#how to use article forge

[mashkaroom]

Translation thoughts on the greatest poem of our time, “His wife has filled his house with chintz. To keep it real I fuck him on the floor”

It’s actually quite tricky to translate. Because it’s so short, each word and grammatical construction is carrying a lot of weight. It also, as people have noted, plays with registers. “Chintz” is a word with its own set of associations. Chintz is a type of fabric with its origins in India. The disparaging connotation is from chintz’s eventual commonality. Chintz was actually banned from England and France because the local textile mills couldn’t compete.

Keep it real” is tremendously difficult to translate -- it’s a bit difficult to even define. It means to be authentic and genuine, but it also has connotations of staying true to one’s roots. Like many English slang words, it comes first from AAVE. From this article on the phrase:

“[K]eeping it real meant performing an individual’s experience of being Black in the United States. As such, it became a form of resistance. Insisting on a different reality, one that wasn’t recognized by the dominant culture, empowered Black people to ‘forge a parallel system of meaning,’ according to cultural critic Mich Nyawalo...The phrase’s roots in racialized resistance, however, were erased when it was adopted by the mostly-White film world of the 1970s and ’80s....Keeping it real in this context indicated a performance done so well that audiences could forget it was a performance.This version of keeping it real wasn’t about testifying to personal experience; it was about inventing it.”

One has to imagine that jjbang8 did not have the origins of these phrases in mind when composing the poem, but even if by coincidence, the etymological and cultural journeys of these two central lexemes perfectly reflect the themes of the poem. The two words have themselves traveled away from the authenticity they once represented, and, in a new context, have taken on new meanings -- the hero of our poem, the unnamed “him”, is, presumably, in quite a similar situation.

Setting aside the question of register, of the phonology, prosody, and meter of the original, of the information that is transmitted through bits of grammar that don’t necessarily exist in other languages -- a gifted translator might be able to account for all of these -- how do you translate the journey of the words themselves?

In my translations, I decided to go for the most evocative words, even if they don’t evoke the exact same things as in the original. The strength of these two lines is that they imply that there’s more than just what you see, whether that’s the details of the story -- what’s happening in the marriage? how do the narrator and the husband know each other? -- or the cultural background of the very words themselves. I wanted to try and replicate this effect.

Yiddish first:

זייַן ווייַב האָט אָנגעפֿילט זייַן הויז מיט הבלים

צו בלייַבן וויטיש, איך שטוף אים אופֿן דיל. zayn vayb hot ongefilt zayn hoyz mit havolim.

tsu blaybn vitish, ikh shtup im afn dil

This translation is pretty direct. There is a word for chintz in Yiddish -- tsits -- but, as far as I can tell, it refers only to the fabric; it doesn’t have the same derogatory connotation as in English. I chose, instead, havolim, a loshn-koydesh word that means “vanity, nothingness, nonsense, trifles”. In Hebrew, it can also mean breath or vapor. I chose this over the other competitors because it, too, is a word with a journey and with a secondary meaning. Rather than imagining the bright prints of chintz, we might imagine a more olfactory implication -- his wife has filled his house with perfumes or cleaning fluids. It can carry the implication that something is being masked as well as the associations with vanity and gaudiness.

Vitish -- Okay, this is a good one. Keep in mind, of course, that I’ve never heard or seen it used before today, so my understanding of its nuances is very limited, but I’ll explain to you exactly how I am sourcing its meaning. The Comprehensive Yiddish-English Dictionary (CYED) gives this as “gone astray (esp. woman); slang correct, honest”. I used the Yiddish Book Center’s optical character recognition software, which allows you to search for strings in their corpus, to confirm that both usages are, in fact, attested. It’s a pretty rare word in text, though, as the CYED implies, it might have been more common in spoken speech. It appears in a glossary in “Bay unds yuden” (Among Us Jews) as a thieves cant word, where it’s definted as נאַריש, שרעקעוודיק, אונבעהאלפ. אויך נישט גנביש. אין דער דייַטשער גאַונער-שפראַך --  witsch -- נאַריש, or “foolish, terrible, clumsy/pathetic. not of the thieves world. in the German thieves cant witsch means foolish”. A vitishe nekeyve (vitishe woman) is either a slacker or a prostitute. I can’t prove this for sure, but my sense is that it might come from the same root as vitz, joke (it’s used a couple of times in the corpus to mention laughing at a vitish remark -- which makes it seem kind of similar to witty). I assume the German thieve’s cant that’s being referred to is Rotwelsch, which has its own fascinating history and, in fact, incorporates a lot of Yiddish. In fact, for this reason, some of the first Yiddish linguists were actually criminologists! What an excellent set of associations, no? It has the slangy sense of straightforward of honest; it has a sense of sexual non-normativity (we might use it to read into the relationship between the narrator and the husband) -- and a feminized one at that; it was used by an underground subculture, and, again, the meaning there was quite different -- like the “real” in “keeping it real” it was used to indicate whether or not someone was “in” on the life (tho “real” is used to mean that the person is in, while “vitish” is used to mean they’re not). It’s variety of meanings are more ambiguous than “keep it real”, which can pretty much only be read positively, and it also brings in a tinge of criminality. Though it doesn’t have the same exact connotations as “keep it real”, I think it’s about as ideal of a fit as we’ll get because it’s equally evocative of more below the surface. I also chose “tsu blaybn vitish”, which is “to stay vitish”, as opposed to something like “to make it vitish” to keep the slight ambiguity of time that “keep it real” has -- keeping it real does< I think, imply that there is a pre-existing “real” to which one can adhere, so I wanted to imply the same.

The rest is straight-forward. “Shtup” is one of a few words the Comprehensive English-Yiddish Dictionary (CEYD) gives for “fuck”, and I think it has a nice sound.

Ok, now Russian

женой твой дом наполнен финтифлюшками

чтоб не блудить с пути, ебемся на полу

zhenoy tvoy dom napolnin fintiflyushkami.

shtob ne bludit’ s puti’, yebyomsya na polu

In order to preserve, more or less, the iambic meter, I made a few more changes here -- since Russian, unlike Yiddish, is not a Germanic language, it’s harder to keep the same structure + word order while also maintaining the rhythm. I would translate this back to English as:

“Your house is filled with trifles by your wife. To not stray off the path, we’re fucking on the floor”

So a few notes before we get into the choice of words for “chintz” and “keep it real”. To preserve the iamb, I changed “his” to “your”. This changes the lines from a narration of events to some outside party to a conversation between the two men at the center. Russian also has both formal and informal you (formal you is also the plural form, as is the case in a number of other languages). I went with informal you because I wanted to preserve the fact that his wife has filled his house not their house, as someone pointed out in the original chain (though I don’t think that differentiation is nearly as striking in the 2nd person) and because it’s unlikely you’d be on formal you with someone you’re fucking (unless it’s, like, a kink thing). I honestly didn’t even consider making it formal, but that would actually raise a lot of interesting implications about the relationship between the speaker and the husband, as well as with what that means about the “realness” of the situation. Is, in fact, the narrator only creating a mirage of a more real, more meaningful encounter, while the actual truth -- that there is a woman the husband has made promises to that he’s betraying -- is obscured? that this intimacy is just a facade? Is there perhaps some sort of power differential that the narrator wishes to point out? Or perhaps is the way that the narrator is keeping it real by pointing out the distance between the two of them? there is no pretense of intimacy, the narrator is calling this what it is -- an encounter without deeper significance?

Much to think about, but I actually think the two men do have history --  i think the narrator remembers the house back when it was actually only “his house” and was as yet unfilled with chintz. We also don’t know what they were calling each other prior to this moment. This could be the first time they switched to the informal you. 

Ok moving on, I originally translated it as “твой дом наполнен финтифлюшками жены”. Honestly, this sounds more elegant than what I have now, but I ultimately though removing the wife from either a subject or agent position (grammatically, I mean) was too big a betrayal of the original. The original judges the wife. She took an active role in filling the house. If she were made passive, that read is certainly a possible one -- perhaps even the dominant one -- but it could also read more like “we are doing this in a space filled with reminders of his wife and the life they share” -- the action of filling is no longer what’s being focused on. Why do I say the current translation is inelegant? I feel you stumble over it a little, because it’s almost a garden path sentence. This is also an assset though. “Zhenoy tvoy dom napolnen” is a fully grammatical sentence on its own, and it means “Your house is filled by your wife” -- as in English, the primary read is that the wife is what the house is full of. If the sentence makes you stumble, perhaps that’s even good -- we focus, for good reason, on the relationship between the two men, but in a translation, the wife is able to draw more attention to herself.

Ok, chintz: I chose the word “финтифлюшки” (fintiflyushki), meaning trifle/bobble/tchotchke, because it, allegedly, comes from the german phrase finten und flausen, meaning illusions and vanity/nonsense. Once again, I like that the word has a journey, specifically a cross-linguistic one.

Keep it real: this one, frankly, fails to capture the impact of the original, in my opinion, but allow me to explain the reasoning. “Stray off the path” implies, again, that there is some sort of path that both the narrator and the husband were on before the wife and the chintz -- and one they intend to continue taking, one that this act is a maintenance of. It brings in a little irony, since the husband very much is straying from the path of his marriage. “Bludit’“ can also mean to be unfaithful in a marriage (as, in fact, can “stray”). The proto-slavic word it comes from can mean to delude or debauch -- they want to do the latter but not the former.

As for register -- “shtob” is a bit informal. I would write the full version (shto by) in an email, for example. The word for fuck, yebyomsa, is from one of the “mat” words, the extra special top tier of russian swears, definitely not to be said in polite company (and, if you are a man of a certain generation or background, not in front of women; it’s not that the use of mat automatically invokes a male-only environment, but if we’re already thinking that deeply about it. But while we’re on the topic, i will say that in my circles in the US, women use mat much more actively than men (at least in front of me, who was, up until recently, a woman and also a child).)

Ok i think that’s all the comments i have!

[novaursa]

A Flame All Her Own (dragons after dark)

- Summary: You and Daemon are accused of indecent exposure after your recent escapades in Flea Bottom.

- Paring: sister!reader/Daemon Targaryen (with hints of Viserys I Targaryen with both of them in the past)

- Rating: Mature 16+

- Previous part: 1

- Tag(s): @sachaa-ff @alyssa-dayne @oxymakestheworldgoround

The council chamber was quiet, an unusual peace resting over the small council—until Otto Hightower cleared his throat with a pointed cough. Viserys looked up from a map of the Crownlands, brow furrowed, as Otto shifted in his seat, clearly uncomfortable but also eager to get something off his chest.

“Your Grace,” Otto began, clasping his hands together with a rigidness that suggested this was no ordinary report. “There is… a matter of some delicacy that I feel must be brought to your attention.”

Viserys raised an eyebrow, already sensing that this was not likely to be a straightforward discussion. “Yes, Otto?”

Otto leaned forward, glancing briefly at Daemon, who sat with his feet propped up on the table, looking very much like a prince whose mind was miles away, perhaps dreaming of dragon flights and not the least bit concerned about his present company.

“It concerns your brother,” Otto continued, his tone clipped, “and your sister.”

Daemon’s eyes flicked up, a faint smirk on his lips as he lazily removed his boots from the council table, folding his arms in a way that suggested he was ready to enjoy whatever fuss Otto was about to create. “Is that so?” Daemon’s voice dripped with feigned surprise. “Do enlighten us, Otto.”

Otto’s lips thinned, but he forged on, determined. “It appears that last night, certain… rumors have circulated throughout Flea Bottom.”

Viserys sighed, looking weary already. “Rumors?”

“Yes, rumors,” Otto repeated, each syllable laden with his disapproval. “About the prince and princess being… sighted in public, in a rather compromising state.”

At this, Daemon’s smirk widened, and he leaned forward as if savoring every word that left Otto’s mouth. “Oh, do go on. I’m curious about these rumors myself.”

Otto’s jaw clenched, clearly reluctant to continue but, being the Hand of the King, he did not have the luxury of discretion. “It is said that Prince Daemon and Princess Y/N were spotted�� in various states of indecent exposure, as it were, during an excursion into Flea Bottom.”

Viserys paled. “Indecent exposure?”

“Precisely,” Otto said, barely concealing the satisfaction in his voice as he relayed the details. “Some claim they were… engaged in, ah… revelries. Others describe certain articles of clothing as being notably absent.”

A cough choked out of Viserys’s mouth as he looked at Daemon, who sat there entirely unfazed, his expression one of mild interest at best.

“Daemon,” Viserys said, voice exasperated. “What is he talking about?”

Daemon shrugged, crossing his arms and leaning back in his chair. “Perhaps they mistook us for someone else.”

Otto’s glare could have melted stone. “There were reports of a silver-haired woman and a silver-haired man seen, quite publicly, by no fewer than twenty merchants, three blacksmiths, and one poor tavern keeper who claims he had to close shop early due to the commotion.”

“Commotion?” Daemon chuckled. “I do believe we’re innocent in that regard. We were simply… taking in the night air. Can we help it if Flea Bottom is easily scandalized?”

Viserys buried his face in his hands, letting out a long, tired sigh. “Daemon, please tell me you didn’t…”

Daemon leaned forward, grinning. “We were enjoying a harmless stroll through the city, brother. Perhaps my sister stumbled. I may have… caught her in my arms.” He shrugged. “The streets are narrow, after all.”

“And how do you explain the… lack of clothing, then?” Otto’s voice was practically a hiss.

Daemon raised an eyebrow, looking delightfully unbothered. “The night was warm. Flea Bottom is hardly known for its air quality; perhaps we were a bit overheated.”

Viserys looked torn between exasperation and amusement, glancing between Otto, who was nearly purple with indignation, and Daemon, who was enjoying himself far too much.

“I’ll speak with her later,” Viserys mumbled. “Though it seems she’s blissfully unaware of this entire meeting.”

“Indeed,” Otto added, clearly affronted. “Your sister, Prince Daemon, is currently asleep, untroubled by the scandal she has brought upon the crown.”

Daemon smirked, tilting his head as he glanced out the window, towards where he knew you were soundly sleeping in his chambers, blissfully unaware of the ruckus you had apparently caused.

“You see, Otto,” Daemon said, voice rich with mischief, “some of us have our priorities straight.”

Otto looked as if he might explode on the spot, his glare enough to scorch even dragon scales. “Your Grace,” he said to Viserys, voice shaking with frustration, “I would suggest that the Prince and Princess conduct their… excursions with more decorum in the future.”

Daemon merely chuckled, clearly unbothered, as he rose from his seat, giving Otto a mocking bow before leaning over the table to clap Viserys on the shoulder. “Come now, brother. Life’s too short to worry about such trifles.”

One by one, the members of the small council shuffled out of the room, each with varying degrees of disapproval and exasperation. Otto departed first, his nose lifted as if the very thought of Daemon and Flea Bottom scandal was beneath him. Tyland Lannister muttered something about “Targaryen passions,” while Mellos whispered a prayer for “royal restraint.” Corlys chuckled under his breath, likely remembering his own youthful exploits, and Beesbury, well, he mumbled something entirely incoherent as he tottered out.

Finally, Viserys and Daemon were alone in the chamber, and the air grew notably less stiff. Viserys let out a sigh, shaking his head as he turned to face his younger brother, who stood grinning like a cat with feathers in its mouth.

“Daemon,” Viserys began, tone weary but still tinged with brotherly affection. “You know I have to address this. Flea Bottom isn’t some playground for you and Y/N to make spectacles of yourselves. We’re not children anymore.”

Daemon cocked an eyebrow, folding his arms as he watched his brother with that perpetual glint of mischief in his eyes. “I’m not sure what you mean, brother. We were simply… enjoying the night air.”

“Oh, of course,” Viserys replied, dryly. “And shedding half your clothes in the process?”

“Clothes are but an inconvenience in certain settings,” Daemon countered, smirking. “It’s not my fault that Flea Bottom took notice of a little, ah, fresh air between siblings.”

Viserys pinched the bridge of his nose, suppressing a laugh that threatened to break through his serious expression. “Look, Daemon. I won’t tolerate this again. If you and Y/N want to explore the city, I don’t care. But could you please… refrain from causing a scene?”

Daemon tilted his head, lips curling as he feigned shock. “You make it sound as though we’re entirely to blame. Perhaps Flea Bottom’s citizens simply haven’t the sophistication to understand royal comportment.”

“Royal comportment?” Viserys nearly snorted, giving his brother a look. “Is that what you call it?”

“A very dignified stroll, as I said,” Daemon replied smoothly, though the grin on his face betrayed his amusement.

Viserys sighed, straightening himself as he tried to assume a more serious expression. “Well, I’ll speak to her as well. Once she wakes. Hopefully, one of us can impress upon her the importance of… discretion.”

Daemon chuckled, the sound a low, warm rumble that seemed to fill the room. “You’ll talk to her, will you?” His eyes sparkled with the memory of mischief. “And what will you tell her, I wonder? That the king disapproves of his siblings enjoying themselves? You’ve gotten awfully proper since you took that throne, brother.”

Viserys raised an eyebrow, the faintest hint of a smile tugging at his lips. “I wouldn’t call it proper. Perhaps just… restrained.”

“Restrained,” Daemon repeated, savoring the word as if it were a bitter taste. “And you think restraint suits you, do you?”

“Yes,” Viserys replied, though he didn’t sound quite convinced. He shook his head, a small chuckle escaping. “Not everyone can run about the city causing scandals, Daemon. Some of us have responsibilities.”

Daemon rolled his eyes, leaning back casually. “You used to enjoy our company,” he said, his tone almost wistful. “Remember? Back when you weren’t restrained or… boring.”

“Boring?” Viserys shot him a look, though his mouth twitched with a reluctant smile. “I am not boring.”

“Oh, but you are,” Daemon continued, grinning. “It’s been ages since we’ve all been together like that. The old Viserys would have been right there with us, laughing, celebrating, not sitting on his stuffy throne, worrying about what Otto Hightower thinks.”

Viserys opened his mouth to retort, but he hesitated, glancing away as if the memory of those carefree days was tugging at him. “Things… change, Daemon,” he said finally. “I am king now. I have to be responsible.”

Daemon snorted. “King. Yes, yes, I know. But the crown doesn’t mean you have to be miserable, chained to your duties like some prisoner.” He took a step closer, lowering his voice as he looked Viserys in the eye. “You’re Targaryen. We’re dragons, not gray little men sitting in musty chambers. What happened to the brother who would drink and laugh until dawn?”

“Daemon…” Viserys began, voice a touch softer. The memories seemed to hang between them, filling the silence in a way that was almost tangible.

“What’s the harm in a little fun, brother?” Daemon pressed, leaning back with a smirk. “Perhaps you’d remember that if you joined us again sometime.”

Viserys shook his head, his mouth quirking into a small, defeated smile. “I suppose I can’t change you, can I?”

Daemon chuckled, clapping Viserys on the shoulder. “Not a chance.”

Viserys sighed, smiling faintly as he looked at his brother, who stood there looking exactly like the reckless, loyal sibling he’d always known. “Fine. I’ll let this go. This time. After I talk with Y/N. But for the love of the Seven, Daemon, please, try to stay out of trouble.”

Daemon laughed, turning towards the door, his hand resting on the handle as he threw one last cheeky grin over his shoulder. “Oh, come now, Viserys. You know I’d be a poor Targaryen if I promised that.”

And with that, he sauntered out, leaving Viserys alone in the chamber, still shaking his head with a rueful smile, knowing that whatever mischief his brother might conjure next, there was no stopping it.

Daemon slipped quietly into the low lit chamber he shared with you, a mischievous smile dancing on his lips. You were still sound asleep, sprawled across the bed in a tangle of silken sheets, one arm thrown over your head, hair splayed across the pillow like a midnight wave. It would have been easy for him to leave you in peace, but since when did Daemon Targaryen ever do the easy thing?

With a barely contained smirk, he approached the bed, slipping off his boots and cloak with the practiced stealth of a dragon sneaking into a nest. He slid into bed beside you, and without ceremony, he reached out and gently tugged a lock of your hair.

“Wake up, my scandalous princess,” he murmured, amusement thick in his voice.

You stirred, a soft murmur escaping your lips, but otherwise remained blissfully unaware of his presence. Daemon raised an eyebrow, feigning offense as he leaned over you, his face only inches from yours.

“Sleeping through your king’s summons, are you?” he whispered, lips twitching with a grin. “I’d thought even the Seven couldn’t wake you after last night’s ‘adventures.’”

You shifted, brow furrowing, before mumbling something incoherent and burying your face into the pillow. Daemon rolled his eyes, his grin widening as he reached out, fingers finding that ticklish spot just beneath your ribs.

With a startled gasp, you shot up, glaring at him with a mix of irritation and groggy confusion. “Daemon!”

He lay back, arms crossed behind his head, looking up at you with an entirely too-pleased grin. “Good morning to you too, darling.”

You blinked, still caught between sleep and waking, before the events of the previous night began to creep back into your memory. A flush crept to your cheeks as you recalled the, well… enthusiastic moments you’d shared in Flea Bottom.

“Daemon,” you muttered, pulling the sheets up to your chin. “You didn’t have to wake me like that.”

“Oh, but I did,” he replied smoothly, his voice dripping with humor. “You should have seen Otto’s face when he spoke of our little escapade. I swear he looked like he’d swallowed a lemon.”

You snorted despite yourself, a reluctant smile tugging at your lips. “I can only imagine.”

“Oh, but you don’t have to,” he replied, his grin widening. “Viserys has promised to speak to you personally about it.”

Your eyes widened. “Viserys? He knows?”

Daemon laughed, reaching out to tug the sheets away from your grip. “Of course, he knows. You’ve made quite an impression on Flea Bottom, love. They’re calling us the ‘Silver Specters.’” He paused, leaning closer with a wicked glint in his eye. “I think we’ve scandalized the city.”

You groaned, collapsing back onto the pillow. “Why did you have to drag me into your schemes?”

“My schemes?” Daemon looked wounded, a hand pressed to his chest in mock hurt. “Oh, dear sister, if I recall, you were the one suggesting we slip away from the Red Keep for a bit of fun.”

You opened one eye, giving him a skeptical look. “Fun, yes. Not… public indecency.”

Daemon chuckled, shifting closer to you, his hand resting casually on your hip. “Come now, admit it,” he whispered, his breath warm against your ear. “You enjoyed every moment. Don’t tell me you weren’t thrilled by the danger.”

You rolled your eyes but felt the flutter of his words settle warmly in your chest. “Maybe a little.”

He laughed again, his hand trailing along your back as he murmured, “That’s what I thought.”

You sighed, glancing toward the chamber door. “What do we do now? If Viserys is actually going to talk to me—”

“Let him talk,” Daemon interrupted, waving a hand dismissively. “He’s forgotten how to have fun. You, my dear sister, are the only thing keeping this court interesting.”

“Oh, really?” You quirked a brow, giving him a knowing look. “And I suppose you had nothing to do with our ‘adventure’ last night?”

He grinned, unabashed. “Not a thing. I’m simply an innocent bystander swept along by your rebellious spirit.”

You rolled over, pinning him with a look that was half-amused, half-exasperated. “You’re an utter rogue, Daemon Targaryen.”

He chuckled, reaching out to pull you close. “And you love me for it.”

With a laugh, you let him draw you into his arms, the warmth of his embrace and the humor of the situation filling the room like a fire on a cold morning. Whatever lectures Viserys might have planned for you, they could wait. In that moment, it was just you, Daemon, and the quiet mischief that bound you together.

Later that day, you found yourself summoned to Viserys’s solar, a request you knew could only mean one thing: the dreaded talk. You walked in with feigned innocence, a small, polite smile playing on your lips, though you could already spot Daemon lounging near the hearth with an air of smug satisfaction.

Viserys stood by his desk, hands clasped behind his back as he gave you a look that was equal parts exasperated brother and disappointed king. It might have been intimidating, had Daemon not been sitting just a few paces behind him, barely suppressing a smirk.

“Y/N,” Viserys began, his tone solemn. “We need to talk about… last night.”

“Oh?” You blinked, wide-eyed, adopting a tone as innocent as you could muster. “Did something happen last night, Your Grace?”

Daemon let out a soft snicker, and Viserys shot him a look before turning back to you, fighting to maintain his composure. “Don’t play coy with me. You know very well what I mean. The Flea Bottom… incident.”

“Ah,” you murmured, trying to look suitably contrite but struggling to keep a straight face. “The, um, ‘Silver Specters,’ was it?”

Viserys sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Yes. That. Do you understand the kind of scandal this has brought upon the crown?”

“Oh, come now, Viserys,” Daemon drawled from his spot by the fire, voice dripping with amusement. “It’s hardly the first scandal we’ve been part of.”

Viserys turned to shoot Daemon another glare, before turning back to you, struggling to resume his kingly seriousness. “Y/N, this sort of behavior… it’s unbecoming. You are royalty, and your actions reflect upon the Targaryen name.”

You tilted your head, an innocent glimmer in your eyes as you answered, “Oh, I seem to remember a time when all three of us did this sort of thing regularly. On Dragonstone, remember?”

Daemon’s smirk widened, clearly entertained, while Viserys looked as if you’d just struck him speechless. A faint blush crept up his neck, and he coughed, suddenly at a loss for words.

“I… well, that was…” he stammered, momentarily thrown off balance. “That was… a long time ago.”

“Oh, it wasn’t that long ago,” Daemon chimed in, the gleam in his eye betraying his enjoyment. “I remember it well. Especially that one summer—”

“Daemon!” Viserys cut him off, clearly trying to maintain some sense of decorum but failing miserably as memories of youthful indiscretions seemed to flash behind his eyes. “That’s… not the point.”

You couldn’t resist pressing further, stepping closer to him with an innocent smile. “Why, brother, you didn’t seem to mind then. In fact,” you paused, voice dropping to a more mischievous tone, “if memory serves, you were rather… enthusiastic about our nightly adventures.”

Viserys’s face flushed a deeper shade of red, and he glanced away, clearly flustered as he grappled with his authority and memories he’d rather keep buried. “Yes, well… I… that was different.”

“Oh?” Daemon smirked, crossing his arms as he leaned against the wall, looking between the two of you with open amusement. “I’d love to hear how it was different, brother.”

Viserys opened his mouth to respond, but words failed him. His gaze shifted from you to Daemon, caught somewhere between indignation and something else entirely, something softer and unspoken. His shoulders slumped a little as he let out a resigned sigh, his kingly facade crumbling.

“Perhaps… I’ve become a bit too serious,” he admitted quietly, almost to himself.

Daemon chuckled, stepping forward to clasp a hand on his shoulder. “You see, Viserys? That crown’s made you dreadfully dull.”

“Maybe it has,” Viserys said, glancing between the two of you, a small, reluctant smile tugging at his lips. “But one of us has to be the responsible one.”

“Oh, but I don’t think you’ve forgotten everything,” you said softly, your gaze meeting his, a flicker of shared memory passing between you. “You were always our leader back then. Wherever you went, we’d follow.”

Viserys swallowed, his cheeks still faintly pink as he looked at you, then at Daemon, as though some long-buried part of himself was surfacing. “I suppose,” he murmured, his voice tinged with nostalgia. “There were good times.”

Daemon grinned, moving to stand beside you as he gave Viserys a sly look. “Then perhaps it’s time we brought a little of that back.”

Viserys shook his head, though his smile had fully broken through. “I don’t know if I should be encouraging the two of you…”

“Oh, you should,” you replied, a spark of mischief lighting in your eyes as you leaned closer to him. “We’ve missed you, you know. It’s been too long since all three of us… indulged.”

For a moment, Viserys’s gaze softened, the weight of the crown forgotten as he looked at you and Daemon, the memories of simpler times gleaming in his eyes. He glanced away, chuckling softly.

“Well,” he said, trying to sound stern but failing, “as long as you two promise not to cause a scandal quite so… public next time.”

“Who, us?” Daemon feigned innocence, draping an arm around your shoulders. “We would never dream of it.”

Viserys’s laughter filled the room, and for a brief, perfect moment, it was as if the three of you were back on Dragonstone, young, free, and utterly unburdened by the crown’s weight.

[justwinginglife]

The Best Of My Life

You accidentally just had the best sleep of your entire life. And so did Hoshina. 

You honestly hadn’t even heard him enter the library.

Everyone on base had been doing their best to uncover No. 9’s schemes, you and the Vice Captain especially, and that meant late nights poring over news articles, historical reports, eyewitness testimony, scientific studies, all to figure out what 9 was capable of.

All you figured out was what you were capable of, and it was not this. If you had to spend one more night reacquainting yourself with these same four walls, you’d asphyxiate from the claustrophobia. You swore every time you entered this room, it got smaller and smaller. Eventually, the exhaustion enveloped your body, and you were encumbered by the sheer weight of this sudden enervation. Unable to will your limbs into submission, to command them to make the long journey back to your room, you passed out in the library. 

When the smell of cologne and coffee finally stirred you from your slumber, you were shocked to find the Vice Captain resting on your shoulder. And it seemed, from the position you were in, you’d slept on his head. You’d never even said more than “Goodmorning” and “Goodnight” to him before, and now, you were using him as your own personal pillow. The sudden, unexpected intimacy made you want to bolt. But he was sleeping so soundly, you couldn't help but find it so precious how much comfort and ease something as simple as your shoulder could bring him. He was sleeping as though you weren’t in wartime. As though you weren’t practically strangers to each other, your only bond forged through spilled blood on a battlefield. 

Right now, you felt the way one did when they suddenly found the space in their lap occupied by a cat or a dog- you just couldn’t move. It wasn’t right. Never mind that you might have to pee, you made a vow to yourself right then and there that you wouldn’t leave this spot, not until the Vice Captain had woken up of his own accord. You wouldn’t ruin the only moment of peace he might have for a while. 

So you stayed put, you stayed still, so still one would think you were dead. Your muscles started to ache from maintaining the same position for so long and, even worse than that, you were incredibly bored. But it was worth it. You found his breathing a soothing sound, you found his scent was quickly becoming more addicting. You found out he occasionally talked in his sleep, and that revelation also brought with it the discovery that you loved to hear him talk. Especially when his voice was dipped in drowsiness. You’d never heard him talk to you this much, ever. You thought to yourself, if you made it out of this alive, if it wasn’t automatically social suicide once he woke up and discovered the shame that had transpired, you would make a point to talk to him more. You would be his friend.

You absolutely would NOT be his friend. This became very clear to you when he suddenly shifted and snuggled closer to you, his hand brushing up against your thigh as he sighed in his sleep. As his breath caressed your skin, you hoped and prayed that he’d remain unconscious long enough for you to get your emotions under control, or at least just your face under control. You were unsure how you were going to explain away the shade of crimson seeping into your cheeks.

But it seemed you had no luck to spare today because he began to stir from his sleep. You cursed the gods. 

As he blinked the library back into his view, rubbing his eyes languidly, you thought to yourself that even the way he woke up was cute. And when he finally pulled away from you, stretching and yawning, you pondered how his absence from your shoulder felt even heavier than his head. You wondered if you could coax him back to sleep, convince him he was still laden with exhaustion. You’d never taken up much more than a minute of his time in the past, and now your ambition was suddenly desiring every second of his time. You wondered if holding your breath would freeze time, if closing your eyes again, relaxing against him, would compel him to stay here, to stay yours. Just for a moment. You could go back to being strangers in the morning. 

And then he spoke. “Was it just me… or was that the best nap ever?” 

You immediately took back your thoughts. After tonight, you’d never be satisfied just being strangers ever again. “Not just you. I feel amazing.”

He took a moment to properly examine you. It was though he was trying to figure out what exactly it was about you that made him so completely at ease. It was slightly unnerving the way his eyes roamed over you but you didn't dare look away, in case you blinked and he disappeared into some dream. He finally spoke, "You know, it's funny, I feel completely rested and ready to take on the day even though we only napped,” He checked his watch, “For about two to three hours.” 

You blinked. Had it only been that long? It felt like an eternity. You’d known nothing about him before tonight, and now you felt like you were privy to his most intimate self. 

He paused, appearing to take his next words into heavy consideration before proposing them. “Imagine…” His voice dropped to a low, hushed tone, “Imagine how good we’d sleep for a whole night.”

You swallowed, cheeks returning to their earlier rosy color. Was he proposing what he thought you were?

“Just think about it. Everyone’s been on high alert lately. Stress is high. Tension is high. Shit could hit the fan at any moment. We’re never promised a moment’s rest, let alone peaceful rest. And I’ve never slept so well in my entire life than I did when I was sleeping with you.”

You tilted your head as you processed this information, trying your best to avoid feeling honored for such high praise when you knew he was simply stating data rather than complimenting the way in which your presence set him at ease. It was an interesting suggestion, and if you were honest with yourself, you were intrigued by it. 

“So, if you’re saying what I think you’re saying, you want us to sleep together?”

He nodded, a cheeky grin curving across his face. “I won’t do anything to make you uncomfortable. It’ll be purely platonic. In fact, it doesn’t even have to be platonic, just business.”

You wanted to tell him that even if it wasn’t platonic, you wouldn’t be uncomfortable. And you certainly didn’t want to be just business. But, like an idiot, you held your hand out to him to shake on it like you were closing a contract rather than exploring a new level of intimacy together. Intimacy that no one else was allowed but you. You thanked the gods. 

He smirked and shook your hand. “Sounds like a deal to me. Shall we get started then? Because we’ve got a couple more hours until sun-up and I could use an extra boost.” He hoisted you to your feet and led the way to his bedroom, his hand still grasping yours as he navigated the halls. You wondered if he’d meant to continue holding your hand but you weren’t about to bring attention to it, the absence of his head from your shoulder was more than enough, you didn’t need to deprive yourself of his hand as well. 

As you neared your destination, you suddenly became all too aware of the tingling sensation that was slowly spreading through your body. Electricity soared through your veins as the anticipation consumed you. You imagined nestling into his bed. Inhaling the scent of detergent on his sheets. Feeling the divots in the mattress where he frequently positioned himself. You had unlocked the gateway to a whole new world, and yet still, it wasn’t enough for you. You wanted his universe. You wanted to know what he ate for breakfast, what kind of toothpaste he used, if he slept in just his underwear (you hoped he did), if he preferred boxers or briefs, if he was a morning person or a night owl, if he had any guilty pleasures, if he had a sweet tooth, you wanted to know every little thing about him. Every insignificant detail had suddenly been made significant in your eyes. 

He opened the door to his room and you entered his world. For such a rambunctious man, his room was surprisingly clean and orderly. He had shelves neatly lined with all manner of books, it seemed he wasn’t picky on the genre. He had swords on display, and you thought that was very like him. It probably served as both decor and legitimate weaponry, knowing him. His space was cozy, felt lived in, felt comfortable, but was also organized to the point that everything in view seemed to serve some sort of use, like he wouldn’t dare clutter his room with unnecessary baggage. He was an officer, his life wasn’t guaranteed, he had no time to waste on hoarding trinkets. 

It made you want to spoil him rotten. Made you want to fill up his drawers, his shelves, any empty space within sight, with gifts, with evidence of your interest in him. It honestly shocked you how quickly your interest in him had grown, from the moment it blossomed in the library to the moment you’d crossed the threshold into his room, into his life. You’d never go back, not now that you had a taste of him. 

Even the few moments he'd taken to slip into the bathroom and get changed into comfier clothes was enough to get you aching for his presence. But your sulking quickly subsided when he reemerged to toss you one of his shirts and a pair of his shorts to sleep in. He was a gentleman, he didn’t want you to be uncomfortable, especially when he was the one who had concocted this crazy idea of sleeping together. 

You quickly put his clothes on, not realizing you had been so eager to try them on that you forgot to make the trip to the bathroom and had changed in front of him. Once he realized what you were doing, he turned around to give you some privacy, but not before you saw the look on his face. It started out shocked, had a brief moment of bashfulness, before finally slipping into amusement. He chuckled and shook his head as he waited for you to finish.

“Some business partner you are, stripping in front of me so soon.” He teased.

You flushed but you retorted back, “And weren’t you the one just enjoying the show a minute ago?”

He shrugged and crawled under the covers, leaving you without a verbal response, but the smirk on his face answered plenty. 

You knew this was the part where you joined him in the bed but you hesitated.

He gestured for you to come over, so you did. 

But you positioned yourself as far away from him as you could. You weren’t sure where all your nerve from earlier went. You’d wanted to be closer to him, but now were somehow afraid to touch him. As if touching him might cement whatever feelings you were starting to have for him. As if you might not ever get up from his bed again, you might not want to. 

He laughed. “You can strip for me, but you can’t cuddle me? I seem to recall the deal was us sleeping together and I don’t think you huddling on the edge of the bed counts.” He wrapped his arms around you and pulled you as close as he physically could before snuggling against you. “God, you’re so comfy.”

You froze in his embrace. What now? What the fuck were you supposed to do now? This was the part where you went to sleep but every part of you was wide awake. Every part of you was enjoying the feeling of every part of him pressed up against you. You wondered how much you were allowed to savor this. Should you be feeling guilty for just how good this felt?

Fuck it.

You sank into his arms, allowing yourself to melt into his touch.

He sighed as you relaxed against him. “Good girl. Let’s have the best night of our lives, yeah?” 

And then he conked out.

You rolled your eyes. How the fuck were you supposed to go to bed when he said shit like that to you?

But eventually, after adjusting to his warmth, after getting drunk on his scent, you drifted off into a blissful slumber right along with him.

And he was right. It was the best night of your life.

And again and again, you continued to have the best night of your life every single night that you slept with him. On the days that you weren’t able to sneak into his room, on the days when even a small nap was out of reach, it was painfully obvious to you both how miserable you felt without the other nearby. And that craving, that desperate need for the other, it eventually made itself known in the daytime too. Soshiro -he’d made you start calling him by his first name because it didn’t feel right for someone who he’d seen in her underwear and who’d seen him in his underwear (turns out he did usually sleep in just his underwear, and you’d learned that once he’d gotten more comfortable with you) to be calling him by his last name- was startled to find that even on his most well-rested days, he still sought out your presence. At first, he thought maybe he wasn’t as rested as he’d assumed, maybe his body craved another nap, but eventually he realized he just craved your voice, need your laugh to get him through the day. And you needed him just as badly. 

You loved the way he’d read you passages from his favorite books as you snuggled in his arms and soaked in the sound of his voice. You loved the way he hoisted you up on his back and carried your dead weight back to his room when training had properly kicked your ass. You loved the way he had learned how to braid hair, just because he liked fidgeting with your hair and wanted to make himself useful while he was fidgeting. You loved every moment you stole from him in passing, every secret he whispered, claiming it was for your ears only, every act of intimacy shared between you. You loved it all. You loved him.

He loved you too. It was evident in the way that he ironed your clothes for you because he knew you hated wrinkles, even going so far as to wake up early to do it if he knew you had a meeting first thing in the morning (and he made a point of knowing your schedule everyday.) It was evident in the way that he'd started suggesting romance movies as a way to wind down at the end of a long day, because he knew they were your favorite but he also knew you were too ashamed to keep begging him to watch them with you. It was evident in the way that he made you tea every morning because he knew you weren’t a big fan of coffee. He’d even switched to drinking tea himself, though he was an avid coffee drinker before he met you, because he didn’t think you’d kiss him if he tasted like coffee. But you’d kiss him even if he tasted like sour milk. You’d do anything to kiss him and just keep kissing him.

The first time you kissed him was completely by accident. He’d been nudging your nose with his, trying to ease you into waking up. You’d jolted forward and woke to find your lips mashed into his. When he recovered from the shock, and you’d started to pull away, clearly embarrassed, he did the only thing he could think of to ease your embarrassment. He pulled you in for another kiss. And another. Until you couldn’t stop kissing each other, until you couldn’t keep your hands off one another. 

Every night with him was the best night of your life, this you knew, but every day with him quickly became the best day of your life as well. He became the best thing you’d ever had, the best thing you’d ever have. The best love you could ever or would ever know.

And it all started because of a nap.

[aquamarixx]

breaking the internet

chapter two Hiori discovers Miss Journalist might be a loyal fan of his — and learns the hard way that stalking someone on Winstagram can quickly get complicated. blue lock longfic series pairing hiori yo x reader contains slow slow slow burn, post blue lock timeskip, afab!reader angst, fluff, very hiori yo centric piece, reader is big hiori fangirl i guess masterlist

A few days later, Hiori noticed Bastard München’s group chat buzzing on his way to training. In just a couple of days, your article he had stumbled upon gained traction, spreading quickly among fans and media circles.

To his surprise, the team’s marketing team seized the opportunity to reshape the narrative to their advantage. They shared the article on the team’s official social media account, tagging you, with the caption: “Big W, thanks @/yn_offthepage for the awesome feature! We appreciate the support and dedication from all fans as we push forward this season. Don’t count us out yet!”

The reaction was immediate and electric. Fans who had been hesitant—some even critical—now rallied behind the team. Comments flooded in, sparking a renewed sense of hope for the Kaiser-less Bastard München. It was as if your article had breathed life back into a disheartened fanbase, bringing a spark of energy and support that the team badly needed.

By mid-day, another notification caught Hiori’s attention—a link to an old podcast clip that had resurfaced from an episode a few weeks prior to the start of the season. He opened it, surprised to see that you had been a featured guest in Anri Teieri and Ego Jinpachi’s Japanese Football Association podcast show.

The video began with the three of you sitting around a cluttered table with JFA signage and merch. Anri wore her usual JFA-branded polo shirt, and Ego wore a dark dress shirt paired with his signature bolo tie. 

You, however, were dressed more casually this time—casual but sporty. You donned a simple oversized tracksuit jacket and pants, with your messy bun adding an almost charming touch to your appearance. Your cheeks were lightly dusted with blush, and somehow looked radiant under the studio’s lights.

The podcast attracted attention quickly, and for good reason. The topic of discussion? The top three teams to watch that season. When Anri posed the question to you, Hiori hadn’t been prepared for your bold and quick response: Bastard München. The choice raised an eyebrow from Ego, who clearly hadn’t been expecting it.

In the next few seconds, you defended your choice with a blend of sharp analysis and an unexpected warmth. 

“Bastard München may have their flaws,” you explained, “but this season is about more than just winning. They’re rebuilding, and that means everyone now has a chance to shape the team’s dynamics in a way we haven’t seen before. It’s exciting because of how the team chooses to play things out this season can make or break them.”

As Hiori watched the clip, he couldn’t suppress a slight smile. The way you spoke about Bastard München struck a chord.

Your words weren’t just empty praise. They held conviction, a belief in their potential that was oddly reassuring. It reminded him of why he played, of the love for the game that had gotten buried under expectations and pressure.

“Think of it this way,” you continued, “just like in the Blue Lock project, players are forged through fire and brimstone, transforming into better versions of themselves. But this time, it’s not just individuals. It’s a whole team, shaping their destiny together. Aside from snide fan remarks, the only limiting factor to their potential growth is themselves, with the season a ticking time bomb hovering over their heads. This is where real egoists evolve.”

Not many sports personalities, especially journalists, would have taken the risk of showing open support for a team with uncertain prospects.

She a Noel Noa fan? he wondered.

Regardless, he hadn’t expected to feel that weight behind your statement, but something about it felt... right. 

At practice later that day, the clip had gone fully viral. So viral that the team’s sly marketing team couldn’t resist showing it to the squad. And like clockwork, during their break, Coach Noa and the marketing manager flagged down the sweaty athletes and gathered them in the locker room to watch the podcast clip.

The team crowded around the big TV, and as they watched, Hiori felt the atmosphere shift. The weight of their previous defeats seemed to lift. Your public support for Bastard München—the way you called them the team to watch out for this season—was like kindling to their dying embers. 

Even without looking at each other, they can feel that there’s a newfound determination settling within them. Even Greisner’s grumpy self got visibly pumped, his potty mouth running nonstop, but in a good way.

Watching his teammates respond to the clip reaffirmed what he’d felt earlier. But it was Hiori who felt the impact the most. Your conviction, your words, as if everything was directed to him.

This wasn’t just about the praise; it was about being seen, understood, in a way he hadn’t known they needed. Your words had done more than lift him; they’d awakened the fire within the entire team, making them feel, for the first time in a while, like they were exactly where they were meant to be.

But what surprised Hiori was the next clip that Coach Noa played.

The clip showed Anri bringing out an exaggeratedly large whiteboard titled “Ego’s Top Player Watch List”.

It showed a list of the top ten players to watch this season, paired with a comically drawn cartoon face of a player beside their name. It listed high-profile names and football stars everyone was expecting to see. The usual suspects—Julian Loki, Michael Kaiser, Shidou Ryuusei, the Itoshi Brothers—were all there.

But you interrupted Ego’s explanation mid-sentence.

“Not to be rude, but this looks like a ‘super fan’s’ wet dream.”

The team erupted in laughter. Hiori could hear Anri snort in the background, trying to cover it up with a cough after getting a stink eye from Ego himself.

Even Coach Noa couldn’t help himself, letting out a low chuckle at that unfiltered comment about his former brother-in-arms.

The camera panned to Ego, whose face was now a mix of curiosity and provocation. Through gritted teeth, he said, emphasizing every syllable of every word, “Is that so? What makes you say that, Y/N-chan?"

Realizing how rude that sounded, you bowed profusely, the tips of your ears red from the embarrassment. “I’m sorry! That came out wrong!”

“What I mean is, these are the players that football fanboys usually rattle off,” you said, catching yourself a bit too late. You just called Ego a fanboy. You winced but pressed on.

“These are the stereotypical names everyone expects to hear. But there are so many others who are just as impactful in their own way. Players like Nanase Nijiro, Niko Ikki, Agi, Miroku Darai, Alexis Ness …”, and for a second, you visibly, faltered, hesitating.

But you continued with a smile, “... and Hiori Yo, to name a few.”

“Oooh, that’s some hot take you’ve got there, Y/N-chan.” Anri laughed. “Also, two players from Bastard München?”

“So I’m guessing your favorite player is from the German club then?” Ego pried as he erased names on the board to replace them with Alexis Ness, Agi, and Hiori Yo’s names.

“Is it that obvious?” You chuckled. “Actually, let me show you.”

The team’s eyes were glued to the screen as you started unzipping your tracksuit jacket and revealed a Bastard München black jersey with the big bold gold number on the front.

Jersey number 23.

Hiori Yo’s jersey number.

His jersey.

“Ooooh!” The team erupted in laughter and teasing as they eyed Hiori, who was clearly stunned by the sudden reveal.

And it didn’t stop there.

“He’s a strategist both on and off the field. A true genius." You leaned forward, eyes bright with conviction.

“Everyone’s always focused on the strikers, but for me, midfielders steal the show. Playmaking is the heart of football; without midfielders to anchor the team, you’d just have chaos and confusion. Don’t get me wrong, I love the excitement that forwards like Julian Loki bring. But midfielders like Hiori Yo have their own kind of charm, a different thrill.” 

Your voice softened, your gaze momentarily distant, as if lost in thought. “There’s something mesmerizing about the way they read the game, anticipating moves before anyone else sees them. They make football more dynamic, more unpredictable. What’s not to like, right?”

You paused, catching your breath, and glanced around, realizing you rambled on. Anri and Ego exchanged amused glances, clearly entertained by your enthusiasm. Hiori watched as you tucked a stray strand of hair behind your ear, cheeks flushed as if you'd suddenly remembered you weren't alone.

It was clear you’d been watching him closely, noticing the subtleties of his play that often went unnoticed. And for a moment, he couldn’t help but feel a sense of pride.

As the clip ended, the locker room broke out in playful whistles, the whole Bastard München jeering at Hiori. Grins and knowing looks flew his way, as they egged him on this surprising development.

“Look at you, Hiori,” Ndiaye teased, nudging him. “Got yourself a fangirl.”

Hiori felt his cheeks grow warm as he tried to hide a small smile. But something stirred within him. Was it validation? Recognition? He couldn’t quite tell.  

“Who wouldn’t like Hiori? He’s, like, the ultra-sadist.” Isagi laughed as he elbowed Hiori on the side.

“Ah, shaddap, that was ages ago,” Hiori laughed, shoving him back. “But this ultra-sadist ain’t passin’ to ya if ya play like crap next match!”

“Damn, so cruel, so mean, Hiori.” Kunigami said.

“Guess it’s just my charm, eh?” Hiori grinned as he gracefully dodged a playful jab from a pouty, jealous Igarashi.

“Lucky! I’d kill for a fan in the press, so unfair.” Raichi groaned, casting a jealous look at Hiori.

Theo Sachs draped his arm around Raichi and said, “I doubt Miss Y/N would even write about you, even if you’re the master striker. You gotta be smart, not a smartass.”

“Plus, if we’re judging the team, you’d probably come in just above Igarashi at the bottom.” Yukimiya chimed in, laughing. “Even Gagamaru’s got a better shot at landing a cute fan.” Gagamaru simply huffed in smug satisfaction.

A loud clap broke their chaos as they heard Coach Noa clear his throat. “Alright, that’s enough. This is good publicity, yes, but remember, this puts all eyes on us for the next few matches. So don’t slack off. We’ve got a chance to prove them wrong, and I expect every one of you to play like it.”

The team erupted in shouts and cheers, clearly energized by the encouragement in the video. It might not have seemed like much, but having someone voice their confidence in Bastard Munchen out there for everyone to see lifted their spirits and boosted morale in a way they hadn’t expected. 

Football players are so single-minded, Hiori chuckled to himself.

The team dispersed as Coach Noa dismissed them with a wave, nodding with certainty at Hiori before heading to the field. The rest of the team scattered, eager to enjoy the rest of their break before afternoon training resumed.

He watched them go, but his mind lingered on the clip and on you.

Hiori felt a strange warmth unfurl in his chest. You weren't focused on the typical names, the usual flashy strikers; you spoke about the heart of the game, the grind, the transformation.

And when you mentioned the midfielders—the players who built the game from the ground up, who connected every move and controlled the chaos on the field—it felt like you were talking directly to him.

He couldn’t remember the last time someone had seen that side of his role, had recognized the way he approached the game. He felt seen—not for his skill or his stats, but for the way he played, for the choices he made on the field.

This wasn’t validation from his parents or praise from a coach. This was different. It was like a piece of himself he’d almost forgotten was gently being uncovered again. And in that moment, Hiori realized he wasn’t just another player on the field. He was Hiori Yo, a player with his own way of seeing the game—and you understood it.

Hiori replayed the clip, slipping on his earphones as he sank onto an empty bench under the shade. He let the image of you in his jersey burn into the back of his mind. And that smile.

This feels damn good, huh?

It was strange. Most people dismissed his approach to the game as too quiet, too calculated. But you understood it, and that understanding warmed him from the inside out, like a light he didn’t want to fade.

Without a thought, he checked your Winstagram account he had bookmarked. He scrolled down further before stopping as he spotted the picture he had been looking for. He clicked on it, and it showed him a carousel of images from that podcast episode. He did linger a little longer on a candid photo of you in his jersey.

He tried to zoom in, double tapping the image. “Ah, shit.” he muttered, as a heart-shaped “like” notification popped up instead.

In a panic, his fingers moved before he could even think about it. His heart raced as he tapped it continuously, unliking it, then tapped it again, liking it once more.

He froze, realizing that what he had done probably made things worse.

“Well… no goin’ back now, huh?” With a soft chuckle, he hit the follow button before stashing his phone in his bag and jogging back to the field, a smile playing on his lips.

While in the middle of researching a story, you were drenched in sweat as your phone blew up with notifications. The JFA podcast going viral definitely wasn’t on your to-do list today. While the clip's popularity was undoubtedly a career boost for a budding sports journalist like you, the attention was overwhelming.

Many praised you for your insightful take on the team and Hiori, but others labeled you an overzealous fan, clinging to idealistic views. As you scrolled through the messages and comments, a creeping anxiety settled in. 

Was your conviction really misplaced? Maybe you should’ve just mentioned PXG, like the other “normal” fans.

Instead, you had blurted out your admiration for Bastard Munchen—and, to make it worse, wore the jersey of your favorite player on camera.

What was I thinking, showing that off in a recorded video? So stupid.

As you scrolled further, a few off-the-rails comments caught your eye: 

When she talked about Hiori, she gloooowed.

Hiori Yo's biggest fangirl confirmed?

Your face flushed, a mix of embarrassment and something else, something unexpected. You quickly swiped past the post, your heart pounding. Was it really that obvious? The beating in your chest wouldn't go away.

Your moment of procrastination was interrupted by a series of Winstagram notifications popping up on your screen.

hioyi_yo23 liked a post. hioyi_yo23 liked a post. hioyi_yo23 started following you.

“Shit. Shit, shit shit shit shit. What now?!” You choked on your iced latte and scrambled to open the notification.

You couldn’t tell if the universe was playing some twisted prank on you. Because when you saw what photo Hiori Yo—Bastard Munchen’s midfielder, jersey number 23, THE HIORI YO HIMSELF—had liked, it felt like the entire world had just shifted on its axis.

It was your photo, wearing his jersey. He saw. He watched the clip. And he knew your Winstagram account.

Wait—did he like it and un-like it?

You quickly opened his profile, you fingers trembling. His account was a stark contrast to yours. There was barely anything personal—just a handful of Bastard Munchen-related posts, a few photos of teammates and friends, and some glimpses of his personal life, like the computer games he played or events he attended.

Everything was cryptic, like the man himself, showing only fragments of his life.

“Well, here goes nothing,” you muttered, butterflies exploding in her stomach as you tapped the follow button.

You stared at the screen for a moment, holding you breath. A smile tugged at your lips as you read it again: hiori_yo23 follows you.

author's notes: after so many revisions, it's finally done! i rewrote this chapter and it turned out longer than i expected. but i wanted to show both hiori and reader felt, their internal thoughts and feelings. a friend (who hasn't read or seen blue lock) has been helping me with proofreading. i was pretty happy because he said, he's liking hiori's character and how the slow burn is unfolding. anyway, i hope you guys enjoyed it! lemme know what you guys think!

[slavghoul]

Interview from Sweden Rock Magazine 10/2023

Hi, hi. There is an interview with Tobias in SRM’s newest issue, but it’s in the subscribers only section, so I thought I’d translate/share since I guess not many people will be able to get their hands on it. It is about Prequelle and it’s part of SRM’s „200 best Swedish hard rock albums of all time” series. Prequelle placed #68. The other albums may have scored higher, but for now we don’t know the whole list. Either way, enjoy. Very insightful. 

„Do you think that "Prequelle" is Ghost's worst album?” Now that’s an unusual opening question. Especially when the interview is about an album that Sweden Rock Magazine's writers and qualified Swedish hard rock musicians (including Tobias Forge) have voted as one of the 200 best Swedish hard rock albums of all time. The question wasn’t planned, but comes spontaneously, as a reaction to the first thing Tobias Forge says when we sit down on opposite sofas in the record company office. I'm here for a two-part interview, partly about the EP "Phantomime" (published in #6 2023), partly about "Prequelle". Neither record companies, artists, voters, nor even our writers who conduct interviews for this series of articles have any idea what placement an album has received. Interviews are often done well in advance and we simply don't want placements to leak and become public long before publication.

No Ghost album has ever been on the list before. The idea is actually to end the day with the "Prequelle" talk, but when Tobias Forge suddenly starts with a funny little comment that this album is probably the one that those who have voted think is Ghost's worst or least popular album, I just have to take the opportunity to ask the question: Do you think that "Prequelle" is Ghost's worst album?

No, absolutely not, he says and laughs. If I'm going to be completely pragmatic, I'd say: "How many songs do we actually play from that record?" There are songs that work damn well live and sit where they should. So it's a pretty strong album.

But is this what you are basing it on? "Prequelle" was released after Ghost had become really big so it can't be compared to "Opus Eponymous" and "Infestissumam" which you don't play many songs from. I mean, no matter what kind of record you had released when "Prequelle" came out, you would still have played many songs from it and they would have worked precisely because Ghost's songs nowadays are moulded more to the arena format.

I don't know how to answer that, it's difficult. If the album had been different, it would have been. If I'm going to talk somehow both artistically and practically, I know that for every record we have become exponentially bigger. "Prequelle" was definitely no exception, but it also took us a big step forward and upwards and we became bigger and broader. To the extent that when we introduce old songs in the live set, you notice that there are elements on albums one and two that make some songs more difficult to play. Not technically, we can play the songs, but they don't work in quite the same way as the later songs, which means that there is a slight favouritism.

I asked the original question about whether you think it's Ghost's worst album only because you directly said that this means it's the least popular one.

I'm just so full of myself I assumed all the other albums are also in the top 200, which may actually be incorrect. This might be the best album and the others aren't even there, haha.

It wasn't long after "Prequelle" was released that you were self-critical of the album in interviews, saying that it was too ballad-heavy and a bit too soft. I haven't noticed that before, you being so self-critical shortly after the release.

Yes, but I still feel that way. If, as an artist, I am only going to look at the work with the criticism that one can feel towards one's own work, I think that if things had been different or if I had more time, I might have wished that I had managed to get maybe two more hard songs. Maybe one more hard song would have fit on the album and another harder song might have phased out one of the ballads. Now five years after the album came out, I know that the two ballads ("Pro Memoria" and "Life Eternal"), which I may not think are bad, are one too many. But I know that many of the people who like the band like both of them, so it's kind of a useless argument.

Who sets the length of an album? Have you set a limit, that it can't be longer than this and have no more songs than that?

No, but it must fit on an LP disc and there is a physical limit. I think the absolute pain threshold is 46 minutes and that's 23 minutes on each side. Now maybe Mikkey Dee (co-owner of Spinroad Vinyl Factory) will raise his hand here: "But I can make it longer!" And it's maybe 48 minutes, I don't know, but I do know that when a disc starts getting so full that you start getting close to the sticker, it starts to sound bad. Especially nowadays, because recordings today are so very maximalist in scope. It's one thing if you record 60s music with drums, a guitar and bass where the sound is cleaner and finer or if you play acoustic stuff with just vocals. Bob Dylan records could have eight songs on each side and it worked all the way through. But this kind of fairly compact music doesn't work well. Not only am I a militant vinyl advocate, I think we should respect the fact that most artists don't manage to create more than 45 minutes of good music on a regular basis. A lot of famous double records are not that good. I don't think the Rolling Stones "Exile On Main St" is very good. It might as well have been on one disc. And if I'm actually going to turn it into something completely mundane, I'd say that I think it's irresponsible to sit and make records with twelve songs if it results in the record being 63 minutes long and you automatically have to make a double record. It's pretty wasteful.

When you said that it's irresponsible, I thought you were going to say that it's irresponsible to print a double vinyl because of the environmental destruction that it entails.

Of course, if we're going to be completely straightforward and not do anything that harms nature, we shouldn't even release any records, so I say this with reservation. But with that in mind and for the sake of art, I think more people should embrace the actual given format that has been the most prevalent in rock history. There is a reason why a film is usually one hour and 30 minutes. You can’t take any more. There's a certain dramaturgical structure and there’s a certain comfort in it. Then the CDs came along they screwed that up, and suddenly there weren't two sides anymore but it started one way and ended another. Now that the CD is no longer important and we've gone back to vinyl, creators should follow suit and start embracing the physical rules.

Are there songs that have been rounded off just because you thought „I have to round off here, because if I continue, it won't fit on the vinyl disc"?

We actually had that problem on the last album. „Watcher In The Sky” ended the A-side and the outro is much longer on the CD and digitally. Two minutes longer I think. Much, much, much longer. It's long, noisy and has all these dives. It's a very chaotic soundscape. You get the feeling that it goes on and on, and on the vinyl it's just the beginning of an outro and then it drops almost immediately. I think that was a huge mistake.

So the overall sound quality was more important than vinyl buyers getting everything? Because you could have pressed the vinyl and it would have fit, but you would have had to compromise the sound quality.

Yes, exactly. You can get the song to just keep going until the vinyl simply runs out. Then it just starts spinning in the middle, depending on what kind of record player you have. But the problem then, if you want to anticipate events at a creative stage, is that people today buy and listen to vinyl records and are sensitive. It's quite common for people to complain that the record is broken. I don't just mean our records, but people complain a lot about the presses. If you make ten songs, it's therefore stupid to have a too thick soundscape towards the end of song number five and song number ten. If you want to be really good and old school, that's where you put a piano ballad because it's an easier sound to handle so far into the record. This is what I think about when I make records. But clearly sometimes I miscalculate.

This must cut right through the record collector Tobias Forge's whole body and soul, that "Watcher In The Sky” is shortened by two minutes on the vinyl of all versions.

Well... I don't toss and turn and wake up in the middle of the night thinking about it anymore. But when it happened, I was livid. Luckily it was just an outro. It would have been worse if it had continued with some kind of narrative into the next song. Now I can't remember in my head how long "Prequelle" is, but if I'd had to go back in time and just re-construct it, the re-construction wouldn't have had much to do with the existing material, I would have just wanted to add a scene. And it's not a scene that's missing, it's just for the sake of balance. It became asymmetrical in a way that bothers me a bit.

You've talked about this before, but it was before "Prequelle" that you really started to talk a lot about how you were thinking about what kind of new songs might suit the live show. Can you get stuck in that mindset, thinking more about what songs are needed live right now rather than creating an album that will last 30 years?

Hmm... (long pause)... The reason I'm sitting here thinking is because I'm trying to come up with examples of other bands that I think might have gone through something similar. I’m looking for examples to the answer I'm about to formulate and that is that: yes, I think there comes a point in the career when most bands make a record because they simply feel they need to… Because what we're talking about is that when you go from playing in small smoky clubs in front of an already inveterate audience that already understands the perhaps a little more chewy expression, that experience can change if you start playing in front of a larger and especially a different type of audience. When a different type of audience comes and you play in a different format, you discover that this song doesn't work very well, it doesn't sound very good and it's difficult to get the sound right. Then there's usually a record or two or three during your career when this transition happens where you start filling in with songs that work better live. Look at Piece of mind", "Powerslave" and "Somewhere in time". There's a reason why Iron Maiden didn't play a lot of the first two albums there and then, because it was easier to play the new songs. You get to that point somewhere in your career and it's very difficult to say when it is - there's no given rule and there are artists who continue to release relevant records and have an amazing ability to release new records and just play the whole new record. Well, now Iron Maiden does that and tests their audience a little bit in that way, but then they will always compensate by doing like a "best of" set the following year so everything is forgiven. Now we're in the middle of the "Impera" period here and have a very strong set, but I'm starting to feel that now that I'm about to start writing a new album, it feels like it's not really on my agenda to write three more albums that will change the live setlist ten years ahead. I think we already have the blueprint for what is Ghost's setlist, especially if you include the entire catalogue. After a while, each new record you make becomes a little less important. It's really hard to know when that point comes, but the truth is that new records don't matter in the same way. Slayer didn't have to release "Divine Intervention”. They definitely didn't have to release "Diabolus In Musica". I didn't care about it and I just wanted to hear the old stuff. If they had just come up and played "Reign In Blood" I would have been soooo happy. And that's the way it is with most bands. Nobody would be sad if the Rolling Stones came up and didn't play anything from "Emotional Rescue". And that's just the way it is. In the future, I can see a scenario where there is probably a basis to possibly build up an alternative setlist. There are so many songs that we do not play and that I have nothing against - I love them too! But it would almost be easier to build up a completely alternative setlist and run a show with only the odd songs. There are so many songs now. There's no reason not to build on that. But when I want to make a new record, it's irresponsible for me not to consider that there might have to be some songs that are a bit more direct. But it doesn't hurt me if we have more songs that we don't play live. I don't know if this answers your question...

I would actually like to ask exactly the same question again, because I wonder if you yourself feel that you get stuck during the making of the record. You said that you would have liked to include another hard song because "Prequelle" doesn't have the balance that you would have liked to have in retrospect.

Exactly, but the explanation for that has more to do with my mental capacity there and then. I simply couldn't cope. I felt that I had probably maxed out… It was probably about as much as I could do that year. That's the simple explanation. To get another song that would have fit and that would have fulfilled this requirement that I now in retrospect would have wished I had, it would have required something that I did not have there and then. The only thing that could have made it easier is if I had more time. It is difficult to reason about it, you see.

I was in the studio for a few days during the recording and it's one of the few times in all these years that I've done interviews where someone has started crying during an interview. It was quite obvious that everything that had happened with the split of the band affected you.

Yes. Of course. It did.

Is "Prequelle" a difficult album to listen to for you? Can you sit and listen to it all the way through? 

Well, at the moment I have to do that from time to time, and listen to all the records, because we're just about to start rehearsing again and then I sometimes have to go back and just listen to the record to go: "Fuck, is that really how I sing?" Especially when we start rehearsing, I can be a bit like: "Damn, who changed this bit?” Then I usually sit down and it hits me: "Oh, it's me who has changed my song!" You simply do that over the years, you start singing it in a slightly different way. So sometimes I have to go back and listen, but it’s more practical. I don't think it's fun to listen them. I do it until they are finished. I listen over and over and over again and really try to listen with all the imaginary ears and all the imaginary perspectives you can have. "How would I have listened to this if I had heard it from this perspective?" Just to get as "objective" a perspective as I can until I'm satisfied, but then it's like „No, I don't want to hear this anymore". But I have to say that I think "Prequelle" is a very tolerable disc despite everything that interfered with the process. Therapeutically, it works quite well considering that we are still playing at least half of the album. For every artist there are songs that you want to play, and there are songs that you don’t want to play because they feel too personal. I don't feel that way about this one, it's more like: "Ah hell, they're part of the setlist and people like it and it sounds good. So that's what we're doing."

On a personal level, was Tom Dalgety the perfect producer for you, the way you were feeling at the time? Tom feels like the kindest, sweetest producer you can meet. He wasn't the kind of producer who pushed you very much, it was more of a nice atmosphere between you.

Yes, really, and it would have been different if Klas Åhlund, who is more confrontational, had been in the room. Now Klas and I are great mates, so it would certainly have been very therapeutic also, but it would have been a different process. If an artist comes in who is in such bad shape that they can't make a record, or a band where the main songwriter has just left them, then a Bob Ezrin goes in and says: "If you don't make the record, I'll make the record myself.” And he goes and makes Kiss "Destroyer" or Alice Cooper records. I'm not saying they didn't make them, just that you hear that Bob Ezrin made "Beth". It's a type of producer that's very different from a lot of other producers who maybe act a little bit more like buddies and cheerleaders and make the atmosphere good. Bob Ezrin doesn't care so much about the atmosphere in the room. Klas is somewhere in between, I would say. Given the condition I was in during "Prequelle", the result could probably have been different if Klas had come in. Ironically, there was actually talk of him doing it, but he didn't have the time and we'll never know how it would have turned out. I only know that it would have been different, but right there and then Tom was fantastic. I know that a lot of bands like to work with him because he is technically brilliant. He's really good at those typical sounds that people like: cool drums, guitar, bass, tone and clarity. He is also very "happy go lucky", a nice guy who sits and jokes all the time. Even if he has a bad day, it doesn't affect anyone else, which is convenient.

Let me compare it to when a writer contacts me after an interview and says "that was such a nice interview". For me, "nice" is not something positive in such a work situation and the result is often better when there is a little friction.

Mmm, and that is more Klas. There is more friction and more confrontation. And I was much better equipped for that at "Meliora" and later at "Impera". I felt better and was simply stronger. There wasn't the same survival instinct as on "Prequelle". If I think back, not about how the album turned out and how I have to live with it, but if I think back to the situation I was in, I was very anxious all the time. Even though I'm happy with the result, I wouldn't want to go through the recording again, even though Tom was great. Because it's hard to work when you're under attack. I realised that now when I made "Impera", when it was no longer like that. You are much more comfortable, it doesn't feel the same, you are more mature, you make better decisions, you are more controlled or dare to be uncontrolled. When things are this serious, you can end up in a freeze mode. Maybe that's also why there wasn't another song. The song that I miss doesn't exist because I simply squeezed out everything I had. If I had been in a different emotional state, I might have been more comfortable working out something at the last second from bits and pieces. But I felt that I really just wanted to get it done, deliver it, get back out on tour and start over again.

When you described being more mature during "Impera" you sounded like a 70-year-old, kind of like all the Aerosmith-like bands that have been fighting all their lives and now that they're in their 70s they say "we're soooo mature,” haha.

I think with all artists, especially when they're required to work in a group, there are many recordings that have been a collision with a wall because you're expected to function in a context all the time, whatever and whenever. But you do change and from one year to a few years down the line there can be a huge difference in a person's drive, hunger and priorities in life. Whether you have the same band structure as I do or whether you play in Metallica, people come in one state and they may end up in another, because you have different priorities at different times. It's unfortunately against the whole rock myth. I think that's the biggest problem for bands and businesses, that you always have this idea that if you just get to a certain stage - not just monetarily or career-wise, but you get to a certain stage of fun - then we've reached the status quo. But that is never the case! Never! There’s always something. Even in the best moments when everything is working, the band is awesome, everyone is working well, the crew is awesome, everyone is laughing, it's just a party all the time mentally, you have the world's best tour manager, everything is flowing and the tickets are selling, there will always be someone who doesn't like it and then has to break away and want to do their thing because it's no longer fun. It's usually somewhere in the lead-up to a stage where it's interesting and then once you've achieved it, it all becomes a bit boring. Just like in a relationship some people may eventually think, "well, that's a bit boring, I have to go out and do something else".

Since I was in the studio when you were laying down guitars on "Witch Image", my heart beats a little extra for that song and I thought it would be a great live song, but you've barely played it (at the time of writing it's Ghost's forty-fourth most played song live).

We did it during the "Prequelle" tour, or "A Pale Tour Named Death" as it was called. Then we did quite a few "an evening with" concerts, for better or worse. The advantage was that if you were a big fan of the band we actually played a lot of songs and actually a lot of the first albums, like "Idolatrine" - or "Witch Image". We did a set, a break and then a whole other set. That was a bit of a taste of what I was talking about earlier: doing a slightly larger set and then a slightly smaller one. You just shouldn't do it on the same night because it gets a bit stale. We played for two hours and 30 minutes or something and that wasn’t a good idea, haha. At least we did "Witch Image", but it has fallen behind a bit and it doesn't mean that we will never play it again, just that we don't do it right now. What I've been happy about is that there has been a feeling for the records that we've made recently, "Prequelle" and "Impera", that people still want to hear the new stuff. We haven't gotten to that stage that I talked about earlier when it doesn't matter anymore. Then it's very fun to try to find a new way to perform the songs, not technically, but suddenly a song like "Witch Image" might fulfill a very nice purpose between a completely new song and another song.

Let me speculate: in 30 years, I think "Rats" will be considered the great hard rock song, "Dance Macabre" the great hit and "Life Eternal" the great ballad. What do you think? Will this in the future be seen as the three big songs of the album?

Yes, that makes sense, I think. I understand that an instrumental song automatically ends up in the wake of a "best of" collection, in the sense that you do one in 30 years. I realise it's not a hit but the instrumental "Miasma" is a big part of our live show. It's strong and feels like such a keeper. Now we don't play "Life Eternal" very often actually, but it was very well received. For some reason people like to get married to it, I don’t know why, hehe. It's nice but it's also a bit like U2’s „I still haven't found what I'm looking for" and you don't use that one at a wedding. But people like it and I guess interpret it differently to me. It’s also a song that I don't think is fun to play live.

And why not?

Because I find it hard to play ballads. Physically, they don't feel the same as rock songs. I miss the "dunka dunka". Now everyone who plays music today knows what I mean - sorry, readers who don't play music - and it's that there's a small problem with having in-ear monitors. This means that you have to reach a certain frequency of beats in order to feel the music, unlike when you played at clubs with only a guitar amp behind you. You felt every single note you made and it just went through your body. Nowadays, I think it's sometimes hard when you play slow songs, because you have to trust that it sounds good, whereas when you play a rock song, you feel that it sounds good.

Does it also apply to "He Is” which is such a huge ballad, not least live?

Well, just the intro and then it gets going quite quickly and suddenly becomes a hard and rather fast-paced song. The classic ballad concept has always been that you play so-called edge beats to make it sound soft, while "He Is” is actually a rather hard-played song considering that it is a ballad. Once the drums come in – boom, boom – it's got AC/DC bite to it. It has a rock feel to it that "Life Eternal" doesn't really have. As I said, I don't think that "Life Eternal" is a lot of fun to perform, but that doesn't mean that it isn't quite good to listen to. It’s just that when I play "Dance Macabre" or "Mummy Dust" I feel that I can express myself physically more in line with what the text says and what it means.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

'We buy ugly houses' is code for 'we steal vulnerable peoples' homes'

Tonight (May 11) at 7PM, I’m in CALGARY for Wordfest, with my novel Red Team Blues; I’ll be hosted by Peter Hemminger at the Memorial Park Library, 2nd Floor.

Home ownership is the American dream: not only do you get a place to live, free from the high-handed dictates of a landlord, but you also get an asset that appreciates, building intergenerational wealth while you sleep — literally.

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/11/ugly-houses-ugly-truth/#homevestor

Of course, you can’t have it both ways. If your house is an asset you use to cover falling wages, rising health care costs, spiraling college tuition and paper-thin support for eldercare, then it can’t be a place you live. It’s gonna be an asset you sell — or at the very least, borrow so heavily against that you are in constant risk of losing it.

This is the contradiction at the heart of the American dream: when America turned its back on organized labor as an engine for creating prosperity and embraced property speculation, it set itself on the road to serfdom — a world where the roof over your head is also your piggy bank, destined to be smashed open to cover the rising costs that an organized labor movement would have fought:

https://gen.medium.com/the-rents-too-damned-high-520f958d5ec5

Today, we’re hit the end of the road for the post-war (unevenly, racially segregated) shared prosperity that made it seem, briefly, that everyone could get rich by owning a house, living in it, then selling it to everybody else. Now that the game is ending, the winners are cashing in their chips:

https://doctorow.medium.com/the-end-of-the-road-to-serfdom-bfad6f3b35a9

The big con of home ownership is proceeding smartly on schedulee. First, you let the mark win a little, so they go all in on the scam. Then you take it all back. Obama’s tolerance of bank sleze after the Great Financial Crisis kicked off the modern era of corporations and grifters stealing Americans’ out from under them, forging deeds in robosigning mills:

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-breaks-down-93-bln-robo-signing-settlement-2013-02-28

The thefts never stopped. Today on Propublica, by Anjeanette Damon, Byard Duncan and Mollie Simon bring a horrifying, brilliantly reported account of the rampant, bottomless scams of Homevestors, AKA We Buy Ugly Houses, AKA “the #1 homebuyer in the USA”:

https://www.propublica.org/article/ugly-truth-behind-we-buy-ugly-houses

Homevestors — an army of the hedge fund Bayview Asset Management — claims a public mission: to bail out homeowners sitting on unsellable houses with all-cash deals. The company’s franchisees — 1,150 of them in 48 states — then sprinkle pixie dust and secret sauce on these “ugly houses” and sell them at a profit.

But Propublica’s investigation — which relied on whistleblowers, company veterans, court records and interviews with victims — tells a very different story. The Homevestor they discovered is a predator that steals houses out from under elderly people, disabled people, people struggling with mental illness and other vulnerable people. It’s a company whose agents have a powerful, well-polished playbook that stops family members from halting the transfers the company’s high-pressure salespeople set in motion.

Propublica reveals homeowners with advanced dementia who signed their shaky signatures to transfers that same their homes sold out from under them for a fraction of their market value. They show how Homevestor targets neighborhoods struck by hurricanes, or whose owners are recently divorced, or sick. One whistleblower tells of how the company uses the surveillance advertising industry to locate elderly people who’ve broken a hip: “a 60-day countdown to death — and, possibly, a deal.” The company’s mobile ads are geofenced to target people near hospitals and rehab hospitals, in hopes of finding desperate sellers who need to liquidate homes so that Medicaid will cover their medical expenses.

The sales pitches are relentless. One of Homevestor’s targets was a Texas woman whose father had recently been murdered. As she grieved, they blanketed her in pitches to sell her father’s house until “checking her mail became a traumatic experience.”

Real-estate brokers are bound by strict regulations, but not house flippers like Homevestors. Likewise, salespeople who pitch other high-ticket items, from securities to plane tickets — are required to offer buyers a cooling-off period during which they can reconsider their purchases. By contrast, Homevestors’ franchisees are well-versed in “muddying the title” to houses after the contract is signed, filing paperwork that makes it all but impossible for sellers to withdraw from the sale.

This produces a litany of ghastly horror-stories: homeowners who end up living in their trucks after they were pressured into a lowball sales; sellers who end up dying in hospital beds haunted by the trick that cost them their homes. One woman who struggled with hoarding was tricked into selling her house by false claims that the city would evict her because of her hoarding. A widow was tricked into signing away the deed to her late husband’s house by the lie that she could do so despite not being on the deed. One seller was tricked into signing a document he believed to be a home equity loan application, only to discover he had sold his house at a huge discount on its market value. An Arizona woman was tricked into selling her dead mother’s house through the lie that the house would have to be torn down and the lot redeveloped; the Homevestor franchisee then flipped the house for 5,500% of the sale-price.

The company vigorously denies these claims. They say that most people who do business with Homevestors are happy with the outcome; in support of this claim, they cite internal surveys of their own customers that produce a 96% approval rating.

When confronted with the specifics, the company blamed rogue franchisees. But Propublica obtained training materials and other internal documents that show that the problem is widespread and endemic to Homevestors’ business. Propublica discovered that at least eight franchisees who engaged in conduct the company said it “didn’t tolerate” had been awarded prizes by the company for their business acumen.

Franchisees are on the hook for massive recurring fees and face constant pressure from corporate auditors to close sales. To make those sales, franchisees turn to Homevana’s training materials, which are rife with predatory tactics. One document counsels franchisees that “pain is always a form of motivation.” What kind of pain? Lost jobs, looming foreclosure or a child in need of surgery.

A former franchisee explained how this is put into practice in the field: he encountered a seller who needed to sell quickly so he could join his dying mother who had just entered a hospice 1,400 miles away. The seller didn’t want to sell the house; they wanted to “get to Colorado to see their dying mother.”

These same training materials warn franchisees that they must not deal with sellers who are “subject to a guardianship or has a mental capacity that is diminished to the point that the person does not understand the value of the property,” but Propublica’s investigation discovered “a pattern of disregard” for this rule. For example, there was the 2020 incident in which a 78-year-old Atlanta man sold his house to a Homevestors franchisee for half its sale price. The seller was later shown to be “unable to write a sentence or name the year, season, date or month.”

The company tried to pin the blame for all this on bad eggs among its franchisees. But Propublica found that some of the company’s most egregious offenders were celebrated and tolerated before and after they were convicted of felonies related to their conduct on behalf of the company. For example, Hi-Land Properties is a five-time winner of Homevestors’ National Franchise of the Year prize. The owner was praised by the CEO as “loyal, hardworking franchisee who has well represented our national brand, best practices and values.”

This same franchisee had “filed two dozen breach of contract lawsuits since 2016 and clouded titles on more than 300 properties by recording notices of a sales contract.” Hi-Land “sued an elderly man so incapacitated by illness he couldn’t leave his house.”

Another franchisee, Patriot Holdings, uses the courts aggressively to stop families of vulnerable people from canceling deals their relatives signed. Patriot Holdings’ co-owner, Cory Evans, eventually pleaded guilty to to two felonies, attempted grand theft of real property. He had to drop his lawsuits against buyers, and make restitution.

According to Homevestors’ internal policies, Patriot’s franchise should have been canceled. But Homevestors allowed Patriot to stay in business after Cory Evans took his name off the business, leaving his brothers and other partners to run it. Nominally, Cory Evans was out of the picture, but well after that date, internal Homevestors included Evans in an award it gave to Patriot, commemorating its sales (Homevestors claims this was an error).

Propublica’s reporters sought comment from Homevestors and its franchisees about this story. The company hired “a former FBI spokesperson who specializes in ‘crisis and special situations’ and ‘reputation management’ and funnelled future questions through him.”

Internally, company leadership scrambled to control the news. The company convened a webinar in April with all 1,150 franchisees to lay out its strategy. Company CEO David Hicks explained the company’s plan to “bury” the Propublica article with “‘strategic ad buys on social and web pages’ and ‘SEO content to minimize visibility.’”

https://www.propublica.org/article/homevestors-aims-to-bury-propublica-reporting

Franchisees were warned not to click links to the story because they “might improve its internet search ranking.”

Even as the company sought to “bury” the story and stonewalled Propublica, they cleaned house, instituting new procedures and taking action against franchisees identified in Propublica’s article. “Clouding titles” is now prohibited. Suing sellers for breach of contract is “discouraged.” Deals with seniors “should always involve family, attorneys or other guardians.”

During the webinar, franchisees “pushed back on the changes, claiming they could hurt business.”

If you’ve had experience with hard-sell house-flippers, Propublica wants to know: “If you’ve had experience with a company or buyer promising fast cash for homes, our reporting team wants to hear about it.”

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in Calgary, Toronto, DC, Gaithersburg, Oxford, Hay, Manchester, Nottingham, London, and Berlin!

[Image ID: A Depression-era photo of a dour widow standing in front of a dilapidated cabin. Next to her is Ug, the caveman mascot for Homevestors, smiling and pointing at her. Behind her is a 'We buy ugly houses' sign.

Image: Homevestors https://www.homevestors.com/

Fair use: https://www.eff.org/issues/intellectual-property

[emmanuellececchi]

Defending the castle like a man...

I've just read this article : Defending the castle like a man: on belligerent medieval ladies.

One of my friend is practicing HEMA (historical european martial art) as well as forging. We speak often about it and I have many question, mostly because of my main character in my medieval romance. As in forging, strength is not all in fighting. Know how to do it and practicing is first and foremost (she is smaller and thinner than me. she can wield swords that I cannot lift).

She reads lots of things about medieval warfare and we have discussion about it, and more recently because of my main character in my medieval romance. She had send me this article. And while reading it, I thought about some of my mutuals and the quite recent discussion about Eowyn and Théoden. So this is for you : @torchwood-99 , @from-the-coffee-shop-in-edoras , @konartiste. @errruvande I thought about you as there is a good reference about Alfred's daughter.

Reading this, I thought about Théoden. Rohan seems to have a certain history of female fighters. Shieldmaiden is not a name coming out of nowhere. So... what led Rohan to, seemingly, forget about this role? When did it happen?

In this article, there are a lot of example of women who did fight in war and defend their territory. It seems there are more and more proof of that. Even more, it seems women were actually expected to know at least how to defend their castle and lands. "Do as their husband do". So they had to know how to fight or at least strategies and siege... And some knew how to use bows, crossbows and even swords. Still, they had been, most of the time, erased or played down.

It is not said if this erasing was all along or more recent, as it is noted that those women of war were common up until the 14th centuries. In any case, they existed, but in later ages, it was inconvenient for men to have their female kin show "men's virtue".

Did something equivalent happened in Rohan? Why would something like this would happen? I would be the first to say "Oh it's all Saruman/Grima's fault". But no. Theoden do not think of sending Eowyn to war. He does not even have the reflex to think about her as a leader for his people. if it had been Grima and/or Saruman, he would have think about it.

Could it be his gondorian upbringing? After all he grew up in Gondor, had a gondorian mother? Thengel did not seem to held his countries culture in high regard. So, could it be this? Or even before that?

In my glèomenn fanfic, Tirwald said it was legends and old story. Could it be even older? Something more recent, linked to another culture?

So... What do you think?

[mariacallous]

Climate denial may be on the decline, but a phenomenon at least as injurious to the cause of climate protection has blossomed beside it: doomism, or the belief that there’s no way to halt the Earth’s ascendant temperatures. Burgeoning ranks of doomers throw up their hands, crying that it’s too late, too hard, too costly to save humanity from near-future extinction.

There are numerous strands of doomism. The followers of ecologist Guy McPherson, for example, gravitate to wild conspiracy theories that claim humanity won’t last another decade. Many young people, understandably overwhelmed by negative climate headlines and TikTok videos, are convinced that all engagement is for naught. Even the Guardian, which boasts superlative climate coverage, sometimes publishes alarmist articles and headlines that exaggerate grim climate projections.

This gloom-and-doomism robs people of the agency and incentive to participate in a solution to the climate crisis. As a writer on climate and energy, I am convinced that we have everything we require to go carbon neutral by 2050: the science, the technology, the policy proposals, and the money, as well as an international agreement in which nearly 200 countries have pledged to contain the crisis. We don’t need a miracle or exorbitantly expensive nuclear energy to stave off the worst. The Gordian knot before us is figuring out how to use the resources we already have in order to make that happen.

One particularly insidious form of doomism is exhibited in Kohei Saito’s Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto, originally published in 2020 and translated from Japanese into English this year. In his unlikely international bestseller, Saito, a Marxist philosopher, puts forth the familiar thesis that economic growth and decarbonization are inherently at odds. He goes further, though, and speculates that the climate crisis can only be curbed in a classless, commons-based society. Capitalism, he writes, seeks to “use all the world’s resources and labor power, opening new markets and never passing up even the slightest chance to make more money.”

Capitalism’s record is indeed damning. The United States and Europe are responsible for the lion’s share of the world’s emissions since the onset of the Industrial Revolution, yet the global south suffers most egregiously from climate breakdown. Today, the richest tenth of the world’s population—living overwhelmingly in the global north and China—is responsible for half of global emissions. If the super-rich alone cut their footprints down to the size of the average European, global emissions would fall by a third, Saito writes.

Saito’s self-stated goals aren’t that distinct from mine: a more egalitarian, sustainable, and just society. One doesn’t have to be an orthodox Marxist to find the gaping disparities in global income grotesque or to see the restructuring of the economy as a way to address both climate breakdown and social injustice. But his central argument—that climate justice can’t happen within a market economy of any kind—is flawed. In fact, it serves next to no purpose because more-radical-than-thou theories remove it from the nuts-and-bolts debate about the way forward.

We already possess a host of mechanisms and policies that can redistribute the burdens of climate breakdown and forge a path to climate neutrality. They include carbon pricing, wealth and global transaction taxes, debt cancellation, climate reparations, and disaster risk reduction, among others. Economies regulated by these policies are a distant cry from neoliberal capitalism—and some, particularly in Europe, have already chalked up marked accomplishments in reducing emissions.

Saito himself acknowledges that between 2000 and 2013, Britain’s GDP increased by 27 percent while emissions fell by 9 percent and that Germany and Denmark also logged decoupling. He writes off this trend as exclusively the upshot of economic stagnation following the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy in 2008. However, U.K. emissions have continued to fall, plummeting from 959 million to 582 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent between 2007 and 2020. The secret to Britain’s success, which Saito doesn’t mention, was the creation of a booming wind power sector and trailblazing carbon pricing system that forced coal-fired plants out of the market practically overnight. Nor does Saito consider that from 1990 to 2022, the European Union reduced its emissions by 31 percent while its economy grew by 66 percent.

Climate protection has to make strides where it can, when it can, and experts acknowledge that it’s hard to change consumption patterns—let alone entire economic systems—rapidly. Progress means scaling back the most harmful types of consumption and energy production. It is possible to do this in stages, but it needs to be implemented much faster than the current plodding pace.

This is why Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet by Hannah Ritchie, a data scientist at the University of Oxford, is infinitely more pertinent to the public discourse on climate than Saito’s esoteric work. Ritchie’s book is a noble attempt to illustrate that environmental protection to date boasts impressive feats that can be built on, even as the world faces what she concedes is an epic battle to contain greenhouse gases.

Ritchie underscores two environmental afflictions that humankind solved through a mixture of science, smart policy, and international cooperation: acid rain and ozone depletion. I’m old enough to remember the mid-1980s, when factories and power plants spewed out sulfurous and nitric emissions and acid rain blighted forests from the northeastern United States to Eastern Europe. Acidic precipitation in the Adirondacks, my stomping grounds at the time, decimated pine forests and mountain lakes, leaving ghostly swaths of dead timber. Then, scientists pinpointed the industries responsible, and policymakers designed a cap-and-trade system that put a price on their emissions, which forced industry into action; for example, power plants had to fit scrubbers on their flue stacks. The harmful pollutants dropped by 80 percent by the end of the decade, and forests grew back.

The campaign to reverse the thinning of the ozone layer also bore fruit. An international team of scientists deduced that man-made chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) in fridges, freezers, air conditioners, and aerosol cans were to blame. Despite fierce industry pushback, more than 40 countries came together in Montreal in 1987 to introduce a staggered ban on CFCs. Since then, more countries joined the Montreal Protocol, and CFCs are now largely a relic of the past. As Ritchie points out, this was the first international pact of any kind to win the participation of every nation in the world.

While these cases instill inspiration, Ritchie’s assessment of our current crisis is a little too pat and can veer into the Panglossian. The climate crisis is many sizes larger in scope than the scourges of the 1980s, and its antidote—to Saito’s credit—entails revamping society and economy on a global scale, though not with the absolutist end goal of degrowth communism.

Ritchie doesn’t quite acknowledge that a thoroughgoing restructuring is necessary. Although she does not invoke the term, she is an acolyte of “green growth.” She maintains that tweaks to the world’s current economic system can improve the living standards of the world’s poorest, maintain the global north’s level of comfort, and achieve global net zero by 2050. “Economic growth is not incompatible with reducing our environmental impact,” she writes. For her, the big question is whether the world can decouple growth and emissions in time to stave off the darkest scenarios.

Ritchie approaches today’s environmental disasters—air pollution, deforestation, carbon-intensive food production, biodiversity loss, ocean plastics, and overfishing—as problems solvable in ways similar to the crises of the 1980s. Like CFCs and acid rain, so too can major pollutants such as black carbon and carbon monoxide be reined in. Ritchie writes that the “solution to air pollution … follows just one basic principle: stop burning stuff.” As she points out, smart policy has already enhanced air quality in cities such as Beijing (Warsaw, too, as a recent visit convinced me), and renewable energy is now the cheapest form of power globally. What we have to do, she argues, is roll renewables out en masse.

The devil is in making it happen. Ritchie admits that environmental reforms must be accelerated many times over, but she doesn’t address how to achieve this or how to counter growing pushback against green policies. Just consider the mass demonstrations across Europe in recent months as farmers have revolted against the very measures for which Ritchie (correctly) advocates, such as cutting subsidies to diesel gas, requiring crop rotation, eliminating toxic pesticides, and phasing down meat production. Already, the farmers’ vehemence has led the EU to dilute important legislation on agriculture, deforestation, and biodiversity.

Ritchie’s admonishes us to walk more, take public transit, and eat less beef. Undertaken individually, this won’t change anything. But she acknowledges that sound policy is key—chiefly, economic incentives to steer markets and consumer behavior. Getting the right parties into office, she writes, should be voters’ priority.

Yet the parties fully behind Ritchie’s agenda tend to be the Green parties, which are largely in Northern Europe and usually garner little more than 10 percent of the vote. Throughout Europe, environmentalism is badmouthed by center-right and far-right politicos, many of whom lead or participate in governments, as in Finland, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Serbia, Slovakia, and Sweden. And while she argues that all major economies must adopt carbon pricing like the EU’s cap-and-trade system, she doesn’t address how to get the United States, the world’s second-largest emitter, to introduce this nationwide or even expand its two carbon markets currently operating regionally—one encompassing 12 states on the East Coast, the other in California.

History shows that the best way to make progress in the battle to rescue our planet is to work with what we have and build on it. The EU has a record of exceeding and revising its emissions reduction targets. In the 1990s, the bloc had the modest goal of sinking greenhouse gases to 8 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12; by 2012, it had slashed them by an estimated 18 percent. More recently, the 2021 European Climate Law adjusted the bloc’s target for reducing net greenhouse gas emissions from 40 percent to at least 55 percent by 2030, and the European Commission is considering setting the 2040 target to 90 percent below 1990 levels.

This process can’t be exclusively top down. By far the best way for everyday citizens to counter climate doomism is to become active beyond individual lifestyle choices—whether that’s by bettering neighborhood recycling programs, investing in clean tech equities, or becoming involved in innovative clean energy projects.

Take, for example, “community energy,” which Saito considers briefly and Ritchie misses entirely. In the 1980s, Northern Europeans started to cobble together do-it-yourself cooperatives, in which citizens pooled money to set up renewable energy generation facilities. Many of the now more than 9,000 collectives across the EU are relatively small—the idea is to stay local and decentralized—but larger co-ops illustrate that this kind of enterprise can function at scale. For example, Belgium’s Ecopower, which forgoes profit and reinvests in new energy efficiency and renewables projects, provides 65,000 members with zero-carbon energy at a reduced price.

Grassroots groups and municipalities are now investing in nonprofit clean energy generation in the United States, particularly in California and Minnesota. This takes many forms, including solar fields; small wind parks; electricity grids; and rooftop photovoltaic arrays bolted to schools, parking lots, and other public buildings. Just as important as co-ownership—in contrast to mega-companies’ domination of the fossil fuel market—is democratic decision-making. These start-ups, usually undertaken by ordinary citizens, pry the means of generation out of the hands of the big utilities, which only grudgingly alter their business models.

Around the world, the transition is in progress—and ideally, could involve all of us. The armchair prophets of doom should either join in or, at the least, sit on the sidelines quietly. The last thing we need is more people sowing desperation and angst. They play straight into the court of the fossil fuel industry.

[novella-november]

Fantasy Discrimination, and The Implications

A post on my dash reminded me to share some more writing advice, so here is a very good article by @mythcreantsblog , about how to make sure you're not dehumanizing a species or culture in your writing, which is a good guide on how to avoid accidentally writing racist or ableist tropes:

In particular, I want to talk about the ever-present racist trope in a lot of fantasy and scifi fiction, and that is the decision a lot of creators make where the villains are not just a single person, a faction, or a kingdom -- *its an entire species* who is not only the villain, but are outright, inherently *evil*.

To start out, here's a political cartoon by Tom Gauld you've probably seen all around tumblr with the name cropped out:

[ID: a political cartoon by Tom Gauld, showing two identical cities and boats mirrored on a river, each with a purple or yellow flag; one side is labled "Our Blessed Homeland, Our Glorious Leader, Our Great Religion, Our Noble Populace, Our Heroic Adventuerers", The other side is labled "Their Barbarous Wastes, Their Wicked Despot, Their Primitive Superstition, Their Backwards Savages, Their Brutish Invaders. End ID]

This political cartoon is a very good tool for testing your writing for the trope of demonizing/glorifying your fantasy/scifi species.

Let's use a classic example: your fantasy setting is made up of the following species: Elves, Dwarves, Humans, and Orcs.

Your Elves are a long-lived, ethereal people who live in secluded, perfect cities, all of them tall, blonde, and blue-eyed, who are extremely wise and making plans that can stretch out over dozens of human generations, and they're the deciders of 90% of politics in your world. Your Dwarves are a short, squat, species who spend their lives working in forges, mines, and laboratories, tirelessly toiling (because they enjoy the hard work, of course!) and selling their products to the Elves who are their largest and wealthiest customer base; Dwarves work hard and studiously for decades at a a time to complete a piece of work in order to fufill the intricate orders from their Elven customers, which is how the majority of them provide for their families, working 16 hour shifts each day for decades per order. Your Humans are far more seperated, and often live on the fringes of what their longer-lived compatriots consider "Civilized Society", often living as Subsistence farmers and hunters, not out of choice, but often due to poor land and lack of resources; the wealthiest of Human cities are usually the capitals where the royals reside and may live in luxury with rich markets and high-quality products and running water, but the vast majority of Humans live in small, poor villages that must rely on traveling merchants to sell what produce and livestock they can spare from their farms in order to buy the supplies they need to live out another year. Your Orcs.... well, they don't really live anywhere, do they? Orcs strongholds can only maintain their grip in hellish wastelands where living is nigh impossible, with all food and water only obtained from outside sources; occasionally, Orcs will attempt to establish base camps in more fertile land, invading neighboring Human, Dwarf, and Elven territory to do so, who quickly unite to expel these vile, dark, brutish invaders lest they steal their daughters, destroy and taint all of the natural resources and steal the few jobs available to the Humans in Dwarven and Elven cities as manual labour and servants.

And Now, take a step back from this world, and take a long, hard look at these species (outside of humans who are just kinda there in the middle and the only ones capable of change because Humans Are Always Special) and societies and what ideas are being reinforced here, especially when the above descriptions are framed as Hard Facts which are both Just and True?

(archived read-more Here)

Elves are morally superior and are always Perfect and Correct,

Dwarves are happy to spend their entire lives toiling in the forges and mines to please their Elven patrons,

and Orcs are Evil Monsters who will rob, murder, and rape any hapless victim who comes their way, so it's better to slaughter them all on sight and kick them out of your cities and towns, and this is the 100% correct morally right choice every single time and the narrative and characters themselves support this?

Did you spot them already, or does the above just seem like a cool, fun fantasy world where Elves are the cool wise good guys and Orcs are the devil's army and can be used as canon fodder any time your main character needs to mow down some enemies for a Badass Scene?

Let's retrace our steps a bit, shall we, and examine this "perfect" world through a critical lens?

When your elves are all portrayed as Perfect Ethereally Beautiful Blonde and Blue-Eyed wise leaders of the civilized world, what idea is being reinforced here? Who does it harm, and what real world ideas is this mirroring and enforcing? Who is going to have their own biases reinforced by this narrative?

When only the longest-lived people are allowed to decide politics, what group biases are being enforced? Is portraying "young people" as "being incapable of making political decisions" as a correct, logical choice in your story something you wish to enforce? Are there any real world issues this trope mirrors?

When your Dwarves are all Happy Workers and Slaves, bound to and reliant on the superior Elves to live, spending the majority of their life purely in service to these Superior Beings while happy to do it, what idea is being reinforced here? Who might see themselves in the plight of the Dwarves and feel alienated and insulted by the Dwarves happily slaving away in the dark? Who might have biased ideas reinforced by seeing the Dwarves treated in such a way?

When your Orcs are portrayed as evil, dark skinned, brutish savages who will kidnap and rape poor helpless women from the "pure" species, when Orcs are incapable of creating anything of their own and can only steal, what racist messages are being enforced and upheld? Who are the real people and cultures being demonized when you perpetuate this? What real world peoples and cultures have faced *decades of propaganda framing them as such*?

If you spotted these harmful messages in the initial indented description, good job!

But if you didn't, it's time to find and read critical reviews and essays written by marginalized communities of works that include these damaging tropes, because if it your Evil Species are Weird Aliens, because when you characterize and describe your Evil Species, you are undoubtedly going to be drawing heavily on your own internal biases of what makes people Other and Wrong.

Are your Evil Species all dark-skinned, physically-strong and animalistic? Congrats, you have just regurgitated centuries-old racism that justifies slavery, segregation, and discrimination *to this day*

Are your Evil Species all nomadic ~cannibals~ who are incapable of creating anything of their own and have to loot and steal from others to have anything of value? Congrats, you are once again regurgitating racist propoganda that has been used against countless cultures and minorities for centuries.

Are your Evil Species reknowned for kidnapping and raping the women of your Good Guys in order to create Evil Twisted Halfbreed Offspring for ....uh, reasons? Congrats, once again, this is literally just racist propaganda being reinforced by your writing.

Anything you come up with to make your Species Inherently Evil is going to most likely be something that is weaponized against real world minorities that you are now reinforcing with your writing, from racism to ableism to queerphobia and all the ways they intersect.

How do you fix this?

It's incredibly simple!

Don't make an entire Species be Inherently Evil.

They need to be just as varied as real living people.

Your Species should not be a Monolith, let alone of *Evil*.

Your Species should not have their only "decent/civilized/kind people" examples come from ""crossbreeds"" [and this term itself should be used only by bigots as a deragatory term] or random orphans who were raised by one of the Good Species(tm)-- this is how your story starts advocating for *eugenics*, which is not something you want to do!

So, instead of having an entire Species be "Inherently biologically" Evil, consider instead:

Making your villain group diverse instead of all one Species.

if your villain group is a Species Supremacist, they're probably still going to have underlings and lower castes who do their dirty work, or have been taken in by the cult ideology.

Making the villains of this Species be a small fraction of a larger whole, who are part of a violent cult, ideology, or political party that not only puts them in conflict with your main characters, but also with the rest of their Species.

Having your main character or their friends be the same Species as your villain group, and they represents the vast majority of the Species, instead of hailing them as "the Paragon of Goodness who emerged somehow pure from of a species forged in hell" or anything similar.

You should also sit down and not only think about the harmful, racist tropes that would come from writing Inherently Evil Species, but also consider:

Why do you want to include an entire species of people who are inherently evil in your novel?

Is your novel gaining anything for including these tropes uncritically?

Does it make it a better, more interesting story to include these tropes uncritically?

What message are you trying to send with your story?

Does including these tropes uncritically in your story *undermine* your intended message?

Another trope in the opposite direction, is talking about "Oppression" and "Fantasy Racism" from the perspective of a character who is part of the oppressed minority, only to spend the entire novel talking about how your Opressed Class are Literally and Factually threats to the population that "discriminate" against them, usually by being rightfully wary in their prescence.

if the Oppressed Minorities in your story in anyway resemble the Orcs in Bright, the Predators in Zootopia, or the Khajiit in the Elderscrolls, where the Racism these peoples face in based on hard proven facts that these people have been and still are threats to most of the population..

... you're less writing a story about how "Racism Against Vulnerable Minorities is Bad"

and sound more like you're saying

"It's bad to be "mean" (afraid of) Nazis who literally want you dead and who can kill you with impunity and no consequences."

If you are writing a story about Fantasy Discrimination, and the basis of your Fantasy Discrimination is based on *cold hard facts that your narrative supports and upholds*, instead of actually basing it on and talking about what leads to discrimination in the real world

(xenophobia and the fear+hatred of The Other, economic gain, mainly),

then you are not making the progressive stance that you think you are, and instead are enforcing the ancient propoganda that racism is based on fact, that racism is "for a good reason", and you need to take care that you are not upholding this idea in your works.

TL;DR:

Instead of making an entire Species of people a trope of Wise Good Guys or Evil Incarnate, consider using *Factions not Races* for your groups, and think long and hard about the implications of your world's politics and how it mirrors our own world, especially in ways *you may not intend it to.* If your story is meant to be progressive and inclusive, but your villains are an entire race of black orcs who slave and rape the good guys species, you need to go back to the drawing board.

[alovelywaytospendanevening]

Lit Hub: How Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon Forged a Literary and Romantic Bond

Wilfred Owen first mentioned the presence of a new star on his horizon on August 15, 1917. He had been busy acting, editing the hospital magazine, arguing with his mother by letter about whether Christianity and the war were compatible (he thought not, and he had hard words to say about the Archbishop of Canterbury, who did). So he may not have noticed at first the presence of Siegfried Sassoon. At their first meeting, Sassoon treated Wilfred with a certain lordly condescension. Wilfred persisted, however, and their next meeting was warmer. They talked about poetry, and Sassoon asked Wilfred to help him decipher a handwritten fan letter from H.G. Wells, written in pale pink ink. Wilfred was in the full throes of hero worship, while Sassoon, although he may have been better at concealing his emotions, was beginning to feel a powerful attraction for his handsome young admirer, critiquing and rewriting Wilfred’s poems, who had sent home to his mother and sister for every scrap he had written. It should not be imagined that the relationship between the two men was all one way. Sassoon recognized in Wilfred a greater poet than himself, but his own poetry also improved as the two men worked together. Still, it was Sassoon who remained in Wilfred’s eyes “the great man,” an impression no doubt influenced by class. [Wilfred's] brother Harold scoured his letters so thoroughly after his death that it is impossible to tell whether Owen had a physical relationship with Sassoon, but in every other respect it was the closest he would ever come to a love affair. “Spent all day [with Sassoon] yesterday,” he wrote his mother ecstatically. “Breakfast, Lunch, Tea & Dinner.” Wilfred and Sassoon spent their last evening together at the Scottish Conservative Club in Edinburgh, eating a good dinner, drinking “a noble bottle of Burgundy” and laughing uproariously over a volume of especially bad poetry. Sassoon had given Wilfred, as a parting gift, a thick envelope, which he opened in the club while waiting to take the midnight train. It contained a ten-­pound note and a letter of introduction to Robert Ross in London, the friend, editor, and devoted defender of Oscar Wilde and a literary luminary almost as well connected and admired as Edward Marsh. Ross was a friend of H.G. Wells, Arnold Bennett, and Osbert Sitwell, as well as a central figure in the homosexual literary and social world. Sassoon must have hesitated before including the ten-­pound note for fear it might be taken as an insult, but Wilfred responded with genuine gratitude. "Know that since mid-­September, when you still regarded me as a tiresome little knocker on your door I held you as Keats + Christ + Elijah + my Colonel + my father-­confessor + Amenophis IV in profile…. I love you, dispassionately, so much, so very much, dear Fellow, that the blasting little smile you wear on reading this can’t hurt me in the least….And you have fixed my life—­however short. I was always a mad comet; but you have fixed me. I spun around you a satellite for a month, but I shall swing out soon, a dark star in the orbit where you will blaze." He ended his letter with a phrase he had used earlier to his mother to describe his relationship with Sassoon: “[We] knew we loved each other as no men love for long.” (Full article)

[rose-maidenn]

Chaos magick of Gemini-punarvasu , Devi Aditi and my personal takes , ft Wanda Maximoff

Before I start Aditi choses her power to create with peace and love always and though I have done some comparisons in no way am I against Wanda or my Goddess .

Also it's @azure-cherie here I'm back cause I had to share this with yall , a possible explanation would be that in a way I need a change and my life has been rapidly changing too , I will keep this blog low-key and less serious so I can focus on my life and post some interesting observations. I hope yall have been well I missed yall so so much

Let's begin :

Wanda is played by punarvasu moon Elizabeth Olsen . After the death of vision entirely fabricates another reality in the show Wanda vision , though she does not realise she causes pain and agony and separation to the people around her she formulates a husband and her kids , she wants a fairytale so she creates it , this goes to show the height of punarvasu illusion the world of fantasies and delusions one uses to protect themselves against the harshness of the reality , the grief in her is her is so large that it encompasses the creation of something new .

After the tear shed of ardra the grief in her creates something new a new world of wonders as the punarvasu renews the light, the renewal of light is often a creation accompanied by transformation and though the process might be of beauty the transformation is of generative power , the world often complains of suffering and pain the creatrix Aditi also created the matrix the sadness the happiness are all but fragments of her Maya she is Bhuvaneshwari all encompassing , she holds the power to lead you through transformation which ofcourse is preceded through the dark night of the soul .

Her grief makes her to form new realities one could call this a form of schizophrenia caused by ptsd that's what happens when the kick of magic falls in it creates new realities . One more example of this can be seen in Shelly Duvall , some articles claim her to be schizophrenic which was cause due to her trauma in life, she nevertheless lived a life of her choices. We all go to our childhood when we need a sense of peace we search paradise in it wanda's paradise was a 60s sitcom and the way out to reality was through facing her traumas that's what all of us have to go through once in a while .

As Agatha narrates wanda " This is chaos magick wanda , that makes you the scarlet witch " she narrates how Wanda is a being capable of spontaneous creation, she creates what she creates she does have power over herself but not over her chaos magick it protects her it empowers her . In the shastras there isn't much written about Aditi who she is where she emerges from etc she simply appears , she simply creates , she's simply a secret likewise life imitates the divinity , Agatha makes her know that she has been written about in the book of the damned . She also says her that she has power but a lack of knowledge, as she hasn't learned the basics of magick .

" The scarlet witch is not born she is forged, she has no coven , no need for incantation " likewise Aditi appears before the universe she creates the Trimurti , she creates Daksha and is Born to Daksha , she rules she creates she forms shes truth she is maya she is the lotus the divine swan . Agatha tells wanda how it's her destiny to destroy the world , to which wanda replies she never learned magic and ultimately wanda tries to protect her fabricated reality but it wears off , the darkhold takes control of her and she reappears in the multiverse of madness ( didn't watch it yet ) I know yet that she was forced by her mind into a new world of dark spells and craft but ultimately wanted to stop strange from doing the mistake that she herself did , she didn't die at the end of the movie as a red light shines " Scarlet witch is alive and breathing " her ways might be dark but her intentions were pure .

🌷My views on the entirety of the situation

Punarvasu bestows you with the gift of creation but it's in ones hand to channel it use it for the good and the bad , it's dependent on us .

The power is preceded by the dark night of the soul and intense situation of purge and fantasy and illusion to win against Maya one has to understand Maya likewise punarvasu has to go through it to understand the true power of themselves .

Punarvasu acts as the antihero in the dynamics of the world , we all mimic the deity of our nakshatra so do we mimick her , yes the world was created for peace and beauty but the cathonian question always arises that why there is so much pain in the world then? We complain to the divine mother our mother about the pain but can she eradicate pain because the eradication of the pain eradicates the chances of existence , the world is constantly jiggling between creation preservation and destruction one has to go through it all , you can blame the mother but can you truly blame her she's the antihero.

Punarvasu like a child goes on teaching when they themselves don't know enough, power without knowledge brings pain , in my personal experiences this is true , I believe I was in dire need of more knowledge that's what I'm seeking right now.

While scorpio engulfs power from the sources to their requirements they know what they deserve and so they can handle it while the gemini is a naive child who simply holds mostly without a vessal so cultivation of strong boundaries in punarvasu is essential for ones sanity . The power disparity in Scorpio and gemini sometimes creates fallouts between Scorpio and gemini because the Scorpio doesn't find the gemini worthy . But scorpios do bring enlightenment to geminis.

A hold upon our boundaries is the most crucial or else the generative engine that doesn't cause exhaustion starts causing delusion which taps into the darkside, start empowering yourself and in humbleness live a beautiful life . The beautiful life might call for you to disappear or just be silent but know that true power is one within ones mind it's not to be shown but just to be felt .

Om Aditi namah 🪷

Thank you so much for reading I believe I'm truly blessed by Aditi devi for the knowledge she imparted in me regarding this I feel blessed . Have a beautiful time ahead.

[another-lost-mc]

Omg a fellow F1 enjoyer here!! I absolutely love all your works, but I especially loved that one even more! 🥺 can I request for the dateables and side characters too pleaseee? 🫣

a/n: I'm glad you liked it! the demon bros were more like mc's little crew and it was such a cute idea. I think the others would still support mc in their own way too.

➤ when MC is a professional F1 driver | the dateables + mephisto

1.3k words | sfw | gn!reader | fluff & slice of life shenanigans

cw: developing relationships with the other characters (except for baby brother luke who is strictly platonic and mc's #1 fan).

related versions: the demon brothers

Diavolo

— He's thrilled that you're forging your own path in the Devildom and that the demon brothers are involved.

— He's impressed by your abilities but he still worries about your safety.

— Every morning when Barbatos brings him his morning paper, he scans the front page and sports sections for articles or photos about you or your latest race.

— He saves clippings of all your newspaper/magazine appearances and keeps them in a scrapbook.

— His original intention was to give it to you as a gift when you finished your year in the exchange program. He ends up making copies for everyone who wants one and keeps the original for himself.

— He has his own impressive vehicles. your excitement is palpable when he shows you the collection in his garage. When you go out together, he offers you the keys and hopes that you'll take the wheel. (He can't explain why he likes it so much.)

Barbatos

— He's a skilled driver himself even though he rarely needs to drive. Portals are so much simpler.

— The Devildom racing league tightens up its safety and security measures when you join. Barbatos personally oversees that their lax approach to rules and safety are amended. He argues that there's a fortune to be made for having the novelty of a human world driver on their track. He promises with fake smiles that their license and investments will suddenly be forfeit should anything happen to you due to their negligence.

— Barbatos doesn’t have a lot of free time to watch your races in person, but he follows your Devilgram account and watches the highlight reels that Asmo posts when he is done working for the day.

— He receives your fan club's newsletter. He's also purchased some merchandise as well, including a coffee mug he uses when he drinks tea privately in his chambers

— The Little D’s are some of your biggest fans too. Some of them make zoom-zoom noises as they race each other in the halls of the castle. (Little D Number 2 has tried to "borrow" Barbatos' fan merch, several times, but always gets caught.)

Simeon

— He's not sure why humans are so fascinated in sports or activities that look far too dangerous. He admires your passion and hates it at the same time.

— He’s a little nervous the first time you offer to take him out for a joy ride, but later he admits it was surprisingly enjoyable. (Anything with you is enjoyable, though.)

— He and Luke go to your races and both of them have a small collection of your fan merch.

— He’s very concerned about your safety. He knows humans are less durable than demons are and he watches from the stands with the pent-up energy of a bird about to take flight. If something happens, he's going to be out of his seat and flying to your side to help you.

— He secretly hopes you’ll retire from this career sooner rather than later because he’s terrified you’re going to get hurt (or worse) one day.

Luke

— He’s fascinated by the sport and how talented you are. He thinks it's a little scary how fast the race cars drive and he reminds you before each race that winning isn't important, as long as you're safe and having fun!

— He makes cupcakes and other yummy treats for you to celebrate your big wins. The cake and icing is dyed the same bright colours as your racing car.

— He loves it when you give him a chance to visit you behind the scenes at the track: exploring the pit, letting him sit in your car with your too-big helmet teetering awkwardly on his head.

— The others get a little jealous when you show Luke special attention, like when you wave to him in the crowd before a race or hug him when he runs up to you after.

— Luke likes sitting shotgun when you drive him and the others around town or for little day trips. Mammon even gives you permission to take him for drives in his own car sometimes. (Mammon lets Luke sit in the front seat with you if the three of you go somewhere together.)

— Luke talks about you constantly with his roommates in Purgatory Hall. He also mentions you a lot to Michael and even offered to send him some of your fan merch.

— (Michael grows more curious about you with each story or photo Luke shares with him, but he won't admit it to himself or anyone else.)

Solomon

— Solomon doesn't have an interest in most human sports, but when he meets you, his interest in the racing world is piqued.

— Whenever he wants to go out somewhere, he insists that not only should you go with him, but that you should drive, too.

— (There's something about your cool confidence and quiet joy behind the wheel that makes him feel things.)

— Your fan following in the human world is almost as impressive as your growing popularity in the Devildom. He goes on a little shopping spree, buying up the various official and fan-made merch that was sold during your rise to success.

— He keeps his favourite items for himself but lets the others have their pick. You think it's embarrassing how he even managed to find some of this junk (really, who has a pristine copy of an old racing calendar?). The demons and angels divide it all amongst themselves without too much arguing—at first. (You leave when someone suggests Rock, Paper, Scissors to settle some of the arguments over the most coveted items everyone wants for themselves.)

— Solomon rolls his eyes when Mammon claims loudly that this stuff is gonna sell for a fortune in the Devildom, but he knows the Greed demon has no intention of selling any of it. (Asmo confirms later that Mammon keeps everything he claimed, including the little collectible figures of your old racing car, on a shelf in his bedroom.)

Mephistopheles

— He's completely unimpressed with you when you first arrive, and he really doesn't understand what all the fuss is about. So what if you're human? You're completely ordinary and boring and unremarkable, so why should he care?

— The revelation about your human world profession, and your dramatic debut into the Devildom racing scene, changes his mind. Professionally, anyway.

— It's hard to refuse his next assignment when the prince himself takes such an interest in you. Mephisto is the RAD Newspaper Club representative tasked with covering your career and setting up interviews and photo-ops that the rest of the school are clamoring for.

— Mephisto really underestimates your popularity. He grits his teeth when Asmo cackles on the other end of the D.D.D. and informs him that he'll be added to the list of news outlets that want an interview with you.

— Seriously???

— (He refuses to be affected when you admit bashfully that interviews are something you'll never get used to, and that maybe if he's feeling generous, can he be kinder than some of the human world reporters used to be?)

— He gets special access, along with one of the Newspaper Club photographers, to the front row staging area so they can capture the best shots of you before, during, and after each race. He hates your bright smile when he grudgingly hands you a photo afterwards. Don't get the wrong idea, either: it's for his younger brother. Mephisto couldn't care less.

— (His brother is over the moon when Mephisto gives him the signed photo later. If he's smiling, it's only because his brother is happy!)

[fatehbaz]

The link between warfare and technological innovation has been well documented [...]. World War II was a particularly intense crucible of technological change, and the repurposing of military technologies and industries in the forging of a new post-war consumer [economy] is crucial [...]. Processes of technological bricolage turned the machines of war onto the natural world as global powers competed to cement their economic and imperial hegemony. In Great Britain’s post-war “groundnut scheme” in its East African territories (1946-51), this collision of nature, military hardware, and technical expertise was part of efforts to both produce more fats for the British diet and to demonstrate to the world (most importantly the United States) that, through a newly energized science-led developmentalism, British colonialism still had a “progressive” role to play in the postwar world.

The aim was to produce millions of tons of peanuts across Tanganyika using the latest methods of advanced scientific agriculture. The environmental conditions in the north, where the scheme was to begin, were known to be especially trying, not least the dry climate [...]. But faith in the power of mechanized agriculture was such that any natural limits were thought to be readily surmountable.

The groundnut scheme was to be, as its Director put it in an interview with the Tanganyika Standard, a “war” with nature, and an “economic Battle of Alamein” waged over some three million acres by an army of colonial technicians - many recruited from military ranks - and local laborers, for many of whom the scheme represented their first entry into the wage labor market.

But it wasn’t just the rhetoric of war that was repurposed.

Lancaster bombers were kitted out to survey and discover “new country” in East Africa for agricultural development. [...] [T]ractors and bulldozers from military surplus stores in Egypt proved unable to tackle the hard ground and tough vegetation, so the planners turned to a novel solution: repurposing surplus Sherman M4A2 tanks. The Vickers-Armstrong factory in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne set about rearranging key elements of the tanks’ construction [...]. The tractors, christened “Shervicks” for their hybrid origins, were [...] thought to be particularly suited to large-scale earth-moving and to the kind of heavy duty “bush clearing” that was required in Tanganyika.

Officials sought to dismiss concerns that large-scale bush clearing would have wider environmental consequences, using the well-worn colonial trope that any observed changes in local climate or erosion patterns were due to the “primitive” agricultural practices of the locals, not to the earth-moving practices of the colonists.  [...] As the plants continued to wilt in the sun, [...] [t]he stakes were high. As [J.R.] of the Colonial Development Corporation put it in a letter: “Our standing as an Imperial power in Africa is to a substantial extent bound up with the future of this scheme. To abandon it would be a humiliating blow to our prestige everywhere.” The only option left was to try and bend the weather itself to the scheme’s will, by seeding the clouds for rain. [...] “Balloon bombs” (photographic film canisters tethered to weather balloons) and a repurposed Royal Navy flare gun were used to target individual clouds [...]. The scheme itself has survived as a cautionary tale of governmental hubris, but it is instructive too as a case study of how technologies of war have been turned against other foes.

---

All text above by: Martin Mahony. “The Enemy is Nature: Military Machines and Technological Bricolage in Britain’s ‘Great Agricultural Experiment.’“ Environment and Society Portal, Arcadia (Spring 2021), no. 11. Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society. doi:10.5282/rcc/9191. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Images and their captions are shown unaltered as they originally appear in Mahony's article. Public Domain Mark 1.0 License for images: creativecommons dot org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/]

[ohsalome]

In the aftermath of Prigozhin’s media empire collapse, former employees spoke out about the dark tactics employed, including hiring individuals to portray “victims of Ukrainian Armed Forces” in staged reports that underpinned Russia’s fake pretext for the full-scale invasion of Ukraine — its Big Lie about alleged “genocide in Donbas.”

Following the unsuccessful mutiny of the Wagner Private Military Company, its financier Evgeny Prigozhin had closed down his media empire, including the infamous troll factory. This included Prigozhin’s media holding “Patriot” and such media outlets as RIA FAN, Politics Today, Economics Today, Nevskiye Novosti, and Narodniye Novosti.

Employees of the Prigozhin media were long unable to disclose the state of affairs in the editorial offices, as they were all forced to sign non-disclosure agreements. However, now, they speak. Russian media website Bumaga interviewed several former employees of “Patriot,” who revealed unknown details about its operation and propaganda tactics.

Notably, one RIA FAN journalist who worked with military coverage from Donbas told that the source files of the interview often contained off-screen instructions for the heroes of the reports, who were hired people coached by an off-camera operator who offered advice on how to say their pre-memorized lines more realistically (and with more propaganda effect):

“Most of the people who were portrayed in such stories as ‘victims’ of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were stand-ins, hired individuals. These characters repeated pre-memorized lines to themselves, trying to ‘squeeze out a tear.’ They were also instructed off-camera by the operator to speak ‘slower’ or to ‘repeat this moment again’,” told the former employee of RIA FAN.

This admission is crucial, as it offers more proof of how Russia fabricated its 9-year-long propaganda narrative about the Ukrainian “Nazis” deliberately attacking the “people of Donbas.”

Other famous debunked examples of this narrative included a story that state TV channel Pervyi Kanal ran on 12 July 2014, showing an “interview” with a woman who claimed to have witnessed the crucifixion of a three-year child by Ukrainian nationalists. However, bloggers and journalists from Ukraine and Russia could quickly prove that the woman was an actor and the story was a hoax.

Another well-known debunked “Donbas genocide” propaganda case happened in April 2015. The Russian TV channel NTV claimed that a ten-year-old girl had been killed by Ukrainian government forces in eastern Ukraine, echoing the disinformation story about the crucified boy from the year before. A BBC reporter working on the ground in the conflict managed to prove that also this story was a hoax. (For more examples of Russian propaganda that demonizes Ukrainians, check out our article A guide to Russian propaganda. Part 1: Propaganda prepares Russia for war).

Since Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014 and occupied part of eastern Ukraine’s Donbas, Russian propaganda has meticulously demonized Ukraine and the Ukrainian Army. One of the grand narratives of its propaganda claimed that the Ukrainian forces attempting to liberate their lands from the Russian invaders were actually “punishing” the Ukrainians in occupied Donbas for their alleged “choice” to be with Russia, which is how Russia called its fake “referenda” that led to the creation of two puppet republics, the Luhansk and Donetsk “People’s Republics.” The revelation from Prigozhin’s media empire’s employees reveals how this narrative was forged, one fake report played by actors after the other.

The final result was the creation of Russia’s Big Lie, the alleged “Donbas genocide,” which Putin used to launch an invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022.

Bumaga’s material revealed other fascinating details about the operations of Prigozhin’s media empire.

Former “Patriot” employees revealed the security checks and the workplace atmosphere to Bumaga anonymously. According to a former employee, each media was allocated a floor, and smaller editorials sat together.

“They did not check me on a polygraph, but I heard stories from newcomers. They were taken to a room where security service specialists worked with them and asked questions,” said the source.

These questions, asked during a “lie detector” test, intended to weed out any drug addicts or Russian opposition sympathizers, especially fans of Alexei Navalny, another source told Bumaga.

Moreover, the media empire had extensive surveillance measures in place. An anonymous source disclosed that they “followed electronic passes, cameras, and all records from computer screens were broadcast to the security service.” When Patriot was just opened, a special department existed in the holding that was engaged in custom materials about the opposition.

Two former employees of the Patriot holding, in a conversation with Bumaga, claimed that everyone at the “troll factory” knew that the goal of Evgeny Prigozhin’s media was to create informational noise to “clog the agenda.”

“Information noise was generated along with the implementation of Prigozhin’s interests. While some [journalists] distracted people with the problems of other countries, with these reports from Africa and so on, with our local celebrities and reviews of dumb movies, others, on the front lines, were brainwashing people with materials from the ‘Special Operation Zone‘,” a former journalist of RIA FAN told, referring to Russia’s codename for its invasion of Ukraine, where Prigozhin’s Wagner PMC played a key role.

Now, the former employees of Prigozhin’s once-famed “troll factory,” who sowed disinformation in Russia and abroad, are left without a job. Luckily for them, prominent Russian media managers are stepping in to give them decent work in top Russian outlets:

“Dmitry Sherikh, the head of the St. Petersburg branch of the Russian Union of Journalists, has volunteered to help the employees of the ‘Troll Factory’ find jobs: ‘The Russian Union of Journalists will, whenever possible, appeal to the heads of other media outlets to help find employment for our dismissed colleagues, as well as provide other information support.’ The chief editor of ‘Moskovsky Komsomolets in Petersburg,’ Timofey Shabarshin, who is also the former head of ‘Nevsky News’ (up until 2021), also agreed to welcome the colleagues. Vladimir Yagudaev [an SMM manager from Prigozhin’s media empire who talked with Bumaga – Ed.] does not know if the Union of Journalists helped his former colleagues, but he notes: ‘Certain chief editors have begun to hire the most interesting employees into St. Petersburg publications. However, this is a limited contingent.'”

Located near St. Petersburg, Prigozhin’s troll factory, also known as Internet Research Agency (IRA), was one of the more-studied elements of the Russian propaganda machine. To achieve its goals, the troll factory employed fake accounts registered on major social networks, online media sites, and video hosting services. It expanded threefold in 2018. The troll factory’s employees were given messages they should push in social media and online debates in what a US indictment called “activities as a strategic communications campaign with an emphasis on target group awareness.”

[grey-sorcery]

Title: Shadow Work: First Steps

Related Articles

Shadow Work Concepts Emanations of The Subconscious Dualities Biases in Witchcraft Finding Balance Divination Basics of Spellcasting Basics of Astral Projection Fundamentals of Energy Work Spell Design What is Witchcraft?

Important: Shadow work is in no way necessary for witchcraft. Nor should magical applications of shadow work be the crux of your self-reflection.

The concept of the shadow holds a lot of significance to most witches today. The shadow, as elucidated by Carl Jung, represents the concealed and often repressed aspects of an individual's psyche. It encompasses the less desirable qualities, such as fears, insecurities, and suppressed emotions, which are typically kept hidden from conscious awareness. Engaging in magical shadow work entails embarking upon a journey of self-discovery and self-integration, allowing individuals to explore these hidden depths in order to achieve greater personal understanding and growth. And while Jung may not have been the most savory character, his contributions were and continue to be very useful! I highly recommend looking into his ideas and how you can potentially modify them to better fit your own life.

The Shadow

The shadow, as defined and utilized in shadow work, refers to the concealed and often repressed aspects of an individual's psyche. The shadow represents the repository of thoughts, emotions, and impulses that are deemed unacceptable or incompatible with one's conscious self-image. A lot of the shadow’s characteristics are forged through traumatic experiences and manifest themselves as trauma responses. These hidden aspects of the self reside in the unconscious mind, remaining largely inaccessible to conscious awareness.

Shadow work involves a deliberate and introspective exploration of these suppressed elements. It is a process of bringing to light the aspects of ourselves that we may disown or deny, aiming to integrate them into our conscious selfhood. By engaging with the shadow, individuals gain insight into their fears, insecurities, and unresolved conflicts, shedding light on the hidden motivations behind their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. This exploration of the shadow is not limited to psychological analysis alone. It encompasses various practices and techniques, such as magic, divination, self-reflection, journaling, therapy, and emotional intelligence development. Shadow work allows individuals to confront and confront their shadows in a compassionate and non-judgmental manner, promoting personal growth, self-acceptance, and authenticity.

Techniques for Exploring and Integrating the Shadow

One approach to delving into the depths of the shadow is through the practice of meditation. By cultivating a focused and contemplative state of mind, individuals can delve into their subconscious and uncover suppressed emotions, memories, and beliefs. Through consistent meditation practice, one can gradually bring these shadows into conscious awareness, allowing for a deeper understanding of oneself.

Rituals and spellwork can serve as transformative tools in shadow work. Rituals provide a structured framework within which individuals can confront and engage with their shadows. By employing symbolic gestures, such as the use of correspondences or ritual objects, or the implementation of astral projections and energy work, practitioners can externalize their inner struggles and navigate the complexities of their shadows in a controlled and intentional manner. Through spellwork, it is possible to influence the psyche, open up self awareness, make it easier to gain access to repressed memories, aid in inducing relaxed states, and form energetic representations of emotional states. 

Archetypes and symbolism serve as potent vehicles for exploring the shadow within magical practice. Archetypes represent universal patterns and primordial images that exist within the collective unconscious. By working with archetypal energies, individuals can gain insight into their own shadows and access the transformative potential residing within them. Symbolism, too, can play a central role in shadow work, as it allows practitioners to express and explore complex emotions and experiences that may be difficult to articulate directly. By utilizing symbols, such as colors, animals, or mythological motifs, individuals can unlock the safety, self-awareness, and confidence contained within their shadows.

Magical Shadow Work

One of the primary benefits of engaging in magical shadow work is the revelation of hidden aspects of the self. By courageously diving into the shadow, individuals can shed light on the suppressed emotions, desires, and beliefs that have influenced their thoughts and behaviors. This process of self-exploration enables individuals to develop a more comprehensive understanding of their true nature, promoting authenticity and self-acceptance.

Magical shadow work also holds the potential for healing past wounds and traumas. By addressing the suppressed emotions and traumas stored within the shadow, individuals can initiate a process of emotional and psychological healing. Confronting and processing these experiences in a supportive and intentional manner allows for the release of stagnant energy and the restoration of emotional well-being. Engaging with the shadow can lead to personal transformation and empowerment. As individuals become aware of and integrate their shadows, they gain the ability to reclaim the aspects of themselves that were once repressed or denied. By embracing the full spectrum of their being, individuals unlock their true potential and experience a greater sense of wholeness and authenticity.

Before engaging in magical shadow work, It would be wise to approach it mundanely first. At the very least, mundane shadow work will give you an idea of what your shadow is, the shape of it, its reactionary patterns, its roots. Without mundane shadow work, or a very experienced healer, you’ll be flying blind. Shadow work is an intimate process of getting refamiliarized with the sum total of your being, your life. If you’re ready for magical shadow work, here are some spells that can help. (Be sure that they’re of your design for best results.)

Anti-anxiety spell candle

Spell to remember dreams

Spell to make accessing sensitive memories easier

Binding your own trauma response (temporarily)

Cord cutting (Actual cord cutting, not that candle & string tiktok bs)

Glamour for self-love and acknowledgement 

Reveal truth spell

I may write some spells for this purpose, If I do, I will link them here in this section.

Mundane Shadow Work

Mundane shadow work refers to the process of exploring and integrating the hidden aspects of the self from a psychological and self-care perspective, without invoking supernatural or metaphysical beliefs. It involves delving into the unconscious patterns, beliefs, and behaviors that shape an individual's thoughts and actions; as well as taking the time to care for yourself, even when the cost required to do so means draining yourself. Unlike magical or mystical approaches, mundane shadow work focuses on psychological principles and practices to uncover and address these hidden aspects.

From a psychological standpoint, mundane shadow work involves examining the unconscious patterns and behaviors that influence an individual's life. The unconscious mind plays a vital role in shaping thoughts, emotions, and actions, often driven by deep-seated fears, unresolved conflicts, and unacknowledged desires. By exploring and understanding these unconscious elements, individuals can gain insight into the underlying motivations and dynamics that affect their daily lives. Mundane shadow work also involves exploring the impact of childhood conditioning and societal influences on one's personality and behavior. Early experiences and societal norms can shape beliefs, values, and attitudes that may be limiting or detrimental. Through introspection and analysis, individuals can identify and challenge ingrained patterns and beliefs that no longer serve their personal growth and well-being.

Self-reflection and journaling are effective practices for mundane shadow work. Taking time to reflect on thoughts, emotions, and experiences can help uncover hidden patterns and gain insight into one's motivations and reactions. Writing in a journal allows for a deeper exploration of thoughts and feelings, enabling individuals to recognize recurring themes, triggers, and patterns in their lives.

Self-care can serve as a valuable tool for shadow work, facilitating the exploration and integration of hidden aspects of the self. By engaging in self-care practices, individuals create a nurturing and supportive environment that allows for deep introspection and personal growth.

Examples of self-care as a form of shadow work include:

1. Mindfulness and Meditation: Practicing mindfulness cultivates awareness of one's thoughts, emotions, and sensations, creating a space for acknowledging and exploring the shadow. Meditation provides an opportunity to observe and process unconscious patterns and emotions that may arise during the practice.

2. Journaling and Reflection: Writing in a journal encourages self-reflection and can help uncover hidden aspects of the self. By expressing thoughts, emotions, and experiences on paper, individuals gain insights into their shadows and can identify recurring patterns or triggers.

3. Self-Compassion and Self-Acceptance: Embracing self-compassion and self-acceptance involves acknowledging and accepting all aspects of the self, including the shadow. By practicing self-compassion, individuals can foster a non-judgmental and nurturing attitude towards themselves, creating space for healing and growth.

4. Emotional Regulation and Boundaries: Developing emotional regulation skills allows individuals to navigate and process challenging emotions that may arise during shadow work. Setting boundaries helps establish a safe and supportive environment, protecting one's well-being and allowing for focused introspection.

5. Rest and Relaxation: Prioritizing rest and relaxation is essential for replenishing energy and fostering emotional well-being. Taking breaks, engaging in hobbies, and practicing self-care rituals such as baths or massages create a conducive environment for self-exploration and introspection.

By incorporating self-care practices into one's routine, individuals can enhance their well-being while simultaneously engaging in shadow work. These practices create a nurturing space for deep reflection, emotional processing, and personal growth. Self-care as a form of shadow work enables individuals to develop a deeper understanding and acceptance of their shadows, leading to greater self-awareness and integration.

Engaging in therapy or counseling is a valuable approach to mundane shadow work. Mental health professionals provide a supportive and objective environment where individuals can explore their unconscious patterns, childhood conditioning, and societal influences. Therapeutic techniques, such as psychodynamic therapy or cognitive-behavioral therapy, can aid in uncovering and addressing underlying issues, facilitating personal growth and transformation.

Developing emotional intelligence is another crucial aspect of mundane shadow work. Emotional intelligence encompasses the ability to identify, understand, and manage one's own emotions, as well as the emotions of others. By enhancing emotional awareness and regulation, individuals can gain insight into their unconscious emotional reactions and learn healthier ways of expressing and processing emotions. Practices such as mindfulness meditation, emotional regulation exercises, and empathy-building activities contribute to the development of emotional intelligence.

Mundane shadow work is an integral part of personal growth and self-actualization. By exploring and integrating the hidden aspects of the self, individuals can achieve a deeper understanding of their motivations, desires, and fears. This process fosters self-acceptance, self-compassion, and a greater sense of authenticity. Through mundane shadow work, individuals gain the opportunity to transform limiting beliefs, heal emotional wounds, and cultivate healthier relationships with themselves and others.

Similarities and Differences between Magical and Mundane Shadow Work

Magical and mundane shadow work share common goals and principles despite their different approaches. Both seek to explore and integrate the hidden aspects of the self, acknowledging the existence of unconscious patterns and behaviors that influence thoughts and actions. The shared goal is to achieve personal growth, self-awareness, and transformation. Both approaches recognize the importance of addressing suppressed emotions, traumas, and limiting beliefs for healing and achieving a more authentic and fulfilling life.

Magical shadow work often involves metaphysical or spiritual practices and rituals, whereas mundane shadow work focuses on psychological principles. In magical shadow work, practitioners may utilize meditation, visualization, energy work, rituals, and working with archetypes and symbolism.

In contrast, mundane shadow work primarily relies on psychological approaches supported by scientific research. It emphasizes self-reflection, introspection, therapy, and emotional intelligence development. Techniques such as journaling, therapy, and emotional regulation exercises are used to explore and understand unconscious patterns, childhood conditioning, and societal influences. Mundane shadow work seeks to integrate psychological principles and evidence-based practices for personal growth and transformation. Mundane shadow work can also use symbolism and work with archetypes. The shadow is an archetype, a subcategorization of the psyche. 

While magical and mundane shadow work have contrasting approaches, they also have complementary aspects that can be integrated for an approach to self-discovery and growth. Practitioners can incorporate psychological techniques into magical shadow work. For instance, individuals can use self-reflection and journaling to deepen their understanding of the symbolism and archetypes encountered in magical practices. This integration can provide a psychological framework for exploring and processing the experiences and insights gained from themagical, mystical, and metaphysical practices, enhancing self-awareness and personal growth. In mundane shadow work, practitioners can draw inspiration from the use of symbolism and archetypes in magical practices. Symbolism and archetypes provide a rich language for exploring and expressing complex emotions, experiences, and unconscious patterns. By incorporating these symbolic elements into therapy or counseling, individuals can tap into a deeper layer of self-understanding and facilitate transformative healing processes.

Both magical and mundane shadow work recognize the importance of the mind-body connection in personal growth. Engaging in practices such as meditation, mindfulness, or breathwork can foster a deeper connection with the self and facilitate emotional and psychological healing. This mind-body integration can bridge the gap between magical and mundane approaches, emphasizing the interplay of thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations in the process of shadow work. Both require a level of intimacy and honesty that may be uncomfortable for those who are just starting. They both often involve reflecting on past traumas and how they are reacted to.  

Choosing the Right Approach

When it comes to shadow work, it is crucial to choose an approach that aligns with individual preferences, needs, and goals. While both magical and mundane methods offer unique perspectives, it is essential to consider personal inclinations and strike a balance between the two. However, prioritizing mundane approaches for mental health considerations is of utmost importance. Without professional guidance, a practitioner may end up hurting themselves more than healing. Especially for younger practitioners. 

Each individual has their own preferences and inclinations when it comes to self-exploration and personal growth. Some may resonate more with the mystical and metaphysical aspects of magical shadow work, while others may find solace and effectiveness in the practical and evidence-based approaches of mundane shadow work. It is essential to honor these individual preferences and inclinations when selecting an approach to shadow work.

Before starting shadow work, it is vital to identify personal needs, goals, traumas, boundaries, and influences. What aspects of the self do you wish to explore? Are you seeking healing from past traumas or a deeper understanding of your unconscious patterns? Understanding your specific needs and goals can help determine the most suitable approach for your shadow work journey. Finding a balance between magical and mundane approaches can provide a well-rounded and comprehensive experience. The metaphysical aspects of magical shadow work can offer a sense of awe, wonder, and connection to something greater than oneself. On the other hand, the psychological grounding of mundane shadow work can provide a practical framework for understanding and integrating the shadow. By incorporating elements from both approaches, individuals can tap into their intuition while also utilizing evidence-based practices for self-discovery and personal growth.

While both magical and mundane approaches have their merits, prioritizing mundane approaches to mental health is crucial. Mundane shadow work is rooted in psychological principles and has a strong evidence base. Engaging in therapy or counseling, utilizing psychological techniques, and focusing on emotional well-being are essential components of addressing mental health concerns. It is important to recognize that while magical shadow work may provide spiritual or mystical insights, it should not be relied upon as a sole solution for mental health challenges. By prioritizing mundane approaches to mental health, individuals can ensure they receive the necessary support and guidance from qualified professionals. Therapeutic interventions provide a safe and structured environment for exploring the depths of the shadow, addressing past traumas, and developing healthier coping mechanisms. Taking care of one's mental well-being is paramount and should not be overshadowed by the allure of magical or mystical practices alone.

How Shadow Work Enhances Magical Practice

Shadow work, with its focus on exploring and integrating the hidden aspects of the self, can significantly improve magical practice in various ways. By delving into the depths of the shadow, practitioners can enhance magical potency, deepen their connection to their own practice, and develop self-awareness regarding potential negative influences on their spellwork, metaphysics, and magical praxis.

Shadow work can enhance magical potency by addressing and transforming the unconscious patterns, fears, and limiting beliefs that may hinder the effectiveness of magical practice. When practitioners engage in shadow work, they uncover and work through these hidden aspects, allowing them to reclaim personal power and align their intentions and energies more effectively. By integrating the shadow, practitioners can cultivate a greater sense of authenticity, clarity, and focus, thereby magnifying the potency of their magical endeavors.

Shadow work offers a unique opportunity to deepen the connection one has to their own magical practice. By exploring the depths of the shadow, practitioners gain insights into their motivations, desires, and fears that may unconsciously influence their magical workings. This self-exploration allows practitioners to align their magical practice with their true selves, fostering a deeper sense of connection, purpose, and resonance. By integrating the shadow, practitioners can cultivate a more authentic and fulfilling magical journey.

Engaging in shadow work helps practitioners become self-aware of potential negative influences on their spellwork, metaphysics, and magical praxis. The shadow, with its hidden and repressed aspects, can manifest in unintended ways within magical practice. By exploring the shadow, practitioners can bring these influences into conscious awareness, thereby minimizing their detrimental effects. This self-awareness enables practitioners to identify and address biases, unresolved traumas, and unacknowledged emotions that may impact their magical workings. By integrating the shadow, practitioners can ensure that their spellwork and metaphysical understanding align with their authentic selves, promoting ethical, balanced, and effective magical praxis.

To become self-aware of the shadow's potential negative influence, practitioners can engage in regular self-reflection, journaling, and introspection. They can analyze their magical experiences, observe recurring patterns or emotional reactions, and critically evaluate their intentions and motivations. Seeking feedback from trusted peers or mentors can also provide valuable insights and help uncover blind spots or unconscious biases. By developing this self-awareness, practitioners can actively work towards minimizing negative influences and ensuring their magical practice aligns with their true values and intentions.

Tips for Shadow Work

Prepare by gathering comforting items and keeping them close by so they can be used afterwards.

Bathe afterwards (This may not be helpful if you suffer from dysphoria)

Practice regular meditation so that it becomes easier

Take notes during solo shadow work practices in order to discuss the points with a therapist.

Analyze personal biases and preconceptions to prevent them from influencing your exploration.

Understand intersectionality and how it affects your life.

Utilize symbols and archetypes without ascribing unnecessary magical attributes to them.

Cultivate emotional awareness, empathy, and self-regulation.

Seek information from various disciplines, including psychology, history, and ethics, and apply critical thinking to what you read.

Stay open to different viewpoints and be willing to modify your beliefs as you learn.

Dedicate time to reflection and self-assessment to facilitate growth.

Strive for authenticity rather than attempting to conform to any particular spiritual or magical tradition.

Understand your limits and maintain healthy boundaries in your practices.

Recognize that tools and accessories can aid practice but are not inherently magical. They only serve to support headspace.

Share your findings and thoughts with a professional for feedback.

Recognize the cultural origins of various practices and treat them with respect.

Distinguish between metaphorical and literal interpretations to prevent falling into delusions, especially for those with a mental illness.

Extend compassion to yourself and others, recognizing that shadow work can be a challenging process.

Understand that shadow work leads to change, and be willing to embrace it.

Surround yourself with supportive friends, family, or community.

Keeping a journal aids in tracking progress and thoughts.

Acknowledge your responsibility for your actions and beliefs.

Understand that complex phenomena cannot be reduced to overly simplistic explanations.

Seek out primary sources when researching different traditions.

Utilize both logic and intuition in a balanced way.

Recognize how language shapes thought and be mindful of your word choices.

Understand historical practices in their proper context without romanticizing them.

Recognize the metaphorical nature of certain concepts without taking them literally.

If using substances to aid in exploration, do so responsibly and with awareness of potential risks. It is unwise to employ alcohol consumption for shadow work.

Establish a physical and emotional environment that feels safe and conducive to exploration.

Stay clear of pseudoscientific explanations and theories. Especially those originating from New Age “Spirituality”.

Understand that shadow work can be taxing and prioritize self-care.

Recognize the limits of personal understanding and be humble in your approach.

Embrace a nuanced view that avoids rigid binary classifications.

Familiarize yourself with psychological theories that pertain to consciousness and the unconscious.

Be aware of the tendency to seek information that confirms pre-existing beliefs.

Recognize the connection between body and mind and engage in physical activities that promote well-being.

Recognize and avoid superstitions that might influence rational thinking.

Understand how societal norms and constructs can shape personal beliefs and behaviors.

If using visualization, do so with an understanding of its psychological basis rather than mystical.

Recognize the multifaceted nature of human personality and experience.

Be willing to change directions in your practice if something is not working, regardless of the time and effort invested.

Establish a consistent routine that supports your shadow work practice.

Maintain a strong connection to reality, recognizing the symbolic or metaphorical nature of many spiritual or magical concepts

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[ewingstan]

are you still doing the philosophy ask game. if so jessie...for me...

Okay I'm gonna go more in-depth than I usually do for these, because the thing that best works is a whole article that itself is responding to a lot of different arguments. So this is gonna be a bit of a journey. It’ll start out morbid, but end on a more positive note. Jessie fans should read Kaufman’s Lucretius and the Fear of Death.

The question of whether we see death as a bad thing has been contentious for as long as we have records of people arguing. Its simpler for those who believe in an afterlife: If what comes after is bad, you should fear it, if it isn't, you shouldn't. But for those who don't believe in an afterlife, why should death be considered bad for you?

The question might seem ridiculous, but its worth pointing out that most bad things that can happen to us are experiences. Pain, sorrow, humiliation, all are bad because they happen to us. But death? When it comes we're not around anymore to experience it. As Epicurus argued, "so long as we exist, death is not with us; but when death comes, then we do not exist. It does not then concern either the living or the dead, since for the former it is not, and the latter are no more.”

So if things can only be bad by virtue of us experiencing them, and if we can't experience death (we can experience dying, but not death), then why should death be feared? A popular answer is to expand what counts as bad to include deprivation, or the absence of positive things we're owed. Consider a case where someone sends us jewelry as an anonymous gift, but the gift gets stolen in transit. We don't feel any negative emotions as a result; we weren't expecting a gift, so its absence doesn't make us frustrated or sorrowful. But we can still say the theft was bad for us, because it deprived us of something that should've been ours. So Epicurus is often answered using The Deprivation Account: Death is bad because it deprives us of the goods of life. When I die, I'm robbed of all the good experiences I could've had by living longer.

The good times we shared will always have happened. But I deserve more, and our expiration dates mean I'm not going to get them.

But this argument already had its critics as far back as first-century BC. Lucretius challenged it with The Symmetry Argument: If its nonexistence that we find terrible, our absence from the universe after our death that we find tragic, why isn't our absence before our birth similarly tragic? Our prenatal nonexistence mirrors exactly our post-death nonexistence. And if death is bad because our nonexistence deprives us of all the goods we could've experienced in the future, doesn't our late time of birth deprive us of all the goods we could've experienced in the past?

If I'm sad that I didn't get to live another twenty years, than it shouldn't matter that those twenty years not lived were in the future and not the past. And if I'm not sad about having been deprived of past existence, I shouldn't be sad about having been deprived of future existence.

(Of course, Jessie could mourn that she wasn't born earlier. All the happiness you had growing up, that I read about him having. The closeness you shared, that pushed you away from getting close to me for so long. What would it have been like for us, if I was there from the start?)

So why should we hold asymmetrical attitudes towards the earliness o our death and the lateness of our birth? Kaufman gives a good reason: We couldn't have been born earlier. "I" am not my body or my genetic code—if I was, I'd share an identity with my identical twin. "I" am a psychological continuity, a chain of memories and mental states, a process of one experience leading to another. The memories I have, the connections I've forged, how my experiences have made me who I am—that's what makes me me. So a hypothetical version of me born earlier couldn't be "me" in any robust sense, because that hypothetical me's earlier birth would mean it shared no psychological continuity with me.

I can talk about myself using counterfactuals: What if I'd gone to trade school? What if I pursued a career as a boxing manager? But the reason I can talk about those counterfactual people and call them me, despite how they've lived a different life, is because they share a psychological continuity with me up to a point. We have the same start, and from there have the same chain of experiences and mental events up till some point of divergence. But someone can't share a continuity with me if their continuity had a different starting point. If I ask "what if I was born in ancient Egypt" or "what if I was born in 4000 AD," I'm not actually asking what I'd be like in those circumstances at all—I'd only be asking what a person with my genetic code would be like. I am my history, and even if they lived within my actual lifetime, an earlier start means they wouldn't share any of that history. I might as well be talking about my twin, or a stranger who looks like me.

After all, Jessie was born earlier—but not as herself. Jamie the first had the same body, same genes, but wasn't the same person as Jessie. The start of her psychological continuity, her birth, was not a continuation of Jamie's continuity, but a break and an end.

I can imagine what it was like to be him. You know he was good at painting a picture, for all his quietness. But I didn't live his life, I've just read his words.

Thankfully, I could never really be him. My story is a clean slate. I'm here, and I'm ready to live.