#his fears of being changed by the capitol did become true and he did struggle

[sungkaan]

When I say I love a character, I actually mean the quality of their writing. I love how they are written. Like problematic characters are interesting and I love them for it, but it doesn't mean that I would love to meet that kind of person in real life. I'm not saying that wholesome characters are boring though because there are a lot of wholesome characters who are written well.

[aowski]

Changing the Narrative

It seems that death is coming at us from all sides these days. Police shootings, mass shootings, road-rage shootings, COVID deaths, and the execution spree of the last administration.  

What most of us know about the death penalty in America, we probably gleaned from movies like “The Green Mile”. In our minds, we confine it geographically and historically to the old South. I propose that it encompasses more of our lives than we care to admit. We just don’t see it and recognize it as such. The sentence of death hangs over all of us. We’ve become numb to all the ways this is true, especially if it doesn’t directly affect us or our demographic today. But executions are happening daily in this country. It might help if these executions were categorized:

Judicial Execution - Death administered by the State, as a punishment for a capitol crime, usually for being too poor to afford a proper defense.

Civil Execution - Death administered by law enforcement as punishment for  no reason at all except being a poor person of color. 

Stochastic Execution - Death administered randomly in a public place by another person by reason of their own uncontrolled rage and easy access to military-grade firearms.

Domestic Execution - Death administered by a significant other, usually an aggrieved spouse or lover. Again rage combined with easy access to firearms. May result in stochastic execution of others.

Policy Execution - Death administered by state austerity that neglects human well-being. Reverend Barber’s “Policy Violence”.

Economic Execution - Death administered by poverty. Holes in the social safety net coupled with grievous inequality depriving people of access to food, water, shelter, and healthcare.

Environmental Execution - Death by industrial pollution, its toxic effects on food, water, or air, and climate change.

Epidemiological Execution - Death by a communicable virus that spreads like wildfire because of government negligence,  politicization, assertion of personal freedom, and utter disregard for the well-being of others.

Self Execution - Death caused by our own hand. More than the act itself. The culmination of untreated depression, bi-polar illness, or hopelessness, i.e. the psychic death that precedes it.

Taken together, the result is...

Actuarial Execution - The reduced lifespan resulting from living in the United States. With a life expectancy of 78.5 years (per a WHO 2019 report), we have fallen to 40th among the world's nations in life expectancy! These are Life-years stolen! How did we get here? What is it about America that has made 39 others countries a better place, a place to live longer?

We have accepted a "culture of death", a phrase coined by Pope John Paul II. The Psalmist called it “the Shadow of Death”. In this country, the culture of death began with genocide of the indigenous, but gained an enduring foothold with slavery.

Slavery was the foundation of the economy at our country’s inception and was well-represented at the Constitutional Convention: 

Let us consider the first fifty years of our national history. There was never a moment during this time when the slavery issue was not a sleeping serpent. That issue lay coiled up under the table during the deliberations of the Constitutional Convention in 1787.— John Jay Chapman

Much of our Constitution was an agreement made by compromising with slave-holding states and interests. The most notorious artifact was the “three-fifths” clause which counted slaves as 3/5 of a human being for the purpose of apportionment, thus giving the slave-holding states disproportionate representation. The Second Amendment is another concession to the interests of slavery. By the time of the Convention, “Slave Patrols” were well established in the South. There was concern that Article 1, Section 8, giving Congress the power to form and finance armies could gain control of state militias. Virginia would not ratify the Constitution unless the Second Amendment was included. 

The cohesion (and fragmentation) within our society is based on identity. Too often this identity is not based so much on common interests, but on caste.

Identity is not who we define ourselves to be, but who we define ourselves to not be. More to the point, we understand ourselves to be in a hierarchy, so we define ourselves by who we are above. 

They have had to believe for many years, and for innumerable reasons, that black men are inferior to white men. Many of them, indeed, know better, but, as you will discover, people find it very difficult to act on what they know. To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger. In this case, the danger, in the minds of most white Americans, is the loss of their identity.—James Baldwin

"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." —Lyndon B. Johnson

It is a human failing that we need a scapegoat to blame others for our shortcomings and vulnerabilities. White people impugn our shadow on Black people and other minority groups. Everything White America refuses to believe about itself, hates about itself, is projected onto people of color.

The white man's unadmitted and apparently, to him, unspeakable-private fears and longings are projected onto the Negro. —James Baldwin

Of all the things we want to push away from ourselves, the certainty of our death is chief among them. Yet...

Mortality the reality that we are most adept at denying. 

Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have.

—James Baldwin

And, again, White America, finds it convenient to avoid  the reality of death by projecting it on others:

White Americans do not believe in death, and this is why the darkness of my skin so intimidates them.  

—James Baldwin

Is this is why White America has been so indifferent to the suffering and death of Black Americans? Per CDC data, life expectancy for Black Americans is approximately five years less than the population as a whole. Indifference may not be imputation, but it does translate into the lack of political will to change things.

Racism is the Poison. Although inequality disproportionately affects people of color, all working and middle-class people are struggling to survive. Compared against other wealthy Western nations, America’s systemic ills are dragging us all down into the shadows of death. 

...racism is a poison first consumed by its concocters. What's clearer now in our time of growing inequality is that the economic benefit of the racial bargain is shrinking for all but the richest. The logic that launched the zero-sum paradigm-I will profit at your expense-is no longer sparing millions of white Americans from the degradations of American economic life as people of color have always known it.

—Heather McGhee (The Sum of Us)

Solidarity is the alternative and people are waking up to it:

Everywhere I went, I found that the people who had replaced the zero sum with a new formula of cross-racial solidarity had found the key to unlocking what I began to call a "Solidarity Dividend," from higher wages to cleaner air, made possible through collective action. And the benefits weren't only external. I didn't set out to write about the moral costs of racism, but they kept showing themselves. There is a psychic and emotional cost to the tightrope white people walk, clutching their identity as good people when all around them is suffering they don't know how to stop, but that is done, it seems, in their name and for their benefit. The forces of division seek to harden this guilt into racial resentment, but I met people who had been liberated by facing the truth and working toward racial healing in their communities.

—Heather McGhee (The Sum of Us)

A New Way, a way of life, a way of economic security is possible, but only if we seize the moment we are in. A moment of crisis is also a moment of opportunity. As we come out of a once-in-a-lifetime crisis, more people are facing the bankruptcy of 40 years of trickle-down Reaganomics.

Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced —James Baldwin

The politics and messaging of racial scapegoating is deeply embedded in the American psyche. Race-baiting and fear are the tools used against solidarity. The answer is a new story, a race-class narrative. 

If we lead with a shared value, that means race and class, for example, ‘Whatever your race, gender, or religion, most of us work hard for our families. Every child, regardless of where they come from, deserves a chance to pursue their dreams.’ Reminding us of our common humanity (that’s a good place to start) and then saying that racial scapegoating is a weapon that economically harms all of us. You’re actually putting a shot in your listeners’ arm, inoculating them, so the next time they hear that racial scapegoating, they have antibodies for it. —Heather McGhee

This is the pivotal moment we find ourselves in. Our choices are to continue with the old story of racism, division, and death or to embrace a new story, a story of solidarity and an abundance. This can happen when we realize we are more than "The Sum of Us" (McGhee).

[jockpersecution]

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

Note: this is the prequel to the Hunger Games series. If you're invested you may not want to read this review before reading the book!

In his last scene before returning to the Capitol, Coriolanus dives into the remote lake. His mother's palette and his photographs are destroyed by the water, but he is surprised to find that his father's compass still works. He trashes the ruined items, meanwhile rejecting the legacy of gentleness his mother's token represented and the relationships represented in the photos. With only his father's inherited (literal and figurative) compass left to guide him, he returns to the Capitol and embraces his father's coldness.

I was really excited for this. I trust Suzanne Collins and I wasn't disappointed! Often a prequel can't compete with the originals, but it didn't feel like she was retconning important details; she added interesting background, and in some ways the sequel seemed planned. Tigris especially was given a background. I had already reread the trilogy earlier this year but had to read them again after this.

Snow is a great unreliable narrator. At first I was disappointed that the contestants in the 10th Hunger Games were not fleshed out. They seemed almost animalistic, dehumanized. But that's because this is Snow's perspective. We know what kind of person he is destined to become; he has to someday be the President Snow we see in the trilogy. Looking back to the trilogy, we can draw comparisons between the protagonists. Katniss empathizes with the other tributes; even when she attempts to dehumanize them so that she call kill them, she describes their traits and backgrounds and feels guilt. The reader of Ballad doesn't know who the the 10th Hunger Games tributes are beyond their violent acts because Snow doesn't care; Katniss identifies with the other 74th and 75th Hunger Games tributes and knows they are not her true enemy. Katniss and Corio both grew up poor and hungry, but Corio is unable to identify with others or see his problems as structural because he views himself as separate from and better than people outside his sociopolitical bubble. His skill as a manipulator is shown immediately, but at times he edges toward the sympathetic. However, the more he interacts with Lucy Gray, the more we see that he dehumanizes her as well. I feared at some points that this book might follow a pattern of blaming a woman who breaks the man's heart for his loss of character. However, it soon became clear that his way of speaking about Lucy Gray was written very intentionally. The first time he refers to her as "his", it's plausible he's speaking only in the terms of the Capitol. Later, he speaks of her being unequivocally his, and of owning her. He does not really like anything about her. I felt dread as the book progressed.

Snow maintains his worthiness above people born into "lesser" families, most especially those of the districts. He can only convince himself of Lucy Gray's worth by believing she is not truly "of the districts". This of course is a farce, as no one is intrinsically district or Capitol, and this belief in her worth deteriorates over time. He essentializes Capitol vs district and Panem citizenship; the Covey is not "really" district 12 because they previously were travellers. However, district is determined by the Capitol, which suppresses human movement and cultural expression. Everyone's ancestors were something before they were Capitol / district. To Snow, "District 12" and "Capitol" are both intrinsic states which indicate different levels of worthiness, rather than incidental circumstance of birth.

At no point does Snow come to respect the Plinths. At no point does he truly care about others. When he realizes what Tigress, only two years his elder, may have sacrificed for him --endured a trauma for him -- he decides he doesn't want to know about it. She can bear to experience it, but he can't even bear to take some of the burden by listening. The presumed murder of Lucy Gray is presented as nothing more than an inevitable tragedy at the hands of a man who could not be satisfied without conplete power and control.

Snow's characterization brings home the political message at the core of the series. A large portion of the book is his internal experience, through which we see a man not unlike powerful men in modern America. His struggle and life experience do not inevitably make him evil; his active decisions and mentality do.

Overall, I enjoyed it. I hope Collins writes more (in other series!). It didn't fully have the pull of the original trilogy but kept me engaged and interested, and appropriately haunted. I read it a few weeks ago and am still thinking about it.

Some miscellaneous thoughts:

• At two separate times, I thought Coriolanus would be left in the arena to teach him and the people a lesson that even the Capitol has to comply. First, I thought the bombs were set by the Capitol and meant to start the Hunger Games with all the contestants and mentors present. Then I thought he and Sejanus would be left to battle it out after sneaking in. I was interested in the development but must've been misreading where the plot was led. Just a sidenote.

• Built into the original trilogy is commentary on sex, class, and race; an analysis of racism is missing from this book. I wanted a deeper analysis of colonization when the Covey was discussed and I was surprised to see racial dynamics that are absolutely an issue in-universe ignored while in the perspective of a man who will once day be responsible for the structural propogation if it; it was so severe by the 74th Hunger Games that the omission seems glaring.

• At what point did Collins decide she would write this, and did she have Snow's background already in mind at the time she wrote the first books?

• What inspired the Covey? Given that racist legacies are written into the original trilogy and the canon is a commentary and representation of issues Collins is concerned about, I wonder about it and its implications but don't know enough. District 12 is settled on mines but the Covey is said to be travelers, considered outsiders. Collins *did* show the suppression of the Covey and the attempt to homogenize the culture, and the absurdity of District citizenship being seen as intrinsic. I just wanted more, I don't know how much of a real criticism this is, I just wanted more.

• If I recall right, neither district 12 Hunger Games victors are discussed by Katniss's time; both histories have been erased. It fits in so well with the originals.

• What specifically is said about the songs sung by the Covey, especially The Hanging Tree? How does context change the song's interpretation?

[bvtaille]

eliza scanlen . cis female . she/her ➶ I RECOGNISE THAT FACE! that's annie cresta, the twenty-three year old victor from district four. they’ve been in the capitol around every once in a while, long enough to gain a reputation as the tragedy for being so kind-hearted & unstable. they’re so lucky getting to live in the tribute center for the duration of the games! ( character is part of the uprising ) – kati . 20 . cis female . she/her . gmt+2 . none

hello friends ! in the past two hours i have found and joined this group, so if i am a bit lost, forgive me ! i just couldn’t pass the opportunity to play this beautiful character once again. i am kati and i’m looking forward to getting to write with all of you, tap that heart down below and i’ll come bother you for plots. but now, a bit about annie !

tw: death, suicidal thoughts, ptsd, hallucinations

growing up in a district always meant that you were in danger, some less, some more. annie was one of the more fortunate ones, born in district four where she did not grow up in poverty. she and her three sisters helped their mother to fish, they did their chores and enjoyed their lives.

annie had never been interested in the games. the violence terrified her, as did all the death. she saw it for what it was – making innocent children kill each other for someone’s entertainment. every year she feared to hear her own name or even worse, one of her sisters’. year after year she survived, until the year she was eighteen years old.

the 70th hunger games, another decade gone. annie hears her own name in the reaping and the life she has always known is over. to everyone’s surprise, nobody volunteers. later it will become one of annie’s daydreams, but now she has to step forward, rise on the stage and say goodbye to her family.

she doesn’t think she’ll return in anything else than a coffin. she can gut a fish any day, or use a spear or a trident passably, but she has never been trained to fight. and at the end of the day, none of it matters since she simply doesn’t want to kill. quietly she resigns to her fate, though she still makes fast friends with the other tribute, trafford. annie wholeheartedly hopes he’ll win.

annie is small and quiet throughout the time she spends in the capitol. whenever she looks at her fellow tributes, she knows she could never kill any of them, not even the ones who have steel in their eyes and a sneer on their lips. she spends her nights talking to trafford, telling him stories of her sisters. her days she spends mostly alone, occasionally talking with her mentor, the notorious finnick odair.

she has heard of him, watched his games five years ago. he tells her he’ll do his best to keep her alive, which she appreciates, even though she thinks it’ll probably be unnecessary. she doesn’t dare to tell him that, though. he seems invested, which feels strange. annie has always been the one who takes care of others, not the other way around. 

when the morning of the first day of the games rises, annie is prepared to die. she says her goodbyes, thanks finnick for all he has done for her. for the viewers, the arena probably looks beautiful. annie only thinks how much she wishes she could be back in her district. when the games begin, she only runs. she is flabbergasted to have survived the bloodbath and even more shocked to meet trafford, alive as well. she doesn’t dare to hope, but for now she is still alive.

the second day changes everything. they are scavenging for food and chattering quietly as they go. her back is turned as she has bent down to gather some berries, when trafford goes quiet. she turns, only to see the tribute from two beheading him. a flood of instant shock and sorrow runs through her, disbelief and pure pain muddling her mind. she drops the berries and runs, runs away from them. when she hears the cannon, she knows it’s because of trafford. tears flow from her eyes and she screams, though no sound escapes her.

she runs until her legs give out, near a small stream of water. she is exhausted, yet she can’t sleep. every time she closes her eyes, her mind replays the gruesome scene, over and over again. every single sound makes her heart race, it’s impossible to relax. she finds a spot to hide and she only prays for it to be over soon. 

but no one comes. she is alone, only accompanied by her thoughts and the constant paranoia. her exhaustion only grows and she begins to see trafford again. it’s only a hallucination, brought on by dehydration, exhaustion and trauma, but it makes everything simultaneously better and worse.

finally, salvation comes in the form of a flood. water takes her and her tears blend with the murky flow. it would be so easy to let go, just to float away, but a voice in her head tells her to fight. swimming is the most natural thing she can do, so she just swims until she has won. she doesn’t understand and just keeps swimming. the hold her down, bleeding and laughing, and tell her she has won the games. she doesn’t understand and just keeps laughing. eventually they turn into sobs and after them, silence follows.

annie can feel their disappointment. she can hear the whispers, declaring the games a farce – they didn’t get a true winner since she died without blood staining her hands. she wants to scream to them that she never wanted to win and it would be better if she had died, anyways. she doesn’t say a word, though. she just sits there, wrapped in a dove gray blanket and staring into nothingness.

this is where my writing motivation tanked! after the games annie went back to four and pretty much had nothing to do with capitol after her tragic victory tour. she struggled with ptsd and the aftermath of her trauma and has never truly gotten over it. somewhere along the line she and finnick became a pair, which helps with her trauma. she’s part of the uprising mostly because finnick is, she naturally despises the games and the capitol but doesn’t have a big role in it. i’ll finish the intro when i am not falling asleep, but i hope we’ll get to plotting soon!

[liam-93-productions]

In 2016, Liam Payne met with Capitol to play his first solo songs. The one everyone most gravitated toward was “Both Ways,” a midtempo track about a threesome. “It was testing the waters of what we could write about and could say,” says Payne, adding with a laugh, "Going into a meeting and playing a song about threesomes is an interesting place to be, let me tell you."

"Both Ways" also informed how Payne approached his debut album, LP1, which arrived Dec. 6. The 17-track project includes all six of the singles Payne has released since 2017’s “Strip That Down,” and establishes his sound as a modern update to the rhythmic pop of Usher and Justin Timberlake. Though fans have been eagerly awaiting the LP for the past two and a half years, the former One Direction member felt it was important to take time to sit with his music before sharing it with the world.

“This album has grown with me over the last two years -- honestly, some of the hardest I’ve spent on this planet,” says Payne, 26, (...). “[LP1] is about my audience getting to know me.”

Below, Payne details why his album is just now arriving, One Direction's impact on his solo artistry, and the song he feels does the best job at giving a glimpse at who Liam Payne is.

What contributed to the delay in releasing your debut full-length?

It was about finding the right records; I’m a bit of a perfectionist, so that caused a lot of delays. Also, there was one day where I wasn’t very famous, and then there was a day where I suddenly became ultra-famous -- and the transition of that is a bit of a headf--k, really. I never predicted that I was going to be part of the biggest boy band in the world, and that it would be a huge thing that would go on for many years and take my life in a completely different [direction]. When we were in the band, we were literally writing an album in two weeks, and then it'd take a month to record. Finding your sound was a bit of a tricky thing to do; you didn't really know what the audience wanted from you. There’s always that internal fear that you don’t really know what you’re getting yourself into.

How did the reaction to "Strip That Down" help guide the rest of the album?

Going from being in a soft-pop-rock band, and also the weight of the One Direction success on top of you -- and working with a new team and label -- it was difficult to know if people were alright with me moving into the hip-hop lane. [“Strip That Down”] let me let loose a little bit, and push the boundaries as much as I could.

Why did you feel the need to put out an album at all, after having success with your singles?

Obviously it’s a different game these days with streaming, but the problem is, [in order] to tour, you need a songbook, and the quickest way to get that songbook out there is an album. The singles I put out so far are very happy-go-lucky, but didn’t really give you an in-depth look at what I’m about. It was a chance for me to get a few things out that I’ve not really said before.

Like what?

Some of the different struggles and things I've been through, I've kept quiet to myself and dealt with by myself. My life's very heavily monitored through tabloids and whatever else, and people get to know me through other people -- which is quite a different experience, not being able to fully say your side of the story. "Weekend," for example, is about a really dark experience that I had that I'll probably never actually talk about publicly, but it's in the song for people to make what they will of it.

Is there a song you feel best represents you?

“Live Forever” is a really good representation of me. It’s written by a good friend of mine who [reached] a point where he had to make a choice for himself, when you get to that age when you realize you’re not invincible anymore. I think I had been quietly struggling with that the whole time that [my career] has been going on, really, because life got so crazy so quick it just kind of puts you in a very strange frame of mind. The “Live fast, die young” sort of scenario, a lot of artists go through that kind of thing, and it’s not really true. It’s all about how you want to live your life, really, but finding that one person you can lean on through this experience that kind of gets you through and makes you realize “I do want this forever.” That was a real strong message for me, not even through the live or die aspect, but the "to be an artist or to not be an artist" [aspect].

Are there any artists that have inspired you as you developed your own artistry?

I love Billie Eilish’s attitude around the whole idea of what her brand is. Post Malone does a similar thing -- he is who he is, and that’s what you get. He seems like he’s having fun doing what he’s doing, but there’s also a real dark side to his music. I used to speak to him before he was super massive, and obviously we’ve changed our phone numbers, like, 50 million times, but he randomly Instagram DMed me at 3 in the morning saying, “Love you, Busta.”

Anyone you worked with behind the scenes who was particularly impactful to you?

One of the most random ones was Rami Yacoub, who wrote “What Makes You Beautiful.” He doesn’t have any songs [he co-wrote] on the album, but we went into a deep conversation, and I’ve got some songs that I kind of held back because I thought there might [involve] a bit more growth than this album was. The relationship with Rami and One Direction wasn’t always straightforward -- at points it was quite complicated, in a sense. But it makes you feel like you’re still quite grounded, if you still hold the same people around you that you did. I’m definitely going to work with him again.

So now that LP1 is done, how does it compare to what you thought you’d be releasing as a solo artist?

It’s exactly what I wanted to release. There was a time in the band when I was labeled “Mr. Boring,” and now I find myself naked on the side of a bus in London [for a Hugo Boss ad campaign]. In a band, you become one of something and it’s very easy to lose yourself within that, and I think we all had to get that back once we left. You can see that now — look at the way Harry [Styles] dresses, the music he puts out and the message that he sends. It’s a completely different thing. Same for all of us; everybody branched out and went, “I want to be me!” straight away.

A version of this article was featured in the Dec. 14 issue of Billboard.

[samiralula01]

Underneath the Tattoos

❝ Politics have no relation to morals. ❞  — misquoted Machiavelli.

Here’s the thing: I’d like to think that I’m not naïve. History is just the greatest thing to me since its not simple in the slightest; I mean, think about it, just the beauty of all the politics, dynasties, betrayals and double-faces that figures of history had...*sighs dreamily while apologizing for being a nerd*

Episode 94 of MDCBK made me remember why I’m such a love-struck nerd for history and politics. 

1. Do I Believe Yuuta’s Story?

Yes. Undoubtedly so. I never thought of Katsu and Ryusaki as “innocent,” once during my time reading this story. No one in such a position of power by the name of a “blood king,” could be.

The way people rise to greatness is always on the backs of the weak. One must lose for another to win. That’s simply how the world works. There is so much we're told is evil from one viewpoint but from another standing position, evil is in truth, the other.

Katsu’s admitted that he isn’t a good person who's done many bad things, most of the time in a mistaken sense of “trying to help,” which he was, in reality, doing the opposite. So Yuuta saying that Katsu would pity and look down on him is something I can understand. 

Even Mei seems uncertain after she hears Kôzuke’s side of the story. It sounds more than plausible, even if its something she finds hard to hear. 

“The world you think you see...is more twisted than you know.”

2. Who is the “good” side?

There really isn’t such a thing. There never is in war and politics—simply people wanting things; resources, power, land...

However, if I had to say who was the more sympathetic side, (at least personally) it would be Kôzuke. 

Does anyone remember how in the first few episodes it was highlighted that the people of the main setting’s kingdom both feared and hated their ‘blood king,’ and his army?

The royal brothers also seemed to be struggling to hold onto power, with the multitude of assassination attempts on them (this literally started the plot) and rebellion growing in certain parts of their kingdom, whose numbers are growing daily.『Ep • 28』

I’ve also seen in the comments section too that people are saying Yuuta would be more sympathetic if he wasn’t trying to force Mei into being with him...but wasn’t Mei also forced to stay at the Capitol Palace?

“You wish to leave?”『Ep • 02』

And both had her dressed in revealing clothing she wasn’t comfortable being in and all three main male leads kissed her while she was sleeping/unconscious if you're going to start pointing out the lack of consent.

Meanwhile, Kôzuke’s people living under him seem to be quite loyal and happy with him, referring to him as the “true king,” and genuinely believe he will bring about peace for them.

“When the true king takes his place, we’ll know what its like to live in a peaceful country.”『Ep • 82』

Even his explanation for the human and drug trafficking...he treats his people well (at least when they obey his orders) and isn’t the worst person to follow.

Yes, perhaps he did become slightly drunk on power while working to become stronger in order to protect Mei (his whole rise to power was centred around fulfilling this promise to her) but he did what he needed to so that he could get where he is now.

Katsu on the other hand, whom I’ve mentioned probably isn’t a true king anyway, is somewhat hypocritical to me as a ruler. He says quite often that he doesn’t want to repeat the mistakes of his father and plans to end the reign of the “Blood King,” with himself and yet he carries on his “role,” not honestly planning on changing any at all and just dying like that to “end” it. Yes, he was forced to do a lot under his father but at the end of the day is he really trying to make amends or is he just rolling with being what his father “made” him?

Anyways, what I feel currently happening now in the story is Mei being clouded by her emotions, which is not necessarily a bad thing to have, it is limiting her usually sharp intuition and judgement. At the beginning of the story, Mei wasn't as close and sympathetic to the other main boys as she is now and was able to more calculatingly scrutinise them and their motives, granting her some level ground despite her lack of inside knowledge.

Unless she takes a few steps back from everyone to gather herself again, we’ll be as confused as we are now. 

Meh...I’m not really going anywhere with this post, I just wanted to unload some of my thoughts. 

[mhagnolia]

So that's who Finnick loves, I think. Not his string of fancy lovers in the Capitol. But a poor, mad girl back home.

this is directed to anyone who finds this blog or to me, in the future, reading my old words. i thought concluding this blog with some sort of diagnosis and reflection was good, but, i have more to say. this is the falling action of my character arc.

i would not deny the words i wrote in this blog, the repetitiveness, the anger, the grammar mistakes. i don’t think there is a deeper look into who i have been for about the past three years of my life (circa 2016 to 2019) therefore, i won’t revoke anything i said. it’s bitter and it’s depressing to realize how much time i dedicated to my brain, whether deliberate or not, but its me. i have sometimes been that person, itching to tell secrets and gossip but the secrets contained in this blog, though have constantly clawed at my throat, have never gotten out. this is a picture into a ‘me’ no one knows. i kind of regret my post about betrayal from my mom, because it wasn’t betrayal and it was out of love. i guess whenever i mention my mom, i don’t know if i could uphold that writing. but besides those posts, i believe this is as good it can get.

it seems just a bit tame to say i hated myself because of how reused that phrase is nowadays. i vehemently, furtively, angrily hated myself. it prevented me from trusting myself, trusting others, believing myself, talking to others, pursuing life, engaging in everything outside of my head. i think my condition was unique from the depression i typically acknowledged it as because i felt like i was trapped. i told people how much i loved things; books, characters, movies, tv shows, people, music, art. i said the world was beautiful out loud, and then inside, i said that the world was something that i never deserved. i remember the moments i said this so clearly, which may be why i tear up whenever eponine sings “without me / his world will go on turning / a world that's full of happiness / that I have never known.” granted, i am definitely not a orphaned, poor girl, starving and dying in the french revolution, but you know, parallelism or whatever.

i don’t know where this horror came from. i think it was a mix of social media, personal (social?) pressures, parenting (as is, like, everything) but i don’t blame anything. it was not in my nature or in my disorder’s nature to blame anything. 

i don’t regret the struggle i went through. it is part of me, my personality, to characterize myself inferior because of selflessness. it takes strength to even put kind words onto myself. it takes strength to admit it takes strength, as well. but it’s out there (which is much more than what i could do a year or two ago). this thing is not going to go away and it is going to be a part of every single thing i ever do but it’s okay. this is my journey and this is my life, i will figure it out.

i found what i believe i lost. a purpose, an appreciation for something. horror and fear and depression is a lack of autonomy and to combat it, i’ve grabbed continuously at nothing to gain that choice back again. i’ll say that i’m writing more and constantly fantasize becoming an author, but things can always change. its tentative.

not everything is perfect. i’ll admit that i’m not so plagued by gloom: the other day, after school walking the halls, teary-eyed, i noted that me crying at school didn’t happen as often. i’ll admit, too, that my mentality with food has never been good. i’m afraid of depression but i warmly invite restrictive eating. 

things will never be not hard but that’s because the world is not perfect. i love literature and books because they show me how valued my story is, even if it is blighted with failure and blubber and stumbling. i love literature and books because i get to escape the negativity the world has fallen into and visit the better parts of humanity. i love literature and books because they are never one-dimensional and they aren’t written in a blatant perspective; everyone’s life and writing is different. i love literature and books because they interact and dance with the bad, the good; the unforgivable, the angels; the crimson, the lily-white. there is much more to learn.

this was all born from the young girl, reading fan-written stories in bed, after hours, crying and whispering to the moon. i thought it was great and romantic, such a tragedy boohoo. all i wanted was to be recognized and to be loved for my flaws. i wanted to see past the facade other people had so they could see past mine and i could really touch someone. 

i was so compelled to include the suzanne collins quote about finnick odair in my title because he’s my most recent fictional crush (an engagement i don’t think will ever give up, as embarrassing as it is bleh) and he has easily become one of my favorite characters (which is a better way to put it haha). he fits into the archetype of a walled, put-off persona with a deeper, more meaningful character, adorned with a strong moral standing. but he also doesn’t fit because he appears so honest and flawed. i included the quote, i believe, because it’s sort of all i’ve wanted, for someone i love to love me, too, no matter what (romantic or not). love = beauty, beauty = the world, as naive as it is. i am a romantic and i trust in goodness and i trust that good exists everywhere. that, and because finnick is a character that embodies my aesthetic for tragically beautiful things. he is a theme of duality in himself, perfect despite imperfectness.  he is arrogant and sly on the outside, and certainly on the inside. his image is perfect and his reputation is unparalleled. he is desired, symbolizing a golden lust and envy. and he has been wrecked, physically and mentally. he stands for the sea that he has lived by and he is graceful in his work. but he has killed and dives headfirst into a ruthless persona, not outliving the pain his environment inflicts. however, regardless of pain and isolation, he is one of the most selfless characters i think could exist. he sacrifices himself for who and what he loves and he sees past inabilities. and it might seem reaching but to me, it seems true. and i haven’t even read the source material (eek, i’m gonna buy the books soon, i promise) , that’s just what translates from it. i tear up just thinking of his demise. but then again, i’m at least glad. glad that in his fictional universe he was alive and was himself. it’s great writing and i’m in love with how he was written.

i’m going to include a last allusion and it’s to harry potter. it’s one of my favorite quotes. dumbledore tells an angsty harry that he does, in fact, care about what he loves. “you care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it.” i like it a lot because it’s not such a travesty that harry was put into the world he was, because it’s beautiful. and he did have the responsibility of caring for everyone he loved but he eventually embraces it. i think it was just so moving to read how unmoving sentiment can be and how the conditioning of people brings us to passion. why be passive? there is so much to fight for.

i’m going to practice piano now. thanks for being a venting for rants, tumblr. i don’t even know if these posts will deleted one day—i thought i could give the ‘it’s on the internet forever’ theory a chance—so yea. maybe this will all go away. it’s existential but poetic, too. time to play piano. 

[buttersbots]

Energy Vampires Timeline

This is a masterpost of my stories about the lives of Nos-4-a2 and Eve Two in chronological order. It’s a whopper! Check out the dA version here for the most comprehensive version (all the ficlets are placed separately instead of being lumped together in to “Energy Vampire Shorts (AO3) (FF.net)”).

Also, you’ll notice there are very few tumblr links. That’s because most of the tumblr posts are only outgoing links themselves. Not really here for notes, just want to get as much exposure as possible because I have an undying thirst for validation nothing makes me happier than talking about my stories!

2778    -Nos-4-a2 is created. (The chronological order of his episodes from Buzz Lightyear of Star Command would make the most sense in the order of “Nos-4-a2,” “The Slayer,” “Dirty Work,” “Wirewolf,” and “Revenge of the Monsters,” the events of which would span over several years.) He is rebuilt by one of Zurg’s Brain Pods, who wanted to escape Planet Z. Things did not go as planned, and Nos-4-a2 left on his own. 2805    -The Axiom lands on Earth after the events of Wall•E. Robots and Humans work together to remove the decay and rebuild a stable society.    -More Buy n’ Large space liners begin returning to Earth and colonies grow all over the planet.    -The study of robotics explodes as Humans come to realize that the automatons have evolved to be their co-dominant species, and many new advances are made in establishments such as the Axiom Robotics Laboratory (ARL). 2807    -“Humanity” (dA) (AO3) 2825    -Several Bn’L space cruisers refuse to return to Earth because they agree with Shelby Forthright’s ruling that the planet is beyond hope, and life in space is much easier. They ally with the Larreb, an aggressive race of space-dwelling creatures with advanced weaponry, to conquer the colonies and leave Earth to decay.    -Casualties are immediate and abundant for the unprepared Earth. Out of the five EVE Probes from the Axiom, only Two and Four remain. Sturdy systems of underground complexes left behind from the 22nd century are reinforced and used as safe houses for the beings who cannot fight. Four, in the interest of keeping her last remaining sister safe, accompanies Two and lives in one of the safe houses with her. 2828    -After 3 long years of hiding, Four sneaks away with intentions of escaping the war-torn Earth. Two is heartbroken at the loss of her last sister, fearing the worst. 2829    -The First War ends with the assistance of the Galactic Alliance through Star Command, who were searching for the Larreb. Earth is submitted to the Galactic Alliance for protection and trade.    -To the shock of all who knew of Wall.E and Probe One’s story, One is found to be alive on one of the captured rebel ships as a slave, and though she is damaged after 4 years of neglect, she is functional and alive. Two is elated to see one of her sisters again, and Wall.E, who had become depressed and distant after the loss of his one true love, is indescribably happy to be with her once more. 2830    -Two leaves Earth to search for Four despite One’s return, feeling partially responsible for not being able to convince Four that escaping was a bad idea. Two knows that Four’s chances of survival were nearly nonexistent after so many years, but she refuses to give up hope. 2832    -Two’s search becomes more of an escape from Earth and all of the painful memories of her lost sisters with no trace of Four to be found. Her wandering leads her to the planet Trade World, where she meets Nos-4-a2. The Energy Vampire, who has never encountered any Earthling technology before Two, attempts to capture her. When he finds that he can’t wirelessly control her will like he can with other robots, he uses force to imprison her on his ship and study what makes her immune to his power.    -Meanwhile on Earth, re-reconstruction is progressing and scientific study is resumed, with robotics still the most popular field. Wall.E and One are the first robots to successfully use an artificial reproduction program that had been in development before the war started to have a daughter. They name her Willow after One’s favorite garden. 2833    -In the time Nos spends finding out why his powers don’t work on Two, he realizes that she is just as sentient as he is, making him rethink his purpose. The relationship between him and Two turns from villain-and-victim to mutual wariness, though neither robot despises the other.    -“Pick Your Poison” (dA) (AO3) (FF.net)    -Even though he has loosened his grip on her, Two decides not to run from Nos-4-a2 because he orbits Trade World, the biggest information center she could hope for that might give her some clue as to where Four might be. Nos-4-a2 decides not to consume Two’s energy because she’s different than any other robot he’s met (in that she’s the only one he’s taken time to know) and he doesn’t mind her company, though they both get on each others’ nerves. 2834    -Nos and Two are no longer on bad terms, but pretend to be when other villains are around so Nos-4-a2 can retain his reputation. Two convinces Nos to stop eating robots.  They have become friendly enough to trust each other. 2835    -“When You Taught Me How to Dance” (dA) (AO3) (FF.net)    -Nos and Two, spending most of their time alone in Nos-4-a2’s ship since Two convinced him not to eat robots, begin falling in love.    -Nos struggles to find a way to safely quit being a villain and take Two somewhere she’ll be safe.    -“Paradox” (dA) (AO3) (FF.net) 2836    -“Acts of Love” (dA) (AO3) (FF.net)    -Nos resolves to go to Earth and settle down with Two, but Star Command captures them under the impression that he’s still evil. After a series of tests and trials, Nos is proven to be a changed man.    -Nos-4-a2 is processed through a standard relocation program for converted villains put into place after Shiv Katall’s demise. He buys a large plot of land in the capitol of the Axiom Colony so Two can be close to her remaining family, and before they depart, he proposes to her. She accepts and they’re married before they reach Earth.    -“Alloy” (dA) (AO3) (FF.net)    -“Marriage: Day 2” (dA) (AO3) (FF.net)    -“Honeymoon” (dA) (AO3) (FF.net) 2837    -Because they have no source of income after the funds from the relocation run out, Nos-4-a2 decides to go into the business of what he knows best: energy. He starts to convert their extra storage space into a laboratory of sorts and formulates power cells, the design of which he sells to electronics companies (his alien knowledge of power is unknown and valuable on the newly emerging Earth). Two goes to work at a nursery.    -“Ficlet: New” (tumblr) (dA) (AO3) (FF.net)    -“Good Morning” (dA) (AO3) (FF.net) 2839    -“Communication” (dA) (AO3) (FF.net)    -“In the Library” (dA) 2841    -“Long Nights” (dA) (AO3) (FF.net) 2842    -“Nightmare” (dA) (AO3) (FF.net) 2843    -“Charming” (dA) (AO3) (FF.net) 2845    -“Vampirism” (dA) (AO3) (FF.net)    -While the couple is visiting Borton Colony (located in the eastern part of modern-day Canada), Two sustains life-threatening damage to her fuel cell in a sudden snowstorm.  Nos-4-a2 knows that she won’t make it to the ARL Repair Ward in time, so he turns her into an Energy Vampire to make her more independent of her fuel cell. Two becomes the second true Energy Vampire.    -“Ficlet: Fathers’ Day” (tumblr) (dA) (AO3) (FF.net)    -“Stretch” (dA)    -“The Announcement” (dA) (AO3) (FF.net)    -Two becomes pregnant due to an unforeseen adjustment in her system settings after turning. 2846    -“Time Off” (dA)    -“Fat” (dA)     -“Dark Matters” (dA) (FF.net) 2847    -“Soft” (dA) (FF.net)    -“Speaking Silences” (dA) (AO3) (FF.net)    -“Welcome to Earth” (dA) (AO3) (FF.net)    -After a 14 month pregnancy, Fletcher is born to the infinitely happy Nos-4-a2 and Two.    -Mysterious minor malfunctions have begun to affect Two: sudden episodes of hallucinations that play from her memory banks. Her engineer, Dr. Darickson, doesn’t understand the source, but attempts to find a way to solve the problem. Vivid nightmares occasionally ensue but life carries on for the new parents.    -“Fledgling” (dA) (AO3)    -“Hand in Hand” (dA) 2851    -“Sweet Dreams” (dA) (AO3) (FF.net) 2852    -“5,000 Lights” (dA) (AO3) (FF.net)

2853    -“The Vampires Down the Street” (tumblr) (dA) (AO3) (FF.net)    -“Lost Cause” (dA) (AO3) (FF.net) (tumblr)

2855    -“Fletcher’s First Experiment” (dA) (AO3) (FF.net)

2857    -Fletcher shows great interest in science, especially botany, which he inherited from Two’s original programming. Nos-4-a2 and Two are proud of their son’s emerging talents, but worry about his lack of success at school and the fact that he only has one close friend.    -Two still suffers from malfunctions, though she’s learning how to keep them under control. 2858    -“Jessie” (dA) (AO3) (FF.net) 2860    -“Lost Cause” (tumblr) (dA) (AO3) (FF.net) 2863    -After struggling in school for as long as he was enrolled, Fletcher barely graduates and helps his father engineer power cells, though he specializes in biofuel. 2866    -“The Solution” (dA) (AO3) (FF.net) 2868    -Fletcher decides that he’s more attracted to humans than robots. He travels to another colony on a trip and, without his parents knowledge (or permission), alters his frame and has legs along with other human anatomy installed. Two is shocked, Nos-4-a2 is furious. Fletcher makes it known that he is not changing back and a mutual begrudging agreement is reached amongst them.    -Two still struggles with occasional malfunctions. 2876    -Many years have passed since Two gave up on her search for Four, but she is shocked to the point of crashing when Four suddenly returns, having unknowingly escaped Earth and survived through the kindness of a family of aliens (which will be described in more detail later). One, Two and Four celebrate their reunion with much rejoicing.    -Fletcher is making great use of his new hardware, though he can’t keep a relationship. He continues to experiment at home with things such as engineering a super acidic species of apple. 2883    -Fletcher leaves the family business to work at the ARL, where he joins a team Dr. Darickson had put together to study Energy Vampires. 2889    -Dr. Darickson conducts a study to discover more about how an Energy Vampires’ systems work, but one of the members of his team realizes that there’s a serious problem with Two’s operating system. More research shows that it’s the cause of her malfunctions, and Fletcher has to help find a resolution before the problem gets out of hand. All of the sharpest minds of the ARL work together to create Unify, a program that rids Two of her malfunctions forever and provides more insight to the alien technology of Energy Vampires. 2890    -Nos-4-a2 and Two renew their vows after the recent scare with her operating system. 2936    -“Meet Asteri” (dA) (AO3) (FF.net) 2954    -After a long friendship, Fletcher and Asteri start dating. 2971    -Fletcher and Asteri get married. 2983    -Fletcher and Asteri leave Earth to travel the surrounding star systems, using a pool of money that Fletcher had been saving to fund their trip.    -Nos-4-a2 and Two feel lost with their son out of the house, but continue their work.  Two has secured a high position in her job at the nursery while Nos-4-a2 has become a highly reputable contact to many energy companies.

2994    -“Ficlet: Wear and Tear” (tumblr) (dA) (AO3) (FF.net)

3050    -Fletcher and Asteri return to Earth when Asteri becomes pregnant.    -“I’ll be Home for Christmas” (dA) (AO3) (FF.net) 3051    -Nos-4-a2 and Two’s first grandchild, Toby, is born.    -Fletcher and Asteri move into the mansion to raise their family, and Fletcher goes back to work at the ARL to reestablish a team to study Energy Vampires in the hopes of making turning a less painful process. 3053    -“Fall” (dA) (AO3) (FF.net) 3076    -Fletcher and Asteri have their second child, a girl named Mel.

3077    -“Ficlet: Grandbabysitting” (tumblr) (dA) (AO3) (FF.net) Over the 42nd to 45th centuries    -“Like We Used To” (dA) (AO3) (FF.net)    -“Like Snowflakes” (dA)    -“Golden Season” (dA)    -Earth has reached a golden age of education and exploration, establishing itself in the galaxy as a center of trade and culture. It’s an important member of the Galactic Alliance.    -The system of land changes from colonies (with Axiom as the capitol) to countries, each divided into provinces. The governments differ between each country. Axiom keeps its system as a democracy with councils in each province.    -The Energy Vampires have expanded to be a large family with the oldest members still living in the original mansion, many estates branching out around it as their population increases. The entire race becomes known for their exceptional skills with electrical engineering.    -Nos-4-a2 and Two are invited onto the council of their province (the capitol province of Axiom), along with others who have lived on Earth since the inception of the colonies. 5970    -Two passes away. 6084    -Nos-4-a2 passes away.

Stories that don’t take place at any particular time    -“Ficlet: Escapist” (tumblr) (dA) (AO3) (FF.net)

[dumbledearme]

chapter four

~~ read Metamorphosis here ~~

Effie glued her face to the train window, trying to keep her eyes on her sister for a little longer. Then she was left there, sitting in the fancy cabin without paying any attention to the comforts around her, feeling only the fear of finally being alone off to an unfamiliar place with people who were nothing but strangers to her.

Plutarch tried to hard to be kind, and every five minutes he and Fulvia, his secretary, came to check if Effie was well. She was offered tea, coffee, juice, toast... Maybe a hot bath? A comfortable bed?

But Effie wasn’t listening. She was stuck in the mental state Cleitus had left her last night, perfectly aware that there was nothing in the world that could make her feel better. Except maybe—

"It is true?" she finally spoke. Plutarch looked at her with interest. "What you said at the station? If I win this contest... Are you going to feed District 12?"

Plutarch motioned for Fulvia. She took an envelope from the table, brought out some papers and handed them to Effie. "It's all there, the rules. President Snow's orders. He'll deal personally with the winner. All you have to do, Miss Trinket, is sign it." He pulled a gold-plated pen from his coat pocket and offered it to Effie.

She took the pen and looked at the papers. Could it be that a paper with some writing on it could really change the lives of so many people? And hers in particular? Effie focused on what the contract said — the competition tests were individual and were worth points in the form of votes for the runners. The girl one with fewer points at the end of each test, would be eliminated and would have the choice to stay in the Capital or return home with nothing. At the end of the contest, the top three selected would receive votes from the audience that would decide the winner.

"As soon as you sign it, you’ll become our property for as long as the contest lasts," said Fulvia, who was rather rude.

Effie's heart raced — she didn’t like the idea of ​​being owned by anyone. Wasn’t that just the kind of thing Cleitus would say to justify his actions? Had coming been a terrible choice? Was she going somewhere even worse than the place she was leaving behind? Was that even possible?

"What does that mean?" she asked, fearing the answer.

Fulvia shrugged her bony shoulders. “You’ll have to take care of yourself. If you fail to follow the rules (they are detailed on the other sheet), you will be eliminated and sent home. Nothing much.”

Nothing much for her who lived in the Capitol with all the comforts that money could afford.

"You'll have to take these vitamins," she handed Effie a bottle of purple pills. "You're very thin, you need the nutrients. You'll see how your skin, your hair, your digestion, everything will improve. One per day." She consulted an electronic device. "As soon as we get to the Capitol, you'll be to see a doctor, to find out if you need any special attention, if you have any problem, that sort of thing."

"We need you to understand the rules before anything else," Plutarch said, still with that curious look on his face. "Things will be pretty simple."

They waited for Effie to give a sign that she was listening, then Fulvia continued: "You will not be allowed to leave the complex unaccompanied, anywhere. I can’t stress that enough, Miss Trinket. People will cheer for the girls, but there will also be those who desire to eliminate the competition."

Effie didn’t like the way Fulvia said eliminate but she remained silent.

"The only person who can eliminate you from the contest, in case you are not the competitor with the least votes, will be President Snow. He has full authority to sent home anyone he doesn’t like."

He sounded like an idiot. Effie had watched Snow's elections, even though she wasn’t old enough to participate. It had happened two years ago, and he had been the youngest elected president in the history of Panem, only twenty-seven years old. His promises seemed fair at the time and no one hesitated to vote for him, but in his two years of service, Snow had yet to take action to end the hunger in the poorer districts.

"While no one expects you to get along with the other contestants, you are strictly forbidden to quarrel with them physically — and here, I warn you, that verbally quarreling isn’t advisable either —, or try to sabotage them during the contest. If you’re caught trying to harm your competitors, it’ll be in the hands of Snow to punish you. The girl who has the most votes in each test, shall be awarded with special prizes, such as tours of the Capitol or other districts, and you can even bring a companion, anyone of your choice. "

"Like your sister," Plutarch said with an encouraging smile.

"You may not wear any clothing that has not been specifically made for you on our orders,” she gestured to herself and Plutarch, “just as you may not opine on what you should wear throughout the contest. And most importantly: on weekends there will always be some event or other, Miss. Trinket, and your presence will be imperative. Dances, dinners, interviews, no matter what, you will attend wearing costumes of our choice and you will be courteous and attentive to everyone you meet until you become the face of Panem. Any questions?”

“No.” That final part, although extremely serious, was what Effie had expected which made it easy to bear.

Plutarch jumped to his feet and clapped his hands. "Perfect, now you sign it."

Effie was left alone after that. And that was how she wished to stay, because soon after signing the contract the tears began to come. She had thought she had no more tears inside her — hadn’t she cried them all already? — but she’d been wrong. It still hurt. Everything still hurt.

She wondered if any of the other girls had cried in the train to the Capitol. Was it only her? Only her struggling to remain whole while leaving all traces of familiarity behind?

As the train slowed, bright light flooded the compartment, and Effie lifted her head. There it was — the Capitol, the ruling city of Panem.

The cameras had not lied about its greatness; it was possible they hadn’t captured it in its entirety. The magnificence of the buildings shimmering in a rainbow of colors that rose in the air, the gleaming cars that passed through the wide paved streets, the people who dressed in strange ways, with bizarre hairstyles, their faces painted, and who had never experienced hunger in their lifetime.

All the colors looked artificial, the pink was too deep, the green too bright, the yellow painful to the eyes. People began to point and wave at her. Quickly, Effie took a step away from the window, feeling nauseated, and went to take refuge behind the bar, from where she only came out when the train entered the station, blocking her from sight.

It was time to be strong. She couldn’t let them see her cry. The good things in her life were being left behind, but so were the bad. And Effie had to make room for new things. Pain and fear would have no place in this adventure. Cleitus would cease to exist. She would not mention his name — nor think it. He was not welcome here. That was the only rule she was needed to follow.

Fulvia came running to meet Effie and uttered a muffled shriek: "You didn’t even wash? Go now! You can’t get off this train in this state!" She made Effie take a shower and then brought her a simple green dress and matching flats. "Well, at least you're clean," she said, not knowing what to do with Effie's hair.

Plutarch appeared. "Well, everyone already knows who's District 12′s competitor. They're thrilled to have a look at you. You ready?”

Effie let go of who she was and made room for who she needed to be. "Yes". But when the doors opened, she realized she’d been mistaken again. The screams were deafening, the lights made her dizzy — there was a lot of people waiting to welcome her; she had not been ready for that.

An aisle had been improvised so she could pass in between the crowd that cheered and jumped and waved. Every twenty feet there were guards to keep them in line.

Hesitantly, Effie took a step forward and raised her hand to wave back. Immediately, she knew that had been the right choice. She had to turn her head from side to side — everyone was calling her name! They reached out to touch her arms and hands as she walked by. They raised stylized flags saying DISTRICT 12 and handmade posters with her name on it. They loved her without ever having met her.

In the right corner, Effie found a little girl that reminded her of Ingrid. She wanted an autograph. At her side, an older woman wanted to shake Effie's hand. Behind her, a man asked to kiss her hand and some others wanted to give her roses. Effie did as they required, tried to please them, gave them smiles and sent air kisses back. It was as if a robot had taken hold of her body. Her actions were almost programmed, in spite of how much she wanted to run away and hide.

She stayed a good half an hour at the station. Plutarch and Fulvia seemed to approve. Effie left with them, carrying what had now turned into a bouquet, completely and absolutely shocked of having survived all of that.

Thinking about the cameras and their flashes, Effie wondered if Ingrid would be watching all that — and if so, would she be proud and also cheering for Effie? After all, it was all for her.

[internetbasic9]

Nature Yale Touted Kavanaugh; Now Comes ‘a Moment of Reckoning’

Nature Yale Touted Kavanaugh; Now Comes ‘a Moment of Reckoning’ Nature Yale Touted Kavanaugh; Now Comes ‘a Moment of Reckoning’ https://ift.tt/2Ii4ca5

Nature

Image

Students at Yale Law School held a sit-in on Monday to protest the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.CreditCreditRebecca Lurye/Hartford Courant, via Associated Press

Students and faculty members from Yale Law School packed the campus’s largest church on Tuesday for a hastily arranged town hall, where they spoke about the sexual assault allegations swirling around the Supreme Court nominee, Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, a 1990 graduate of the school.

That was after a campus sit-in that prompted the cancellation of many classes, and protests in Washington, D.C., where two of their colleagues were arrested, and a blistering email that a group of students sent out to their classmates and faculty that said that the Kavanaugh nomination had exposed “our entire school’s culture of legal elitism and fixation on proximity to power.”

It was an abrupt shift on campus. In the days after Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination in June, the school’s website boasted that, if confirmed, he would be the fourth sitting member of the Supreme Court who had gone to Yale. The school’s dean, Heather K. Gerken, called him “a longtime friend to many of us in the Yale Law School community.” Other professors praised him.

Now, in the wake of recent troubling allegations linked to the school, the authors of the email said many students felt even more “alienated, disillusioned, and frustrated with the ambivalence and moral abdication of this institution, its faculty, and its administration.”

The furor over the nomination was “a moment of reckoning for all of us.”

Yale Law School, long regarded as one of the best in the country, has always stood out as an intimate, largely liberal bastion with a nonpareil track record in propelling graduates to prestigious court clerkships and white-shoe law firms. And the pinnacle of accomplishment, arguably, is a seat on the Supreme Court, where a Justice Kavanaugh would join the Yale alumni Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr., and Sonia Sotomayor.

But these days, Yale is experiencing an unusually intense bout of existential hand-wringing, buffeted by the allegations against Judge Kavanaugh, the paroxysms of the #MeToo movement, and a more diverse, politicized student body uncomfortable with the privilege of an Ivy League pedigree, even as it actively pursues it. The school, student activists now say, has been overly obsessed with burnishing credentials, turning a blind eye to concerns about the behavior of its alumni and faculty.

Image

After accusations of sexual misconduct emerged against Judge Kavanaugh, posters went up around the law school.CreditJessica Hill for The New York Times

What has compounded the tensions, students and faculty say, is the confluence of other sex and status controversies swirling around the school. Last week, the Guardian reported that Amy Chua, one of the school’s star professors, had told female students they needed to have a “certain look” in order to clerk for Judge Kavanaugh, a charge she has denied.

Her husband, Jed Rubenfeld, also a star professor, said he is under investigation by Yale, though he said he did not know why and the school would not comment. And critics have said the school should have known about Alex Kozinski, a prominent federal judge who abruptly resigned last year after multiple women accused him of sexual harassment, for whom Yale students often clerked.

The school’s administration said that its initial reaction to Judge Kavanaugh’s choice was in keeping with its response to other high-profile nominations involving alumni, including that of Justice Sotomayor, a liberal on the court, and that it was meant to be nonpartisan. Among faculty members who praised him was Professor Akhil Reed Amar, a liberal constitutional scholar, who later wrote a New York Times opinion article arguing in favor of the appointment. (Mr. Amar has subsequently said that he had second thoughts in the wake of the sexual assault allegations.)

At the time, there was a muted reaction from the faculty on campus, though a group of students and alumni signed an open letter denouncing what they perceived as the school’s endorsement, arguing against Judge Kavanaugh, a conservative, on political grounds, saying that he “is a threat to the most vulnerable.”

Alyssa Peterson, a third-year law student, was among those who signed it. The law school, she said, “has a lot of internal reckoning to do.”

But as the fall semester began and the accusations against Judge Kavanaugh, first lodged by Christine Blasey Ford, and then by a member of his Yale undergraduate class, Deborah Ramirez, emerged, the anger at the school boiled over. Many invoked comparisons to Justice Thomas’s confirmation hearings in 1991, when another Yale Law graduate, Anita Hill, accused him of sexual harassment. Justice Thomas is also conservative in his views.

When asked about students’ concerns, Dean Gerken said in a statement that “this conversation has been a long time coming.”

Image

Students from Yale Law School joined demonstrators against Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination in the rotunda of the Russell Senate building on Capitol Hill in Washington on Monday.CreditErin Schaff for The New York Times

She continued: “Our students are calling upon the best values of this institution, and we are listening carefully. This is a moment of reflection for this institution, and we will do our best to answer our students’ call and work in partnership to make sure we live up to those values.”

The momentum has shifted so much that law students at Yale who describe themselves as conservatives and who signed a petition supporting Judge Kavanaugh say that they dare not speak out publicly, for fear of being ostracized.

“It would just be a total land mine explosion to speak about this publicly,” a second-year student said, speaking anonymously because of fear of what he said was a “culture of intimidation.” “If you don’t believe Dr. Ford, then you are sexist. You’re just an evil person.”

At the center of the debate has been the issue of clerkships, prestigious appointments to work with judges that burnish a young lawyer’s resume and can help propel them to the legal profession’s heights. Clerkships have become even more prized by prospective law students in recent years, especially after the legal profession was jolted by the financial crisis of 2008, said Asha Rangappa, a former associate dean and graduate of the law school, who is now a senior lecturer and director of admissions at Yale’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs.

Judge Kavanaugh was among those who had clerked for Judge Kozinski, and Judge Kavanaugh has said that he did not notice anything amiss.

Last week as Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination was caught up in the sexual assault allegations, some students became upset at comments by Douglas Kysar, a deputy dean. Mr. Kysar said Yale had known for years about boorish behavior by Judge Kozinski, a federal appellate judge in California. The students, however, interpreted his comments to mean Yale had known about sexual harassment complaints. Mr. Kysar later said that “I always wish I had done more.”

That strained credulity with one student, Dana Bolger, who tweeted: “Do More Now.”

The school has also worked to widen the pool of those who become clerks, and Ms. Chua, who is also the author of the parenting book,“The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” has been one of the most effective mentors for women and students of color, Ms. Rangappa said.

Image

The Yale Law School Library on Tuesday.CreditJessica Hill for The New York Times

The Guardian, quoting anonymous students, said that Ms. Chua told students it was “no accident” that Judge Kavanaugh’s female clerks “looked like models” and advised female students about their physical appearance, in essence condoning the practice.

Ms. Chua, who is not teaching this semester as she recovers from what she said was major surgery, forcefully denied the account in a statement: “Everything that is being said about the advice I give to students applying to Brett Kavanaugh — or any judge — is outrageous, 100 percent false, and the exact opposite of everything I have stood for and said for the last 15 years.”

Some notable alumni took to Twitter to defend her. J.D. Vance, the author of the best-selling “Hillbilly Elegy,” praised her record as a mentor and said that “if you want poor kids and other nontraditional students to succeed at Yale, you should reward her and then clone her.”

Almost simultaneously, Ms. Chua’s husband and fellow law professor, Mr. Rubenfeld, said that he was being investigated by the school. In a statement, Mr. Rubenfeld said that “I do not know what I am alleged to have said or done.”

Yale would not comment on the investigation but an email letter that was circulated among Yale Law School alumni in recent weeks said that it was for his conduct with female students, though no specific accusations have been made.

Last week, students plastered the campus with posters and organized both the protests on Monday and the town hall on Tuesday, which was open to only law school students and faculty.

Harold Hongju Koh, a professor and former dean of the law school, said that the recent tumult was of a magnitude that he had witnessed only a handful of times since he began teaching at Yale in 1985.

“It’s a tense time in the country,” he said. “It’s a tense time at the university. But I think it’s very healthy and necessary. Elite institutions get so satisfied. Who are we? What do we stand for? Are we being true to our values? It’s a constant struggle for defining the identity of the institution as times change.”

Tyler Pager in New York and Amy Cheng in New Haven contributed reporting

Read More | https://ift.tt/2NJqdVo |

Nature Yale Touted Kavanaugh; Now Comes ‘a Moment of Reckoning’, in 2018-09-27 00:42:27

[lisabelkin-yahoonews]

Resilient, or just numb? As atrocities mount, Americans become adept at moving on

Items are seen left at a memorial near the site of the shooting at the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs in Sutherland Springs, Texas, Nov. 7, 2017. (Photo: Jonathan Bachman/Reuters)

There is a melody to national tragedy, to national grieving.  It starts with shock, segues to fear and anger, crescendos with memorials and tributes, then codas into vows to never forget. The notes are similar from one rendition to the next, but the tempo, the distance from beginning to end, is never exactly the same. And it’s the rhythm, the speed, that’s the true measure of a country’s psyche.

Lately Americans have been playing a quickened, shortened tune.

We were transfixed for months after Oklahoma City and 9/11, for weeks after the Boston Marathon, more like days after San Bernadino. We watched the Columbine memorial services live, knew the faces of the Newtown children, but probably can’t name the victims of Sutherland Springs. The nation paid the family of each 9/11 victim $3.1 million; those injured in Orlando and Las Vegas started GoFundMe accounts and many struggle to pay their medical bills.

“It’s like it never happened,” wrote Amanda Getchell in the Washington Post  last week, of her life after she fled the fusillade of bullets from the Mandalay Hotel. “My phone stopped ringing with concerned calls and text messages…The mourning lasted a day, and then everyone forgot about what happened in Las Vegas.

And in lower Manhattan, not far from the 9/11 Memorial, the Guardian described the scene on Halloween this way: “Within hours of Tuesday’s Home Depot truck attack more than a million New Yorkers poured back on to the streets for the annual Halloween parade, and countless thousands of other kids and their parent-minders were out trick-or-treating in their neighborhoods. By Wednesday morning, nearby schools that had been in lockdown during the attack were open for business…”

Heavily armed police guard as revelers march during the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade, Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2017, in New York. New York City’s always-surreal Halloween parade marched on Tuesday evening under the shadow of real fear, hours after a truck attack killed several people on a busy city bike path in what authorities called an act of terror. (Photo: Andres Kudacki/AP)

The popular word for this insta-back-to-normal is “resilience”, and it is used with pride. “This was a cowardly act of terror,” New York mayor Bill de Blasio tweeted less than 24 hours after the attack. “It was intended to break our spirit. But New Yorkers are resilient. We will be undeterred.”

Resilience, though, is a symptom: a muscle that develops with over-use, a coping mechanism that hews close to various degrees of resignation.

“Resilience requires being able to contain certain emotions that would otherwise overpower you,” explains clinical psychologist Alon Gratch, “and denial involves exactly the same thing.”

Gratch has been musing on this duality a lot lately. Israeli-born but working in New York for 38 years, he wrote a book called “The Israeli Mind,” and he sees Americans following the mental path that Israelis started down decades ago.

During the two waves of Infitada roughly from 1987 to 2005, there were periods of daily terrorist attacks. “There was just no way to cope with other than to just go on living,” Gratch says. “You clean up the blood and go on.” Israelis took pride in the fact that a café targeted by a suicide bomb in the morning would be back in business by nightfall, and that people continued to ride the bus in the face of frequent attacks.

In part, Gratch says, Israelis coped by off-loading the role of honoring and memorializing the dead to the government. In his book he calls this the “grief industrial complex”, the hero-worship of victims by officialdom “which allows people in day to day life to ignore it and move on.” By quickly transforming events into history, and treating the dead as part of a national narrative, violent loss becomes “oddly normalized, a story of sacrifice for a cause that feels like a story.”

And so it is in the US as well. The news alerts bing, the cable coverage begins, there is speculation as to motive, and interviews with partisans who declare either that that immigration restrictions would not have prevented this or it is too soon to talk about guns, depending on the emerging portrait of the killer. There are vignettes about the dead, hashtags — #bostonstrong #vegasstrong – and a candlelight vigil. A celebrity organizes a concert. The motions become familiar.

The U.S. Capitol dome backdrops flags at half-staff in honor of the victims killed in the Las Vegas shooting as the sun rises on Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2017, at the foot of the Washington Monument on the National Mall in Washington. (Photo: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP)

“Congress is already doing what it sees as its part,” Congressman Steve Israel wrote in a New York Times op-ed last month, after the Las Vegas shooting spree that left 58 dead.  “Flags have been lowered, thoughts and prayers tweeted, and sometime this week it will perform the latest episode in the longest-running drama on C-Span: the moment of silence. It’s how they responded to other mass shootings in Columbine, Herkimer, Tucson, Santa Monica, Hialeah, Terrell, Alturas, Killeen, Isla Vista, Marysville, Chapel Hill, Tyrone, Waco, Charleston, Chattanooga, Lafayette, Roanoke, Roseburg, Colorado Springs, San Bernardino, Birmingham, Fort Hood and Aurora, at Virginia Tech, the Washington Navy Yard, and the congressional baseball game practice, to name too many.”

Somewhere in this cycle a prominent public official declares, despite all past evidence to the contrary, that the nation will always remember. “They were mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers,” Donald Trump said in Las Vegas. “They were husbands and wives, and sons and daughters. They will be dearly missed, and they will never be forgotten.”

For individuals, Gratch says, this way of coping is a good thing. “It’s necessary to face it and then move on,” he says,. “Otherwise you become paralyzed and then paranoid. You amplify the dangers and overreact to them.”

He tells of a colleague who closed an office above Grand Central Terminal after 9/11, believing it was a next logical terrorist target. Gratch, in turn, remained in his space near Grand Central, feeling it was important for both him and his patients to face down the fear. “The best treatment for anxiety is exposure, small steady doses of what you are afraid of so you can increase your tolerance,” he says, and  in that way the rash of public violence in the United States in recent years has been a perverse national experiment in cognitive behavioral therapy.

But this treatment works because it creates the feeling of taking back control, and that element seems lacking in the current national tableau. Instead, legislators and advocates describe being reminded with each attack of how ineffective attempts at change have been over the years. Choose your reason: a hopelessly polarized society, a political system shackled by special interests, leaders who choose party over country… Whatever the cause, the result is a growing realization that grief and outrage do not lead to change. Those who see the solution as fewer guns, recall assault bans that did not pass after Sandy Hook and the bill to ban ‘bump stocks’ that has been stalled in Congress Those who think stricter control of the borders is the answer note that their promised wall has not been built and courts have blocked all attempts at a virtual “extreme vetting” version.

Dozens of people attend a vigil remembering the 59 people killed in Sunday’s shooting in Las Vegas and calling for action against guns on Oct. 4, 2017 in Newtown, Connecticut. The vigil, organized by the Newtown Action Alliance, was held outside the National Shooting Sport Foundation and looked to draw attention to gun violence in America. Twenty school children were killed at the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown on December 14, 2012. (Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Is the result a resignation that accounts for the quickened pace of moving on from tragedy? Is what looks like resilience really helplessness mixed with depression? And if so, what is the cost long-term to the national psyche?

“The paralysis you feel right now – the impotent helplessness that washes over you as news of another mass slaughter scrolls across the television screen,”

is how Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy described the phenomenon after Sutherland Springs. Its effect, he warned, is to make the fight exhausting and futile, to numb citizens into dropping their demands for gun control.

“We are suffering from combat fatigue,” agrees Nikki Stern, an essayist and author who was executive director of Families of 9/11 and who says her cause is now gun control. “We’re being pummeled into accepting this as normal. We must fight that.” But, she adds, she is not exactly sure how.

“If I could figure out how to get through, I’d probably have a peace prize to put on my shelf,” she says.

A panoramic of the quickly built Healing Garden in the Arts District of Las Vegas as a memorial for victims of the recent Las Vegas mass shooting on October 8, 2017, in Vas Vegas, NV. The garden was built in four days in response to the mass shooting that killed 59 people and injured more than 500 at the Route 91 Harvest Festival near Mandalay Bay on October 1, 2017, in Las Vegas, NV. (Photo: Doug Kranz/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

_____

Read more from Yahoo News:

After the killings, shock and grief in a small Texas town

In China, Trump confronts an emerging superpower flexing its military and economic might

‘Are you kidding me?’: Terror expert reacts to president’s Gitmo idea

In the hands of Trump, the past is a political weapon

Photos: Deadly mass shooting at Sutherland Springs, Texas, church

[thebadgerwriter-blog]

Chapter II: Strange Markings

          His vision is blurry and he can make out very little, but Vydahr knows that this is not the waking world. At least, not in the present. Certainly, he has never seen the ground as far below him as this.

           Floating as high as he is, it seems to Vydahr that, nevertheless, he can still see the goings on of the world below in great detail, though not with his physical eyes. The goings on of the most minor child adventuring in the streets of a great city Vydahr has never seen is shown clearly, as seemingly inconsequential as those deeds are. A subsistence farmer working in his fields miles distant, a look of worry over the dry weather plastered upon his face, is seen in great detail. The mightiest king on his throne, slowly dying of a wasting disease yet hiding it well, is seen despite the vaulted ceiling above his head. And the haughtiest priest at his altar, twisted in pain as, at that moment, the God he is speaking to feels a resonance, a foreboding of fulfilled prophecy, panics and lashes out at his agent among mortals. Even the connection to the Gods cannot hide that man from Vydahr's view. None can hide from his dream-eyes. All are as ants to him, in this moment.

           Suddenly, his vision shifts from the present and the tapestry of life unfolds before him, and the future, or a future, reveals itself to him. Disjointed fragments, yes, but still it shows some of its weave to the confused and fearful young Blood Angel.  

           The nations of Men are divided between the Three that remain loyal to the Gods and the Seven who are in support of an outsider, a challenger to the Gods. Fighting tears up the earth for miles around the cities of Men, the most significant damage focused around the capitols. The child from Vydahr's earlier vision has become a fine soldier for one of the Free Nations, fighting for the challenger and rising to prominence. The farmer also has a future in this chaotic world, as an emissary to the Blood Angel's, asking them to reveal their true intentions to the Gods, yet betraying the Gods at the last moment and instead becoming a lord in one of the Seven Kingdoms.

           The Gods themselves are half paralyzed by the fear of the prophecy of an ancient entity become new enemy, the same that caused the one of their number to burn out a High Priest and make him simple when once he was cunning. Yet still the Gods try to influence the world, attempting to coerce the hidden Golems in their mountain halls to help them against this as-yet-to-be-revealed foe and to bend the Djinn of the Great Desert to their will, deigning the Sprites to be too simple and powerless to assist them. Yet all the while they do not realize that their first-created children have all but left their ways, except to exploit the strength still in the Gods' hands.

           Hidden deeper still than even the Golems are the Faeries, with their king, Fro’Dae, anxiously awaiting the savior- and destroyer- of his way of life. The Sprites and Djinn in the Great Desert and the Dryads, Nymphs, and Imps in the forests of the world, all are stirred up, sensing great change coming. All these avatars of nature resist the pull of the Gods, knowing their time to fight has not yet come.

           All these details, however, are not consciously known to Vydahr. He knows not the intentions of each of the factions that he has seen, only that there is Chaos, for as soon as he sees something, it flees his thoughts to then embed itself in his subconscious. However, he knows that there is fear and anxiety in abundance, but not the source of it. And he also knows that this has a great deal to do with himself.

           As the vision begins to fade, a seed sprouts in his mind. A seed of power and knowledge and the pattern of Soulweb itself.

           Slowly, Vydahr's eyes begin to open, the last tendrils of his dream slipping away, leaving little but shards that resist examination.

           As his vision clears, and his eyes open still wider, he sees his father's concerned countenance. Gradually, the face of Vydahr's father changes from deep worry to immense relief. Letting out a deep sigh that could shake old leaves from the boughs of a tree, Avindyr says, "Son! Oh, praise the Mother, you're finally awake!" Avindyr pauses a moment, then continues, "Did you.. Did you have one of your visions?"

           "I... Yes, I think so, but... This one was different, father," Vydahr's eyebrows draw close together as he concentrates on attempting to recall the details of his vision, "I can't seem to remember it. Not clearly, and not very much. Just... The Gods being upset about something... A young boy in one of the human cities... A priest... Even a.. A farmer?"

           Vydahr pushes his head back on his pillow in frustration and clenches his jaw, angry tears forming in his eyes, "None of it makes sense! Usually I can remember them, but this one acts as though it doesn't want to be remembered. How can that be? The last vision I had was as clear as day and I didn't pass out like I did this time," groaning loudly out of aggravation and confusion, he yells out, "I don't understand!"

           As if shocked by electricity, Vydahr suddenly sits bolt upright. The sheet covering him drops to his waist as he puts his hands firmly on Avindyr's shoulders and looks deep into his father's eyes, "Father, this was the most important vision I've ever had, and I can't remember it. And... Father. I think that all of the chaos and fear and destruction... The innumerable changes that I saw... I think they were all because of me."

           With these last words, Vydahr collapses, face beaded with sweat and a single tear rolling down his face. Avindyr leans forward and rests his hand on Vydahr's face, and in a deeply worried tone, asks, "Son, are you alright? Is another vision happening?"

           "No... No, I'm just...” The young man’s voice is shaky as he struggles to speak, “I'm so tired. I..."

           Vydahr is interrupted as his aunt and uncle appear at the door, breathing a little harder than usual. After a brief pause, his uncle says, "Avi, we heard yelling and thought we'd come and see what was going on. Did something happen? Is the boy awake or did he fall back to sleep?"

           "No, brother, he's awake. Just exhausted. This vision doesn't seem like any of those he's had in the past."

           "Uncle Ahlwyn... Aunt Ilarya... I'm fine. You don't have to worry about me so much." Vydahr forces a wry grin onto his face as he says this, and continues, "It'll take more than a little vision to keep me down."

           As he finishes talking, Ilarya walks around the bed and sits at his left side. Leaning forward, she takes his face between both of her hands and peers into his eyes. A warm, soothing feeling begins to permeate Vydahr's body as his aunt delves into it, searching for any abnormalities. "You're both right," she says, sounding mildly confused as she pulls her hands away and looks at Vydahr contemplatively, "Yet... There's something different about you, Vy. I can't place exactly what it is. But, if anything, you actually seem stronger. Mentally and physically, the experience of that vision drained you, but something seems to have blossomed in your spirit. It seems more vibrant than before. And... I don't know how to explain it other than to say that the blossoming has connected you more fully to the Soulweb. Your spirit seems vaster than it ever has, more so than I've ever seen before, in anyone."

           As Ilarya trails off, Ahlwyn's breath catches and she and Avindyr turn to him. Vydahr's father looks at his older brother questioningly, "Ahlwyn, what is it?"

           Ahlwyn, eyes wide in surprise, simply points to Vydahr's left side. As they turn to look and see what Ahlwyn is indicating, Ilarya, too, gasps in surprise. Yet Avindyr's face, if possible, becomes even paler than usual.

           Speaking frantically, Vydahr says, "Father, what is it? Why are you looking at me like that? Uncle, what's going on? Is something wrong?" The young man props himself up on his elbows to look at where all the others are staring and his gasp echoes those of his aunt and uncle. There, on the left side of his exposed waist, a tattoo of a jet-black vine with radiantly white leaves and silver veins stands starkly against his bronze skin. Vydahr's eyes go wide as well, and he says, half in wonder and half in fear, "The visions have never made something like that happen before..."

           "It's... It's okay, son. I'm not sure what it is, but it seems harmless. Your aunt didn't notice any negative effects coming from it, so clearly it's benign. Right, Ila?"

           "You're right. I didn't even know it was there until Ahlwyn pointed it out. Though... It might be connected somehow to that change in Vy's spirit I saw."

           Avindyr's face begins to regain what little color it has to recover and he says, "Well that's fine then. It seems to only be positive," smiling slightly, he continues, "See, son? Nothing to worry about."

           "Well… Alright. If you're sure."

           Ahlwyn walks around the bed and rests his hand on his wife's shoulder, then says, "Of course we're sure. Ilarya is never wrong about these things. Healing is one of her Talents, remember."

           "Yes, Uncle, I remember. And it does help to think of that. She has healed me often enough in the past, after all." A more genuine smile appears on Vydahr's lips when he says this. Laying his head back on his pillow, Vydahr sighs, his bright blue eyes looking at the unfinished-beam ceiling.

           "Well," Ilarya says, standing, "Considering that it is indeed one of my Talents, it is my recommendation that we leave this young man to his rest, so that he can recover his stamina. Come, come, boys. I think there's still a bit of that bloodwine left." Making shooing motions with her hands, Vydahr's aunt ushers his father and uncle out the door. Before she continues out the door herself, however, she turns to Vydahr with a compassionate look on her smooth face and says softly, "Don't worry, Vy. I'm sure everything will be alright. I'll be back with a little food and maybe a small glass of the bloodwine for you in an hour or two, after you've recovered some of your strength. Rest well, now." With a final, kindly smile, Ilarya turns and leaves, quietly shutting the door behind her.

                                                           * * *

             Avindyr, now by the clock that struck Vydahr into his vision, paces more vigorously than a caged wolf. If a tail were present on his body, it would have been lashing in agitation. Ahlwyn looks on in concern, wondering how long his brother can keep going like this before wearing a hole in the floor to match the one in Avindyr’s normally serene exterior.

           Having watched silently for several long minutes, Ilarya sighs deeply and speaks authoritatively, “Avindyr, if you don’t sit down and drink some of your wine I’ll send you back to the Mother before you can catch a glimpse of what I hit you with.”

           Avindyr stumbles slightly as he turns to stare incredulously at his sister-in-law, but the steely glint in her eyes tells him in no uncertain terms that he ought to do as she says. Now sighing himself, Avindyr takes a seat across from Ahlwyn and Ilarya and takes a long draught from his glass. Shoulders slumping in defeat, he mutters, “Damn it, Ilarya. Can’t a father worry in peace about his only son?”

           With a snort, Ilarya responds, “Of course a father can worry about his son. That’s no excuse to scuff the floor. Maybe,” speaks the silver haired woman pointedly, “you should talk about what’s worrying you so much. I said the boy… Well, young man, now, is even healthier than he was a day ago, if a bit more exhausted. What is there to worry about?”

           “Tell us, Avi,” chimes in Ahlwyn, “that’s what we’re here for, isn’t it? We took in your son to keep him from the Council, and if we’re willing to do that for the last eighteen years and more, well, then by the Mother, you should know we’re willing to help you with whatever else worries you.”

           Avindyr looks up with grateful eyes, lips slightly upraised in thanks. Speaking softly, yet with power, the scholar intones, “When Sky and Earth embrace, so shall be born the final God of the Untamed Wilds, he who is marked by Balance, and who shall overthrow the Gods of Va'allae even while crushing the Faeries of Hae'del underfoot.”

           The eyes of Ilarya and Ahlwyn grow wide as saucers upon hearing Avindyr speak. Ahlwyn, now so tense he might reasonably be mistaken for a statue, whispers between his teeth, “Avi, what are you doing saying that out loud? Nobody is even supposed to know about that prophecy, let alone utter it! If the Gods were to receive news of this…”

           “The Gods won’t hear of it, brother,” Avindyr says, cutting off Ahlwyn mid-sentence, “You know all the creatures around your home are allies. We’ve treated them better than most would even consider possible: they won’t betray us now. Beyond that, the Gods are busy with their politicking and only deign to notice their Children when there’s some political or personal benefit in doing so. You can rest easy.”

           Becoming marginally less stiff, Ahlwyn takes a deep breath, “Fine, fine. You’re right, of course. Still, so many years of being told never to speak of anything that would even bump against the dominion of the Gods lest we be struck down tends to instill a certain paranoia…”

           Ilarya nods in agreement as Avindyr speaks again, “I understand that. I also understand that we’re one of only a handful of people who know of that piece of information and no one outside of this room is even aware we know of it. That being said, do either of you understand the significance of that prophecy? What it means to our family?”

           “I always thought it was just a bit of rebellious writing you found one day at the Great Library, Avindyr,” says Ilarya, once again composed, if still more tense than usual, “Nothing significant to us personally, except that we don’t want the knowledge to get spread.”

           “Ilarya… How I wish I thought the same. The Gods themselves don’t know the full extent of knowledge stored away in the library. There have always been scholars who wish to stash information of all sorts, blasphemous or not. And over the centuries, a great many books and scrolls and Illusion Crystals have built up that have incredible information in them. Over the years that I’ve lived and worked in Valome, I’ve… learned things. This prophecy was one of them. The explanation of it, in pieces, is another thing I’ve learned.”

           Downing the last of his wine and standing abruptly, Avindyr startles his relatives and continues speaking, “The Sky and Earth are metaphors. Metaphors for the Gods and Faeries.”

           Holding up a hand to forestall Ilarya’s objection, Avindyr explains, “Yes, I know that a God would sooner give up being reincarnated than embrace a Faerie, and the same in the other direction. But prophecies are tricky things that tend to mislead even as they speak bare truth. In this case, I’ve long feared that the embracing only had to be done by derivatives of one or both mentioned directly in the prophecy. I’m now convinced that this is true. Who was Vydahr’s mother, Ilarya? She was a Faerie. And I was a foolish Blood Angel, a creation, a derivative, if you will, of the Gods. And I can assure you that Ari’ahnn and I embraced at least once, possibly twice.”

           Avindyr smiles wryly at his brother as Ahlwyn rolls his eyes. Continuing, Avindyr walks toward the window as he speaks, “Now, of course, that alone doesn’t necessarily mean much beyond breaking one of the strictest laws the Gods gave to us. Given, more than likely, because of that prophecy. If we had had no children, it would be inconsequential to the Gods, though they would have been… displeased,” Sighing, Avindyr turns from the window and leans against the counter, looking back toward Ahlwyn and Ilarya, “However, the second portion of the prophecy has made things more than clear to me that I’ve perhaps aided in the end of our world as we know it. “Marked by Balance.” It’s an odd phrase, to be sure. But there is a plant whose very nature is to keep balance between the other plants in its area. Nae’Berahn. Nature’s Balance, in the common tongue. Any idea what it might look like?”

           Ahlwyn follows his brother’s lead now, finishing his wine in a single gulp and standing, “You’re telling us that our nephew is marked? That he’ll end the world? Vydahr is strong, there’s no doubt. But not strong enough to do that. And even if he were, he’s a peaceful boy. We’ve all taught him right, Avi. Even when he has to hunt, he makes sure to thank the poor beast he kills for its sacrifice, and there are times that he doesn’t even want to touch a weapon. How could he be the one from this prophecy? I don’t see it. It’s not possible!”

           Waving his hand nonchalantly, Avindyr conjures an Illusion: an image of a flowering vine in the middle of the room. “This plant is in my house in Valome. Secreted away physically, and wrapped within as many magical veils as I can think of, as well as a number from a friend I trust with everything in the world. This vine grew from what I thought was a dried seed in a book I found. I put it in some soil on a whim, and the next day it had grown at least half a foot. Those plants next to it are there to test whether it is what I think it is. Even though some of the plants are more substantial than others, there’s a balance between each one; yet they flourish. This, I think, is caused by the Nae’Berahn enabling a greater efficiency in the use of resources. This behavior seems to fit the rare passages that touch on the plant, and it’s clearly a magical organism.” Avindyr pauses for a moment, his pacing halted. “I suspect,” he picks up his pacing again, “That it is a plant that the Gods likely thought wiped out. After all, if no one recognizes what the marking is on the one that’s prophesied, that one is unlikely to do much beyond get discovered and gotten rid of by one of the Gods.”

           Waving away the image, Avindyr walks over to his now wide-eyed brother. Resting a hand on his shoulder, Avindyr says, “Ahlwyn, you saw the vine. What did it look like?”

           Before Ahlwyn could breathe a word, Ilarya’s awe-filled voice whispers past her lips, “That vine looks like the one on Vydahr’s side. He’s… He’s in a prophecy?”

           Turning to Ilarya, Avindyr nods, “Yes, I believe so. I think he’s the final incarnation of the Wild God.”

           Immediately upon hearing those words, Ahlwyn falls forward, stiff as a board, and loses consciousness before he thuds against the floorboards.  

[trancecreator]

Transgender ‘bathroom bill’ leaves Texas Christians deeply divided

Neil Cazares-Thomas began his job as senior pastor at the Cathedral of Hope in Dallas in June 2015, only a couple of weeks before the US supreme court legalised same-sex marriage nationwide. It was an auspicious time to take charge of what has been called the world’s largest gay church. The fight for LGBTQ rights, though, was far from over.

Now Cazares-Thomas – who arrived via Los Angeles and England’s south coast – is among pastors taking a stand against a proposed “bathroom bill” to control the access of transgender people to restrooms and changing facilities in Texas.

Much of the energy behind movements for and against the bill is being driven by Christians, underlining the split between progressive and conservative faith groups and the relationship between religion and politics in an increasingly diverse Bible Belt state.

Liberal church leaders rallied against the bill on Tuesday, at an inter-faith event outside the capitol building in Austin. Two days later, religious conservatives gathered on the same steps to demand the bill’s passage.

“I think personally that much of this is a backlash against the growing acceptance of lesbian and gay people, and specifically marriage equality and that transgender people are seen as a minority that they can now attack,” Cazares-Thomas said.

“It’s a demonstration of bigotry and discrimination using the name of religion … when we listen to the voices of those who we are making laws against, you understand then that your faith directs you to always be on the side of the marginalised, the poor, the disenfranchised. And when we don’t do that we are not exhibiting the faith of Jesus.”

Founded in the early 1970s, the Cathedral of Hope has 4,000 members. More than 80% of them are LGBTQ, hence its reputation as the world’s largest predominantly-LGBTQ congregation. Cazares-Thomas is gay and married with a young daughter. He was raised as a Mormon in Poole, Dorset, and came out aged 15. His family left the church when he was about nine, mainly because his mother, who was divorced from his father, wanted to marry a man who was not a Mormon.

“I knew from my own experiences that the church could be wrong,” the 51-year-old said. “It was wrong about not marrying my mother, the church was wrong about homosexuality in the same way that it’s been wrong about slavery and wrong about women. And I believe that the gospel is about a gospel of inclusion and not exclusion.”

He moved from Bournemouth, where he was senior pastor of the local Metropolitan Community Church, to California when a church in Los Angeles recruited him. Since coming to Texas he has appreciated the diverse faith communities of Dallas and noted the entwining of politics and religion.

“I think what really helps me,” he said, “is to understand the foundations of evangelical Christianity in the United States as a deliberate strategic attempt to ensure that Christians were at every level of government. And to that end they have been extremely successful. But also because of that the church has become a representation of the culture and not a representation of Jesus.

“When I was in the UK I don’t think I was ever asked to open council meetings with prayer even though I was at one point the chaplain to the mayor of Bournemouth. Here the first thing I was asked to do was to pray for council.

“Well, isn’t there separation of church and state here? And if it was true, why would you have a Christian minister or any minister open a state event? There is this blurry line between the separation of church and state and the importance of God and religion in civic life. It’s interesting.”

‘It really is a moral issue’

A bathroom bill failed to pass during the Texas legislature’s regular session earlier this year but the Republican governor, Greg Abbott, called a 30-day special session and placed the matter on the agenda. The Senate has green-lit a bill requiring transgender people in government buildings including schools to use facilities in line with the sex designation as stated on official ID, such as a birth certificate.

The session is halfway through and the proposal is yet to work its way through the House, which is much less enthusiastic. Its ultimate fate may come down to the outcome of a power struggle between its biggest advocate, Dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor and a staunch conservative Christian who has sought to galvanise support from congregations, and Joe Straus, the speaker of the House and a more moderate voice who is firmly against it.

An economic boycott struck North Carolina when it passed a similar law in 2016, only to partially repeal it this year. Texas’ plans have attracted opposition from a host of big businesses and police chiefs, while the Episcopal Church could move its 2018 General Convention out of Austin if a bathroom bill becomes law.

In the current national political climate, however, many Texas Republicans are increasingly doctrinaire. About 150 people gathered in roasting heat for Thursday’s rally. It was organised by the Texas Pastor Council (TPC), a division of the Houston-based US Pastor Council, a cultural and political activist group that includes on its website a “Special Pastor Commentary: Homosexual Lifestyle is Genocide”.

An open letter endorsed by more than 770 Texas pastors was distributed. It contended that equality and traditional family values are threatened by corporations and politicians pandering to “the less than one-half of 1% of our population who are confused about their gender and their liberal allies”.

Dave Welch, the TPC executive director, said that its members grew concerned after cities passed local anti-discrimination ordinances featuring gender identity protections.

“It really is a moral issue,” he said. “It’s a public decency issue, it’s a public safety issue, there are a variety of factors to it. It’s not overtly religious at all. Unfortunately it seems like the only significant voice left that has any framework of opposing such an ordinance has come from the church.”

Ruth James stood in the crowd, clutching a toilet seat. On it was written: “Rosa Parks did not give up her seat for a man … neither will I!!!”. James saw the bathroom bill as an opportunity to fight back against the perceived erosion of Christian values in American life.

“We learned something when we rolled over and played dead when they took prayer and the Bible out of schools,” she said. “We are not rolling over any more.”

Bathroom bill supporters describe the law as vital for the protection of women and children. Placards were handed out on Thursday with hashtag slogans calling for “Daughters over Dollars” and “Privacy over Predators”.

A similar fear-mongering playbook from Welch and others prompted the resounding defeat of an anti-discrimination ordinance by Houston voters in 2015, though there is no evidence that such ordinances increase sexual assaults in restrooms – which are of course illegal under existing laws. There is, by contrast, evidence that many transgender people are traumatised and endangered by victimization and harassment.

‘I am the man that they don’t want in the women’s restroom’

Ethan Avanzino leads the transgender council at Cathedral of Hope. The 28-year-old is a transgender man who transitioned two years ago. Changing the gender marker on official documents is a complex process in Texas, requiring a court order.

“This bill would put me in the women’s restroom and I have a beard and a hairy chest and hairy legs, so I am the man that they don’t want in the women’s restroom,” he said.

Avanzino has testified in front of Senate committees and met with legislators.

“They’re often confused by me because I look and sound just like every other dude,” he said. “I still question whether they fully understand what it means to be transgender, and if they do understand then they’re just totally freaked out by the concept of it and don’t want us to exist.

“If we are supposed to be more like Jesus and follow his message of ‘love thy neighbour, care for one another, don’t judge’ – that’s everything that they’re not doing. I often say, ‘Father, forgive them for they know not what they do’.”

Source Article

The post Transgender ‘bathroom bill’ leaves Texas Christians deeply divided appeared first on TRANCE CREATOR.

Read full post at: http://www.trancecreator.com/transgender-bathroom-bill-leaves-texas-christians-deeply-divided/

[readnowsleeplater]

The Glass Arrow

FTC disclosure: I received this book free from the publisher for promotional consideration.

Hi everyone! I just received a copy of Kristen Simmons's standalone novel, THE GLASS ARROW. I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but I'd love to share some info about the book, an excerpt, and a Q&A with the author for those of you interested in reading this. 

The Glass Arrow

Kristen Simmons Tor Teen, 2015 (paperback edition 2015)

Once there was a time when men and women lived as equals, when girls were valued, and women could belong only to themselves. But that was ten generations ago. Now women are property, to be sold and owned and bred, while a strict census keeps their numbers manageable and under control. The best any girl can hope for is to end up as some man’s forever wife, but most are simply sold and resold until they’re all used up. Only in the wilderness, away from the city, can true freedom be found. Aya has spent her whole life in the mountains, looking out for her family and hiding from the world, until the day the Trackers finally catch her. Stolen from her home, and being groomed for auction, Aya is desperate to escape her fate and return to her family, but her only allies are a loyal wolf she’s raised from a pup and a strange mute boy who may be her best hope for freedom. . . if she can truly trust him.

Excerpt

“Run, Aya! I feel them! They’re coming!” I know a moment later what she means. The horses’ hooves are striking the ground, vibrating the gravel beneath my knees. I look to the brush beside us and quickly consider dragging Metea into it, but the horses are too close. If I’m going to save myself I don’t have time. “Get up!” I am crying now. The salty tears blend with my sweat and burn my eyes. “Leave me.” “No!” Even as I say it I’m rising, hooking my arms beneath hers, pulling her back against my chest. But she’s dead weight and I collapse. She rolls limply to one side. I kiss her cheek, and hope she knows that I love her. I will sing Bian’s soul to the next life. I will sing her soul there too, because she surely is doomed to his same fate. “Run,” she says one last time, and I release her. I sprint due north, the opposite direction from the cave where I hope Salma has hidden the twins. I run as hard and as fast as I can, fueled by fear and hatred. My feet barely graze the ground for long enough to propel me forward, but still I can feel the earth tremble beneath them. The Trackers are coming closer. The Magnate is right on my heels. I dodge in my zigzag pattern. I spin around the pine trees and barely feel the gray bark as it nicks my arms and legs. My hide pants rip near the knee when I cut too close to a sharp rock, and I know that it’s taken a hunk of my skin, too. No time to check the damage, no time for pain. I hurdle over a stream-bed and continue to run. A break in the noise behind me, and I make the mistake that will cost me my freedom. I look back. They are close. So much closer than I thought. Two horses have jumped the creek. They are back on the bank now, twenty paces behind me. I catch a glimpse of the tattered clothes of the Trackers, and their lanky, rented geldings, frothing at the bit. The faces of the Virulent are ashy, scarred, and starved. Not just for food, but for income. They see me as a paycheck. I’ve got a credit sign tattooed across my back. I run again, forcing my cramping muscles to push harder. Suddenly, a crack pierces the air, and something metal—first cold, then shockingly hot—winds around my right calf. I cannot hold back the scream this time as I crash to the ground. The wire contracts, cutting through the skin and into the flesh and muscle of my leg. The heat turns electric, and soon it is shocking me, sending volts of lightning up through my hips, vibrating my insides. My whole body begins to thrash wildly, and I’m powerless to hold still. The pressure squeezes my lungs and I can’t swallow. I start to pant; it is all I can do to get enough air. A net shoots out over me. I can see it even through my quaking vision. My seizing arms become instantly tangled. “Release the wire! Release it!” orders a strident male voice. A second later, the wire retracts its hold, and I gasp. The blood from my leg pools over the skin and soaks the dirt below. But I know I have no time to rest. I must push forward. To avoid the meat market, to keep my family safe, I must get away. I begin to crawl, one elbow digging into the dirt, then the next. Fingers clawing into the mossy ground, dragging my useless leg. But my body is a corpse, and I cannot revive it. Mother Hawk, I pray, please give me wings. But my prayers are too late. My voice is only a trembling whisper, but I sing. For Bian and for Metea. I sing as I push onward, the tears streaming from my eyes. I must try to set their souls free while I can. Out of the corner of my eye I see the boney fetlocks of a chestnut horse. The smooth cartilage of his hooves is cracked. This must be a rental—the animal hasn’t even been shod. An instant later, black boots land on the ground beside my face. Tracker boots. I can hear the bay of the hounds now. The stupid mutts have found me last, even after the horses and the humans. I keep trying to crawl away. My shirt is soaked by sweat and blood, some mine, some Metea’s. It drips on the ground. I bare my teeth, and swallow back the harsh copper liquid that is oozing into my mouth from a bite on the inside of my cheek. I am yelling, struggling against my failing body, summoning the strength to escape. “Exciting, isn’t it boys?” I hear a man say. The same one who ordered the release of the wire. He kneels on the ground and I notice he’s wearing fine linen pants and a collared shirt with a tie. If only I had the power to choke him with it. At least that would be vengeance for one death today. His face is smooth and creaseless, but there’s no fancy surgery to de-age his eyes. He’s at least fifty. He’s wearing a symbol on his breast pocket. A red bird in flight. A cardinal. Bian has told me this is the symbol for the city of Glasscaster, the capitol. This must be where he plans on taking me. He’s ripping the net away, and for a moment I think he’s freeing me, he’s letting me go. But this is ridiculous. I’m who he wants. Then, as though I’m an animal, he weaves his uncalloused, unblistered fingers into my black, spiraled hair, and jerks my head back so hard that I arch halfway off the ground. I hiss at the burn jolting across my scalp. He points to one of the Trackers, who’s holding a small black box. Thinking this is a gun, I close my eyes and brace for the shot that will end my life. But no shot comes. “Open your eyes, and smile,” the Magnate says. With his other hand he is fixing his wave of stylishly silver hair, which has become ruffled in the chase. I do open my eyes, and I focus through my quaking vision on the black box. I’ve heard Bian talk about these things. Picture boxes. They freeze your image, so that it can be preserved forever. Like a trophy. I’m going to remember this moment forever, too. And I don’t even need his stupid picture box. Excerpted from THE GLASS ARROW © Copyright 2015 by Kristen Simmons. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

Q&A with Kristen Simmons

Q: Please introduce us to Aya and share some general background on THE GLASS ARROW.

A: Aya has been one of my favorite characters to write. Born into a world where women are endangered, where girls are condemned as breeders and misogyny is the norm, she's learned to adapt and survive by flying under the radar. With her family - a small group of free women - she hides from those who would see her sold into domestic slavery. Aya is tough: she hunts, fishes, defends her family. When she's captured and brought into captivity at the Garden, a training facility for girls, her life is turned upside down. All she can think about is reconnecting to the people she loves, and reclaiming her freedom, but she has to be smart in order to escape, and that may involve trusting a very unlikely ally. 

Q: What inspired you to write THE GLASS ARROW? 

A: A few stories on the news, and some social issues that seem to continue rising, but mostly my own experience. The transition into high school was difficult for me, as it is for many people. Before that time, I remember feeling like I could do anything, be anyone. I was valued because I was creative, and interesting, and smart, but once I stepped foot into high school, things changed. It didn't matter what kind of person I was; all that was important was if I was wearing the right clothes, or had my hair done the right way. If I was pretty. Boys judged us based on a star system - "She's an eight," they'd say, or "Her face is a nine, but the rest of her is a four." And worse, girls began sharing that same judgment, trying to raise these numbers to be cool, and popular. They'd compare themselves against each other, make it a competition. This, as I quickly learned, was what it meant to be a young woman. 

That experience transformed into Aya's existence - her journey from the freedom of the mountains, where she was important for so many reasons, to the Garden, where she is dressed up, and taught to be, above all things, attractive. Where she has to compete against other girls for votes come auction day. On that auction stage, Aya's given a star rating based on her looks, which is what her potential buyers will use to determine their bidding. It bears a direct correlation to my life as a teenager - to the lives of many teenagers. 

When it all comes down to it, I wanted to write a story where worth is determined by so much more than the value other people place on your body.  

Q: A lot has happened in the "real world" since the novel first came out in 2015. Does it feel surreal looking back at the book now?

A: Ah, I wish it did! Unfortunately, I feel like a lot of these issues are still very, scarily relevant, not just for young women, but all people. It seems like every time I see the news there is another incident of someone being measured by their looks rather than their internal worth, of women being degraded and disrespected, and of advantage being taken of someone's body and mind. It frightens me that these issues persist, but I never claim that THE GLASS ARROW was a look into the future. To me, it was always a way of processing the present. 

Q: Congratulations for the surge of attention the book is receiving, thanks to things like the Hulu adaptation of THE HANDMAID'S TALE. What do you want readers to take with them after reading THE GLASS ARROW?

A: Thank you very much! I am delighted by the mention, and honored to be included in the same thought as the great HANDMAID'S TALE. If people do find their way to my book as a response, I hope they take away that they are so much more important than the sometimes superficial and careless values other people assign to them. As Aya says in the book, I hope they know that there are not enough stars in the night sky to measure their worth.

Q: Besides other classics like Margaret Atwood's book, do you have any recommendations for readers wanting to explore more dystopian fiction and speculative fiction works?

A: How about METALTOWN by Kristen Simmons? That's a great dystopian! Or the ARTICLE 5 series, about a world where the Bill of Rights has been replaced by moral law... Ok, ok, I'm sorry. That was shameless. I always recommend LITTLE BROTHER by Cory Doctorow, THE PASSAGE by Justin Cronin, Marie Lu's Legend series, and of course, THE ROAD by Cormac McCarthy. Those are all thrilling, and excellent looks both at the present, and the future.

Q: What are you working on now, and when can readers expect to see your next book?

A: I have two books coming out in 2018, and can't wait to share both of them. PACIFICA will be released March 6, 2018, and is about a world after the polar ice caps have melted, and a pirate girl and the son of the president find themselves in the middle of a building civil war. It's a story largely informed my my great grandmother's internment in World War II. In the fall, I'll have a new series starting. THE PRICE OF ADMISSION, first in the Valhalla Academy books, is about a girl accepted into an elite boarding school for con artists. I hope readers love them both!

Q: Where can readers find you online? A: I'm always available through social media - Twitter and Instagram at @kris10writes, and Facebook at Author.KristenSimmons. I'd love to hear from you! Thanks for taking the time to read this, and remember, you're worth more than all the stars in the night sky.

About the Author

Kristen Simmons is the author of the ARTICLE 5 series (ARTICLE 5, BREAKING POINT, and THREE), THE GLASS ARROW, METALTOWN, PACIFICA (coming March 2018 from Tor Teen), and THE PRICE OF ADMISSION (coming Fall 2018 from Tor Teen). She has a master’s degree in social work and loves red velvet cupcakes. She lives with her family in Cincinnati, Ohio.