often treat dissenters. Dissenters are living proof that everyone does not have to comply, that it is possible to live in the truth. This shames those who have chosen temporary comfort over noble sacrifice.

The greengrocer who does not display the sign, Havel says, is soundly punished by his peers precisely because “He has shown everyone that it is possible to live within the truth. Living within the lie can constitute the system only if it is universal. The principle must embrace and permeate everything. There are no terms whatsoever on which it can coexist with living within the truth, and therefore everyone who steps out of line denies it in principle and threatens it in its entirety.”

The crumbling of the Soviet Union began when people “came to realize that not standing up for the freedom of others, regardless of how remote their means of creativity or their attitude to life, meant surrendering one’s own freedom,” Havel writes. There came a point when more people realized that the price of staying silent, of accepting lies, was too much.

Do we need an Afghanistan-level catastrophe for more Americans to realize their acceptance of lockdowns, which mask-wearing signals, is just as deadly? Statists are more than happy to oblige. But the longer we take to wake up, the worse the suffering must be.

— Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist, a happy wife, and the mother of six children. Her newest ebook is a design-your-own summer camp kit, and her bestselling ebook is "Classic Books for Young Children." Sign up here to get early access to her next full-length book, "How To Control The Internet So It Doesn’t Control You." A Hillsdale College honors graduate, @JoyPullmann is also the author of "The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids," from Encounter Books.

[teachmixerofficial]

How to Talk to Your Kids About Racism

Racism has long been an issue in America. Throughout history, people have been bullied, persecuted, harassed, and killed because of the color of their skin or their ethnic heritage.

But racism isn’t always overt. It affects the opportunities that marginalized people are offered; it affects how they are treated on a day-to-day basis; and it affects their mental health and physical well-being.

While racism has been an issue in America for quite some time, it has truly come to the forefront of our national conversation in 2020. The murder of George Floyd and the protests that followed have brought the racial injustice experienced by Black Americans—and marginalized Americans of all races—center stage.

This is a good thing, because talking about these issues, and coming up with concrete ways to address them, is long overdue. If you are a parent, you are probably wondering how to talk to your children about racism.

Let’s face it: some of these conversations can be uncomfortable, and you may feel unsure exactly how to approach them. You may feel concerned that you will frighten your child, or say the wrong thing. That’s understandable, but now is not the time to shy away from these conversations.

The only way we can tackle the issue of racism in America is to turn towards it, not away from it. And that means having difficult conversations with our children.

This doesn’t have to be as difficult as you might imagine, though. We talked to several experts for tips on how to navigate these sometimes challenging, but vitally important conversations with our kids.

Tips on How to Have Hard Discussions About Racism

Why We Need to Talk to Our Kids About Racism

In this day and age, and in this pivotal moment in history, the “racism talk” is not something you can skip with your children, or sugarcoat. Discussing instances of racial injustices as they come up in the news—and addressing the systemic issues that perpetuate them in the first place—has become a vital part of our children’s education.

“Given the current political situation, it’s crucial that parents educate themselves first about how to discuss racially motivated police violence and the history of the criminal justice system, so they can talk with their children about these issues understanding the structural issues at stake,” says Anita Chari, PhD, associate professor of political science at the University of Oregon and co-founder of Embodying Your Curriculum.

The fact is, whatever the racial make-up of your family, racial issues are a part of all of our lives. They are a part of our communities, our schools, our places of worship, and more. And we are all responsible for making sure that each and every other member of our community is treated with respect.

Making this a reality starts with the conversations we have with our children, from their very earliest ages.

Kids Know More Than You Think They Do

Even if we wanted to try to push the issues away, the fact is that our children have probably already heard about some of the divisive current events that have unfolded—so shielding them in some way may even not be possible.

Our kids’ access to social media, along with the fact that these topics are now part of the national conversation, means that our kids probably hear about these things before we even realize that they have. Even young children overhear what we listen to on the news, or the conversations we may have with each other.

“Children are not oblivious to what's happening in the world around them,” says 15-year-old Alejandra Stack, former NAACP Youth Council President and author of Activate Your Activism. “Kids get information from their phones and tablets, television stations, as well as overhearing conversations from adults.”

“This information then gets spread around their peers and turns into a ginormous game of telephone,” Stack says. “Wouldn't you rather your children know the whole story rather than only knowing what Tommy’s friend's cousin told him?”

7 Strategies to Discover and Eliminate Racist Tendencies in Yourself

How to Approach the Topic

When it comes to talking about racism, being clear and straightforward is your best bet. You may think that speaking in vague terms will make it easier for your children to understand or absorb the information, but children actually can understand these issues easier than you may think.

“These discussions are basic for all,” says Stack. “There are ‘softer’ approaches to speak with kids of younger ages about racism and police violence; however, don't make it seem like it isn't as large of a problem as it is. What works for a 14-year-old isn't going to be the same thing you can tell your 4-year-old. Don’t try to ‘dumb it down’—simply find other things similar to these real life situations or use softer language.”

Being honest about what is happening from the onset means that these conversations will continue to be easier as time goes on.

Like the “sex talk,” or other difficult conversations you may have with your children, the conversation about racism is one that should be ongoing, starting when your child is young, and increasing as time goes on. Having a clear, honest, and straightforward framework to work with will make each iteration of the conversation that much easier.

Deedee Cummings, MEd, LPCC, JD—teacher, therapist, lawyer, and author—explains it this way: “Be open with your children. Tell them the full history of our country and why we still have so much to resolve. Remember that it is OK to say, ‘I don’t know,’ or ‘Let’s learn about this together.’”

“As a parent I understand the desire to let children be children,” Cummings says. “It would be lovely if they really could just play and not worry about the ills of this world, but this is not realistic. Talking about and figuring out problems is and should be a part of childhood.”

How to Address Racism With Children of Different Races

It’s important to note that the way you approach the race talk will vary considerably depending on your own family’s experiences with racial issues. If you are a family of color or of an ethnic minority, your “racism talk” will look much different from a family who doesn’t deal with those challenges.

Sonia Smith-Kang, an AfroLatina mom of four and President of Multiracial Americans of Southern California (MASC), shared her experience of “the racism talk” with her children:

“Black and brown parents don’t have the luxury of deciding whether or not we need to talk to our kids about current events and racial violence,” says Smith-Kang. “From a young age, my job has been deliberate. I showed them a realistic picture of what is happening in our country, our state, and our community.”

That also meant arming them with information about how to stay safe from racial injustice, bullying, and harm.

“All my children receive a version of ‘the talk,’” explains Smith-Kang. “For us, it extends beyond ‘the birds and the bees,’ ‘say no to drugs,’ and ‘social media dos and don’ts.’ It includes driving/shopping while Black and brown. Being intentional in our discussions and educating them is an important aspect of what we have to do. It can be the difference that saves their life.”

The Transgenerational Impact of Racism

How to Talk About Difficult Current Events

Some of the current events surrounding racism and racial injustice can feel difficult to discuss, because they are full of unsetting and scary facts and images. Again, though, these are not topics we should shield our kids from, especially because they will likely hear about them on their own, and having a grown-up to talk to about them is vital.

Cummings has a few steps she recommends you take as you begin to broach the subject of current racial events with your children.

Use Open-Ended Questions

Ask your children what they already know about subjects like police brutality, or why people are protesting in the name of Black Lives Matter.

Clarify Terms for Them

For example, your child may not know what “police brutality” is, but they may have heard about the fact that some Black people are afraid of being pulled over by the police.

Admit That You Don’t Have All the Answers

If you don't know something, you can show your child how you go about learning—what resources you look to, and how to educate yourself.

Reinforce the Concept of Racial Justice

All of the current events—no matter how difficult they are to talk about—highlight the need for us all to come together and to care for and respect each other.

Make a Plan of Action

Maybe your child wants to write their congressperson a letter. Maybe your child wants to attend a protest. Maybe your child wants to educate themselves further on the event or topic. Use this as a teachable moment.

Understanding Xenophobia, the Fear of Strangers

How to Talk About Racism By Age

Talking to younger children about racism has different challenges than talking to older children. But that doesn’t mean that you can't begin the conversation from the earliest ages.

Toddlers and Preschoolers

When talking about racism with very young children, Cummings recommends using simple language, and presenting the topic in ways young children can understand.

Talk about the people in your neighborhood, in your family, and at preschool or daycare. What makes these people different? What makes them the same? Talk about the diversity that makes up our world, and how beautiful and important that is.

Elementary School

In elementary school, the issues of race can be discussed using some of the many wonderful books out there on diversity. But even more important than that is exposing your child to diverse authors and books that contain diverse characters.

“Books with Black characters and toys with black or brown skin are not just for Black people,” says Cummings. “Your children should both read and play in a world that reflects the real world from a young age. Interact with your children so you can hear the things they say in role-play. This will be eye-opening. Children do not always know how to answer questions, but they know how to act out what they are learning.”

Cummings also encourages parents to make sure that their children’s actual lives contain diversity as well. If you don’t live in a diverse neighborhood or attend a diverse school, you can still bring your child to places where more racial diversity is present. These little things plant a seed and help your child normalize the diversity that makes up our world.

Alejandra Stack, 15, is an advocate for having blunt conversations with our children, especially as they get older. “Although these conversations are difficult, they are 100% necessary,” she says. “I remember being in school and not being allowed to talk about what happened with Trayvon Martin. This sense of what is ‘appropriate’ for kids to talk about is absolutely ludicrous.”

So what does the “racism talk” look like for older children?

It’s going to be about education, about frank discussion, about learning together, as a family. But it’s also very much about action. And this generation of teens is definitely showing up in big ways when it comes to racial injustice. Many of the protests over the past few months have been organized by teens, and many teens are attending them.

“Show your children how to be a change agent,” says Cummings. “There will be plenty of opportunities to talk with your child about things you would like to see done differently. Identify things you can do together. Going to a rally or peaceful protest together can be a powerful experience.”

Help Your Teen Stay Safe While Protesting

If this is your first time talking about race with your family, you are in good hands. These days, there are so many resources out there for educating your children about the issues and about the history of racism in our country. And there are many opportunities for your family to become part of the fight toward ending racial injustice in America.  

However you go about it, it’s vital that you do the work, and that you don’t try to ignore the issue. For too long, so many white folks have done just that, while people of color have been working to right the wrongs of racism for decades.

“It’s important to note that parents of color can’t be the only ones doing the heavy lifting by having these conversations,” says Smith-Kang. “We don’t have a choice to have these conversations with our children. What we also need is for everyone to be against racism and not see this as a Black issue. It’s all hands on-deck to help keep our Black brothers and sisters safe and alive.”

As upsetting as it can feel at times to realize the extent that racism is alive in America, we can’t turn a blind eye to it. Talking to our kids about racism is the first of many steps we all need to take to address the inequities that continue to impact the lives of so many in our country.

Raising Your Kids to Be Anti-Racist

[profeminist]

“As awareness about non-binary gender identity continues to rise around the world, parents are often left unsure of how to broach the topic with their children. This lead Gender Creative Kids Canada, a Montreal-based nonprofit organization that supports transgender children, parents, and families, to create Sam, a toy which helps children understand transgender or gender diverse people.

Based on traditional Russian Matryoshka dolls, Sam features six different dolls nesting inside each other, each representing a different stage of Sam’s story, from initial exploration of identity, to internal conflict, to social isolation, to eventual acceptance. Inside the smallest doll is a heart, reflecting that no matter what someone looks like on the outside, their heart remains the same. To help illustrate this story a short animated film titled “Sam’s Story” was created, and has already gone viral on Facebook garnering more than a million views in two weeks.

“Most gender-questioning children are born into cultures that don’t accept them. They are often subjected to physical, verbal and sexual harassment leading to feelings of rejection, isolation and confusion,” note the project’s designers on Sam’s Kickstarter page.

To further support these talks, every Sam toy comes with printed Sam booklet with information to help adults talk to children about gender identity. ” 

 Read the full piece here

“The First Toy That Explains Transgender Identity To Kids”

[ramajmedia]

10 Things From Sailor Moon That Did Not Age Well | ScreenRant

The classic anime Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon is known to be a progressive and innovative series. It rose from a need for more superhero stories centered around female characters, and it subverts ideas long established by other anime and manga. This popular tale of good versus evil has become a model template for all subsequent "magic girl" series.

Nevertheless, the original Sailor Moon anime was first released in Japan in 1992. A lot has changed since then in regards to culture and technology. So bearing that in mind, let's examine ten aspects of the anime that haven't aged too well.

RELATED: The Five Best Episodes of Sailor Moon and the Five Worst

10 Animation

It's normal for an anime's style to change and evolve. Or in some cases, worsen. With Sailor Moon, the art changed from episode to episode. The series' original character designer Kazuko Tadano did a splendid job of streamlining the manga's style, but not every animation director upheld the standards she put in place. Considering the rate at which the series was produced, it's no wonder so many episodes look rushed or even sloppy. A change in tone also contributes to why the art may feel dated. For example, Masahiro Ando's cherub style just didn't fit in with the show anymore.

9 Filler episodes

In general, there's been a movement towards less filler in television. Stories have become more condensed and focused. The original anime could have easily trimmed the fat. The problem with the filler episodes isn't necessarily that they exist; it's that they weren't always entertaining. In the fourth season, the fillers especially became too slice-of-life — which would be fine if they had used the stories to develop the main characters in a way the more plot-driven episodes couldn't. The victim-of-the-day formula grew tiresome, but re-using past characters as opposed to new one-offs could've been a mild improvement.

8 Sailor Mars

Fans are divisive about Rei's controversial depiction in the original anime. She flew off the handle at any given second and she was hostile towards Usagi. As for the manga, Rei is demure — polar opposites in terms of characterization. Over the years,��some people have denounced anime Rei because of how she treats Usagi. There's the argument she's protective and this is how she shows affection. One might interpret that reasoning as a justification for her near-abusive personality. Hardly. It's just an attempt to understand a friendship that the writers didn't expand upon after the first couple of seasons.

RELATED: 10 Best Episodes Of Sailor Moon According To IMDb

7 Fan service

The show's staff was made up of mostly men. And with the anime being made in the nineties, it catered to the "male gaze" without scrutiny. This meant the animators inserted upskirt shots whenever possible, and female villains regularly wore scantily-clad and provocatively drawn costumes. The Amazoness Quartet is assumed to be the same age as Chibi-Usa, but their attire is mature. Though to be fair, most of the recurring enemies' ensembles were in fact designed by Naoko Takeuchi. The difference is, however, Takeuchi wasn't sexualizing her characters the way the male showrunners did in the first anime.

6 Usagi vs. Chibi-Usa

Feuding relationships of all kinds frequent anime. It's a staple for the genre. While there has been good discourse over the nuances of Rei and Usagi's complicated friendship, Usagi and Chibi-Usa's longstanding quarreling is borderline torture. From the moment the pink-haired daughter of the future king and queen of Earth arrives, it's non-stop squabbling. It's not amusing. And it continued until they wrote Chibi-Usa out of the show. There was a discernible uptick in quality too. Nonetheless, Chibi-Usa isn't a bad character. It's just all her stories revolve around Usagi — which in turn amounts to a lot of unnecessary disputes.

5 Sailor Moon almost killed an innocent

In episode 42, Minako is visited by her friend Katerina. They knew each other in London when Minako fought as Sailor V. Turns out, Kunzite has transformed Katerina into a monster, and he's using her to draw out Sailor V. And after learning that Katerina "stole" Minako's love interest back in London, Sailor Moon tries to kill her. Sailor Venus pleads with Sailor Moon to stop. It's a glaring blemish on Sailor Moon's otherwise sterling reputation as a champion of good. On the other hand, it's a teachable moment on how even the smallest actions matter in the long run.

RELATED: Sailor Moon’s Senshi Sorted Into Their Hogwarts Houses

4 Usagi and Mamoru's age difference

In the manga, Mamoru is in high school while Usagi is in middle school. However, the '90s anime aged Mamoru up, so he was now in college when they first meet. Yet Usagi is still only fourteen years old. In olden days of kingdoms and royalty, sizable age differences were not uncommon. Usagi and Mamoru each descend respectively from the Moon Kingdom and the Earth Kingdom. So in a historical context, the age issue makes more sense. On the other hand, that doesn't explain Mamoru's age-up. There was no need for him to be at least four years older than Usagi.

3 Homophobia

On occasion, the anime showed its age when broaching queer subject matter. After hearing Makoto is on a "date" with Haruka (episode 96), the others tell Makoto not to "give up" on men. Speaking of, Haruka's same-sex relationship with Michiru is sometimes the butt of pointed jokes. As important as their inclusion is, Haruka and Michiru's personal life becomes a target for homophobic humor. Other transgressions include Usagi telling a female classmate it would be "better" to give her love letter to a boy (episode 178), and Usagi making disappointing comments about Kunzite and Zoisite in a recap special of Season 1.

RELATED: The 10 Best Sailor Moon Cosplays Ever

2 Mamoru's jerk behavior

When it comes to Usagi and Mamoru — the present-day incarnations of star-crossed lovers Princess Serenity and Prince Endymion — their romance was severely mishandled in the early stages. It's true the pair didn't like each other at first in the manga either, but they weren't mean about it. In the anime before everyone's memories of the past are unlocked, Mamoru continually showed up whenever Usagi was out in public. His following behavior was nothing short of street harassment. It really begs us to wonder what kind of person Mamoru would have turned out to be had he not been Tuxedo Mask.

1 Crybaby Usagi

Something played for laughs ad nauseam is Sailor Moon's sporadic crying fits in the face of danger. No matter how many trials she overcomes, Sailor Moon's growth is ignored in favor of this reductive gag. The patent formula — Sailor Moon confronts an enemy head-on, then weeps until someone else intervenes on her behalf — lasts well into the final season. This is even after she's acquires her most powerful abilities. Crying doesn't make Sailor Moon weak or less than; she's merely a victim of stagnant writing. The show often impeded itself with devices and tropes no longer necessary or applicable.

NEXT: 24 Weird Things Cut From Sailor Moon (That Were in the Manga)

source https://screenrant.com/sailor-moon-show-things-aged-poorly/

[republicstandard]

Streets of Blood: Generation Identity Attacked by Antifa in the UK

War is peace, ignorance is strength, and Hope Not Hate are definitely not violent communist activists. For whatever reason, it is not permitted in the United Kingdom to say that it is okay to be British. It is evidently so mind-blowingly subversive to consider the shared ethnocultural heritage of Europeans as a good thing that those who say so must be prevented from entering the country, as has happened again to Generation Identity leader, Martin Sellner.

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This weekend saw this identitarian group hold their first meeting, attended by around fifty people. Whatever was to be said at the meeting is now up for speculation, as Hope Not Hate decided to use mob-rule to shut it down.

BREAKING: Today’s @generationidentity conference is gathering out in Sevenoaks. The Stag Community Centre is the host of the far right group’s get together.

— HOPE not hate (@hopenothate) April 14, 2018

Dr. Joe Mulhall, the senior researcher at Hope Not Hate, told The Independent:

“As an organization, [Generation Identity] remains fairly small here, but it has probably already become the most active far-right organization in the UK, even with its very limited numbers. It’s the new breed.

“While small, they are incredibly active, and the worrying thing is they are very professional, very organized and tech-savvy, and their imagery is very professional. Their website is streets ahead of other far-right groups in Britain. And they’re young."

The claim from this communist group is that Generation is far-right, and therefore literally Hitler. They even have an Austrian leader with a snappy hair-cut, Neville Chamberlain's sake.

I will list for you the core beliefs of Generation Identity:

The ethnocultural identity of Europe has value and should be preserved.

Opposition to multiculturalism, mass immigration, Islamization and The Great Replacement.

Through peaceful activism Generation Identity wish to broach these topics with the silent majority and begin a public discussion on these subjects.

One of the reasons I was not allowed to enter was cause I had “items with me that are showing my extremists believes”. You can guess what those items were.

— Martin Sellner (@Martin_Sellner) April 15, 2018

The response of any goodthinking person is surely to accept the opinion of Hope Not Hate, a state-funded communist group, at face value and attend the event at their behest in order to visit violence upon strangers. These vile people, who have gathered to talk about their concerns about the future faced by their children. Some goodthinking and noble local women even brought their own young children to a situation that they intended to make violent. Imagine looking at your own child, and in good conscience taking them to punch Nazis, about whose ideas you know only what you have been told by literal communists. Of course, Hope Not Hate say that these innocuous ideas about European identity is "coded prejudice." It doesn't matter what you say, it only matters what Hope Not Hate say you are saying.

This HNH Charitable Trust makes serious money. If they have a disagreement with the far-right then organize a Police controlled counter-protest, don't turn our streets into a battleground. I will report this to the Charity Commision.https://t.co/XTXPnVdrkT

— Conor O'Dwyer (@MrJibber) April 14, 2018

Groups like Antifa and Hope Not Hate, through intimidation of citizens and harassment of venues, will prevent uncomfortable truths being spoken. They will protect you from yourself. The British Government itself is aiming to criminalize the viewing of so-called far-right material online in the United Kingdom, as detailed in this excellent video by The Iconoclast.

Who decides what is far right? Are the public ever asked if they find these ideas to be abhorrent, or if they might have a point? Of course not; our civilization is so far removed from even engaging with these ideas that words are met with fists. Here follows video footage of the events, clearly showing masked Antifa thugs attacking people in the street, in broad daylight.

This is England.

This past weekend also saw the 50th anniversary of Enoch Powell's Rivers of Blood speech, which we will reprint in full at the end of this article. For the crime of describing reality accurately, Powell was ruined as a politician, denounced as a racist, and his legacy tarnished forever. Powell as a man was exemplary. An Indophile who spoke Hindi and Urdu, his command of Classical Greek was such that he produced the peerless A Lexicon to Herodotus in 1938 while still a student, and took his professorship at the age of 25. This post he resigned on the outbreak of World War II, seeing the danger of Hitler, rising to become the youngest Brigadier in the Commonwealth, the same as he had been the youngest professor. The point I am making is not just that Powell, dead these past 20 years, was a man possessed of singular intellect and therefore he was right- that is not logical. He was a man of singular intellect and a product of a system that produced many such men; if that turn of phrase does not bend the English language too much. It is a tragedy that we seem not to make such Englishmen today. The point I am making is that such a man lived, was not so dissimilar in opinion on immigration from his party leader and future Prime Minister, Edward Heath; but for speaking truth plainly, he was destroyed. It mattered not one jot that Powell was a scholar, professor, military commander, and decidedly lacking in bigotry of any kind.

What hope then for men such as you and I, to express ourselves in these days, to convince the world of the prophetic truths of Powell's speech? The problems we face transcend the brutish label of far-right, whatever that even means anymore. For two generations the reality that Europeans are under existential threat through immigration has been presented -successfully- as a lie perpetuated by fascists. The possibility that this framing of the conversation is incorrect is also denounced as a lie perpetuated by fascists. It is fascist to notice it, it is fascist to speak of it. It is fascist to allow oneself to hear it. This is what it means to be far right these days; thinking about topics that the globalist state does not want you to think about. Demographics. Identity. Immigration. Ideologies. You must not think of these things, there is only one demography, only one identity, only one nation, only one ideology. One vision of the future- and it's a future in which your nation, your people, no longer exists.

And so, I come full circle to the Generation Identity meeting. This small group is denounced not because they are genocidal racists- there is nothing in their words or actions that suggests this is so. In fact, it requires the analysis of self-proclaimed experts like Hope Not Hate to tell us that this group is far-right and therefore badthink. I would hope that anyone reading this can spot that it is a very bad idea to listen to one perspective alone- but it is this group who are informing the press and government bodies on what is and is not extremist. This group, pro-migration, pro-Islamification, pro-Antifa, claims to understand the difference between Hope and Hate. If that is so, their chief Nick Lowles can inform me by right of reply on these pages exactly what it is that is hopeful about his organization's failure to answer the questions posed by Generation Identity. I would imagine that these questions about population dynamics, demography and culture should be easy to answer if they are only motivated by "hate." It is easy to defeat the bigot, because the bigot is incapable of thinking for themselves clearly; this is why you see a bigot dancing around the attendees of the Generation Identity meeting, squealing that he has found the heretic in the midst of Kent, and all good townsfolk must rise up to burn the witches. This is bigotry, this is intolerance- this squashing of difficult ideas is a cancer in the blood of my countrymen.

Imagine if the @ukhomeoffice & @hopenothate put as much effort into stopping Pakistani hate preachers & returning ISIS fighters from entering the UK as they did with @Martin_Sellner

— TheGorisDaughter🇬🇧 (@ShaziaHobbs) April 13, 2018

My advice is to listen to as many different voices as you can and, most importantly, look to the evidence. Look to reality as much as you dare, stare into the abyss of unfeeling truth. I did so, and changed my mind on many things. For this act alone, I too have been denounced as far right, as a Nazi, as a racist and fascist. It has led to this magazine being censored by one of the most powerful businesses on the planet. All this, in four months of operation for Republic Standard. What is so dangerous about these ideas that we speak of that they must not be spoken? Is not the failure to address the concerns of the day an utter abdication of responsibility by our leaders? Is that not where the genesis of Generation Identity lies?

The question is simple; are we adult human beings with the ability to self-determine our futures and to contend with the world and all her problems, or permanent children, to be kept sedated by trash-culture, consumerism and a comforting, false portrayal of reality?

Over to Mr. Powell.

The supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils. In seeking to do so, it encounters obstacles which are deeply rooted in human nature.

One is that by the very order of things such evils are not demonstrable until they have occurred: at each stage in their onset there is room for doubt and for dispute whether they be real or imaginary. By the same token, they attract little attention in comparison with current troubles, which are both indisputable and pressing: whence the besetting temptation of all politics to concern itself with the immediate present at the expense of the future.

Above all, people are disposed to mistake predicting troubles for causing troubles and even for desiring troubles: "If only," they love to think, "if only people wouldn't talk about it, it probably wouldn't happen."

Perhaps this habit goes back to the primitive belief that the word and the thing, the name and the object, are identical.

At all events, the discussion of future grave but, with effort now, avoidable evils is the most unpopular and at the same time the most necessary occupation for the politician. Those who knowingly shirk it deserve, and not infrequently receive, the curses of those who come after.

A week or two ago I fell into conversation with a constituent, a middle-aged, quite ordinary working man employed in one of our nationalised industries.

After a sentence or two about the weather, he suddenly said: "If I had the money to go, I wouldn't stay in this country." I made some deprecatory reply to the effect that even this government wouldn't last for ever; but he took no notice, and continued: "I have three children, all of them been through grammar school and two of them married now, with family. I shan't be satisfied till I have seen them all settled overseas. In this country in 15 or 20 years' time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man."

I can already hear the chorus of execration. How dare I say such a horrible thing? How dare I stir up trouble and inflame feelings by repeating such a conversation?

The answer is that I do not have the right not to do so. Here is a decent, ordinary fellow Englishman, who in broad daylight in my own town says to me, his Member of Parliament, that his country will not be worth living in for his children.

I simply do not have the right to shrug my shoulders and think about something else. What he is saying, thousands and hundreds of thousands are saying and thinking - not throughout Great Britain, perhaps, but in the areas that are already undergoing the total transformation to which there is no parallel in a thousand years of English history.

In 15 or 20 years, on present trends, there will be in this country three and a half million Commonwealth immigrants and their descendants. That is not my figure. That is the official figure given to parliament by the spokesman of the Registrar General's Office.

There is no comparable official figure for the year 2000, but it must be in the region of five to seven million, approximately one-tenth of the whole population, and approaching that of Greater London. Of course, it will not be evenly distributed from Margate to Aberystwyth and from Penzance to Aberdeen. Whole areas, towns and parts of towns across England will be occupied by sections of the immigrant and immigrant-descended population.

As time goes on, the proportion of this total who are immigrant descendants, those born in England, who arrived here by exactly the same route as the rest of us, will rapidly increase. Already by 1985 the native-born would constitute the majority. It is this fact which creates the extreme urgency of action now, of just that kind of action which is hardest for politicians to take, action where the difficulties lie in the present but the evils to be prevented or minimised lie several parliaments ahead.

The natural and rational first question with a nation confronted by such a prospect is to ask: "How can its dimensions be reduced?" Granted it be not wholly preventable, can it be limited, bearing in mind that numbers are of the essence: the significance and consequences of an alien element introduced into a country or population are profoundly different according to whether that element is 1 per cent or 10 per cent.

The answers to the simple and rational question are equally simple and rational: by stopping, or virtually stopping, further inflow, and by promoting the maximum outflow. Both answers are part of the official policy of the Conservative Party.

It almost passes belief that at this moment 20 or 30 additional immigrant children are arriving from overseas in Wolverhampton alone every week - and that means 15 or 20 additional families a decade or two hence. Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. We must be mad, literally mad, as a nation to be permitting the annual inflow of some 50,000 dependants, who are for the most part the material of the future growth of the immigrant-descended population. It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre. So insane are we that we actually permit unmarried persons to immigrate for the purpose of founding a family with spouses and fiancés whom they have never seen.

Let no one suppose that the flow of dependants will automatically tail off. On the contrary, even at the present admission rate of only 5,000 a year by voucher, there is sufficient for a further 25,000 dependants per annum ad infinitum, without taking into account the huge reservoir of existing relations in this country - and I am making no allowance at all for fraudulent entry. In these circumstances nothing will suffice but that the total inflow for settlement should be reduced at once to negligible proportions, and that the necessary legislative and administrative measures be taken without delay.

I stress the words "for settlement." This has nothing to do with the entry of Commonwealth citizens, any more than of aliens, into this country, for the purposes of study or of improving their qualifications, like (for instance) the Commonwealth doctors who, to the advantage of their own countries, have enabled our hospital service to be expanded faster than would otherwise have been possible. They are not, and never have been, immigrants.

I turn to re-emigration. If all immigration ended tomorrow, the rate of growth of the immigrant and immigrant-descended population would be substantially reduced, but the prospective size of this element in the population would still leave the basic character of the national danger unaffected. This can only be tackled while a considerable proportion of the total still comprises persons who entered this country during the last ten years or so.

Hence the urgency of implementing now the second element of the Conservative Party's policy: the encouragement of re-emigration.

Nobody can make an estimate of the numbers which, with generous assistance, would choose either to return to their countries of origin or to go to other countries anxious to receive the manpower and the skills they represent.

Nobody knows, because no such policy has yet been attempted. I can only say that, even at present, immigrants in my own constituency from time to time come to me, asking if I can find them assistance to return home. If such a policy were adopted and pursued with the determination which the gravity of the alternative justifies, the resultant outflow could appreciably alter the prospects.

The third element of the Conservative Party's policy is that all who are in this country as citizens should be equal before the law and that there shall be no discrimination or difference made between them by public authority. As Mr Heath has put it we will have no "first-class citizens" and "second-class citizens." This does not mean that the immigrant and his descendent should be elevated into a privileged or special class or that the citizen should be denied his right to discriminate in the management of his own affairs between one fellow-citizen and another or that he should be subjected to imposition as to his reasons and motive for behaving in one lawful manner rather than another.

There could be no grosser misconception of the realities than is entertained by those who vociferously demand legislation as they call it "against discrimination", whether they be leader-writers of the same kidney and sometimes on the same newspapers which year after year in the 1930s tried to blind this country to the rising peril which confronted it, or archbishops who live in palaces, faring delicately with the bedclothes pulled right up over their heads. They have got it exactly and diametrically wrong.

The discrimination and the deprivation, the sense of alarm and of resentment, lies not with the immigrant population but with those among whom they have come and are still coming.

This is why to enact legislation of the kind before parliament at this moment is to risk throwing a match on to gunpowder. The kindest thing that can be said about those who propose and support it is that they know not what they do.

Nothing is more misleading than comparison between the Commonwealth immigrant in Britain and the American Negro. The Negro population of the United States, which was already in existence before the United States became a nation, started literally as slaves and were later given the franchise and other rights of citizenship, to the exercise of which they have only gradually and still incompletely come. The Commonwealth immigrant came to Britain as a full citizen, to a country which knew no discrimination between one citizen and another, and he entered instantly into the possession of the rights of every citizen, from the vote to free treatment under the National Health Service.

Whatever drawbacks attended the immigrants arose not from the law or from public policy or from administration, but from those personal circumstances and accidents which cause, and always will cause, the fortunes and experience of one man to be different from another's.

But while, to the immigrant, entry to this country was admission to privileges and opportunities eagerly sought, the impact upon the existing population was very different. For reasons which they could not comprehend, and in pursuance of a decision by default, on which they were never consulted, they found themselves made strangers in their own country.

They found their wives unable to obtain hospital beds in childbirth, their children unable to obtain school places, their homes and neighbourhoods changed beyond recognition, their plans and prospects for the future defeated; at work they found that employers hesitated to apply to the immigrant worker the standards of discipline and competence required of the native-born worker; they began to hear, as time went by, more and more voices which told them that they were now the unwanted. They now learn that a one-way privilege is to be established by act of parliament; a law which cannot, and is not intended to, operate to protect them or redress their grievances is to be enacted to give the stranger, the disgruntled and the agent-provocateur the power to pillory them for their private actions.

In the hundreds upon hundreds of letters I received when I last spoke on this subject two or three months ago, there was one striking feature which was largely new and which I find ominous. All Members of Parliament are used to the typical anonymous correspondent; but what surprised and alarmed me was the high proportion of ordinary, decent, sensible people, writing a rational and often well-educated letter, who believed that they had to omit their address because it was dangerous to have committed themselves to paper to a Member of Parliament agreeing with the views I had expressed, and that they would risk penalties or reprisals if they were known to have done so. The sense of being a persecuted minority which is growing among ordinary English people in the areas of the country which are affected is something that those without direct experience can hardly imagine.

I am going to allow just one of those hundreds of people to speak for me:

“Eight years ago in a respectable street in Wolverhampton a house was sold to a Negro. Now only one white (a woman old-age pensioner) lives there. This is her story. She lost her husband and both her sons in the war. So she turned her seven-roomed house, her only asset, into a boarding house. She worked hard and did well, paid off her mortgage and began to put something by for her old age. Then the immigrants moved in. With growing fear, she saw one house after another taken over. The quiet street became a place of noise and confusion. Regretfully, her white tenants moved out.

“The day after the last one left, she was awakened at 7am by two Negroes who wanted to use her 'phone to contact their employer. When she refused, as she would have refused any stranger at such an hour, she was abused and feared she would have been attacked but for the chain on her door. Immigrant families have tried to rent rooms in her house, but she always refused. Her little store of money went, and after paying rates, she has less than £2 per week. “She went to apply for a rate reduction and was seen by a young girl, who on hearing she had a seven-roomed house, suggested she should let part of it. When she said the only people she could get were Negroes, the girl said, "Racial prejudice won't get you anywhere in this country." So she went home.

“The telephone is her lifeline. Her family pay the bill, and help her out as best they can. Immigrants have offered to buy her house - at a price which the prospective landlord would be able to recover from his tenants in weeks, or at most a few months. She is becoming afraid to go out. Windows are broken. She finds excreta pushed through her letter box. When she goes to the shops, she is followed by children, charming, wide-grinning piccaninnies. They cannot speak English, but one word they know. "Racialist," they chant. When the new Race Relations Bill is passed, this woman is convinced she will go to prison. And is she so wrong? I begin to wonder.”

The other dangerous delusion from which those who are wilfully or otherwise blind to realities suffer, is summed up in the word "integration." To be integrated into a population means to become for all practical purposes indistinguishable from its other members.

Now, at all times, where there are marked physical differences, especially of colour, integration is difficult though, over a period, not impossible. There are among the Commonwealth immigrants who have come to live here in the last fifteen years or so, many thousands whose wish and purpose is to be integrated and whose every thought and endeavour is bent in that direction.

But to imagine that such a thing enters the heads of a great and growing majority of immigrants and their descendants is a ludicrous misconception, and a dangerous one.

We are on the verge here of a change. Hitherto it has been force of circumstance and of background which has rendered the very idea of integration inaccessible to the greater part of the immigrant population - that they never conceived or intended such a thing, and that their numbers and physical concentration meant the pressures towards integration which normally bear upon any small minority did not operate.

Now we are seeing the growth of positive forces acting against integration, of vested interests in the preservation and sharpening of racial and religious differences, with a view to the exercise of actual domination, first over fellow-immigrants and then over the rest of the population. The cloud no bigger than a man's hand, that can so rapidly overcast the sky, has been visible recently in Wolverhampton and has shown signs of spreading quickly. The words I am about to use, verbatim as they appeared in the local press on 17 February, are not mine, but those of a Labour Member of Parliament who is a minister in the present government:

'The Sikh communities' campaign to maintain customs inappropriate in Britain is much to be regretted. Working in Britain, particularly in the public services, they should be prepared to accept the terms and conditions of their employment. To claim special communal rights (or should one say rites?) leads to a dangerous fragmentation within society. This communalism is a canker; whether practised by one colour or another it is to be strongly condemned.'

All credit to John Stonehouse for having had the insight to perceive that, and the courage to say it.

For these dangerous and divisive elements the legislation proposed in the Race Relations Bill is the very pabulum they need to flourish. Here is the means of showing that the immigrant communities can organise to consolidate their members, to agitate and campaign against their fellow citizens, and to overawe and dominate the rest with the legal weapons which the ignorant and the ill-informed have provided. As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see "the River Tiber foaming with much blood."

That tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic but which there is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect. Indeed, it has all but come. In numerical terms, it will be of American proportions long before the end of the century.

Only resolute and urgent action will avert it even now. Whether there will be the public will to demand and obtain that action, I do not know. All I know is that to see, and not to speak, would be the great betrayal.

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Powell was right. Not to speak now is to betray ourselves and the warnings of history; whatever the consequences may be. In good conscience, I cannot stay silent. Can you?

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Why are schools brainwashing our children?

Why are schools brainwashing our children?

Protesting oil pipelines, celebrating polygamy: is the new ‘social justice’ agenda in class pushing politics at the expense of learning?

Cynthia Reynolds

October 31, 2012

http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/why-are-schools-brainwashing-our-children/

To those who don’t keep up with education trends, certain recent events might appear to be unrelated. In May, a Grade 3 class in Toronto took to the streets with signs and an oversized papier mâché oil pipeline to protest the laying of an actual pipeline in western Canada. Last year, in Toronto, first-graders brought home student planners marked with the international days of zero tolerance on female genital mutilation and ending violence against sex workers, a means to spark conversation on the issues. In Laval, Que., a six-year-old boy was disqualified from a teddy-bear contest because a Ziploc was found in his lunch instead of a reusable container. In Ste-Marie-de-Kent, N.B., in 2009, Grade 4 students were given 10 minutes to decide which three people from this group should be saved from an imminent planetary explosion: a black African, a Chinese person, an Aboriginal, an Acadian francophone and an anglophone.

These are just a handful of examples of the more peculiar by-products of a vision gaining ground among many education architects: an elementary school education rooted in social-justice principles. Increasingly, faculties of education in Canada and much of the Western world are preparing their student teachers to weave social justice throughout the primary school curriculum—in math and science, language arts and social studies, drama and even gym—as well as into a range of cross-curricular activities, events and projects. The idea is to encourage kids to become critical analysts of contemporary issues, empathetic defenders of human rights and gatekeepers of the beleaguered Earth.

But social justice—which encompasses diversity, sustainability, global affairs and issues of race and class—is a broad term with varying interpretations. It can manifest in wildly different ways. In the hands of one teacher, social justice might entail teaching kids to care for the Earth by having them plant trees in the schoolyard. Another might have the same children write letters to the government about the environmental effects of mining, urging it to reform how mining claims are processed—part of an actual Grade 4 lesson plan created at the University of Ottawa.

When it comes to the question of what’s appropriate to broach with young children, conflicts abound. Last month, Toronto parents were incensed to learn that the Toronto District School Board web page promoting health education included a link to an organization that suggested kids explore their sexuality by experimenting with sex toys and vegetables. The board has since removed the link. Sometimes the social-justice push can just come off as old-fashioned political correctness: the Durham Board of Education in Ontario came under fire for discouraging the terms “wife” and “husband” in class in favour of the gender-neutral “spouse,” and the words “boyfriend” and “girlfriend” in favour of “partner.” And in the name of inclusiveness, some school boards include Wiccan holidays in their school calendars. But because there are no clear guidelines, things can also really go awry. In March, a U.K. school banned “best friends” because that made other kids feel left out. In May, a six-year-old boy in Denver was suspended for singing the pop anthem I’m Sexy and I Know It to a female classmate, violating the school’s sexual-harassment policy.

Between the mounting examples of how social-justice education can go wrong, and the passionate defences from those responsible for training teachers, who believe their vision has never been more important, the fight is growing over what’s going on in primary school classrooms. It’s just the newest battle over an age-old question: who gets to decide the best way to educate our young?

What is not debatable is the growing commitment to social justice within our education faculties. Social justice in education is a trend that has come and gone over the past century, but nowadays one can specialize in it at teachers’ college, and there are courses and textbooks instructing teachers on how to approach the subject in the classroom. Its proponents argue that today’s students are especially in need of it: a growing mandate to integrate special-education students into mainstream classrooms requires better understanding from children; a new awareness of the effects of bullying puts the onus on teachers to inculcate empathy in students; and increased diversity in the classroom can fuel intolerance from all sides.

“The classroom has completely changed,” says Rita Irwin, associate dean of teacher education at the University of British Columbia. “We need to prepare teachers to deal with that.” To that end, the UBC faculty of education has implemented its revamped curriculum, which builds a social-justice component into every teacher-education course, so that would-be teachers can follow the same approach in their classrooms. By repeating the themes of tolerance and empathy throughout the curriculum, teachers have a better shot of reaching their students, Irwin argues.

Some advocates make more ambitious appeals for the importance of a moral education. Last spring, James Banks, professor of diversity studies at the University of Washington in Seattle, spoke to an audience of teachers at a symposium in Toronto called “Activism in Education: Pushing Limits in Increasingly Conservative Times.” He reminded them that even well-educated people can be persuaded to do terrible things. He spoke of the horrors of Nazi Germany, and how despite their high levels of literacy and numeracy, so many citizens succumbed to its evil. “There’s more to education than teaching literacy and numeracy,” Banks said. Against the last century’s backdrop of human-rights abuses, war atrocities and environmental devastation, today’s education architects argue, we have a duty to provide a moral, socially conscious education.

The University of Ottawa faculty of education prepares its teachers-in-training to tackle some of those controversial topics head-on. Several lesson plans written by its students are made available for teachers on its Developing a Global Perspective for Educators website. For instance, in a Grade 1 science lesson, students contemplate what will happen to the Earth if pollution continues. In a cross-curricular lesson plan about the effects of mining coltan (a precious metal) in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Grade 4s watch a video that includes explicit shots of dead gorillas. They then create statements for their local news about how mining hurts the animals. In Grade 5, they learn how their Playstations and iPods may contain coltan and how mining it contributes to the creation of child soldiers. A social-studies lesson requires Grade 6 students to analyze the unfairness of global trade, and evaluate the roles of the World Trade Organizationand NAFTA.

That may all sound like a lot to throw at grade schoolers, and the organization’s acting director, associate professor Nicholas Ng-A-Fook, acknowledges the potential for controversy but argues that real-world contention helps engage kids in the classroom—they’re intrigued, they listen, they participate.

Indigo Esmonde, assistant professor at OISE, University of Toronto’s education faculty, raises a common criticism of the approach. “We hear that we’re brainwashing kids,” says Esmonde, who specializes in math education. Esmonde counters that from the time kids are young, they’re inundated with information, with numbers and statistics that can be easily manipulated to push a certain world view. For Esmonde, a grounding in social-justice math, for instance, helps kids learn to question numbers—whatever their conclusions might be. She cites a Toronto school that conducts an annual math-based garbage audit to test whether its school is truly succeeding with its litter-free lunch policy. Sometimes a political motive behind some lessons is obvious, however. For instance, OISE’s website features a Grade 5 math lesson on government budgets that culminates in students writing letters to MPPs advocating changes in spending priorities. Though not explicitly partisan, it juxtaposes the money spent on the war in Afghanistan with the money spent on poverty—and that does suggest a certain point of view.

It raises an important question: in engaging in controversial topics, are children being taught a mix of perspectives? “Social justice” generally entails a strongly progressive bent, and the idea of political manipulation creates fiercely negative reactions among parents. Andy Shapiera, a father of two in Toronto, was frustrated after learning that his son’s Grade 1 teacher had a poster for PETA hanging in the classroom. “What if you’re a family in agriculture and suddenly you have to explain why you kill cows for a living? The schools have no business discussing hot-button topics with kids that age. That’s the parents’ call.” It’s the same reaction some parents had to the TDSB’s Love Has No Gender poster in schools that included, alongside heterosexual and same-sex couples, pictures of relationships comprising two men and a woman, as well as two women and a man. Love apparently has no number either, the message seemed to be.

Not surprisingly, the new educational approach in the classroom and school hallways is starting to cause a small firestorm. Politicians are beginning to weigh in. Earlier this year, Tory MPP Rob Milligan spoke out against the Grade 3 Toronto class protesting the oil pipeline, calling it “brainwashing” and “an abuse of power.”

Middle-school teacher David Stocker has heard those arguments. He is the author of the textbook Math That Matters: A Teacher Resource for Linking Math and Social Justice, for Grades 6 to 9, which ups the political ante with math problems related to such issues as workers’ rights, racial profiling and homophobia. He’s also no stranger to controversy—he and his wife made international headlines last year after announcing they intended to raise their third child, Storm, genderless. Stocker is frank about his political stance. “All material carries bias of some sort,” he writes in the introduction. “Really the question is whether or not we want to spend time educating for peace and social justice. If we do, let’s admit that bias and get to work.”

The issue that critics have, even those who share the political perspective, is about the age group concerned. “Once they hit high school,” says Shapiera, “students are mature enough to have their own opinions without the influence of the school. For me, it’s not so much whether a political issue needs to be discussed, but when.” And when it’s up to individual teachers to make that call, the results can be risky. Jeanne Williams of Edmonton has seen this in action. As a parent of two boys, Williams was mostly pleased with the school-based social-justice initiatives her sons participated in. But as a child psychologist, Williams has also witnessed how it can backfire. She’s treated several kids for anxiety that she says is directly connected to what they learned at the school, particularly related to the idea that environmental destruction will ultimately end the world. “Kids need to feel safe. It’s an important part of the brain growing normally,” she says. “If children feel safe, they’re more likely to grow up to be stronger and self-confident.”

Psychologist Robin Grille, the author of Parenting for a Peaceful World, adds that getting too political in elementary school, where the power differential between teacher and student is vast, verges on manipulation. “You can’t use children as cannon fodder for your cause,” says Grille. “How do you know these young kids aren’t just parroting what their teacher is telling them? How easy would it be to get them to protest, say, abortion? How much are the young truly able to make up their own minds?” That question particularly comes into play in the context of the classroom, where they’re being graded. Grille argues that kids need to develop emotionally before they can develop politically.

There’s another criticism of the approach, articulated by a conservative commentator in Surrey, B.C., on his Just Right blog. “Schools are failing at their primary job, which is to educate,” he notes in a post about social-justice education. That’s a point that crosses political lines: does too much time devoted to social justice divert attention from academic achievement and ironically promote a gross social injustice: students ill-prepared to contend with a complicated and competitive world? After all, an education that teaches kids to think for themselves should surely allow them to apply critical thinking to everything around them, including global issues, social inequalities and the like.

Teachers, too, can struggle with the mandate. With little on-the-ground guidance about how to actually implement a social-justice lesson that won’t incite parents or frighten kids, they can make well-intentioned choices with terrible consequences. Last year, in Georgia, a teacher resigned after families complained about Grade 4 math homework that had kids calculating how many beatings a slave received in a week. The lesson was part of the teacher’s mandate to reinforce a history unit on slavery in America.

For teachers uncomfortable with coming up with their own social-justice lesson plans, a safer option may be using one designed for them, but that’s no guarantee of success, either. For instance, in partnership with the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario, Springtide Resources, a Toronto-based organization that works to prevent abuse against women and children, has created a package of lesson plans. While few would argue with the organization’s mandate, some of its lessons might disturb parents: in one, Grade 4s read Uncle Willy’s Tickles to initiate a class-wide conversation about abuse; the package also includes a personal safety plan that children fill out, in case they’re ever abused.

Elementary school teacher Rhonda Philpott, who also lectures part-time at Simon Fraser University’s faculty of education, is a social-justice veteran. She’s incorporated that angle into her teaching for more than 25 years, and sees how tricky this territory can be to traverse, especially for new teachers. While some teachers, she says, shy away from the more provocative discussions for fear of antagonizing parents or disconcerting administrators, others jump in without thinking. “Those who insert activities randomly might find that those activities can literally backfire—and both students and teachers may be unprepared for any emotional reactions or resistance,” Philpott says. “You can’t walk into a classroom and just start a social-justice activity. It takes trust.”

Indeed, negotiating the new mandate demands care and sensitivity. “Teachers will have to weigh the potential for conflict against the importance of the topic,” says U of Ottawa professor Ng-A-Fook. “Ultimately, you have to know your students, and teachers may need to collaborate with parents, because you don’t want to offend families or traumatize kids.”

[businessfrontrunners]

Bestselling Book from Psychotherapist Amy Carpenter Reveals What Parents Need to Know to Help Teens Stay Smart, Strong, and Safe from Sexual Harassment and Assault 

https://authoritypresswire.com/?p=35514&wpwautoposter=1621576900 "The #MeToo movement helped break down the walls of secrecy and shame that have always existed around the issue of sexual violence," says psychotherapist Amy Carpenter, author of the bestselling book, Be Strong, Be Wise: The Young Adult’s Guide to Sexual Assault Awareness and Personal Safety. "Since half of all victims are between the ages of 18 and 34, it's crucial that we carry the movement forward by empowering young men, women and non-binary youth to learn ways of keeping themselves and others safe."Carpenter, who has nearly twenty-five years of experience treating sexual assault victims, collaborates with schools and youth organizations to offer a curriculum that teaches young people how to lower their risk of while also building healthy connections with others. Her approach has proven to double awareness scores, meaning participants leave her program with a much clearer sense of how to keep themselves safe.The drive to make a difference is personal for Amy Carpenter. "As a parent, psychotherapist, and assault survivor, I know all too well the importance of arming our young adults with the knowledge they need to safeguard themselves," she says.According to Carpenter, teens are exposed to a staggering amount of explicit content on their computers and smart phones every day - which creates an opportunity for parents and educators. "In my experience, young people are more eager than we think they are to find a safe place where they can process everything," she says. Because discussing sexual ethics with young people is not easy, Carpenter has identified three primary conversation obstacles and how to overcome them:1. Be willing to feel uncomfortable. Carpenter teaches that learning to get comfortable with uncomfortable subject matter is the first step to having an effective conversation. “When adults are afraid to talk about something, the fear often causes us to broach the subject from the wrong angle,” she says. “The best way to overcome that fear is to accept that it’s part of the process. If we wait until we’re comfortable, we may never have these important conversations.”2. Ask better questions. According to Carpenter, asking the right reflective questions helps teens build empathy and awareness when someone they know has been assaulted. “In sorting through the details of harassment or assault, teen groups are often polarized and feel forced to ‘pick a side’ in a bid to maintain their social standing,” Carpenter explains. “To overcome this tendency, instead of asking, ‘What happened and what are people saying about it?’ ask, ‘What would you say or do if someone tried to cross your personal boundaries?’”3. Get on the same page. “This is a vast subject, and many people struggle with knowing where to begin,” Carpenter says. “Exploring the sexual assault definition (which many young people don’t know) is a great place to start a dialogue.”Carpenter’s book comes highly recommended for parents and educators who need extra help with those difficult conversations with young people."Be Strong, Be Wise is an invaluable resource to help young women and men navigate the complexities of social and sexual situations in order to prevent and protect themselves,” says Dr. Nina Silberman, psychologist and parent. “Amy’s book is written in clear, straightforward language that interweaves real life vignettes, statistical data, concrete strategies, thought-provoking questions, practical guidance, and vital resources that make this book a must-read.”While awareness of sexual harassment is at an all-time high, there is still a lot of work to be done. About 60% of women polled by Time magazine said that their work environment has not changed since the #MeToo movement, and half of them said that they are no more likely to report sexual harassment now than before. Yet Carpenter is encouraged by the open, honest conversations she has had with young people in classes she has taught. “In many ways, young people are able to hold meaningful conversation on topics adults still struggle with, since they’ve grown up in the digital age. I can see this trend continuing and it gives me hope,” she says. “Young people are advocating for themselves in profoundly personal ways; it’s our job to respond as fully and mindfully as we can.”Amy Carpenter is a psychotherapist, life coach, and bestselling author with more than twenty-five years of experience in child welfare, youth advocacy, and sexual safety education. She is the bestselling author of Be Strong, Be Wise: The Young Adult’s Guide to Sexual Assault Awareness and Personal Safety and creator of the Be Strong, Be Wise sexual safety education program. Her writings and educational curricula are utilized by schools, youth organizations, and families to empower young people with tools that build confidence and support healthy relationships. She is a speaker, group leader, and co-founder of several community organizations designed to meet the needs of children and families. In 2018, Carpenter was named the Maine Writers and Publisher’s Alliance Ilgenfritz Scholar for writers of non-fiction.To learn more about books, programs, and other educational resources available from Amy Carpenter, visit bestrongbewise.com.

[businessfrontrunners]

Bestselling Book from Psychotherapist Amy Carpenter Reveals What Parents Need to Know to Help Teens Stay Smart, Strong, and Safe from Sexual Harassment and Assault 

https://authoritypresswire.com/?p=35514&wpwautoposter=1621566073 "The #MeToo movement helped break down the walls of secrecy and shame that have always existed around the issue of sexual violence," says psychotherapist Amy Carpenter, author of the bestselling book, Be Strong, Be Wise: The Young Adult’s Guide to Sexual Assault Awareness and Personal Safety. "Since half of all victims are between the ages of 18 and 34, it's crucial that we carry the movement forward by empowering young men, women and non-binary youth to learn ways of keeping themselves and others safe."Carpenter, who has nearly twenty-five years of experience treating sexual assault victims, collaborates with schools and youth organizations to offer a curriculum that teaches young people how to lower their risk of while also building healthy connections with others. Her approach has proven to double awareness scores, meaning participants leave her program with a much clearer sense of how to keep themselves safe.The drive to make a difference is personal for Amy Carpenter. "As a parent, psychotherapist, and assault survivor, I know all too well the importance of arming our young adults with the knowledge they need to safeguard themselves," she says.According to Carpenter, teens are exposed to a staggering amount of explicit content on their computers and smart phones every day - which creates an opportunity for parents and educators. "In my experience, young people are more eager than we think they are to find a safe place where they can process everything," she says. Because discussing sexual ethics with young people is not easy, Carpenter has identified three primary conversation obstacles and how to overcome them:1. Be willing to feel uncomfortable. Carpenter teaches that learning to get comfortable with uncomfortable subject matter is the first step to having an effective conversation. “When adults are afraid to talk about something, the fear often causes us to broach the subject from the wrong angle,” she says. “The best way to overcome that fear is to accept that it’s part of the process. If we wait until we’re comfortable, we may never have these important conversations.”2. Ask better questions. According to Carpenter, asking the right reflective questions helps teens build empathy and awareness when someone they know has been assaulted. “In sorting through the details of harassment or assault, teen groups are often polarized and feel forced to ‘pick a side’ in a bid to maintain their social standing,” Carpenter explains. “To overcome this tendency, instead of asking, ‘What happened and what are people saying about it?’ ask, ‘What would you say or do if someone tried to cross your personal boundaries?’”3. Get on the same page. “This is a vast subject, and many people struggle with knowing where to begin,” Carpenter says. “Exploring the sexual assault definition (which many young people don’t know) is a great place to start a dialogue.”Carpenter’s book comes highly recommended for parents and educators who need extra help with those difficult conversations with young people."Be Strong, Be Wise is an invaluable resource to help young women and men navigate the complexities of social and sexual situations in order to prevent and protect themselves,” says Dr. Nina Silberman, psychologist and parent. “Amy’s book is written in clear, straightforward language that interweaves real life vignettes, statistical data, concrete strategies, thought-provoking questions, practical guidance, and vital resources that make this book a must-read.”While awareness of sexual harassment is at an all-time high, there is still a lot of work to be done. About 60% of women polled by Time magazine said that their work environment has not changed since the #MeToo movement, and half of them said that they are no more likely to report sexual harassment now than before. Yet Carpenter is encouraged by the open, honest conversations she has had with young people in classes she has taught. “In many ways, young people are able to hold meaningful conversation on topics adults still struggle with, since they’ve grown up in the digital age. I can see this trend continuing and it gives me hope,” she says. “Young people are advocating for themselves in profoundly personal ways; it’s our job to respond as fully and mindfully as we can.”Amy Carpenter is a psychotherapist, life coach, and bestselling author with more than twenty-five years of experience in child welfare, youth advocacy, and sexual safety education. She is the bestselling author of Be Strong, Be Wise: The Young Adult’s Guide to Sexual Assault Awareness and Personal Safety and creator of the Be Strong, Be Wise sexual safety education program. Her writings and educational curricula are utilized by schools, youth organizations, and families to empower young people with tools that build confidence and support healthy relationships. She is a speaker, group leader, and co-founder of several community organizations designed to meet the needs of children and families. In 2018, Carpenter was named the Maine Writers and Publisher’s Alliance Ilgenfritz Scholar for writers of non-fiction.To learn more about books, programs, and other educational resources available from Amy Carpenter, visit bestrongbewise.com.