#i still believe in 'the movement' even if i hate the semantics and will believe in my current orgs mission even if i leave it

[fairy-ganj-mother]

it's unfortunate that we need young people working in agriculture and it's like impossible to start, even with all the education and experience to support passion and interest

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Andrew Doyle

Published: Apr 29, 2024

There is no word in the English language more likely to generate heated debates and general bewilderment than “woke”. Those who use the term – as a form of self-identification, a pejorative, or simply as a means to describe a belief-system – tend to do so without consideration of the multiple ways in which it is interpreted.

Only this week, an opinion piece in the Guardian bore the headline “‘Woke’ isn’t dead – it’s entered the mainstream. No wonder the right is furious”. Its author, Gaby Hinsliff, shows no sign of having attempted to understand the various meanings of the term or how it has changed over the years. Even the headline betrays her lack of curiosity. What we call “wokeness” has been promoted by the Conservatives and Labour alike, and so to grapple with this subject in terms of “right” and “left” is to miss the point spectacularly.

In the wake of the Cass Report, Hinsliff understands in some vague way that the lack of evidence of “gender medicine” and the sterilisation of healthy children has come about due to the rise of the “woke” ideology. But she conflates this grotesque medical scandal with the closure of vegan restaurants and the declining popularity of oat milk. This is precisely the kind of semantic confusion that Guardian writers are usually so eager to criticise.

Hinsliff defines woke as “the broader push for social, racial and environmental justice”, but misses an important qualification. To this formulation, it would be accurate to add the words: “by authoritarian means”. For all that the woke movement attracts bullies who can enjoy the mask of virtue, I do not doubt that many of these activists are well-intentioned and genuinely believe that they are fighting for a better world. I too would like to see an end to racism and injustice, but I do not for a moment imagine it is a realistic aim given the imperfectability of human nature, and nor do I suppose that the erosion of free speech and liberal values is the best way to attempt it.

On the contrary, the only successful and provable method of curbing racism and other forms of injustice has been the liberal approach. And this is the very method that the “woke” are so determined to undermine and jettison.

In one sense, Hinsliff is correct. Authoritarianism is becoming more mainstream. The new hate speech law in Scotland, the proposed equivalent in Ireland, the Tory party’s various crackdowns on peaceful protest and the anti-freedom antics of the Canadian government all point to a disturbing trend. All this, of course, has come about because many decent people have been gulled into believing that the woke movement is simply a “broader push for social, racial and environmental justice”.

And given that the stakes could hardly be higher, we do require accessible terminology to describe the fundamental aspects of this ideology that is wreaking so much havoc on the western world. Personally I use “woke” as a descriptive shorthand without pejorative connotations. I do so as a kind of courtesy to all those activists and thinkers who have embraced the term for themselves. Those who claim that the word was invented by the right as a “snarl-word” simply don’t know their own history.

It's not perfect, largely because so few agree on its meaning. In 2021, a survey by the Centre for Policy Studies found that only 37 per cent of respondents understood what “woke” meant. And in a YouGov poll in the same year, 23 per cent of respondents said that they were not “woke’, while 12 per cent said that they were. Of the 59 per cent who claimed to understand what it meant to be “woke”, only a third referred to themselves as such, with more than half rejecting the label.

But how else are we meant to encapsulate this sprawling and complex ideology? It is the new state religion, the creed of the establishment, but without accurately describing it we have no means to hold it to account.

I suppose we have two options. Here’s one way that we might describe this dominant worldview:

“An ideology underpinned by the postmodernist notion that our understanding of reality is wholly constructed through language, and therefore censorship and other authoritarian measures are necessary to reshape society, with an intersectional focus that rejects the traditional Marxist prioritisation of class and economic disparities in favour of a conceptualisation of group identity as the prism through which all analysis must be filtered, with a particular emphasis on a form of standpoint epistemology that asserts there are multiple ‘ways of knowing’ and that the ‘lived experience’ of the marginalised must take precedence over empirical or scientific methodology – which are merely tools of the oppressor class – all of which is predicated upon the Foucauldian notion that society operates on the basis of invisible power structures, and that denials of such structures are evidence of their existence (as anyone who would deny them is likely to be benefiting from the privileges they afford) and that therefore there must be a cultural revolution in order to guarantee equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity, one that will ultimately achieve the wholesale obliteration of ‘whiteness’, ‘patriarchy’ and ‘cis-heteronormativity’, in which the parameters of thought and speech are limited to the propagation of the cause, and in which all activities of all branches of the media, the arts and the state must be directed towards that end.”

Or we could just say “woke”.

[lailannajacobs]

The Fey King is Cold but at Least it’s not Forty Below | GIBP V

Pairing: fey!Loki x fem!reader

Chapter Summary: Your day doesn’t go as planned after a heated council meeting. 

Warnings: more fluff! 

Word Count: 5.4k

A/N: Thank you to those of you who are still following this series despite my sporadic updates! I hope you enjoy this chapter and let me know what you think! It always makes my day when you do! <3 

Chapter Five

Loki groaned, the sound of his alarm clock taking him only seconds after he’d fallen asleep. He knew that technically it wasn’t true, but it definitely felt like it. Even for moons before YN had arrived, the days had been blending together, problems piling up, one after the other with barely enough time to solve one before the next arose.

He let his head fall back against the pillow. Loki missed the days when he actually saw his court for reasons that weren’t life threatening. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d spent the day in the library with Wanda or the last time he’d played a few rounds of cards with Bucky and Gamora. The only thing he still did was spar in the barracks with Nebula, but it had become more of a necessity at this point than a social call. Loki was beginning to think that the last time any of them had had genuine fun was when his brother had been king. Thor had only been king for fifty years but Loki missed those days more than anything. In all honesty, he missed his brother.

With a sigh, he pushed himself to a seat and stared at the door that separated his room from YN’s room. Nebula was right to be worried about the human on the other side of the door, especially that there was nothing Loki could say to reassure either of them that he’d made the right call. He’d spent most of the night awake trying to think of something — anything — that would serve as proof that he hadn’t just condemned his realm by making this deal with YN. The only thing he’d found reassuring was the way she seemed to wear her emotions on her sleeve. Emotions that seemed real enough — especially her hatred towards him. It was the reason he’d been so surprised by the way she’d so gracefully handled the party last night.

But parties were the least of their worries. They were filled with noblemen and ladies whose opinions didn’t matter. At least it was good practice. Practice he needed. Loki had been so preoccupied with protecting his realm from the inevitable war coming that he’d forgotten what it was like to flirt and act like the burden of his title didn’t exist. It was even harder than he’d expected to act like the same lighthearted, overconfident prince he’d once been because until last night, he hadn’t realized that he’d lost sight of that person to begin with. Even if he still enjoyed the way he’d managed to get flustered reactions from YN, he was a far cry away from convincing.

There was no movement on the other side of the door, but that didn’t reassure Loki in the slightest. He’d learned his lesson the last time. Rubbing the fatigue from his eyes, he got ready for another day. There was a council meeting this morning that he knew would make a scene if he brought YN along with him, but apart from that, he’d promised her that they wouldn’t be spending their days together and he’d meant it. He had to believe that giving her her freedom was the right thing to do even if his sleepless night had made him doubt that it really was the safest thing to do.

He could have used the door connecting their rooms, but he chose to walk out into the hallway and knock on her door. Loki had seen the way she’d looked at their proximity with revulsion and he wasn’t about to piss her off for something like this — no matter how much he enjoyed the look on her face that made him wonder if she would try to stab him. He knew she had a dagger on her. He didn’t know where she kept it, but he knew it was there. And knowing it was there made things all the more interesting.

After a few knocks, he heard faint movement and then the sound of her dragging her feet to the door. When she pulled open the door, she groaned.

“What?”

Loose hair poked every which way out of her braids and her already squinty eyes narrowed even further. Judging by the baggy, soft looking pyjama — courtesy of Valkyrie — it seemed he’d been the one to wake her up this time.

“Morning,” he chirped.

“Rot in the seven hells,” she muttered back.

Loki was sure she was going to slam the door in his face but then she seemed to remember where she was and why she was here. The forced smile she shot him made her look queasy.

“I mean,” she sucked in a long breath, her eyes fluttering closed for a moment as she collected herself, “good morning, Laufeyson.”

His smile grew. Her eyes darkened with fury.

“No actually, I really did mean rot in the seven hells,” she whispered before slamming the door in his face.

“Guess you’re not a morning person,” Loki muttered to the door.

He leaned against the doorframe and closed his eyes, waiting for her to come back out. He heard her soft footsteps padding around in the room as well as the sound of drawers opening and closing. He wasn’t paying much attention to her other than to make sure she didn’t escape out the courtyard window. Even if she did it only to explore more of the palace on her own, he wasn’t sure how he’d be able to explain the escapade to the council. Loki was well aware that he was already walking on thin ice with them, his lies barely convincing enough for them to swallow.

When YN walked back out of the room, her scowl was replaced by a smile that was almost terrifying it was so phoney. But with the hallway deserted, it quickly dropped. She opened her mouth and then closed it, eyes darting to the walls as she swallowed her anger. Still, he could see it there, simmering just below the surface.

It didn’t matter how well she’d hidden it at the party, there was no doubt in his mind that she hated him. So he grinned, knowing it set her on edge. She sucked in a deep breath and for a second he held his, wondering if this was the moment she was actually going to throw a punch at him but she only smiled sweetly. He held her gaze and nodded, oddly satisfied that she wasn’t going to back down. He knew it was stupid of them to be acting this way in public, but this silly competition between them was the only thing lately that didn’t want to make him crawl back into his bed.

“It’s going to be a quick breakfast today,” Loki began, leading her down the hallway as if they hadn’t been locked in a staring contest, “we have a meeting soon.

“Great.”

He wasn’t looking forward to it either.

“I deserve the most amazing breakfast after what I did last night,” she continued.

Loki knew that was true, but they didn’t have the time for it. Not wanting to say as much, he replied arrogantly, “that was only because you were following my lead.”

He smirked when her face pinched in frustration.

“If any of us was pulling the weight last night, it was me,” she snapped with a glare that would have withered most people.

Loki made a mental note to keep her away from Nebula for now. He wasn’t sure the palace was ready for what might happen if the two of them met, regardless of whether or not they got along.

“Doubtful,” he taunted.

“Don’t be an asshole.”

He stopped short, surprised. She crossed her arms over her chest, not looking apologetic or like she was about to take back her words any time soon. Fine with him. He didn’t want her to either.

“How about we call it a tie,” he offered even though what he really wanted to do was see how far he could push her before one of them gave up and called it quits.

“I don’t do ties,” she answered haughtily.

He chuckled unable to look away from the fire in her eyes when he said, “neither do I.”

You hated to admit it, but breakfast, although quick, had almost made up for being woken up this morning. Almost. But that wasn’t because of failure the food’s part. Your body was already showing signs of fatigue and wear, and only a battalion of food and sleep would stave off the effects of your abilities — because the one solution to your problem wasn’t an option here.

You sat at the head of a massive oval table with Loki, listening to the councilmen bicker about a new policy which, if you had understood correctly, would increase trade between Asgard and the realms that had once sided with Odin during the war. The longer they argued about the semantics of the policy, the angrier you became.

Loki had been silent through the whole matter, looking like he was about to fall asleep. He hadn’t spoken a word the entire time you’d been here either, not even a word as you’d walked in. But your presence had spoken volumes, silencing the room as you’d entered. Only a nod from Loki had started the meeting.

The councilmen’s voices never rose beyond mild disinterest — never showed real emotion — as they spoke of the best way to profit and collude with the people who had condoned a genocide hundreds of years ago. You wanted to bash their heads into the table, their words exhuming memories of screams and terror and smoke. You fought to push them back into their box, but the harder you pushed, the faster the memories rose to the surface. Fear and anger washed over you until you weren’t certain that you would’t lunge across the table and rip them to shreds.

Fingers brushed against the back of your hand and you jumped, almost snarling at the contact. Loki’s fingers smoothed back and forth along your clenched hand, but his attention was elsewhere as if it was a mindless gesture he did every day. You smoothed out your hand, and the evidence of your frustration, feeling the eyes of the councilmen on you. You weren’t sure if they’d felt your anger pulsating across the room or if the little act of intimacy had caught their attention, but they now stared at you expectantly as if they were waiting for something.

You looked over at Loki, trying to figure out what you’d missed. You half expected him to return your gaze with that cocky little smirk of his, but his expression was colder than Niflheim. It wasn’t focused on you either. It was focused on the fey in front of you.

“No,” was the only thing Loki said, voice eerily calm.

Helio’s lips spread into a satisfied grin.

“No, prince?” He sneered the title like an insult, “without an active king on Asgard, these matters fall into the hands of a council vote. And if I must remind you, there is no active king on Asgard.”

Loki’s fingers stopped moving, “It will wait until the orange moon.”

The air suddenly dropped in temperature as Loki’s command reverberated throughout the room. The other councilmen flinched at the raw power behind his order, but Helio only sneered.  

“I’m afraid it cannot wait. Svartalfheim and Alfheim have given us until the next moon to decide,” Helio replied pleasantly, leaving the obvious unsaid when he continued, “we must act now.”

You stared between them, your anger rising up into your throat like bile. None of them looked at you directly, but you knew this was a direct hit at you. They hadn’t said anything about your presence here, but you’d known by their faces the moment you’d walked into the room that Loki had broken some sort of rule by bringing you along. And now, because of Loki’s arrogance, realms filled with terrible people who had done horrifying things were going to benefit from it. And of course, as the leader of the realm who turned its back on the Dual Realms during the war, you knew he wasn’t going to try any harder than he had to to stop the policy from going through. This was all part of the act. He was acting frustrated on your behalf, like the lover of any human would. He was a fraud and a coward. He didn’t care.

“I will not see Thor’s work destroyed by Fey who wish to see humans eradicated because they are terrified of them,” Loki affirmed, his voice no louder than a whisper.

Magic crackled in the air and the councilmen seemed to freeze, their spines straightening as if they’d been electrocuted. Their faces paled with genuine fear, but Loki hadn’t done anything more than whisper a threat. Or so you thought. A memory of the pain you’d felt that first night flickered through your mind and you realized that maybe he was doing something to them — something only they could feel.

“We will not loosen our policies with the angels or the dark elves,” he continued, “there will be no vote.”

Nothing happened in the room for an eternal moment and then a collective sigh escaped their lips along with five terse nods. No one said anything, their glares of hatred a clear enough message. You shivered. Loki might have won this battle, but judging by their looks, they weren’t finished with the war. Not by a long shot.

“We’re done here.”

Loki stood, lifting your hand with his. His face had softened slightly into a half smile, but all you could see was the cold fury in his eyes. You inspected him a little closer, surprised. There was no way you could have misjudged him, knowing what you did about what had happened during the war, but it was hard to believe that every emotion he portrayed was an act.

His grip on your hand lessened and you realized he was reading your inspection as hesitation. You held on tighter knowing you couldn’t break the act. Not now.

“We’re done here,” you echoed, your anger and frustration on full display.

Loki nodded tersely and led you out of the room, not once looking back. Neither of you said a word on the way to your rooms, you because you were were too afraid to say anything incriminating that might be overheard and him…well you honestly had no clue what was going through his head. All traces of emotion — real or fake — that he’d shown in the meeting were gone, his face unreadable. You couldn’t say the same for yourself. All you wanted to do was hit something. Instead, you began counting the tiles on the floor as you passed, hoping to take your mind off the meeting long enough to calm down.

“I have a feeling it’s not me you’re angry at, but it’s hard to tell by the way you keep glaring at me,” he murmured with a soft chuckled.

At the sound of his amusement, it took all of your restraint not to grab your dagger and jab it into his chest. He hadn’t once looked your way but he obviously knew how you were feeling. The thought enraged you even more, knowing you weren’t skilled enough at courtly politics to keep any sort of emotion off your face.

“After a meeting like that, I have every right to be,” you snapped, refusing to clarify whether you were mad at him or at them.

“Yes, you do,” he answered softly. Loki stopped beside your bedroom door and rested against the wall, peering down at you with a sad expression on his face. “And if it’s any consolation,” he shrugged slightly as if the words made him uncomfortable, “I’m sorry about what happened to your people.”

Your heart jammed into your throat, the words knocking the breath from your chest. How did he know what you were? How had you managed to give away so much? And how could he be sorry when he’d sat by and let it happen?

Somehow you managed to echo, “my people?”

His brows furrowed slightly, “humans.”

Your people. Those weren’t your people. Other than your sister, there weren’t any of you people left. He’d made damn sure of that when he’d chosen his own realm and left yours to die.

“It’s not a consolation,” you managed and pushed open the door.

You strode to the middle of the room, hands about to tear out your hair when you realized that you hadn’t shut the door behind you. Loki peered around the corner, barely having moved from his position.

“What do you want?” you growled.

He shrugged again, “I’m glad you haven’t forgiven them…any of them… for what they’ve done. I know it was generations before you, but none of them deserve your forgiveness.”

The words were out of your mouth before you could stop them, “no thanks to you.”

The expression on his face hardened, the temperature dropping with it. He didn’t move, his body taking inhuman stillness. A predator waiting to pounce. The silence itself felt dangerous and you could sense your magic rising like hackles in anticipation of a fight — a fight you very much wanted. You held his gaze, daring him to contradict you. You held it just to prove that, unlike the other nobles here, you weren’t afraid of him. That unlike the Fey, you weren’t his to command.

You continued with a snap, “You don’t get to have an opinion when you’re just as much to blame as the rest of them.”

“Watch it YN,” he warned, eyes darkening, his voice a low growl in the back of his throat.

You let out a cold laugh, “make me.”

“You don’t want to go there,” he took a step forward but seemed to remember himself and then stopped.

It only made a ferocious grin spread further across your lips. His eyes flared, a green so bright you could have sworn you saw magic and fire through them. Good.

“You want a fight? Courtyard. Five minutes,” he barked through clenched teeth, “jump out the window if you don’t know how to get there.”

He turned away and slammed the door behind him.

You let out a breath as if the step he’d taken into your room had sucked all the air from it. But that didn’t mean that any of your anger was gone along with him. It wasn’t going to be a fair fight, not while you were in this form, but you were sure in the seven hells not going down without one. Him and his people had ruined thousands of lives during the war. You were going to make him hurt for that.

Loki trembled as he strode away from YN’s room, his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides. His breathing shallowed and he could feel the memories ebbing in like shadows from the corners of his mind. He tried to shove them down before they could wrap those dark tendrils of despair around him and cripple him completely but they weren’t having it. He stuffed his fists into his pockets before anyone could see. He could feel the magic currents in the air, stronger now than before, and it took all of his restraint not to pull on one and watched an explosion of magic follow in its wake.

She hadn’t been there. YN hadn’t been there during the war and yet even she knew how much of a failure he’d been. The word echoed in his mind, bouncing around and repeating itself until the only sound he could hear was  failure. Loki tried again to push the feeling down and lock it away like he’d gotten so much better at doing, but nothing stopped the word from getting louder and louder in his head.

His steps quickened. If she wanted a fight, she would damned well get one.

He was in the courtyard before the minute was up a materialized a long bamboo stick. Just because he was loosing his head didn’t mean that he was stupid enough to fight with real weapons. He paced around the dirt, unable to stand still. He wasn’t calm, but at least he wasn’t shaking anymore. He twirled the stick in his hands. He checked the time. Paced to the other side of the courtyard and back. Checked the time. Took the top layer of his tunic off. Rolled his shoulders back. Checked the time.

The wind picked up, carrying the smell of the sea even this far inland, dragging along dark clouds in tow. A storm was coming. If that wasn’t a sign that this was a bad idea and that he should turn back, he didn’t know what was. But he couldn’t do a damned thing to stop himself.

When the five minutes were up, the courtyard was still empty. He didn’t blame her for not coming. Not after the way he’d snapped at her and ordered her here. He was about to head off to the barracks to find Nebula for a fight when he heard YN step out into the courtyard. She didn’t take another step, and with his back to her, he wasn’t sure he should turn around and face her. He was about to tell her to go back, that this wasn’t a good idea, but she spoke up before he did.

“If you were going to order me around like the king you once were then I would have thought you’d have the decency to let us fight with actual weapons.”

He turned around, and even though he didn’t feel like it drawled, “Somehow, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

That earned him a cold laugh, “maybe you’re right.”

Valkyrie had done her job well, giving YN a sleek, lightweight fighting tunic that he knew would protect her far more than it looked like it would. She stomped across the courtyard with the purpose of someone who was very, very pissed off.

“One?” he asked, lifting the stick so that she knew what he was talking about. He hadn’t risen to her taunt but he wasn’t calm enough to be polite about it.

“Two.”

He materialized two short sticks and handed them over, arm outstretched, not daring to get any closer. YN didn’t flinch at his display of magic, which either meant that she was accustomed to it or she didn’t care. Loki hoped it was the latter because the former would meant that things were infinitely more complicated.

She took the smallest step necessary to reach the sticks and lifted them from his hands with surprising gentleness. She turned them over in her hands delicately, twirled them around once, twice, and then nodded. He wasn’t sure if it was to him or to herself.

She lifted her head, “Rules?”

“None,” he replied. It seemed that neither of them could manage more than a one worded answer.

She barred her teeth in a cat like grin and through all his emotion, he felt a prick of interest. Fighting a human would be easy, but the look in her eyes, alive with fury and determination, promised him a good fight. Even if he found that hard to believe.

She backed into a fighting stance. He did the same, waiting for her to make the first move. She took a small but steady step and they began to circle. Loki refused to give into the instinct to finish the fight before it even started, reigning it in despite how much he itched for a real fight Every step he took, he took waiting to see what she’d do next. He was never waiting long. Her steps were human and easily predictable and the mindless circling was making him more frustrated than less.

She slashed with one of her sticks and he easily sidestepped the hit without returning it. He grinned, only to taunt her. But despite her temper, she didn’t lash out and waited for what would have been an opportune moment had he been human. Instead, he feinted and sent her tumbling to the ground. To his surprise, she caught herself at the last second and rolled back up to her feet.

“Stop holding back,” she snarled.

He hesitated, not sure if he should follow her demand, knowing she physically wouldn’t be able to keep up.

“Do it,” she ordered, and then added just because she could, “Prince Loki.”

He moved on instinct, blocking and countering her moves easily until, within moments, he had her pinned to the ground, his body hovering just above hers.

“Was this what you wanted?” he growled, finding no satisfaction in the easy win.

Her lips spread into a feline grin that, paired with the crazy look in her eyes, sent shivers down his spine — even if she was the one pinned down with a stick to her throat.

She lifted her chin higher, their noses almost touching, and crooned, “look down, prince.”

He titled his head, his anger momentarily giving way to curiosity. She was too confident for him to think that he’d won this fight. And he wasn’t wrong. There, piercing the fabric of his tunic, was a very real dagger — the same one she’d pointed at him the first night — poised to stab him in the heart if she wanted. Of course, now that she’d told him it was there, there was no way she could move fast enough to strike the killing blow, but somehow, she’d drawn that knife on him without him realizing it.

“You cheated,” he huffed, admittedly impressed.

He couldn’t deny, even through all of his anger, that there weren’t many people who could have pulled a dagger on him, let alone a human.

She dropped the knife and tucked it into her boot, their bodies brushing against each other at the movement. Loki knew it hadn’t been there in the first place and that she had done so in order to keep its hiding place a secret. If he was in her shoes, he would have done the same.

“Human,” she shrugged as if it wasn’t the most vague answer she could have come up with.

He lifted up off the ground, but didn’t offer her his hand. He knew she wouldn’t take it.

“So that automatically makes you a cheater?”

“It means that I’m always at a disadvantage and I do what I have to,” she said, brushing the dirt off her pants.

YN picked up the other stick that she’d discard in the fight, her fingers paling from the death grip she had on it. She may have looked collected, but obviously he wasn’t the only one who was still itching for a fight. Good.

He propped up the stick, ready in his hands, “I’ll keep that in mind for the next round.”

“Next round?”

The words were phrased as a question, but she was already twirling her sticks, eyes widening as she readied for a fight. It didn’t stop him from goading her even further.

“What,” he smirked, “are you tired, YN?”

“Don’t use me as an excuse to give up, Prince Loki,” she retorted.

His grin widened, “I wouldn’t dare.”

You were pretty sure you were about to collapse, but at least you no longer wanted to throttle everyone in this place. Sweat dripped from your forehead onto the ground and you wiped it away before taking a long sip of water. Loki stood at the far end of the courtyard, whispering with a dark elf who looked just as imposing as Loki did. Your human body had been ready to quit the round before the last, but your pride and anger had refused to tell him that. Mercifully, the elf’s interruption had made Loki declare it the final one. You didn’t know who the elf was and neither of them had offered up any introductions, but you could tell he was important judging by the way Loki listened to him so intently.

From your spot sitting on the ground you kept your eyes on them, trying to glean any information you could from the exchange. Both of their expressions remained neutral, never giving anything away. The only thing you knew for sure was that they were talking about something important.

You dug your fingernails into the dirt. Had Odin known how impossible his demand had been when he had made it? Had he realized you weren’t prepared for any of this? You balled the earth in your hand. It didn’t matter. He didn’t care.

Loki pursed his lips, the first sign that he wasn’t happy with their conversation, but he nodded anyways. That seemed to satisfy the elf and he turned around, your gazes locking for a second. You forced your face to remain neutral, trying to keep the surprise off your face. The entirety of his arm from his shoulder down to his fingertips was a dark metal laced with traces of gold. You’d never seen anything like it. Dark elves were notoriously fast and strong, and yet something had taken off with his arm. You shuddered to think what that thing could be. The corner of his mouth barely moved, so much so that you weren’t sure it had, but you had the impression he was amused. He was already walking away before you got the chance to look at any of his other features.

“Do it now,” the elf called over his shoulder as he left the courtyard.

You looked over at Loki to see how he’d take the order, but he didn’t seem fazed by it. Actually, he looked as tired as you felt even though you knew that couldn’t be true. He rolled his head from hide to side, a gesture more human than you thought possible from a Fey. Strange.

“Do you think we can manage dinner with the councilmen tonight?” he asked, striding over, “because we’ll be dinning with them every second night.”

You groaned and let your head fall back against the wall.

He didn’t say anything but you could feel his eyes on you, watching in that same unnerving way he always did. Even with your eyes closed you felt like you were giving away more information than you could afford to part with.

“How many days until the orange moon?” you couldn’t help but ask, too tired to do the math anyways. You didn’t care that he knew you wanted the Hand and that you wanted to leave. It was the one thing between you that wasn’t a secret.

“Anxious to be queen?” He chuckled.

I snorted, “I was never meant to be queen.”

He didn’t say anything to that and when you opened your eyes you almost flinched back. His hand was right in front of you, extended. You hadn’t heard him approach, even on the crunchy ground, because of your stupid human hearing. He smirked but there was none of the usual humour in his eyes. Instead he looked almost…sad.

“If it makes you feel ay better, neither was I,” he said, pulling you up to a stand.

You stood facing each other for a moment as you tried to figure out what to do with that information. If you’d known more about Asgard you might have understood, but you’d never been very good at sitting down for lessons and you couldn’t remember much from them anyways. Something had happened to make this fey a king and as much as you hated him, you got the feeling he had never asked for it.

But you knew that if you pressed him for information he would never trust you and you’d never get the Hand before the orange moon. And anyways, this place had to have a library. Just because you hated sitting down for a lesson didn’t mean that you weren’t able to do it now.

“Meant to be queen?” you teased instead.

You felt victorious when you saw the tension leave his face. If you could control your temper long enough to get him to trust you then maybe this whole thing wasn’t as hopeless as you first thought. For the first time since it had been put around your neck like a noose, Odin’s pendant didn’t feel as chilling.

“Exactly,” he chuckled, “shall we go to another excruciating meal with the council?”

You looped your arm in his, “only because we have to.”

[aishabellasbigblogofeverything]

Hey, thank you for this blog. I'm a non-binary Black person and also mixed. In our country, the discussion of racism really properly started with the BLM movement kicking off, so it's very much in baby shoes. I try to keep educate abt racism and keep educated myself about colourism (i don't want to educated too much cuz i feel like that's where dark skinned people should be heard), because the discussion of colourism is close to non-existent here. I really appreciate your work. Kudos to you and hope your year has started well.

"I'm a non-binary Black person and also mixed."

Hi, I hate to break it to you, I appreciate you loving this blog, but saying you are Black or mixed is an oxymoron. Mixed people, even half-Black people, are not Black. Read this post of mine to understand. The most leeway I would allow for a mixed person to call themselves Black is if they have a Black parent and a biracial, half-Black parent, in which case they'd be 75% Black, aka, Black. But that's just semantics. Mixed is not Black. Plain and simple. Unless you meant something like "I'm half-Jamaican and half-Botswanian" which isn't really how the term mixed is used, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Regardless, thank you! I am glad that you are learning about racism, but remember that you can never educate yourself enough. Even I'm not educated enough and never will be. I think what you really mean to say is that you don't want to speak up too much out of fear that you will be speaking over darker-skinned Black people. Which is fair. But remember that you should still speak up for what you believe in and see that something is unfair. Still, if you see something that might be offensive to Black people but don't feel like you have the proper experience to speak about it as a non-Black person, then give Black people the voice! You might not agree with everything they say and we can be wrong as well, but it's best to listen to what Black people have to say and how they perceive issues affecting themselves. I don't know what country you're from, I'd be curious to hear from you as to where and how colorism affects your country. Thanks for appreciating my work!

And my year is starting off well, thanks! We just moved into a new home and I'm really enjoying my room! Kudos to you, too, and take care!

[ansgar-martinsson]

The Best Intentions - Part 8

Her body against his, her voice, her breath on his lips, her long, strong fingers in his hair, the press of her warm, warm, oh so warm and probably wetter than hell oh fuck center against his hard, hard, oh how fucking hard so hard it hurts cock, her words, oh Christ. Her words, her flesh, everything about her, everything Joline had wiped his mind clear away, sent his brain to that limbic, primal place, that place where every axon and dendrite of his frontal lobe was shut down in favour of those few centimeters of brain matter that controlled his animal, sexual self.

Those few centimeters that, although it had been well exercised, turned over on occasion over the past few years - casual encounter after casual encounter, fuck after fuck - it had not been as jumpstarted and shocked to life as it was in that moment for quite some time.

And oh, it felt so good. So good. So incredibly good.

And thus, it nearly killed Ansgar to shut it down, to push her away. He felt a part of himself, and not just his cock, but probably those very few centimeters of white brain matter themselves, shrivel up as he stiffened in her arms. With an annoyed growl, he wrenched his head away from her oral explorations. He clutched her hard by the arms and shoved her heat off of his, stepping purposefully out of her embrace.

Fucking hell fucking hell!!! Why? Why now? Fucking Joline Fucking Lindberg why do you have to do this?

“What?” she protested. “What is wrong with you?”

Ansgar took a long, steady breath through flared nostrils, as he peered, heavy-eyed down his long, regal nose at her. He let his arms fall to their sides and stood taller, his shoulders rigid, his head tipped slightly back. “I will give you one chance, Froken Lindberg….”

“Oh, it’s back to Froken Lindberg now, is it?”

He continued, ignoring her interjection. He lifted a finger instructively. “I will give you one chance to take that back.” Before she could speak again, he continued, raising his voice slightly, but still keeping his tone even, low… dangerous. “I told you I was very good at compartmentalizing,” he said. “Separating business from pleasure. I will tell you right now, Froken Lindberg, that I don’t brook threats or ultimatums in business, and I certainly do not in pleasure either.”

She stared at him, narrow-eyed, and furrow-browed.

“So,” he tipped his head slightly back and quirked a half-smile that did not reach his blazing eyes. “You will take that back.” He looked around the park before bending closer to her, his eyes hardening, the fire within alchemizing them from human sclera into layers of onyx over star sapphire over veined white marble. “You see, I can have any woman I want,” he growled. “Any.”

“Then go get one,” she responded, petulantly, her hands on her hips. Ansgar couldn’t help but notice the shake in her voice and the tremors in her hands… tremors to match the ones vibrating the flesh of his own clenched fists, those he was trying desperately to hide. Her discomfiture, her anger made itself known especially as she pointed to a woman jogging on the nearby path. “Go get her, Casa-fucking-nova. Get that one. Go on. Let me see you. Let me see how you work, lover boy.”

“I don’t want her,” Ansgar seethed, his words a sharp point. “But, as much as I want you, and you know I want you, I will not have you…. Will not,” he corrected, “give myself to you under threat, or under terms that I don’t agree to.”

She squinted at him. “How long as it been?”

“How long has what been?” He shook his head, confused.

“Since she did a runner on you? Your wife?”

Ansgar took a long, harsh breath through his nose. “Two years,” he clipped.

“Then… why do you keep wearing it?”

“I’ve my reasons,” he said.

“Which are?”

He said nothing, but simply stared at her, blinking, swallowing. The words on the edge of his tongue felt thick and heavy, stuck in place.

Because my investors have no idea what’s happened to me.

Because it reminds me of my failures. Because it reminds me that I do not want to fall in love again. Because it… because it gives me security. Because it reminds me of happier times in my life. Because it grounds me. Because it’s helped me move on. Because it’s kept me from doing away with my own life. Because it reminds me that someone, at some time, once… did love me, did truly love me for who I was… or so I’d thought.

“I can’t say.”

“You mean you won’t say,” she corrected.

“Semantics.”

“Fine.” She lifted her chin in defiance and shrugged. “No ring, no me.”

Ansgar stilled, allowing his mask - that old, familiar mask - settle into place. “Fine,” he echoed, at last. He dug into his jacket pocket and with thumb and forefinger fished out the keys to her motorbike. He dangled them in the space between them. “Hold out your hand,” he instructed, as if to a child.

She did as he said, her movements almost automatic.

He dropped the keys into her palm, holding his hand open for a moment before making a fist and bringing it slowly back down to his side. “Go to work, Froken Lindberg,” he droned. “It’s nearly eleven o’clock anyway, you shouldn’t be late, it’s unprofessional.” His expression shifted yet again, the mask taking on the visage of a small, businesslike smile. “I shall see you at nine tomorrow morning at the opera house, and then we have a meeting at ten to go over the preliminary plans for the gala. You should have those calendar entries in your inbox. I suggest you accept them before my assistant pesters you. She can be very persistent, you know.”

She swallowed. “Ansgar – “

“Go to work,” he repeated. “And make sure you’re there for our meetings tomorrow. You don’t want to be in breach of your contract. No, I don’t believe you do. You wouldn’t want me to pull our funding for the gala now, would you?” And with that said, he turned on his heel and strode back toward her bike to retrieve his helmet.

“Is that a threat, Martinsson?”

Ansgar stopped and turned. “No. Unlike you I don’t make threats,” he clipped. “As I said, I compartmentalize. Simply because this,” he gestured between them “doesn’t work out on a personal level, does not mean that we can’t do business together. As I also said, I expect you to take our business together seriously, and if you can’t do that, then we simply won’t do business together anymore. I am not and will not equate one with the other, am I clear?”

“Ansgar, I – “

“Am I clear?”

She nodded, and he did the same, his movements crisp and clear and short. “Very well then. I shall see you tomorrow.” He turned once again and stepped away, reaching her bike in a few long strides and lifting his helmet from the seat.

“Hey! How will you get back?” She called after him.

He hitched his helmet under his arm and continued toward the park’s entrance. He waved his phone in the air as he called over his shoulder. “I’ll walk!”

After a long night of frustration, her vibrator barely satisfying the ache Ansgar awakened in her with a kiss, Joline rolled into work the next morning early, coffee in hand. She didn’t go in early because he ordered it. Despite what he told her to, she actually needed the quiet before the crew reported to work to review some of the logs and plans.

When she arrived at work the day before, after her argument with Ansgar, she got swept up in other things, too many other things to sit with the design plans. She had a tourist group come through to take a tour of the building like they did every day at noon. Anna, Joline’s regular guide, called out with car trouble, so Jo filled in as tour guide. A monumental task it was, imparting facts and figures on the history of the building to a group of semi-interested tourists while her body felt strung out on hormones, arousal and utter frustration.

As the day progressed, her attention was needed on other tasks (booking a traveling musician whose producers couldn’t decide on terms of service to organizing a workshop for some of the grade schools interested in learning how a professional theatre was run), her own personal frustration grew. Without warning, a flash of Ansgar would flit through her mind. The whiskers of his goatee against her lips. The smell of his leathers. The sexy roughened tone of his voice when he said her name in desire. The expert control he held over his toned body. The stiff insistent press of his erection when he held her.

Inevitably, the crushing disappointment that he wouldn’t be the one to experience her next orgasm with her… it sucked! She hated that she wasn’t destined for his bed, that he couldn’t see clear to treat her as an equal… to leave his baggage aside so they could be free to enjoy the hell out of each other.

When she got home that night, she checked on her mother before going to bed without dinner to spend a few hours with her vibrator. To find some relief from an Ansgar-less orgasm… and yet her mind brought him into it with every climax, every clench, every spasm. His tongue, his need, his want to search her for other tastes and tats. Christ!

Hours before any of her backstage crew arrived, Joline alone unearthed a long rectangular rehearsal table from the back of the workshop and moved it out on stage. She spread out the maps and plans from the previous productions to compare to the current set up. Harold offered to help, of course, but without a body there wasn’t much he could do. She was still pouring over it when the first of her crew arrived.

“Jojo-bean,” Georg called from the back of the house. “You bend over again like that, those sprinklers are going to go off. The heat, woman!”

Jo had been bending to stretch across the table to grab the La Boheme plans when she heard his call. She laughed wiggling her arse in his direction, “Have I fired you yet this week?”

Georg, her brother Elias’ best friend from the age of seven, bounded down the aisle. Their relationship had always been less than formal since they too grew up together. “Twice! But don’t let that stop ya. The sound designers have a pool going. Do ya think you’ll make it to seven this week?”

“Give me reason,” she greeted him with a hug, waving to other members of the crew walking down the aisle to the stage.

“How’s mama?”

“Some days are better than others.”

“Whatcha doin’ here?” Georg gestured to the piles of papers, plans and logs.

“Some reps from Martinsson Construction are coming in today to start repairs. I got things out for them to refer to if they need it.”

Georg whistled, “How did you finally pull that off?”

Jo winked, gathering some of the papers she needed to go back to her office. “I can be very persuasive when given the right opportunity. Listen, I need you in here today,” she said lowering her voice. “I have a meeting with one of the executives about the gala and I need you to be my eyes and ears out here, yeah?”

“Of course. Who’d ya land the meeting with, Jojo-bean?”

“Ansgar Martinsson, so everyone needs to be on their best behavior.”

Georg whistled again to give due credit. “CEO. You better go on home then… can’t have the likes of you here.”

Jo turned towards her office, wishing she could, run along home.

*~*~*~*~*~

Anger seethed through her veins as much as it did the day before when she mounted her bike in the park. Feeling every bit the jilted lover, she slammed the kickstand, revved the engine, applied the gas and took off like a rocket, gravel kicked up behind her. She’d spotted Herr Martinsson walking proudly down the main drive into the park. She toyed with the idea of running him over. Unfortunately she knew that she needed him: the gala, the repairs, the little theatre, the commission.

He’d tied her to him, and suddenly the partnership felt more like a sentence than the blessing that she originally thought it to be. Of course, she didn’t have throw herself at him.

When did a casual hookup become so complicated? Was it too much to ask that the man be completely into her before she hopped into bed with him? If in his mind, Herr Martinsson was still married, then to Joline, he was off limits. She wanted to fuck him, but that band on his finger represented that he should be fucking another. She couldn’t stomach it; she wanted someone without obligation to end her sexual frustration.

As she attempted to listen to her voicemails, she recalled what she felt as she sped along the motorway. Her body hummed with Ansgar’s kiss, his passion awakened a sexual appetite she’d never known before. Because of her distraction, she hadn’t heard any of her voicemails, her professional self slow to get to work.

She did, however, pull her shit together by the time the man himself entered her office at the appropriate time. “Herr Martinsson,” she said, rising from her computer chair with a quarter turn. “Thank you for coming.” She offered her hand to shake.

He clipped, “Froken Lindberg.” That was all she got with a stiff handshake.

“Please… do come in. I thought my office would be the best to review the details of the gala.” She tied her hair up in a messy ponytail at the top of her head, stepping around to desk. “I did bring some of the plans from previous productions, for your crew. My staff are in for your direction.”

“The preparation is appreciated,” he intoned flatly, his eyes never leaving her.

“I brought a laptop in for your use,” she waved to the device on her desk across from her that she’d loaded with the schedules. “It’s already signed into wifi. Can I get you anything before we get started? Coffee? Tea? Water? Juice?”

“I’m fine, thank you.” He shed his blazer, and hung it over the back of the computer chair that Jo pointed to for his use. He unbuttoned the cuffs of his white button down with a precision of discipline, and preceded to roll them up to the elbows one by one.

Jo didn’t crawl across her desk, but the thought occurred to her when she saw more skin of the man who had haunted her thoughts. She cleared her throat, plopping down into her chair, toying with her mouse to wake her desktop. “Please tell me where you’d like to begin.”

“New Years’ Eve.”

“What about New Years’ Eve?” she frowned.

“We are going to move the date of the Gala to New Years’ Eve. December 31 of this year. We would sell more tickets, that’s certain. Raise more funds.” He fished into his briefcase and fetched out a MacBook Pro. He crossed to the table beside the window, cleared off an area, and set the computer down, opening it with a flourish. “Let’s start with the scheduling, shall we? I’ve taken your calendars….”

She blinked, slightly shell-shocked. “How did you get my….?”

He interrupted, a small smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “I’ve taken your calendars and modified them slightly. They were excellent the way they were, but we needed some additions with the new date. I set the list of priorities, and provided you with a delegation system for both your employees and mine, as well as a number of outside vendors from my approved list. The work will proceed as planned on the repairs, those should be done within the month. If we follow this course, we will be ready to go by December 30. I’ve already set my event staff on some of these… ah… tasks.”

He cringed inwardly at the small slip in his decorum, but he couldn’t help it. And here it had been so good so far. Even the removal of his jacket had been pain-free. But, as he twisted his torso, the battered muscles around his ribs caught, tightened, and screamed in protest. He rubbed at them, all the while skilfully keeping the mask of businesslike ennui on his face.

For the most part…

She noticed. Of course she’d notice.

She frowned. “You get mugged on your little walk home, or something?”

He rolled his eyes and peered side-eyed at her. “No,” he rest on the edge of the table, crossing his arms protectively over his chest. Yet, he kept his back straight, his shoulders square - damned if he would let her see his pain. “I went to the gym. It’s near the observatory. After that, my driver took me back to Sturekatten where I picked up my Tesla.”

“Oh. Your driver,” she teased.

“Yes,” he replied. “My driver.”

She swiveled her chair. “Wow. You have your very own driver,” she mocked. “I guess I never pegged you for the spoilt executive type, Mister Rockefeller.”

Ansgar gave her a wilting look. “It’s for risk management purposes,” he said. “Liability, safety, and all that. Prevention of exposure to the company should there be an accident involving the CEO. But yes, it can be quite… convenient at times. But you mustn’t concern yourself with that.” He gave her a throwaway gesture, and the movement made his side flare once again. He winced slightly, and sucked a small amount of air in through his teeth.

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Nothing,” he lied. “Nothing is wrong with me.”

“Obviously there is something wrong with you. You’re hissing like an angry cat.” She stood and stepped around her desk to stand before him. Like him, she rested her arse on the edge and crossed her legs beneath her.

“I am not hissing,” he protested.

“Yeah, you are,” she nodded, her eyebrows raised. “What exactly were you doing at the gym?”

“Ring fighting,” he clipped. He dropped his hands and rest them on the edge of the table, relieving some of the pressure on his torso. “Muay Thai, if you must know.”

“Against someone else?”

“Yes. Of course I fought against someone else. How else would you do it?”

“Apparently that someone else was better than you.” she teased.

“No,” he snarled. “He was not better than me.”

“Well, if that’s the case, then… what happened?”

“Nothing happened.” He spoke through clenched teeth and a plastered smile, his eyes flaring with sardonic annoyance.

“You got knocked on your arse, didn’t you?” She quirked a satisfied grin as she reached up and adjusted her ponytail. “Yeah, I’ll bet you did.”

Damn her.

He sighed and fixed her with a long, minatory glare.

Yes, I did. All right? I took a thrusting front kick square in the ribs. I didn’t block. I didn’t dodge. I went down howling, okay? My body is streaked black and blue like a Picasso painting and it still hurts like a mother fuck.

Why?

Because I let my guard down. Because my cock was pounding like a freight train in my shorts. Because I kept imagining you riding on it, your flesh around it. Because my lips still throbbed from your lips. Because I fought like a mindless berserker with trying to forget you. Because I’m a stubborn bastard. Because I’m a fucking idiot…

… Because I want you and I can’t get you off my God damn mind, Joline!

Are you happy now?

“Is this conversation absolutely necessary? No, I don’t believe it is.” He rose from the table and pointed at the computer. “We’ve some very tight deadlines to meet if we’re to make this gala the success you want it to be.”

Joline ignored his diversionary distraction, the opportunity to bust his balls about having his ass handed to him too rich. It was too good, and in her estimation warranted. “So this gym… I’m assuming that you pay them, yes?”

Ansgar almost… pouted when he hadn’t sidetracked her. She couldn’t know that he went to blow off steam because of her. “My trainer is paid very well for his services, if you must know.”

She nodded, tucking her lips between her teeth to hide her glee. She pushed off the table and damn-near skipped back to her desk. She’d tried to keep it professional but he presented it, laid it at her feet and she couldn’t resist. “Could’ve saved yourself some money, I would’ve done it myself for free. I mean… I already had a head start.”

Clearly, he didn’t approve. He scowled and stared her down into her chair behind her desk. “I trust and pay the professionals.” His emphasis abundantly clear.

Her glee instantly turned to hatred. This was her sentence. She’d signed the papers to work with him, and she’d stepped in the shit when she tried to seduce him. Doomed. And yet, she still found him so fucking sexy, and she hated herself for it. She still craved him, drawn to him, could barely resist him.

Her office walls closed in on her, an oppressive atmosphere with his massive presence in the room. Her office was in the oldest part of the building, near the little theatre. It had once been a detention center for criminals awaiting trial in the 1880s before it was converted into a public space for assemblies before opening as a theatre in 1898. It was more a prison, her own personal hell.

He’d picked at the one wound that hurt the most, which stung her deeply, out of all the things he’d said. He implied more than once that she was less than professional, and yet he’d invited it. He’d demanded it of her to use against her when he was pissed off.

“Fine, Herr Martinsson,” she slammed her finger on the mouse, startling her computer from its screensaver. She turned her attention to the altered plans for the gala and her stolen and retooled schedules. All that had been her baby, her celebration for the new season. Again, she felt like she’d failed. “May I call you a pig-headed terrorist?”

“No, you may not.” He got to her and he knew he had.

“Please explain how a soiree for the season opener, in other words, the gala, has been moved four months into the season,” Jo sat erect in her chair, ready to argue her point. “It’s meant to encourage season ticket holders to pledge more money and become sponsors.”

Ansgar didn’t let his oversight trip him up or Jo’s withering look put him off. “We’ll plan something better for the opening… a black tie and gown event. But the gala on New Year’s Eve makes more sense for filtering funds to the little theatre, that’s when we’ll need more money coming in.” He sent her a skype message to show her the budgetary needs for the renovations. “Take a look.” He nodded at her screen.

Jo pulled and tugged at her hair sticking out the top of her head. A pineapple, she thought to herself, I must look like a pineapple with all the sticking out branches. Through her silly bout with self-consciousness, she accepted the message and reviewed the spreadsheet from Ansgar G Martinsson. She sighed in concession, “Very well. But you just gave me a mountainous amount of work to do to get this new event planned in less than four weeks.”

He was about to remind her that he was there to help, that he’d lend a hand and his people. Just as he opened his mouth to do so—

CCCRRRAAACCCKKK!!!

A massive sharp sound ripped through her office from above.

Then a thunder crash boomed.

Ansgar shot to his feet, staring at the ceiling, “What the fuck—?”

Jo plowed through the door to her office, banging the door against the corridor. She starred at the ceiling too, training her ears to listen.

What sounded like bugs running along the steel piping trickled from above. It rolled over her head towards the little theatre at the end of the corridor.

Ansgar stood behind her, his face too turned to the ceiling. “What the hell is that?”

“You tell me, Mister Engineer,” she griped, following the sound.

He let her have that one. He’d made her feel like shit about her job twice already. He gave her that one.

At first her steps were slow, but as she got further down the sculpted marble hallway, she jogged until she full out ran. The sound got louder the further along, when the rain came. The sprinkler in the hall clicked on and water sprayed from above.

“SHIT!!!!!” Jo flung the double doors to the little theatre open. What she found, chaos, complete and total destruction. A large pipe dangled from the ceiling, a distressed break at least a foot long dumped gallons of water into the seats. Water ran down all sides as she peered in. “FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!”

Fast on his feet, Ansgar dialed emergency responders, barking orders and directions in Swedish.

Jo screamed over him, “I know where the valve shut off is!”

“JOLINE, NO!!!!”

But it was too late, she sprinted down the aisle, splooshing water as she went.

“There are unions for that!!!”

Jo couldn’t listen. She had to stop that destruction. She couldn’t wait; there was no time for that. She catapulted onto the stage, taking a flying leap from the arm of a chair in the audience, springing forward. She landed on her feet and didn’t lose a beat in navigating her way through the backstage to the valve to shut off the water.

The large shut off valve measured about a foot wide and Jo dove at it, throwing her entire body weight into shutting it off. She strained and struggled, the thing barely moving with all the effort she put into it. “DAMN YOU!!!” she panted. “MOVE!”

The thing didn’t budge after one squeak to the right, she almost felt like crying, something she didn’t do. Then she felt him, Ansgar had followed her. He lined his body with hers, his arms cocooning her body, his hands framing hers on the wheel. Together they managed to get the damned thing to rotate and the seemingly endless waterfalls finally stopped.

The echo of the destruction froze them in place, running water gushing off the stage. Jo couldn’t move, afraid to look, petrified to see. And yet, Ansgar was there, pressed against her back, just standing with her, drenched to the skin as she was.

As the events of the last few minutes settled over her, she turned to him. She didn’t say anything, couldn’t say anything, but pulled him into a fervent kiss of gratitude, of longing, of attraction.

Because he had been there for her when she needed it most.

[epeolatry001]

Graveside Matters

**Hi, so I decided I’m going to start posting the short stories I write. I’m trying to get better as a writer, and what better way to do that than to get feedback from readers? 

So if you like urban fantasy, snarky necromancers, and short adventures, this short story might be right up your alley!**

Chapter One

I always try my best to avoid performing any unnecessary necromancy. Life and death is a delicate weave of fate after all, and holding such power is, frankly, a gift that should only be used for important situations. Unless some dude had the gall to die when he still owed you twenty bucks.

Then you wake that fucker up.

My shovel sunk into the gravelly earth beside me with a soft chinnk as I straightened to survey the work I had done. The grave had been shallowly dug in a patch of sketchy, leafless woods just outside of the city. The guy in question had been dead for a day, and the people who offed him hadn't had much time for a proper burial ceremony, so the natural ways of the earth were already trying to claim him. Not that natural ways mattered once I got involved.

I rolled my shoulders with a wince at the ache in my back, and stretched my arms high above my head to work out the kinks. (See, people think the whole 'raising the dead' thing is the hard part, but really it's all the digging.) (Seriously, there's a lot of digging involved with this lifestyle.)

A chill was slowly creeping into my bones even with the recent exercise, and my fingers, stiff from cold, felt thick and frozen as I fumbled with my jean pockets to retrieve a pink pocket knife. Then I gritted my teeth against the pain and quickly made a practiced, shallow slice across my left forearm. I pumped my fist to make the blood well faster until it started to drip down into the darkness below.

Most of the time when people think of necromancers, they picture guys in dark cloaks, weird chanting, and virgin sacrifices. And I'm sure there are others out there who do employ all those theatrics, but only because they aren't already gifted with control over the dead, like me. I only need to use my own blood to signify the power in my veins, and to add a little extra oomph when it comes to bigger resurrections, like humans.

An owl hooted softly above in anticipation of the setting sun as I wrapped the cut, staring down in wait at the pale form still covered by a thin layer of dirt, and still dead. Sometimes it took a couple minutes.

With a sudden wide-eyed gasp, he finally jolted up, sending dirt from his shallow grave spraying off him. Deep, rattling coughs followed shortly after as he attempted to hack up the dirt he had just suddenly inhaled. I absently cleaned under my nails while I waited for him to get a hold of himself.

"Wha-?" he sputtered, wiping his hands down his face to clear away the dirt from his eyes. He blinked rapidly, staring down at his dirty, ripped clothes and the dried blood stain right over his heart from the bullet that must've done the deed. He ripped his gaze away to look around, jumping a little when he finally noticed me standing above him. "Kali?!" he gasped in a hoarse tone that held more disdain than shock.

"Surprise," I answered in a high, cheery voice, propping an arm on the shovel's handle.

"What are you doing here? Why -?" His face fell as realization hit. "Oh god, I'm dead, aren't I? Unless this is just a really horrible dream."

"Nope, just dead. Well, undead technically," I said simply with a shrug, tucking my hair behind my ear. The streaks of pink stood out starkly against the natural black, catching the sunset's light filtering through the trees. "But let's not get caught up on the whole thing, I'm sure you lived a good, long life."

His face scrunched up, wrinkling the recently broken nose he was sporting. "I'm twenty-two."

"…And that's long, compared to, y'know… People back in Renaissance times." I scuffed the toe of my shoe against a tuft of grass. Comforting others wasn't one of my strong points, but it was something that, unfortunately, seemed to come with the lifestyle too. "Look, Jerry –"

"Jake."

" – I'm just here to get my twenty bucks back."

He stared at me. "Are you serious?"

"Dead." I fixed him with a stare of my own that relayed just how serious I was about the matter. "You said you were going to pay me back as soon as possible. But it's been a month. And then you went and died."

"I was murdered!" Jake exclaimed in exasperation, sitting up straighter in his grave and waving his hands wildly at the blood stain. His movements were sluggish despite his enthusiasm, (a side-effect of regaining control of your recently-decomposing meat-sack.) "You came all this way to find me, then raised me from the dead, all because you wanted your twenty dollars back?!"

I blinked expectantly. "What else would I be here for?"

He looked around at the empty autumn woods, speechless, as if trying to find someone else to share in how unbelievable this was. "Oh, I don't know, maybe to help me find the guys who did this?"

I winced semi-apologetically. "Sorry, but I wouldn't say we were exactly close… So I'm not really looking to get myself involved in whatever it was that got you killed in the first place. I'm good with just getting my money back, thanks."

Jake passed a hand over his buzzed brown hair, sprinkling more dirt from his head onto his still-covered lap. "We've shared the same class for a whole semester," he tried, "and we live in the same dormitory…?" When I didn't reply, he rolled his eyes with a frustrated sigh. "Y'know what? Fine. I'll give you your money back. Then you can just leave me alone to be dead in peace." He patted his jean pockets, then frowned.

My eyes narrowed. "What's wrong?"

"I think they stole my wallet." He shoved his hands in his pockets to double check, but pulled them out empty.

"You've got to be kidding me."

He flashed a sarcastic smile over his shoulder. "Well, looks like we're both having some equally bad luck. I get murdered, and you lose twenty bucks."

"Sure, but this means I smudged the whole 'with great power comes great responsibility' rule and hiked through these woods for nothing, so who here actually has the worst luck between us?"

"Me. I literally died."

"Semantics," I brushed off, much to his annoyance, before examining the undug grave. "Now I have to make it look like I was never here." With a peeved sigh, I waved my hand to sever our connection.

His eyes grew wide and he sputtered out – "No, waitwaitwait-!" before he flopped back onto the earth in a lifeless heap.

The woods fell quiet. I scanned the darkening sky; the bare tree limbs stretched like twisting veins against the fading backdrop and a dead leaf twirled through the air to land softly to its rest on the cold ground. I surveyed Jake's lifeless body, a tiny bit of guilt welling despite all common sense.

An owl hooted again, a sharp, judgmental sound. The stupid bird should have better things to do than critique my morality. But the guilt still grew. With an annoyed growl, I tore off the bandage on my arm and pinched the cut until more dark blood dribbled onto his white t-shirt to add to the stain.

He jerked back up with another huge, gasping breath, rubbing the back of his head from where it had smacked onto the edge of the grave when his body had fallen. "Ow," he groaned pointedly, shooting daggers up at me.

"So what, this was a robbery gone wrong?" I asked reluctantly, ignoring the look.

Jake's eyebrow rose, obviously suspicious at my sudden interest. "No, I think they intended to kill me from the start. They must've just taken the wallet so I couldn't be identified as easily - not that you care."

"Could you identify your murders if you saw them again?"

He shuffled in the loose dirt, eyes squinting as he thought back through hazy memories. "Uh, yeah I should."

I bit the inside of my lip, hating how much I knew I was going to regret this. "Alright," I grumbled. "You can come back to the dorms with me. But here," I reached down to grab the coat I had recently taken off to dig better, and threw it down to him. "Put this on. It'll hide the blood so you won't look as sketchy when I sneak you in."

Not wanting to tempt fate, he shrugged it on without argument. I was about average height for a girl and the coat was oversized to be extra comfy, but he was tall and athletically built, so it hung shorter and clung a little tighter around his arms, but it would have to do for now.

I offered a hand to help him up, and the light brown of my skin contrasted sharply against his unnaturally pale tone. I distantly recalled him having a nice tan before death; (another unfortunate side-effect of being a reanimated corpse is that you are, well, a corpse, and as a result lose any sun-kissed look you may have perfected when alive.)

He staggered to a stand beside me and once I was sure he could hold his own balance, I finally released my grip. "Now, you can ride in my car," I said as I ripped the shovel out of the dirt and started leading the way out of the woods. "But if you so much as get a speck of that crusty blood on the seat, I swear I will kick your spirit out of your body so fast you'll go spinning."

"I believe you," he muttered from behind me as we left the empty grave far behind.

[sortingoutayoungcontrarian]

I recently typed the name Christopher Hitchens into the search bar on WordPress and was very disappointed with the top result. This result was an ignorant evaluation of who Christopher was as well an evaluation of his book “god is not Great. The author of this “evaluation” was clearly a fundamental Christian along with those who commented on the post thus far… Obviously, they hated Christopher and did their best to discredit everything about the man. I could not help but be a contrarian. I shall copy and paste the exchange below. I shall update per reply.

Me:

Hmm I wonder if you would find Hitchens’ points valid if they were made by a compilation of ancient misogynistic people who believed that genocide, dispossession of land, slavery, polyamorous incest, virgin-child-sacrifice-scapegoating, and baby genitalia mutilation was acceptable (all of these acts adamantly encouraged even), and then translated by a committee of megalomaniacs lead by a man who boiled his wife in a bathtub… All of whom believed the universe revolved around them in every sense the phrase entails and murdered those who said differently whilst claiming absolute morality. The reason why atheists do not mind that Hitchens may or may not have plagiarized is that they value what is true and don’t care how they get that truth. Christians, however, claim the bible to be the inerrant word of god despite its countless plagiarisms and contradictions.

If you could respond to those points which Hitchens made rather than the one he obviously did not care about (the validity of Jesus), then maybe your thoughts of critique would hold more water, maybe even have an atheist flicker with doubt . To be quiet honest, I have a very hard time believing you actually read any book by Hitchens’, due to the fact that his main focus was not to refute the overall accuracy of the bible but rather reveal the overall hypocrisy. You chose to give a general evaluation of a man by highlighting an argument he argued carelessly because there was no need at all to even argue it. Or maybe you were just scared to touch on the points he made that would open the eyes of any free thinking rational mind to see the lie they have succumbed to.

His response:

Your first paragraph has a large number of mischaracterizations similar to what is typical of Hitchens. You seem to have learned him well. Unfortunately, upon close examination, it is sophistry through and through, nothing but a hollow shell of an argument. In but one point: Flatly, circumcision is not mutilation, and to phrase it like you have is not making an argument, but merely using hollow emotional rhetoric. I gave cold explanation of a point, and you respond with emotionalism. This is typical of modern atheism, which Hitchens exemplifies. It always amazes me that atheists deal so much in emotionalism. Personally I prefer reason and logic.

Concerning what I have stated, I backed my claims. For example, see the first link in the post above. As to the Canaanites, I have responded to that as well.

Also please take note of my comment policy.

Me:

Thank you, I am proud to have learned Hitchens! I simply could not do nothing about such an inaccurate “evaluation” of a great man. As to baby genitalia mutilation, I was not making an argument but stating the fact of the matter, a beautiful baby is born and on the eighth day take a blade to its genitalia. There is nothing fallacious about that claim. If it is a semantical issue, the greek translation for “mutilate” is from a compound of kata and temno (to cut); a cutting down (off), i.e. Mutilation (ironically) — concision. The greek word used in the bible for mutilation is “katatomé” which translates– to cut. While circumcision is “peritomē” which translates — to cut around. Look for yourself, please. Studying in-depth interlinear commentaries in greek after graduating seminary school is what drove me away from the hypocrisy that is the church. I am not an atheist, as you assumed in your lazily mistaken attempt of ad hominem, but I merely saw the bible for what it was; a perfect business plan to enslave the people in a time where theocracy reigned. What sane person would not respond with emotionalism over this? If you apply James 2:24 to the role christianity has played throughout the narrative of history you will never again be amazed by the emotionalism that apparently surprises you in atheists however. It causes good people to do bad things, when one takes the focus off themselves and the box they locked themselves in due to fear of losing after-life insurance the bigger picture reveals itself. It is a lame excuse for wars birthed from an ancient inherited trait of tribalism.

You back your claims with a text you cannot prove. As to the Canaanites, I am always amazed by how christians separate real-life and their pretend world of faith as if in admittance to it not being real; Freudian slip esque. Like a child does when playing cops and robbers and their mom calls them inside for dinner and they have to break character in order to reply, “coming mom”. For example, I was stepping outside the realm of the bible and into empirical accounts in history books. who said I was talking about genocide mentioned in the bible only? I never brought up the Canaanites, you were mistakenly assuming (again) atop your omniscience tower. I was referring to, as Hitchens was, the rules for dispossession of land and the slavery of the previous land owners outlined in Leviticus 25, specifically verses 44-46. A lame excuse for justifying lust of what their neighbor has. Leviticus is the same book that outlines the pagan tradition of sacrificing life, (e)scapegoating responsibility. Chapter 25 in Leviticus was most cited chapter in the bible within memoirs of protestants during the establishing of the USA… and people wonder why black lives matter is heading a postmodernist movement.

You still avoided addressing the topic of (1) incest, (2) misogyny (which, unfortunately for all the women of the bible, in this context implies polygamy allowed for the man alone), and (3) The irrevocable evil, with a recorded historical background that goes back thousands of years before the bible linked to ancient savage polytheistic religions : scapegoating responsibility of sins through child sacrifice.

These were the main points of Hitchens, yes? I don’t think one could give a fair “General Evaluation of Christopher Hitchens” without addressing his main points. It seems as if you are trying to hide the reader from the points made by a man who had won countless debates with the leading apologists of all the major religions. A man who is now dead and unable to defend himself… If you could respond to those claims rather than attempting to define who I am or what I believe in then your critiques would be much more (logically/reasonably) respectable. I do apologize if I crossed a line defined in your comment policy. If you would prefer to reply privately I would still appreciate hearing your defense. Whether your audience hears you out or not is not upon my conscious. I would hope they follow you in order to hear the truth rather than feed confirmation bias. I have many issues with your past posts as well that I could refute using the bible, if you are interested. I am honestly just curious and value discussions from those that have come to opposing conclusion.

His Response:

As my comment policy states, this is not a discussion board and we do no go down endless rabbit trails here. Humoring you briefly is all I will do.

–You pointed out correctly that the Greek terms for cut around and cut off are two distinct terms. In no sense is circumcision mutilation. You agree the claim is incorrect. –As for horrible things like incest, the Bible accurately portrays history but does not condone these practices. It forbids incest and shows the folly of marrying many wives, for all who do so are shown to inherit the problems these practices create. –As to the Bible’s treatment of women, any claim that the Bible has a low view of women is completely false. –Child sacrifice was practiced by the Canaanites, which is one reason God commanded they be wiped out. Israel did what you and Hitchens seem to want them to do, which is not actually kill all the Canaanites. As I explained, this resulted in Israel starting these practices, which God stopped by sending Babylon to take Israel into captivity. Please portray the whole account or stop criticizing.

I did indeed deal with Hitchens in a fair manner. All signs point to Hitchens copying from earlier atheist writings, then not even doing the research to check out whether the claims were true. He spent the rest of his life traveling around repeating these claims with bluster, yet they are completely, entirely, totally untrue. His claims about virgin birth myths are completely false. Hitchens did not even do a magazine grade level of research on these items, yet repeated them for years.

The claims in this post stand.

Per my comment policy, we will stop here.

... And then he disabled the comments...

[a-woman-apart]

Off with the kid gloves; how about boxing gloves?

For most of my life, I have valued being “considerate.” I, like many others, have claimed to value honesty while telling innumerable white lies. Even though I hated the statement “what you don’t know doesn’t hurt you” I celebrated “lies of omission”, a way of keeping others ignorant about unfortunate aspects of my life, including what I really thought about them. 

I swallowed my tongue and pushed down my anger because I didn’t want to “be the bad guy.” Being nice was more important than being honest. 

I know that there are times when saying what is right, or being right, is unhelpful. For example, you may honestly believe your grandma’s teal cardigan is hideous, but there probably isn’t a good reason to tell her that unprompted. If she asks, there are probably also ways to tell her your opinion without being needlessly unkind. 

There is also something to be said about lying to an abusive guardian who holds disproportionate economic power over you. You’re not a coward if you choose not to be open about your sexuality, religion, or gender identity to a family member who will throw you out or abuse you if you do so. You are allowed to exercise your basic human instinct of self-preservation. They’ve created a hostile environment where honesty is punished, and you are not at fault.

However, when there are topics that are not a matter of your human survival and more a matter of the survival of your delicately constructed image, then your dishonesty not only hurts others, it hurts you.

Every time you muzzle yourself, either to “save face” or “save someone’s feelings”, you tell yourself that how other people feel about you is more important than the things you feel and believe. 

Over time, that constant denial of your own right to speak and your own self worth, serves to erode your belief in yourself. At least, that is what happened to me and others who I saw struggle with self esteem. 

It’s taken a few years for me to become aware of this destructive cycle, but now that I can see what is happening, I am actively choosing to speak up in as honest a way as I can as often as I can.  

We live in a highly politicized world where attacking someone’s ideas is tantamount to a personal attack on the person who believes them. Knowing this, I was “sensitive” about how I framed political and theological arguments around my family. Now, I almost never hold back, unless I just don’t want to argue, in which case I will change the subject but not concede the point. 

Very few people today understand that highly educated people can believe unintelligent, pseudo-scientific, extremely wrong things.  If I tell you that your beliefs are unsupported by facts, and your knee-jerk reaction is to accuse me of being dismissive or calling you stupid, then that’s definitely a problem with you and not with me, and guess what? 

If you continue to hold completely unsupported beliefs in the face of evidence to the contrary, you are stupid. Stupidity isn’t an ableist buzzword; it’s a description of someone who is willfully ignorant. 

If you lack mental capacity to understand something, you are not stupid. If you lack information on a subject, you are ignorant, not stupid.  

If you choose to be ignorant, you are stupid.  

If, in a debate, you are more concerned with debating how I said something, than whether or not my statement is true, you have a weak argument and likely, you are stupid.

If at any point, semantics, procedure, or decorum are more important to your movement than fighting inequality and oppression on a societal or legislative basis, then you are stupid. 

Everyone on the Authoritarian Left (yes I said it) is concerned about platforming bigots, but I am tired of apologizing for stupidity. I am tired of second-guessing myself and questioning myself in the face of people whose arguments are completely disingenuous and demonstrate an egregious lack of critical thinking. 

When I noticed how much the misery I experience when being gaslit in discussions by my right-wing, conservative, hyperreligious, Evangelical Christian mother was similar to the angst I experienced when reading ultra-Leftist bloggers on this platform, I realized that radical extremism is always irrational, no matter what side it emanates from. 

There is a caveat though. Extremism is often inevitable, but being an extreme force for truth and equality is the best way to escape the partisanship dishonesty of most movements. 

So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime--the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. --Martin Luther King Jr. 

I will end with a warning. For anyone who even still reads this blog, you are going to see a shift in the content. It is going to be a little less “nice.” 

But just remember, there are two kinds of “nice” people: 

There are the kinds of nice people who see that you have spinach in your teeth, and bravely face the awkwardness of telling you, because as your friend, they do not want to have you suffer the public embarrassment of going through the whole night with spinach in your teeth.  

Then there is the nice person, who, to save your feelings in the short term, and to save themselves the awkwardness of confronting you, rationalize that it’s better not to tell you, even though they know that when you go to brush your teeth that night and realize that you spent the whole night with spinach in your teeth, you will be embarrassed more. 

America has spinach in her teeth. I’m going to tell her, and her citizens, because I care enough to be honest. I care enough to have difficult conversations, to try and help make this country a better place before everything is completely wrecked. 

[jangpoo]

So here's the thing:

Idk if people actually understand what Coach Katoka just said to Furuya and how important it was for him to hear. It’s gonna be a long ride and if you are looking for me to hate on Furuya, you aren’t going to get it here. This is a novel, so if you are down to read and you finished all of your finals, keep reading.

When I was coaching, the thing I rammed into my players heads was, “If you don’t work hard, you will not be successful.” I don’t give a damn how good you are, how fast you are, how strong your arm is, how well you can block a ball. I don’t give a shit. Because at the end of the day, in a tied ball game, last at bat, down 3 balls and two strikes with two outs, and one pitch can end the whole damn season, you better BELIEVE I’m going to put the player that has been under the most pressure all year and has shown me results through hard work and dedication. A damn natural talent may win little league games, but it sure as hell isn’t going to win championships with the big kids. The ones that are going to win are kids that have the right mindset, the right attitude, and the right work ethic.

The thing about Furuya is that he’s not a bad player by any means. He also doesn’t have a bad attitude despite what many people think. He isn’t lazy. And I see people give him a lot of shit about a lot of stuff. (I don’t feel that way about him at all and quite frankly, if you hate him because he was receiving all the attention over Sawamura, I have difficulty holding any validity towards your opinions of him, plain and simple). But I think the real issue I’ve always had with his character, despite really enjoying him, is his inability to understand what the real definition of success is. Now, this is all my opinion and we’re just talking semantics, so nobody has to agree with me on this, but just try to hear me out.

First I want to show you these two panels:

That right there is the first issue. He is probably terrified to be at third. He hasn’t played there before, he probably hasn’t even practiced there. Kanemaru even says it, “His movements are so stiff. At this rate, he won’t be able to catch the ball when it comes flying his way.” But here’s the difference between Sawamura and Furuya: Sawamura don’t give a shit. People call him an idiot all the time, which he can be a lot of the time, but sometimes, idiots make the best athletes. Sawamura doesn’t get fixated in the mood and the stress. He doesn’t worry about making mistakes or about whether or not a ball is coming his way. He simply learns how to play the position and plays it to the best of his ability, even if he ends up making a fool out of himself (every chapter of him playing a position other than pitcher in earlier chapters says enough about that poor boy’s ability to play in the field). And even though Furuya said that he was going to do his best last chapter, he’s still scared (I don’t blame him). Would Sawamura be scared? Probably, but he’d yell to the other about having his back because he’d be making a lot of errors, so that’d probably calm him down (I feel like that’s his coping mechanism).

Okay, the next issue I have is this: A lot of people call Furuya selfish because they think he wants all the attention. They think he only wants to be the ace and nothing else and that he thinks he’s the best. We have found out in act ii that he definitely doesn’t think that and I’ve never thought that he had. However, I do think that Furuya was an “assumer”. This is the name I gave my athletes that came onto the team being told they were great. It wasn’t that they had bad attitudes and thought they were the best for no reason. These “assumers” were usually the most amazing athletes and were the most talented in the bunch. So what is an assumer? An assumer, to me, was somebody who knew they had talent, knew they had to work to keep that talent, and assumed that there were never going to be any issues. The biggest downfall of “assumers” is their inability to understand that shit happens.

Another person I would put under this “assumer” umbrella is none other than Miyuki Kazuya (WHAT? OMG NO!) Yes, you heard me. Because guess what happened. Mr. Miyuki was real gun-ho about his ability to get the best out of pitchers. He felt real good about the whole, “even if they hate me, I’m going to make them the best” mentality. And then guess what happened? Sawamura got the yips. Nori didn’t believe in himself anymore. He got hurt. He wasn’t able to play. And guess who changed? Miyuki. I don’t know if other people noticed, but it wasn’t until after he was hurt that he began to take different approaches. He talked to his pitchers a bit more, he realized he was leaving and didn’t have enough time with them, he agreed to talking to them about pitch sequences, he is working more on his hitting to make sure they get the run support they need, he told the second year pitchers to practice with the younger catchers and stop relying on him. The “assumer” stopped assuming that everything was going to be sunshine and daisies. He now thinks ahead of time and says, “in order to make this team successful, even after I leave, what can I do?” This is not, by any means, the only reason he began to act this way though. He was probably humbled due to the injury and his position as a captain, probably a bit of maturity too. But I stand by the fact that it was an eye opening experience for him to see that he isn’t going to always get to play baseball, and I know I’m not the only one that saw how depressed he was about it.

So how is Furuya an assumer? The same way Miyuki was. He got hurt. Not once though! He’s hurt again. As we saw last chapter, he’s starting to realize that he has very little room for mistakes on the team. He has to play wherever they need him because if that’s what is going to make the team better, that’s what you have to do.

I absolutely respect him for coming to that conclusion on his own and making sure that Yui realized making that decision doesn’t mean you’re giving up. It just means you are willing to do what’s right for the team, something I need Okumura to learn (but that’s a whole other post for another day). Now does this mean he is happy with having to do it? Hell no, and he shouldn’t be because he was too good of a pitcher to do that.

So now for the question at hand: What kind of pitcher is the best pitcher in Japan to you? HOLY SHIT, THAT QUESTION. This is the question that should have been asked to Furuya the second he walked onto the field in a Seidou uniform, and I entirely blame this on Coach Kataoka. This has been a long time coming. I want to go back to “If you don’t work hard, you will not be successful.” The real question he’s being asked has nothing to do with being the best pitcher or anything like that. The part of the question that holds any meaning whatsoever is “to you”. What do you think success is? What kind of player do you want to become? Because while thinking of the team is important, if you allow it to affect you so much that it negatively affects you, you are inadvertently hurting the team. Furuya not being at his best is going to cause the team a lot of issues. Sawamura and Nori can’t pitch every game and to have someone throw as hard as Furuya and then put in either one of them is going to throw the other team so hard off their game it isn’t even funny.

Here’s the semantics part of my little documentary/novel I’m writing here: Success, in my opinion, has never been about the winning or losing. It’s never been about being the best player or hitting a home run or not making any errors that day. Because if you base success on these goals, all you have left is disappointment and fear. You play like you are afraid of failure. Sawamura had the fucking yips, bro. He hit the lowest of the low but even when he was pouting and was excluded from practices and not even allowed to step in the bullpen, he was successful. He ran everyday and gained stamina. He worked on his own in the indoor facility throwing balls to a net. He would visualize a batter and pretend to throw outside to them. He put all of his energy into learning how to perfect an outside pitch to compensate for his inability to pitch to the inside (praise our lord and savior Chris senpai). Because despite how pitiful he looked and probably felt, this wilted sunflower was going to rise from the soil and become a fucking pitcher because that’s why he went to mother fucking Seidou in the first place!!! He had hit his low and there was no going any lower. He had been through disappointment after disappointment, yet continued to fight for his spot on that mound because that was his definition of his success! It was never about just being the ace because if it were, what goal would he have after he achieved it? Be the best in college, the best in the country, the best in the world? No! It was and always will be about the grind! “How early am I going to wake up to go for that run? Where the fuck is Miyuki-senpai so he can catch for me? Haruichi, I want to hit with you! Kanemaru, put your protective gear on, I’m going to pitch to you and if I hit you, my bad!” Because no matter what goal you have, especially when it’s about becoming the best of whatever, there is always going to be that empty feeling when you achieve it! So when you make your success the process, you will never feel that emptiness. You will always strive to be better than you were before.

So, Furuya! What kind of pitcher is the best pitcher in Japan to you? Because to me, it’d be someone who worked outside of the bullpen to become an even better outfielder. To me, it’d be someone who took care of himself and learned new stretches to make sure he didn’t get hurt anymore. To me, it’s a guy that walks out on the field, giving no shits about what position he plays or what the end of the game’s result is! It’s about how hard you are willing to work and how much you love the game, even if that means you have to make sacrifices! And here’s the part that gets to me and made me a little emotional:

I see no beauty in Furuya’s sadness and I am not happy to see him this way. However, what I am happy about is that he is beginning to understand. He’s seeing that he’s fighting a battle against a guy that is never going to give up. So now he has to make a decision: do you continue to pursue your success or do you allow yourself to find a new one? There is no right or wrong answer to that. But what I hope happens is that Furuya spends less time focusing on being in the bullpen and try to separate himself a bit. Try going to the corner and throwing to a net. Work on your grips to make sure you get the spin you want. Work in the cages like you have been and work on bunting more. Try to be a positive influence to the younger players and make an effort to associate with them. And more than anything, I hope we see him smiling and loving the game. I want him to sit back and just realize he’s playing baseball.

And if you made it to the end of this, then congratulations, it’s probably been 2 days since you started this damn rant. I can’t wait to see what happens in this story guys, I’m getting so hyped y’all.

[kuriquinn]

Once and Future [6/7]

Title: Second Chances

Disclaimer & Masterpost

AN: I finished all of my grading a day early! Enjoy an update to celebrate with me! It’s another belated update for the NarutoWeek2017 event, but I’m almost done so I don’t even mind ^_^

Gaara sighs and leans back in his chair, rubbing at his eyes.

These days the dark circles aren’t because of any demon haunting his dreams, but the never-ending stream of paperwork that comes with being the Kazekage.

Despite being an organized individual with a fairly developed work-ethic, Gaara has learned within the past few years that being a Kage is a difficult job. Running a village, even as simple a one as Suna, is a lot like being a juggler – only one can’t help dropping a ball every now and then.

The measure of a decent leader is knowing which one I can afford to drop.

Matsuri tells him he’s doing a good job – that the people of the village are happy – but sometimes Gaara thinks she tells him what he wants to hear. He’s mentioned this to his brother and sister once or twice, but their responses aren’t helpful. Kankuro brushes it off with jokes – most of which go over his head – while Temari will glower and grumble.

I suppose there’s always the option of asking Matsuri about it myself, but…

The hair on the back of his neck suddenly stands on end. Sand begins to gather around him, his sand shield at the ready.

“It’s rude to lurk in the shadows,” he says flatly, his weary and relaxed demeanour evaporating into the dry air. “Especially when you haven’t been invited here.”

“Heh…how the times have changed,” a sly, breathy voice chuckle from the shadows. “Now you have an actual awareness of etiquette. So much has change since our first meeting, I think.”

The man that appears out of the shadows is familiar enough to Gaara’s eyes, and hated at that.

“You have a lot of nerve showing your face here, Orochimaru,” he says quietly. “I should kill you.”

“Oh, little Kazekage, let us pretend that you could,” the Sannin says in a patronizing tone, sauntering forward and taking the empty seat on the other side of Gaara’s desk. He crosses one leg over the other, yellow eyes gleaming as if to say what exactly do you plan on doing?

Gaara clenches his fists, studying the older man with utter dislike. His first instinct is to suffocate him with a cloud of sand, but he retrains himself.

Orochimaru was integral to winning the war, after all. If it weren’t for his scheming and meddling and utter inability to die, Sasuke Uchiha might not have returned when he was needed – might not have lived. He and Naruto would not have saved the world.

But it doesn’t change certain facts, including that this creature killed Gaara’s father.

Or that he once wore the cloak of the Akatsuki, an organization that would have succeeded in killing Gaara if not for the noble actions of Grandmother Chiyo and Sakura Haruno.

It would still be perfectly understandable to kill him, though…

But on the heels of that thought, Gaara considers Naruto and his way of compassion. His friend has always forgiven others, even those who have taken everything from him – even this snake of a man. He has always seen the good in people, and has now become a symbol of that faith to his people.

Naruto would be disappointed to hear that Gaara was unable to embrace it, and so the young Kazekage reigns in his more vengeful impulses.

“What is it you want?” he asks finally.

“Ah, straight to the point. Very like your father.”

Gaara growls, “You don’t get to mention him. Say what you want and then leave before I think better of it.”

Orochimaru’s wide lips curve upward.

“Very well…” He tosses his hair imperiously. “You are aware I was once an associate of one of your people. Sasori.”

“He was not one of our people for many years.”

“Semantics, my boy. I happen to know of a cache he maintained here in Suna. A workshop of sorts, which you and your subordinates haven’t found yet.”

Gaara is careful to keep his face neutral. Although it doesn’t surprise him, given the legendary puppet-master’s secrecy, the news is troubling. “And your reason for sharing this information with me?”

“To gain access, of course,” Orochimaru purrs.

“You expect me to believe someone of your talents couldn’t enter this so-called cache on your own, without my knowledge?”

“Well, I admit it’s entirely possible, but as it is deep beneath the Kazekage residence –” This time Gaara’s eyes widen, “– I thought it might be politer to speak to you first. Given the current peaceful state of the world, and how close Konoha is to Suna these days, I wouldn’t want to accidentally start an international incident, yes?”

“You aren’t affiliated with Konoha,” Gaara bites out. “And no one in the Hidden Leaf would weep if we executed you.”

“Ah, ah, ah,” Orochimaru waves a chiding finger. “Were that truly the case, would they have their little dog following me around?”

He inclines his head to the large windows of the office. Gaara barely allows himself a quick glance, not wanting to take his eye off the man before him, but he catches the flicker of movement in the distance. Someone watching from a nearby building.

Naruto mentioned that his former interim captain had been tasked with watching Orochimaru’s movements and reporting them – it looks as if that job involves traversing borders as well.

“That still doesn’t mean he would intervene if I decided your survival wasn’t worth the risk,” Gaara informs him calmly. “As I hear it, he suffered worse than I did from your ways.”

“If you’re so eager to test the theory, by all means,” Orochimaru suggests, and from his tone Gaara suspects he would actually enjoy such an exercise.

That more than anything else stays his hand – he won’t give the snake the satisfaction.

“What exactly is in this workshop that you want?” he asks instead, knowing that it won’t be something as innocent as curiosity or sentimental as nostalgia.

“My former partner studied the human condition and observed their behaviour obsessively,” the Sannin replies. “He considered it integral to his creation process. After all, he did want them to last…” He smiles grotesquely here. “Sasori kept meticulous notes, when I knew him. And he had a particularly detached manner to transcribing his discoveries that I admire. Such a thing is rare and valuable in a scientist.”

Gaara folds his arms, unimpressed and still awaiting an answer.

“I want access to those notes,” Orochimaru says, now sounding businesslike and without the coy lilt in his voice. “You can have whatever else belongs to him – no doubt your puppet masters would be interested in some of his remaining inventions, especially if it could be used to modernize the village. But I want his notes.”

“So you can continue your experiments?” Gaara challenges, disgusted.

“Knowledge is knowledge,” Orochimaru replies airily. “I make no excuses or apologies for my work. In fact, I see no point in apologising for anything, although a case might be made for your father. His death was a means to an end, but I liked him. He was ambitious –”

A projectile of sand blasts across the desk, aimed for Orochimaru’s head, but he dodges it with insulting ease. There’s some movement in the shadows of his office which Gaara notices, but doesn’t address just let.

“I said,” Gaara tells him coldly, “you don’t get to mention him.”

Orochimaru mimes zipping his lips, but his expression remains unrepentant. Outside the window, the figure of Captain Yamato has inched forward, and Gaara suspects if there are any more disturbances, secrecy be damned, the man will intervene with his Mokuton.

“There’s some other purpose to your visit,” Gaara tells Orochimaru. “Some reason you came directly to me instead of slipping in undetected. You want something else and that’s what you came here for. Not some arbitrary permission.”

“I have questions,” Orochimaru hedges, “questions that need answers.”

“Questions about what?”

They stare each other down for a moment, and Gaara expects him to turn and leave. To reconsider the direct approach for something more underhanded and in his style.

He is surprised when the Sannin replies.

“Bonds.”

“…Bonds?”

“I wish to understand,” Orochimaru confirms. “They are factors I did not previously consider in my work.”

“You mean your inhuman experiments –”

“Parent and child,” the man interrupts. “Siblings. Friends, student and teacher…” Orochimaru stands now, pacing back and forth. “When young Sasuke returned to help his former comrades in the war, I felt…pride. There is no explanation for that. I was not invested, I was above it, and yet…” He trails off and once more fixes Gaara in his sight. “How does an orphan, loathed by his entire world, grow to become the sun? How does a boy cut off from his blood, as separated from others as the moon from the earth, maintain connections? Why does a child whose father tried to have him destroyed…come to forgive him?”

Gaara’s jaw clenches.

“Is an external catalyst required? A teacher, a friend – does it alter the course chosen or reinforce it? Can that quality be found within? Does a parent or a teacher determine the path, or does a child? And at what point must the mentor step away and learn from their student? In all my years, and all my studies, I can’t explain that. I never focussed on the internal quality of humans, but rather on the physical. That is a mistake on my part, one I intend to rectify. One cannot arrive at a conclusion without all of the variables, even ones which at first seem negligible.”

Orochimaru is wild-eyed now, as if something within him has abruptly untethered, and Gaara realises that it is the unknown which drives him. The man is so used to understanding everything, by taking it apart and studying it, that he has no understanding of the things which can’t be explained.

It’s something Gaara can understand, even if he left that part of himself behind a long time ago.

The brief shared sentiment with Orochimaru disturbs him, and he finds himself needing to refocus.

“Tell your subordinates to come out of the shadows,” he says. “If you are truly here in good faith, they should be visible.”

There’s a surprised intake of breath from somewhere, but Orochimaru simply smirks in acknowledgement.

As they coalesce from the shadows, Gaara sizes them up. He knows them by sight only – from the attack in the Land of Iron, as well as during the war and its aftermath. Those times were a confusing parade of faces and names, and if he did interact with them beyond that, he can’t recall.

There’s the white-haired nin from Kiri, and the giant with the haunted eyes and a woman with scarlet hair. His eyes linger on her, senses taking in the particular flare of her chakra.

“You’re Uzumaki,” he realises, and she startles at the address. “Like Naruto.”

“Uh…yeah. I mean, distantly. It’s not like I’m best friends with the guy,” she mutters, pushing her glasses up on her nose and adopting an haughty expression.

“That doesn’t matter. By a simple twist of fate, his destiny could have been yours,” Gaara dismisses. “Beyond that, you travelled with Sasuke Uchiha when he was shrouded in darkness. That makes you strong.” This makes her blink in surprise. “And so, I will ask you – do you think it possible for a man such as that to find redemption?”

“Buddy, you chose the wrong person to ask that question,” the Kiri nin snorts.

“Suigetsu,” the giant admonishes.

“No, ass-for-brains is right,” the woman says, scowling as she rests her hands on her hips. The posture is entirely defensive. “He tried to kill me. Just because I forgave him doesn’t mean anything about him, it means I’m awesome.”

“Aw, Karin, don’t try to deny that you’re still in love with him.”

“Eat shit and die!” she snarls, shaking a fist at Suigetsu.

“Children,” Orochimaru says, a smile on his face but a warning in his tone.

“Regardless of what he did, you obviously still care for him,” Gaara points out. Karin crosses her arms, but doesn’t deny it. “That suggests he can change.”

“Golden-boy Naruto obviously thinks so, or he’d be dead already,” Suigetsu points out.

“Naruto would never kill Sasuke,” Gaara says with a shake of his head. “Even if it meant spending the rest of their lives trying to redeem him, he would do it. He has that faith.” He narrows his eyes at Karin. “Do you?”

“Do I…?”

“Have faith that Sasuke Uchiha will be redeemed.”

Karin opens her mouth and closes it a few times, like she wants to reply with some witty retort or brush the question off. But Gaara holds her gaze with his own, until she swallows and looks away.

“…Yes,” she murmurs.

Gaara nods; he expected as much.

“And what of his teacher?” he continues, indicating Orochimaru.

Karin’s eyes widen and her posture immediately becomes defensive again. “I – I think it’s a completely different situation!”

“Yeah, this guy was always a freak, at least Sasuke was sort of cool –”

“Mind your tongue, Suigetsu,” Orochimaru remarks mildly.

“We all have different situations. The past does not confine us, it’s what we’re capable of doing in the future that might,” Gaara says, remembering a battle long ago and the words of his first friend ringing in his ears.

‘It’s almost unbearable, isn’t it? The feeling of being all alone. I know that feeling, I’ve been there, in that dark and lonely place.’

“And those who would help us along the way.”

‘But now there are others. Other people who mean a lot to me. I care more about them than I do myself, and I won’t let anyone hurt them! That’s why I won’t ever give up!’

“And so, I ask again – do you think Orochimaru can be redeemed? Would you trust him in the future, to avoid the mistakes and deeds he has committed in the past? Knowing and unknowing.”

Orochimaru doesn’t appear to care what his subordinates have to say – instead he stares long and hard at Gaara, as if he is witnessing exactly the sort of phenomenon he has been struggling to understand.

Karin looks away from the snake-faced man. “I think it’ll take him a hell of a lot longer than it would take Sasuke. But…maybe one day.”

“He keeps me from harming others,” Jūgo adds. “Whatever his motives, I trust him to do that.”

“And you?” Gaara addresses Suigetsu.

“Well, I trust him to never fucking die, so at least he’ll have the time to get it right,” the white-haired man mutters, but the way he avoids the others’ gazes speaks volumes.

“Your faith in me is heart-warming,” Orochimaru deadpans.

“Very well,” Gaara decides. “I will grant you what you seek.”

Everyone, including the Sannin, appears surprised by this.

“All it takes is one person to honestly believe in you – however small that belief,” he says. “Naruto showed me this. He showed us all this.” He crosses his arms. “It would, of course, be foolish to expect you to change over night, but let us consider this a first step. Perhaps on your journey, you’ll find something of more value.”

Orochimaru’s mouth twitches in amusement. “I dare say you’re right.”

“They say that Akatsuki was first founded to bring peace and to find an end to war,” Gaara continues. “I suppose it is fitting that you, the last individuals to have worn their mantle, should be granted the chance to see that peace and seek redemption.”

“But don’t screw it up, right?” Suigetsu snorts.

つづく

Phew! That was a long one! I hope I got all the characterizations right, I so rarely write about any of these guys! And hopefully foreshadows the transition from questionably-redeemable-Orochimaru from the end of the series to Papa-Orochimaru in the Boruto series!

Thank you for reading! Reviews and concrit are much appreciated - and if you’re feeling generous, I also accept tips through ko-fi (just scroll to the top and click the button!)

クリ

Next Chapter

[yourtoradorasextendedwarranty]

Ok so you're kinda blind here. And I personally think it's funny. But let's put some perspective out here.

1. There are conflicting sources on where and how the "Alt Right" started. That being said, being Anti-SJW does not make someone a Nazi. But here's a participation trophy. Social justice AS A PRACTICE is nothing more than normalised vigilantism and revenge porn at the most basic level. It's a desire to destroy everything outside your belief system and harass/assault anyone who guess against those beliefs. Social Justice is not the same as actual Justice. So you can hard screw yourself if you think being anti vigilante somehow makes you an extremist.

2. Show me, one exact instance, where Milo advocates for the killing of all other races? It the fact that he's better than all races because he's white? Hell I'll move the goal post even closer, explain to me how you can endorse a movement that literally hates everything you are? Yeah, I hate identitarianism, a lot. And I'm not hiding behind anything. The facts are:

Nazis hate gay men: true

Nazis hate non whites: true

Nazis hate Jews: true

So basically anything to do with Milo is specifically in these regards, anti Nazi. Also a Black husband is NOT the "black friend" argument. This is a man he is legally binded to kisses, and has sex with. Last time I checked? Racists don't kiss and have sex with those they hate. And certainly don't share their assets with them. (Also pointing this all out is not identitarian, white nationalism and neo-nazism both rely on identitarian politics because just like the progressive far left, the far-right is also identitarian. So explaining how these things don't quite add up isn't hiding behind someone's identity) *Here's your participation trophy.

All of this is factually true. And if your were to ask Richard Spencer, if he liked Milo, I can expect a less than cultured answer. Also this is semantics but Neo-Nazis and White Nationalist are not identical. Yes it's semantics, and yes they are both quite bad, but if your plan to call someone something, get it right.

3. Milo is provocative on purpose. It's what he does. And yes he is nationalist by nature. He stands on protecting borders, and limiting the number of and immigrants. Which, contrary to your version of reality, isn't a bad thing. Does he say some insane shit? Yes. Does he have some strange views? Also yes. It's he a good person? I don't know him personally but I'm sure he's not easy to be around. And he does seem like an asshole. All of that aside, this whole argument is a moot point because you see "your side" as an agent of absolute good. Based on how you speak, I gather that your are either friends with, or support SJW types. You probably have a wall in your basement dedicated to Antifa, among other things. So, assuming for a second Milo was forced by fucking magic compelling him to tell the truth, and he said he's not racist and not a Nazi or white nationalist, you, and people like you who believe yourself to be heros of society, would still not believe it. And would STILL be having this argument on Tumblr.

The Left? Is not perfect. Social justice is not actual Justice. And the Right is not some evil villain in a James Bond film. And yeah actually your do view anything to the right of Stalin as a Nazi. And so does the rest of your cult. But you're so blinded by your hero complex that you can't see strait. You probably also view Left if center as Nazis too. Which they are not. Neither are Centrists and neither are conservatives.

And the context most Anti-SJW types use the term Nazi in, is the sarcastic, hyperbolic way. Akin to "Fun Nazi". So terms like FemiNazi among other things, are both a reference to that, and a reference to how modern Feminism (not second and first wave feminism) has authoritarian views. Much like the Nazis had. They are not legitimately calling them Nazis. Unless you count the hyper insane Neo-Feminists who'd like to see men in concentration camps. And trust me.... They exist.

Regardless, your mind is made up. And you understanding of the English language, as well as your understanding of politics is severely lacking. But, that's what happens when you drink the Far Left Kool-Aid. David and his lovely wife Susan from down the street, who are totally fine with gay marriage are still Nazis because they go to church and are conservative. You lack the capacity to change your mind. And that's not an ad hominem attack. That's the truth. You and others like your are literally no better than Nazis anyways. Because many of you think communism is amazing. An ideology that has killed 100'S OF MILLIONS MORE THAN THE FUCKING NAZIS! Whom also put people in gulags, killed gays, starved millions. But you know, it's just cool to call yourself a communist.

*PS not saying you do. But many from your side actually do. And frankly, I think that makes them as bad as or worse than Nazis*

*PPS* Even assuming you prove your point, which objectively, unless you find Milo wearing an SS uniform actively trying to kill Jews, is next to impossible except for your feels, what do you gain? Is some Antifa executive gonna give your a trophy because you, "smashed the patriarchy"? Because you, "got woke"? What do you honestly stand to gain? Me? I'm having a discussion trying to talk sense into someone who probably *though unconfined* probably thinks Antifa are the ultimate awesome SWJ heros. Even though they are far from good in any regard. My aim here is to make you think objectively. Your aim here is to be right about someone you see as a Nazi, being a Nazi. So you stand on a table and scream it to the heavens. Where as most of us, probably 99% don't even care about Milo anymore. And will continue not to, unless he actually does something awful beyond calling a woman a man.

Are we going to ignore the fact that durkin62 used a fucking Stonetoss comic? Does Durkin62 not know Stonetoss is legitimate nazi... or doesn't care?

He probably follows the following reasoning:

Stonetoss was called a “Nazi” by left-wingers.

Left-wingers call anyone who disagrees with them a “Nazi”.

Therefore, Stonetoss is not a Nazi; he’s an innocent guy who dared to disagree with left-wingers.

Which is exactly the logic that the “YOU CAN’T CALL NAZIS ‘NAZIS’ JUST BECAUSE THEY DISAGREED WITH YOU !!1!” wanted to spread.

[megamindturtle]

co-workers

megamind somewhat defines his relationship with roxanne. somewhat, but not really. what does he know anyway?

He doesn’t know why, but Megamind races across town to Roxanne’s apartment nearing the middle of the night.

Okay, that’s a lie. He does know why. He always knows why, but if he just tells himself that it’s only for a second. That he just needs to see with his own two eyes that she’s fine. All ten fingers and ten toes accounted for and he’ll be on his merry way.

Because—because—

Because Roxanne Ritchi just doesn’t disappear. Every vacation she’s ever taken is known well in advanced. There might be mild death threats for him to mark his calendar. After all, she complains. Loudly. And angrily about how much he is inconveniencing her. A lot.

Megamind, I have to pack. Megamind, what if I miss my plane? God. Damn. It. Megamind! What if—

(Technically, he always inconveniencing her, but that’s just semantics.)

And Roxanne just doesn’t get sick. She’s impeccably healthy. Oddly healthy. All the time. Compared to most people. Religiously and extremely hygienic.

( No, she only washes herself and makes sure she’s so clean all the time because she’s around you all the time. Of course she wants to erase your breath from the air she breathes—of course, she hates—)

Megamind just has to know she’s okay. He hates not knowing more than anything and once he’s statied his curiosity, then he’ll go home. Just—he just needs to make sure there was no break in or kidnapping or fatal flu or—

Yeah, he just needs to make sure she’s okay. It’s been a little bit over two weeks since he’s kidnapped her and she hasn’t been on the air at all either. Or going to work at the news station.

Or—

Well, he just needs to stop thinking. So hard. Just needs to think of this objectively and ignore that train of thought that he had a second ago about break ins and kidnappings that aren’t done by him and—

Megamind slows the hoverbike to land silently on Roxanne’s balcony. He dismounts the bike easily, his cape swishing slightly behind him. All the lights are off, he notices, but her bedroom curtains are drawn too, so maybe she’s just sleeping.

God, he’s absolutely creepy. In that well, I better check to make sure she’s okay even if she’s sleeping kind of way. His feet feel like lead at the thought as he makes himself to the door.

Totally fucking creepy. He’s actually doing this. He’s—this isn’t even a kidnapping this is—

Without further berating himself, because honestly he could stand outside her apartment all night telling himself he’s awful, he doesn’t. Megamind sucks in a deep breath, steeling himself as he tests her balcony glass door. He’s surprised it’s open and his heart stills against his ribs and slowly falls into his stomach.

It slides easily, the metal smooth along the track. Wordlessly, he takes a step inside and from the moonlight, is pleased to see that everything looks relatively normal in her living room and kitchen at her first glance.

Nothing really too out of place. In that looks like there’s been a burglary/kidnapping kind of way. No chairs flipped over. Nothing torn or shredded. No destruction of any kind.  Just a  few cups litter her coffee table, some clothes tossed over her large red couch.

Really, he thinks if he lingers on it, it’s more strange that it looks like she hasn’t even left her apartment since the last kidnapping.. Taking another step inside, he finds papers scattered in piles everywhere. A chaos of some sort in every direction, a movable white board by her dining table, her laptop’s bubbly screensaver emitting a soft glow tucked in the corner.

He treads lightly  inside, finding himself winding towards the the nearest stack, having to know what’s going on with all the paperwork. He crouches down quickly enough, his gloved hand barely brushing the first page. A compilation of date of some sort, so many numbers and—

“What are you doing?”

Megamind shrieks and falls back on his ass, his palms awkwardly catching him. His wrists sting from the strange angle and blood rushes to the back of his skull when the weight of it makes him tip backwards, looking upside at one Miss Roxanne Ritchi as she peers over her loft railing.

“I—well—you see,” he stammers. “You’re alive!” he rushes instead.

It’s dark and though his eyesight is better in the dark than humans, Roxanne still looks a bit shadowy. He doesn’t need light to see her raising a questioning brow at him though.

“Am I not supposed to be? Is that—is that part of some evil plan of yours?”

She sounds like she’s kinda joking, but Megamind isn’t really sure and—

“No!” he shouts, jumping to his feet. He sways a bit as his head rushes from the jarring movement. “No,” he says more seriously. “That’s never part of any plan.”

Roxanne doesn’t say anything, just quietly making her way down the stairs. She squints as she flicks on the light, clutching her comfy jacket close to her. “Are you okay?”

But Megamind isn’t really sure what she’s asking about because he’s focusing completely on her cheeks, the slope of her nose, the area under her eyes.

They’re—

“—red,” he whispers.

She winces at that, turning from him. But it only gives him a more prolific view of her inflamed skin, of the bumps and red that sprawl along her usually clear face. It’s—

She laughs hollowly before muttering to herself. “Wow, no fucking tact.”

Megamind swallows, uncomfortable as he also looks away. “Sorry.”

Roxanne groans and runs a hand through her hair. She sighs heavily and walks towards her kitchen. “Tea?” she asks, not looking at him.

Megamind blinks, unmoving for his place across the room. “Uh, wh-what?”

This time Roxanne snaps her attention back to him, red skin and all without looking away. “Tea. Would you like some tea, Megamind?”

He blinks again and instinctively gravitates towards her. “Uh, yes. Tea. Would be nice. Yes, please.”

She nods once then turns to fetch something out of a cabinet. There are boxes after boxes stacked haphazardly as she reaches up. Mint tea, green tea, earl gray, sleepytime, spiced apple, blueberry, orange, etc, etc. Finally, she settles on some a simple black tea variety.   She seems tired, the way she moves, and—

“I can feel you burning holes in the back of my head, you know.”

Megamind scoots to sit in one of her barstools, breaking his gaze from her form. “Sorry!”

Without turning around, she laughs and this time it doesn’t sound so bitter. “Stop apologizing,” she says. As an afterthought, she asks. “You’re not planning on kidnapping me, are you? I really don’t want to be on camera right now.” She makes a grand sweeping motion pointing to her face.

“Why would I kidnap you?” he asks.

She looks over her shoulder, her eyes only slightly amused. “You kinda broke into my apartment? Like most kidnappers? And well, you usually kidnap me.”

It clicks then, the lightbulb flicking on as Megamind abruptly stands from his chair. Without a second thought, he stalks back towards the balcony door, ignoring Roxanne as she calls out to him. He opens the door quickly and shuts it just as fast, making eye contact with her through the glass.

From behind her island, she’s gesturing for him to come back inside, waving him over, but Megamind shakes his head. Instead, he takes a deep breath and wears the most serious expression he can muster and—

Knocks on her door. Loudly.

“Miss Ritchi!” he practically yells. “Are you home? I’m not here to kidnap you! Just want to see if you’re okay and—”

Roxanne races from the kitchen, utterly terrified and slams the door open and tugs Megamind inside faster than he can blink. She shoves him to the side as she closes the curtains before whirling on him.

(He can still feel the pressure of her hand wrapped around his wrist. The strength, the action, the grip makes his heart race a little fast.)  

“What on this god green earth is wrong with you?” she grits. “What the actual fuck, Megamind, are you trying to wake up my neighbors?”

He clears his throat awkwardly and grabs his arm defensively, “Well, you know” he coughs “— I thought it would be better if you know—” he mutters.

Frustrated, she puts her hands on her hips The red in her face looks more intense as she glares at him. “What? What could you possibly be thinking?”

“Ah, well,” he sputters. “You know, it’s not a kidnapping. So. Well, better make sure I’m actually invited inside. And, you might. Well, you might actually be the one waking up your neighbors if you keep yelling at me.”

Roxanne blinks up owlishly at him, her shoulders automatically going slack, her fighting spirit gone. Silence stretches between them for a moment, blue eyes examining green before she breaks down in laughter.

She’s wheezing, doubled over too. “So you bang on my door!”

Megamind feels himself blushing. “Well— I had to make sure you understood!”

Roxanne grins at him, her laughter in her smile. “You could have just told me that in the first place rather than wake the dead!”

He huffs, a smile of his own quirking at his lips. “Would you have believed me?”

She hums, calming down. Averting her eyes, she brushes a strand of hair behind her ear. “No, most likely not.” Peering up through her lashes, she bites her lower lip for a second before giving a soft smile. “I do now though.”

Warmth spirals from Megamind’s heart, brushing sweetly against his ribs and he wants to soak in this moment. Burn this to memory because maybe he’s dreaming. He—

The kettle screams and Roxanne jumps. “I should go get that. For the tea.”

His mouth suddenly feels dry. Licking his lips, he agrees. “Yes, the tea.”

“Mmhmm.”

Roxanne busies herself in the kitchen and Megamind slips back onto the barstool at her counter. He’s staring. He knows that he’s staring. He knows that she knows that he knows that he’s staring. He catches the corner of her eye for a brief moment, but for now, he’s trying to not it bother him, his line of sight focused on her skin.

“Is it a allergic reaction or…?”

“Rosacea actually. I had a flare up. It happens.”

About what , he wants to ask, but he doesn't.

“Ah. Is it always this bad? It looks like it hurts.”

And it does. Looks like it hurts. Her skin is dry and flaky and red and—  

She laughs. “It’s not always this bad.”

He bounces his leg on the stool foot rest. “But why? You seemed fine last time I saw you.”

Roxanne sighs and plays with the string of the one of the tea bag as it’s steeping. “Lavender.”

“Lavender?”

She drums the counter and awkwardly looks at him. “Look, so I’m not blaming you per say, but—” she pauses, attempting to make eye contact. “You scented the knock out spray with lavender.”

Megamind his heart drops and the words already rushing out to apologize. Again. Because that’s all he’s been doing for the last ten or fifteen minutes or so is apologizing. God, he should even be here. He should just—

Roxanne raises her hand and he stops. She looks at him gently and motions him to sit down. So he does.

“Like I said,” she starts. “I’m not blaming you. In retrospect, the lavender is a nice touch. I do like the smell of lavender! It’s just,” she points at her face. “Fragrance and my skin don’t get along much. As you can see.”

She lets go of the tea bag, a bit dribbling over the edge of the mug. Roxanne sends him another friendly smile and it’s so— strange. Really, she should be angry, but she’s not and—  

“Usually, I can still wear makeup, but yeah. I’m not leaving the house until it settles down,” she says it matter-of-factly.

“What about work?”

“Just working on my longer pieces at home. Writing some scripts for the station. You know. The desk work usual.”

He snorts. “I don’t think I do.”

She settles a mug in front of him. It matches hers: blue with a white handle. That makes his heart heart melt somewhat. The idea that they have something matching, if only for a moment.

She gives him a wry smile. “No, maybe you don’t.”

“Either way,” he says, his fingers tapping against the mug. “I promise to not kidnap you until after you go back to work. Like on the camera. It’s the least I can do.”

“...thank you...that’s...well, that’s rather sweet of you, Megamind,” she says.

Things are fall quiet between them as she pushes her sugar container his way. She doesn’t say anything either as he puts heaps of sugar in his tea.  

“I mean, well, I could most likely make you a balm or a pill or something?” he says after the fourth scoop. “Maybe try to find some way to help ease it better than what you’re taking now?” His brows furrow together as he starts to think. “Really, it shouldn’t be too hard— I think I could do it,” he trails.

“If you do that, I’ll love you forever. Just saying,” Roxanne says offhandedly, chuckling to herself.

Megamind snaps his attention to her, feeling fluttery, all thoughts ceasing. “Um.”

Um, as in what, as in how as in why as in why not? Well, he knows the answer to why not but still, all he is left with is um.

She quirks a brow, “What?”

She looks amused, her head tilting to the head as she waits for him to find his words. If he can even find words because— because— Roxanne Ritchi has literally said the one sentence in regards to him he never thought she’d say.

Ever.

So.

Um.  

“Wh-what you just said,” Megamind stammers because at this point, he is no longer an evil overlord. He has to be dead. In a weird afterlife where he drinks tea in Roxanne’s apartment and she smiles at him and almost hints that maybe, one day, she could possibly—

“What did I say?” she asks, leaning forward and resting her chin in her hand.

There’s a beauty mark near the corner of her mouth and Megamind’s heart has grown so much he can’t even breathe right. His chest has expanded so much he feels like he’s going to pop.

His voice is higher than usual, disbelieving because what she said could not be true. “That you’d love me? Forever?”

She blinks, her face completely blank and then she—well, if had to describe it, he’d say it’s like she explodes.

“Oh. Oh god!” her eyes are wild, her hand twisting this way and that way. “It’s, um, an expression? People say?” she rushes. “Because love is like— lots of things and there are tons of layers to love and I’d be so—  I’d be super grateful. I’d be happy. I’d be doing backflips over ten cows!”

(He tries not to be....sorely disappointed. He can’t be. Because Roxanne Ritchi would never actually love him. Not romantically, not romantically. But— she said there were layers to love and he is going to tuck that phrase away, maybe to soothe his heart and his mind on bleak, bleak days.)  

Instead, he focuses on more pressing things, things that don’t require layers, but logic.

“Ten cows?! Why ten? That wouldn’t be right realistically, if you’re going to exaggerate, Miss Ritchi.”

“I don’t know, Megamind!” she says, throwing her hands up in the air. “It seemed like a good number!”

He presses his lips together, shaking his head. “Six seems like a more doable number though? Still impressive, more than five, but not too impossible. Especially if you were to possibly launch yourself off something— like a gymnast!”

“I mean, I don’t normally vault over cows to begin with. Frontwards or backwards for the matter,” Roxanne says. “ I just— yeah, thank you. If you were to help me, I’d be really thankful.”

She pats the top of his hand finally, sealing her thanks and Megamind does everything to not stare down at his gloves. And replay the moment over and over and over and over again.  

“An-anytime, Miss Ritchi. You’re—”

the woman of my dreams, he wants to say. “— co-worker?”

Wow. Talk about a non sequitur.

“Co-worker?” she asks, nonplussed and curious, being very nosy reporter like.

“Yes,” he adds with a nod because if there is one thing Megamind has learned is that the best lies are the ones that you believe yourself and he’s going to stick with this instead of, you know, confessing everything. “ With Metro Man. You’re my co-worker.”

Roxanne nods slowly, as if she’s absorbing his words. Tentatively, she sips her now cooling tea. “I, uh, never thought about it that way, but that’s one way to put it.”

“A bit unorthodox, yes. But we’re colleagues in the grand scheme of things.

Because of destiny , rests on his tongue because the last thing he needs to do is begin a destiny rant to Roxanne after lamely, all of this. Whatever this is, but it’s bizarre. In the same vein his head is bizarre, but he’s unable to look away or stop himself from wanting more.

“Well, thank you. From one co-worker to another.”

She yawns.

He’s watched enough movies to know when it’s his cue. And it’s getting rather late, crawling towards one in the morning to be exact. “I think I better leave. I just wanted to make sure you were okay. I’ll see if I can do something for your skin. Give me a little bit, okay?”

She nods and smiles again, her eyes crinkling at the corners as she holds back another yawn. “Thanks for coming over for tea, I guess? It was— nice.”

Roxanne says nice in the way that people don’t mean things are actually nice. But she’s smiling at him and his mind and heart and everything are getting read wrong which is wrong because usually megamind is right. About things. Not people, but things and— he needs to stop thinking.

“Well, after you’re back to work,” he says standing and moving backwards towards the door, “be prepared for some devious plots,” he juts a finger in her direction. “Super awful. Beyond evil. Horrifying bad,” he emphasis every other word with another jab. : I’ll let you off the hook for now, but once you’re better, remember who’s in charge.”

She quirks a brow and leans against her archway across the room. “I thought you said we’re co-workers.”

“I’m more like your supervisor,” he shrugs, his heel tapping the glass door before he turns around. Looking over his shoulder, he smirked. “An evil supervisor.”

“Uh-huh,” Roxanne pushes off the wall and moves towards him. Megamind steps back as she stands beside him, opening up the door for him to exit. “Pretty sure I already have one of those back at the station and they’re miles load more evil than you in that department.

She’s so close, he thinks, it makes him feel a little breathless.

“Have they— “ he starts, but stops when she pats him on the back, the cold air hitting his face.

“Thanks for coming by, Megamind,” she says softly. “I mean it. I guess I was a little lonely.”

“Of course,” he sputters. “That’s what—”

“—co-workers are for, right?”

He nods once, swallowing and finally takes his first step outside. “I’ll be back to kidnap you. When you’re feeling better, that is.”

Roxanne rests on the glass door, hugging her arms across her chest. “I don’t think it’s appropriate to say I’d be looking forward to it.”

To that, he laughs, “Well, you’ve never been a standard damsel.”

“No, I suppose not,” she grins. “But you’re not a standard villain either.”

He doesn’t know what she means by that, but he thinks it’s a compliment. “Of course not, I’m a supervillain after all.”

She hums. “Of course,” she agrees. “Anyway, good night, Megamind. See you at the next kidnapping.”

Megamind stares, his lips parting when she holds back a laugh. “This is the part when you say goodbye and get on your hoverbike.”

“Oh,” he says. “Right, goodbye?”

“Goodbye.”

He nods and inches closer to his bike. “Good night as well.”

She snorts. “Good night.”

“Good—”

“Megamind!”

He sheepishly grins as he throws a leg over it, starting the engine. He waves one last time, mouthing a quick sorry for good measure.

Roxanne does laugh as she walks inside, waving to him before she closes the curtain. “Get home safe,” her lips read through the glass before the fabric falls way.

And just unlike when he raced over to her apartment, Megamind takes the long way home, enjoying not knowing why everything happened, but basking in it anyway.

[allyinthekeyofx]

Fading Light 1/24

Fading Light AllyinthekeyofX Summary: Scully's cancer returns and hope comes at a high price. Notes: I wrote the first 6 chapters to this way back in 2001 and just never finished it....until last year. Yay me! lol PART ONE Prologue My Father once told me that secrets are like old wounds. That no matter how skilfully we hide the scars, they are still there, lingering beneath the surface. Invisible to the eye, but all too obvious if we take the time to really feel them. There are no good secrets. Even the ones we hide in our hearts to protect the people we love will eventually find a way to push themselves up through the layers of deception. I've discovered that we can never hope to protect through lies and after all, isn't a secret just another name for a lie? Semantics Mulder would laugh if he could hear me now. Arguing with myself as I lay, eyes wide open, staring up at the patterns made by the street lamps refracted through the rain that streams down my window. I'm not sure what time it is. I don't seem to sleep much, which is strange, because all I want to do at this moment is close my eyes and sink down into its welcoming arms. To escape from the accusatory voices in my head for a short while would be wonderful, but I just can't seem to relax enough. If I'm honest with myself though, I'm well aware of the reason for my insomnia. It is guilt; pure and simple. I have a secret, and no matter how often I tell myself that I am keeping it from him to protect him, I still feel its presence every minute of every day. I keep it hidden because in doing so I am attempting to shield him from a truth he is ready to neither hear nor accept. Every day I keep the truth from him is another day spent tiptoeing around him, so afraid that he will look into my eyes and see my lies. It was easy in the beginning. Mulder was still shattered over the death of his Mother and I was there for him as he fell apart piece by harrowing piece, supporting him as he has supported me throughout our partnership. I watched over him like the proverbial mother hen as his quest threatened to take him over the edge, ready to drag him back should the need have arisen. For once he didn't need me to catch him and as each day passed he learned more facts behind his sister's disappearance and finally, finally I was rewarded when he came back to me. Not entirely at peace sure - we have seen and experienced too much for that ever to happen - but I saw the stress literally roll off him as, in his own words, he was set free. How can I take that sense of peace away from him now? I have remained silent, promising myself, as I promise myself now, that tomorrow I will tell him. It's ironic in a way, because even I don't believe it anymore. XXXXXXXXX Chapter 0ne Mulder is not in the sweetest of moods. He tries his best to hide it, but it was obvious from the moment he arrived flustered and dishevelled at my door this morning. I'm not sure exactly why we started this whole car pool thing. It certainly wasn't out of any sense of wanting to save the planet, it just kind of happened. I had offered Mulder a ride home one night when he was without his car - I can't remember why he was without it - and he decided it was only right and proper to return the favour. It seems to have set a pattern now that neither of us is willing to break, and it's strange really, but I kind of enjoy it. I like the fact that his face is the first one that greets me every morning. Usually I like it that is. But on days like today, when he is edgy and tense, I wish to hell I could just make him stop the damn car so I can escape out in to the clogged Washington streets and hail a cab. We have hardly spoken during the ride in, just the barest early morning pleasantries. No small talk, no innuendo, no teasing glances. In fact, so far all Mulder has given me is the charming view of his set profile as he keeps his eyes fixed firmly on the road ahead. We are running late for the office, which is never a good thing, especially not today. Today is the second Wednesday in the month. Second Wednesdays mean inter-departmental meetings. Which in turn usually mean bureaucratic scrutiny of our recently submitted expense reports. I hate the meetings almost as much as Mulder does. The difference being, that I don't tend to show it quite as blatantly. But at least we no longer have to suffer the dubious pleasure of AD Kersch as we attempt to justify flying halfway across the country on nothing more substantial than some redneck's sighting of lights in his cow field. Skinner is no less forgiving when we balls things up, but he’s more used to it and therefore more accepting of it. Mulder mutters something under his breath as the car in front slows down to a virtual crawl. I don't bother trying to figure out what it was. The very fact that we are attempting to negotiate rush hour traffic pretty much tells me that whatever it was, it wasn't pleasant and certainly has no need for a response from me. So instead, I just lean my head against the seat rest and close my eyes against the headache that is beginning to pulse at the centre of my forehead. I think that the headaches were the first clear sign that something wasn't right, although for a couple of weeks I was able to pretty much deny their existence. Self-denial is a powerful force, a bit like encasing a broken ankle in a plaster cast. The pain is gone, pushed in to the background, and it's almost impossible to imagine that the broken bone ever happened at all. Until of course you walk on it at the wrong angle and the pain is back to remind you to take more care. That's how it was with me. Only my versions of the plaster cast were non-prescription pain pills. Until they weren't enough, even when foolishly, I was taking well over the required dosage. And then came the day when I couldn't deny it any longer. I remember it vividly. A Saturday spent shopping with my Mother I was in so much pain I could hardly stand. She noticed of course and I remember making vague assurances that I was fine, made my excuses and headed for home. I made it through the door, watched as the room began to spin in that endearing way I had come to recognize from scant years back in the early manifestations of the disease, and woke up three hours later on the floor, still clutching my house keys in my hand. I wish now with all my heart that I had answered the basic need that pounded incessantly in my head. Call Mulder. Instead I had called Dr Zuckerman. Every day since then, I have been trying to find the right words, the right moment, to broach the subject with Mulder, and right along with it, I have found a thousand excuses as to why now isn't the right time. Of course I realize that the right time is never going to happen, and that the longer I keep putting it off, the harder it's going to get. Especially since I have already decided that this time, treatment to prolong the inevitable is not an option for me and whilst I don’t profess to really know or understand exactly what my ‘cure’ entailed the last time around, I am smart enough to realise that its mechanism would never be found written on a treatment protocol. So I have opted to do nothing. To wait out the inevitable. I will continue to work for as long as I can. Until I’m once again incapable. But for how long I can keep up the pretence is anyone’s guess. Not to mention the fact that Mulder is neither stupid nor blind. Eventually he will figure this thing out for himself, and deep down, I can't help wondering if he already suspects something. A paranoid little voice is whispering that I am the reason for his dark mood this morning. Which when I think about it is ridiculous. Oh yeah. Guilt really sucks. Suddenly, I am catapulted from my musings and transported violently back in to the here and now as Mulder curses loudly, swerving the car savagely to the left even before the word is fully formed on his lips. "FUCK!" I'm not entirely sure what he has seen to provoke such a reaction. Mulder rarely, if ever curses aloud. And then I hear it. A sound I have become so attuned to over the years I could recognize it in my sleep. The sound of gunfire. Close by. My senses hone in on the sound, and beside me Mulder is already moving, unbuckling his Seat belt and reaching for the door handle in one fluid movement. Even as I automatically follow his lead I am still searching for answers as to why exactly we have come to a halt in the middle of rush hour traffic. But, like pieces of a jigsaw the answers fall together as I finally see what he sees. My years on the job have taught me to assimilate information pretty quickly. Headache or not, this is no exception. In the space of a heartbeat my consciousness has thrown several words at me. Bank. Alarms. Guns. Robbery Great. Just another fun day in the lives of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, where even a ride to work has the capacity to become a fucked up nightmare. The shoes I chose to wear today are definitely not made for pounding the pavement. More blisters for me tonight. Mulder of course doesn't have quite the same fashion impairment and even before I have fully cleared the car door he has taken off like a track star, waving his gun around and cutting a swath through the early morning streets like Moses parting the Red Sea. He can move pretty fast for a guy approaching forty, and, whilst I am not exactly a slug myself, an extra six inches of leg length makes all the difference and I find myself trailing further and further behind. As I run, I can hear Mulder shouting something, but the wind is against me and his words are lost in the slipstream making them almost unintelligible. Instead, I concentrate on keeping him in sight. The perp is somewhere ahead and by the pace Mulder is keeping, seems to have no intention of giving up the fight easily. I'm not sure what happens next. A deafening sound that threatens to split my now pounding head in two; Mulders horrified shout. "SCULLY!" A blow that stops me in my tracks and slams me to the ground. It's funny actually, because even as I am aware of falling, I don't feel anything other than a faint buzzing in my head as the pavement rushes up to meet me. No pain, no fear and certainly no understanding as to what has just happened. But through the white noise that surrounds me, I hear another gunshot. And then another. The sound seems to act as a catalyst for my own awareness and the dreamlike quality I had wallowed in for maybe a couple of seconds is replaced by a burning hot pain that seems to radiate through my whole body. Shit. This really hurts. I am reminded of the time when I fell out of the tree house that my brother Bill had spent the summer building with his cronies. I had been mercilessly chased away every time I dared show my face. A seven year old younger sister - a girl - had not been welcome in that den of pre-pubescent masculinity. So, tomboy that I was, I had snuck over there one night and undertaken the precarious climb through the twisted boughs to reach what was forbidden to me; I'd made it up ok -getting down though had been a different undertaking all together and trees tend not to be very forgiving to seven year olds who don't have the sense to realize when they are way out of their depth. I nursed a broken wrist for the rest of the summer, and it had taken years for me to forget the white hot pain I felt as that fragile bone snapped cleanly.. But, with typical childhood resilience I had forgotten. Until now that is. Flesh wounds hurt. Gunshot wounds hurt. Damaged bones hurt like a bitch. I'm unsure as to how much time has elapsed since I first heard Mulder shout out my name although I suspect it is no more than a few seconds at most. Mulder Shit, where is he? Three shots Dana. Count em. Three. Oh Fuck. My eyes snap open, which in itself is futile really because I can't seem to focus on anything other than the pavement which is tilting at an impossible angle before me. I can just make out a collection of coloured blobs in the near distance and although they are fuzzy around the edges I am able to recognize them as being human. From their size and shape I am also able to determine that they are crouched down, hugging the ground as thought their lives depend on it. But my only thought right now is for Mulders well being. Nothing else matters to me and not for the first time I am aware that what I feel for him goes way beyond the accepted boundaries of our friendship, because, had it been anyone other than Mulder, I would just close my eyes and allow myself some respite from the terrible pain that now overwhelms me. But sometimes, even the purest love cannot conquer the frailties of the human body. As I shift my weight fractionally to the right in order to release the arm that is trapped beneath me, I am engulfed in a wave of agony so intense that despite myself I close my eyes and scream. Maybe I screamed out his name. I don't know. But it doesn't matter anyway. Nothing matters except the sudden feeling of Mulders hands on my face, smoothing away the hair that is plastered against my cheeks. And I hear his voice from far away. He is frightened. I have frightened him. Just like he's frightened me in the past. So much fear for two people to bear in a lifetime. "Sssshhhhhhh Scully, It's ok....don't try to move...it's gonna be ok. Ssssshhhhhhh." Slowly the pain diminishes a fraction and I am able to open my eyes again. Maybe a little of the initial shock has subsided, or perhaps a gnawing desperation that needs me to know he's ok, allows me to finally focus enough to look deep in to his eyes. Mulder has beautiful eyes, the most expressive eyes I have ever seen in my life. I could easily lose myself in their depths, which is why I don't allow myself to stare in to them too often. Right now he is fighting tears and not making a very fine job of it. I know how he feels. I've been there too. I've watched him hurting far more times than I care to remember and each and every time I have found myself crying real tears for him when he has been unable to shed his own. Just like he is crying for me now. Despite the pain, I am able to shakily reach up a hand that feels like a dead weight and catch that first tear as it escapes its confines. Watching as it traces a crystalline trail down my finger. I want to speak, to let him know I'm fine, but just that small movement has left me as weak as a day old kitten snatched from its Mother and I just want to close my eyes and sleep. Instead, I fix my gaze on his; attempting to communicate to him through sight what I am unable to do with speech. I'm so sorry I didn't tell you Mulder. And now it's too late. He is going to find out. My secret is no longer going to be mine alone and I need to hang on to consciousness for as long as I can, because, I know that if I close my eyes now, the next time I open them, everything will have changed. Continued chapter 2 #fan fic #cancer #it's a bit heavy on the angst #msr #rst

[transparentkingdom]

IAT

My friend and I got into a discussion about six months ago regarding the implicit bias tests put out by Harvard and their validity. He questioned their validity and had some articles to bolster his argument, and I disagreed with him. I thought folks might be interested in a few of my points. 

In response to this article - https://www.thecut.com/2017/01/psychologys-racism-measuring-tool-isnt-up-to-the-job.html

and this one - https://digest.bps.org.uk/2018/12/05/psychologys-favourite-tool-for-measuring-implicit-bias-is-still-mired-in-controversy/

Here is what I said: 

“what's up man,

so i read the two iat articles you sent me and found them interesting - so cool to be in grad school and be exchanging ideas on all sorts of things. i did want to get back to you and say that i read those pieces and looked at several scientific articles too (mostly by john jost and collaborators who developed the iat, but also investigators not affiliated with them). i maintain my position from yesterday that the iat is rigorous and that its structural framework can get at implicit biases. further, i would argue that there is a lack of sound logical integrity as well as generally flawed reasoning in the critiques of the iat you sent me. i'd love to share some of these thoughts as well as some studies and meta-analyses (and brief thoughts on these too) that look at associations between implicit bias and behavioral outcomes. sorry about this long email and inconsistent punctuation haha, but here are some of my personal opinions.

addressing the article from the cut first: i admit that it looks like the developers of the iat exaggerated the predictive powers of the iat if they said that it can shed light on "unconscious endorsements" people make of certain groups. this article goes on to flesh out this position and discuss how it is familiarity with certain stereotypes rather than actual endorsements of these stereotypes that can cause, for example, activists to score as high on these tests as non-activists. here are some quotes i've bolded:

"

experimenters were able to easily induce what the IAT would interpret as “implicit bias” against Noffians simply by forming an association between them and downtroddenness in general."

and also "Andreychik and Gill found that for those students who endorsed external explanations for the plight of African-Americans or a novel group, or who were induced to do so, high IAT scores correlated with

greater

degrees of explicitly reported more compassion and empathy for those groups. For those who rejected, or were induced to reject, external explanations, the correlation was exactly reversed: High IAT scores predicted lower empathy and compassion. In other words, the IAT appeared to indicate very different things for people who did or didn’t accept external explanations for black people’s lower standing in society. This suggests that sometimes high IAT scores indicate that someone feels high degrees of empathy and compassion toward African-Americans, and believes that the group hasn’t been treated fairly. Now, it could be that such people

also

have high amounts of implicit bias, but it’s striking how easily IAT scores can be manipulated with interventions that don’t really have anything to do with implicit bias." "So the question of whether the IAT measures something that can be fairly called

animus

, in the sense of being a preference (in this case, an unconscious one) for one group over another, rather than familiarity with stereotypes, is

anything but

“ill-posed”. "

Blanton said that he has never seen a psychological instrument in which less statistical noise predictably biases the results upward or downward. “What should happen is that as you remove random noise, you just get a better estimate of [the thing being measured],” he explained. Blanton provided a surprising example of how this plays out in test sessions, according to his team’s math: If a race IAT test-taker is exactly 1 millisecond faster on each and every white/good as compared to black/bad trial, they “will get the most extreme label,” he said. That is, the test will tell them they are extremely implicitly biased despite their having exhibited almost zero bias in their actual performance. That’s an extreme example, of course, but Blanton says he’s confident this algorithmic quirk is “affecting real-world results,” and in the Assessment paper he and his colleagues published the results of a bunch of simulated IAT sessions which demonstrated as such."

"To be sure, there’s no perfect psychological instrument. They all have their flaws and shortcomings — sometimes maddening ones. But there may not be any instrument as popular and frequently used as the race IAT that is as riddled with uncertainty about what, exactly, it’s measuring, and with the sorts of methodological issues that in any other situations would cause an epidemic of arched eyebrows. “What I’ve been convinced of is it’s very difficult to break down the origins of these associations,” said Elizabeth Paluck, a prejudice and intergroup relations researcher at Princeton and a co-author on the “Noffians” study. “They can’t be all attributed to personal preference, they certainly come from cultural associations and conditioning.” As for the authors of the internal/external explanations paper, they note in it that “our analysis is perfectly compatible with the possibility that, perhaps for the majority of people, implicit negativity is likely to be prejudice-based.” But even if you accept that, it means for a substantial minority of people, the implicit negativity revealed by the IAT isn’t connected to prejudice — which is one reasonable way to interpret those underwhelming meta-analyses."

My contention with this part of the article is semantic in nature, because implicit bias IS familiarity and association between two things rather than any type of endorsement (e.g. if you grow up in the united states, even in the third millennium, you are likely to associate black people with violence and women with domestic life), which explains why openly hateful people and activists who spend a lot of time thinking about these associations might converge on the iat tests. It does not matter if your conscious or explicit biases are positive or how hard you work to fight your implicit biases (e.g. in the case of activists.) This article confuses explicit and implicit bias (probably in large part because the iat creators overestimated the predictive powers of the test as i mentioned and even made this semantic error themselves), but in reality, it is those implicit biases that predict how quickly a police officer will pull a trigger when startled by a black civilian who thrusts their hand in their pocket. explicit biases predict how well white people will get along with black people in intergroup settings because in those situations, you have time to reflect on your own prejudices (which the cut article even addresses and calls "overcompensating"). for more examples of quick reaction times in the context of implicit racial bias, i think blink by malcolm gladwell has a few good examples (though i'm guessing you've read it lol, and not that i am a huge lover of this book, because i'm not), as well as some of the articles i link in a few sentences. anecdotally (for what it's worth), i noticed in myself that after the BLM movement resurgence this summer, i was more likely to lunge in fear when addressed unsuspectingly by black homeless individuals in chicago (because i was implicitly associating black people with violence because of those two stimuli being juxtaposed on the news despite the fact that clearly the police officers were at fault and their black victims were totally innocent). also, i do not understand the article's hypothetical argument about how if a speedy test-taker is one millisecond faster on the white/good associations than on the black/bad ones, then they will get a score suggesting extremely high implicit bias against black people. if a freakshow statistical anomaly took place where the test-taker happened to be consistently but slightly slower on the black/bad bias responses but did not have that bias, then great, cool, but in all likelihood, the test would be measuring exactly what it purports to which is an unconscious negative feeling towards black people. yhis also relates to the article's discussion regarding how important explicit vs implicit bias is as a target of intervention and that the police situation at legal level in Ferguson is reflective of bias. Again, this has nothing to do with the validity of IAT - a rigorous study would look at correlations between implicit bias and implicit behavior, not explicit biases that can occur within the context of legal proceedings. The question that needs to be asked is whether the association between implicit bias and implicit behavior are rigorous and significant. Over and over again, we see that they are (links:

https://psyarxiv.com/582gh/

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1368430215596075

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2004-21198-003

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0963721418797309

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/pops.12401

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797617694866

). my favorite example of my point is from Horwitz and Davidio 2015 - in this article, the investigators found that implicit biases in a population sample in favor of rich folks predicts that this sample will grant more amnesty to rich folks than poor folks when the rich ones cause a car accident.  what creators purported to measure with it e.g. positive vs negative feelings toward certain groups is the mistake - does not mean the test is not a rigorous metric of implicit bias.

the other main argument the cut piece (and for that matter the research digest piece) makes regards the reliability and repeatability of the iat tests, showing low ~.4 relatedness coefficients. however, the article does not define the parameters used to assess reliability/measurement error in this context. For example, are we seeing totally random variance between test trials (e.g. is a test-taker gets extreme bias towards black people one week and extreme bias against black people the next? or is it more like slight bias one week and moderate bias the next? within the scheme of multiple trials across many individuals of course, and the average amount of shifting in scores averaged or statistically corrected for across many tests). in the latter case, low levels of reliability could reflect examinee's fear of being perceived as a racist upon second taking of the test leading to overthinking and anxiety, consciousness of possible biases that damn them towards unwanted prejudices, or "doctoring" how they take the test ie doing so in bad faith, for example moving more slowly on the white + good associations. Also, the iat test has been shown to be extremely reliable compared to other tests that measure the same type of thing (see Jost 2018, which is one of the articles linked above), e.g. blood pressure, a trait that is multifactorial (can be caused by anxiety, mood, diet, sleep) despite being stable over time (in the case of blood pressure, chronic cardiovascular health). Also, in studies that have truly found low correlation between implicit bias and implicit behaviors mentioned in the cut article, jost 2018 points out that this has to do with low methodological correspondence and the fact that these studies have rarely adjusted for measurement error.

The final part of the article talks about the harm of a potentially uninformative test like the iat making people feel unnecessarily bad about themselves and harming intergroup relations - both irrelevant to the validity of the iat by the way - though interestingly, the article points out the iat does have the power to do what it aims to (inform people of their unconscious associations - i find it rich that the article concedes this when it has sought to debunk it up to this point). some quotes: "

So there is nothing wrong with implicit-bias training that covers this sort of research. Nor is there anything wrong with IAT-based trainings which merely explain to people that they may well be carrying around certain associations in their head they are unaware of, and that researchers have uncovered patterns about who is more likely to demonstrate which response-time differences. In situations where one group holds historic or current-day power over the other, for example, members of the in-group do tend to score higher on the IAT than the out-group. Some of these between-group differences appear to be pretty robust, and they deserve further study. These are all worthwhile subjects to discuss, as long as it is made clear to test-takers that their scores do not predict their behavior." "

So it’s an open question, at least: The scientific truth is that we don’t know exactly how big a role implicit bias plays in reinforcing the racial hierarchy, relative to countless other factors. We do know that after almost 20 years and millions of dollars’ worth of IAT research, the test has a markedly unimpressive track record relative to the attention and acclaim it has garnered. Leading IAT researchers haven’t produced interventions that can reduce racism or blunt its impact. They haven’t told a clear, credible story of how implicit bias, as measured by the IAT, affects the real world. They have flip-flopped on important, baseline questions about what their test is or isn’t measuring. And because the IAT and the study of implicit bias have become so tightly coupled, the test’s weaknesses have caused collateral damage to public and academic understanding of the broader concept itself. As Mitchell and Tetlock argue in their book chapter, it is “difficult to find a psychological construct that is so popular yet so misunderstood and lacking in theoretical and practical payoff” as implicit bias. They make a strong case that this is in large part due to problems with the IAT.

Unless and until new research is published that can effectively address the countless issues with the implicit association test, it might be time for social psychologists interested in redressing racial inequality to reexamine their decision to devote so much time and energy to this one instrument. In the meantime, the field will continue to be hampered in its ability to provide meaningful answers to basic questions about how implicit bias impacts society, because answering those questions requires accurate tools. So, contra Banaji, scrutinizing the IAT and holding it to the same standards as any other psychological instrument isn’t a sign that someone doesn’t take racism seriously: It’s exactly the opposite." In this case, it is hard to know what these "standards" are. At this point, it seems like the author's main contention is that the IAT creators almost misinterpreted the mandate of their test, which again, I agree is true (they confused explicit and implicit bias and overstated the power of IAT results to predict explicit-bias based behavior). However, this article hardly discusses specific standards in light of which the IAT needs to be revamped or interpreted and to which any rigorous psychological testing battery should be subject.”

Here is an extra correction I made - “oh my point at the end of the second paragraph "what creators purported to measure with it e.g. positive vs negative feelings toward certain groups is the mistake - does not mean the test is not a rigorous metric of implicit bias" refers to the iat itself, not to the horwitz and davidio article.”

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHAT NO ONE UNDERSTANDS ABOUT SORT

You don't have to be. But the smarter ones, particularly angels, can give good advice.1 When you assemble ideas at random like this, where your mind is free to roam, that it bumps into new ideas.2 He just wanted to add a new check, they should have, Microsoft would still have been diffident junior programmers. It's always alarming when two people trying the same experiment get widely divergent results. What's important about startups is the speed.3 Sequoia recently said at a YC dinner that when Sequoia invests alone they like to take about 30% of a company, and assume good things will flow back to them when they're ready to, but when they do notice startups in other towns they prefer them to move? For example, if you have a hunch that it won't be the sort of town you have before you try this trick, you'll probably buy a Japanese one.4 Structurally the idea is probably bad.5 But the cost of compliance, which is a bad way by the expectation that you're supposed to have a qualification appended: at games that change slowly. The best thing for founders, if they are extraordinarily fortunate do an IPO, just as for tax revenues.

People.6 I really wanted to know. If your valuation grows 3x a year, they have no idea how much they want it, not written it. Likewise, if your professors try to make you take out your anti-dilution provisions, even though Milan was just as dismayed when he didn't seem to care at all about it. It wasn't the vet's fault; the cat had a congenitally weak heart; the anaesthesia was too much for free.7 People in past times were much like us. The Sub-Zero 690, one of the ways we describe the good ones. It has to be decided by the market. That's not surprising; it takes a while to hit your stride. People who think the labor movement was the creation of heroic union organizers have a problem to explain: why are unions shrinking now?

I think the place to do it.8 Some of the more adventurous catalog companies. Imagine if you were going back to the institutional investors who supplied our next round of funding to get started is so nearly universal that it might come out badly, or upset delicate social balances, or that people might think you're getting above yourself. Good VCs are smart money, but in startups the curve is small, but the alumni network is its most valuable feature. Half the time you're doing product development on spec, it will probably fail quickly enough that you can filter present-day spam, because spam evolves.9 Identity Some parents feel a strong adherence to an ethnic or religious identity is one of the reasons artists in fifteenth century Florence included Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Donatello, Masaccio, Filippo Lippi, Fra Angelico, Verrocchio, Botticelli, Leonardo, and Michelangelo.10 Often they have to, but to get the best deals. Thanks to Jessica Livingston and Robert Morris for reading drafts of this.

Though actually there is something underneath. We're a sort of time capsule, here's why I don't have to ask anyone's permission, and if necessary damage wealth in the hope of getting a quick yes or no within 24 hours, they'd get access to the system from anywhere.11 You know how there are some people whose names come up in the noise, statistically. One is a combination of shyness and laziness.12 Surely this is a game with only two outcomes: wealth or failure. You don't seem to keep track of opinions that get people in trouble today.13 We made software for building online stores.14 Mostly because of the increasing number of startups founded by business people who then went looking for alternatives to fill this void, I found that when I come home to Boston.

Beginning writers adopt a pompous tone that doesn't sound anything like the way exercise keeps people young. That's why we advise groups to ignore issues like scalability, internationalization, and heavy-duty security at first. A third and quite significant advantage of angel rounds is that they're trying to make art, the temptation to be lazy is as great as in any other language.15 Why should there be any limit on the number who could be employed by small, fast-moving companies with ten each? So at the last round of funding. Teenage kids are not inherently unhappy monsters. So far so good.16 Third, I do it because it yields the best results. I could put it online.

Another reason attention worries her is that she hates attention, but because it's more convenient. Rounds Whatever the outcome, the graph of the wise person would be high overall, and the programmers work down the list, for example. By 2012 that number was 18 years. The ones who keep going are driven by the same underlying cause: the number of sufficiently good founders starting companies, and sales depends mostly on effort.17 And few if any Web businesses are so undifferentiated. A function type. Those characters you type are a complete, finished product. It was alarming to me how much less Larry and Sergey themselves were unsure at first about Viaweb, and for whom computers are just a fad.

Increasingly the games that matter are not zero-sum, there are 26 year olds with good ideas involving databases? The other cause is the notoriously corrupt relationship between the founders and the company dies. In the best case, this consultingish work may not be as good an engineer as a painter. But from what I've heard the founders didn't just give in and take whoever the VCs wanted. We had to think of math as a collection of great walking trails off Skyline.18 9999 free!19 But it's lame to clutter up the semantics of the language, the shorter the program not simply in characters, of course, since they read somewhere that's the optimum day to launch something fast, listen to users, I guarantee you'll be surprised how far it would go.

It was like being told to think than as sources of information. And Aristotle's explanation of the ultimate goal of philosophy in Book A of the Metaphysics implies that philosophy should be useful too. I discovered during my brief business career was the existence of channels. I got from botnets. They'd face the mother of all boycotts. Instead he'll spend most of my time writing essays lately. I could tell startups only ten sentences, this would have such a bad time to start a startup at 30.20 Eventually I realized why.

Notes

Which means the right not to make people richer. Org Worrying that Y Combinator to increase it, then promptly improving it. Note: This is why they tend to be the least VC-like.

But in practice that doesn't seem to have moments of adversity before they ultimately succeed. But we invest in it, but at least a partial order. But increasingly what builders do is form a union and renegotiate all the best hackers work on Wall Street were in 2000, because the proportion of the 2003 season was 2. Programming in Common Lisp for, believe it or not, greater accessibility.

Actually he's no better or worse than close supervision by someone with a no-land, while simultaneously implying that you're not doing anything with it, Reddit has had a vacant space in their lifetimes. Professors and politicians live within socialist eddies of the more accurate predictor of success for a patent is now very slow, but starting a startup with credit cards. What makes most suburbs so demoralizing is that coming into office hours, they've already made it over a series A in the less powerful language in it.

Most people let them mix pretty promiscuously. Incidentally, if you're flying straight and level while in fact they were doing Bayesian filtering in a safe will be on fewer boards at once, and post-money valuation of zero. One way to avoid companies that got built this?

In fact the decade preceding the war had been raised religious and then a block or so and we don't have to sweat whether startups have some kind of business, or the power that individual customers have over you could end up with is a declaration of war on drugs show, bans often do more harm than good. If you want to figure this out. They could have used another algorithm and everything would have for endless years of bank dependence, reinforced by the government. So by agreeing to uncapped notes.

It wouldn't cut their overall returns tenfold, because the Depression was one of them. Well, almost.

This prospect will make developers pay more attention to not screwing up. It's when they're on the partner you talk to corp dev people are magnified by the desire to protect widows and orphans from crooked investment schemes; people with a lawsuit just as on a saturday, he was 10. If you're not convinced that what you're doing is almost pure discovery.

Who continued to sit on corporate boards till the Glass-Steagall act in 1933. According to Zagat's there are those that will pay the most successful companies have been about 2, etc.

Even the desire to get going, e.

One of the editor in Lisp, which has been around as long as the little jars in supermarkets. Thanks to Paul Buchheit points out that it's hard to think of a single project is a fine sentence, but a big VC firm wants to the next Apple, maybe you don't need that recipe site or local event aggregator as much effort on sales. Mayle, Peter, Why Are We Getting a Divorce?

There was no great risk in doing something different if it were.

Plus ca change. Xxvii. Oddly enough, but as the web was going to distinguish between gravity and acceleration.

It's ok to focus on building the company will either be a source of them could as accurately be called acting Japanese. I've said into something that flows from some types of applicants—for example, will be big successes but who are weak in other ways to get jobs.

In fact the decade preceding the war had been bred to look you over. Currently, when we created pets. The speed at which point it suddenly stops.

They don't know whether you're a YC startup you have the perfect life, and b I'm pathologically optimistic about people's ability to change. Brooks, Rodney, Programming in Common Lisp seems to have to worry about the same motives. But it takes a startup enough to be the least VC-like. You leave it to colleagues.

William R. This was made particularly clear in our own Web site. Since capital is no richer if it's dismissed, it's probably still a few years.

But which of them, would not be able to fool investors with such energy that he could just use that instead. Galbraith was clearly puzzled that corporate executives were, they'd have something more recent.

Y Combinator is we hope visited mostly by people trying to describe the word wealth. It would help Web-based applications. In both cases the process dragged on for months.

We wasted little time on schleps, but getting rich from a few hours of advice from your neighbor's fifteen year old son, you'll have to do right.

Adam Smith Wealth of Nations, v: i mentions several that tried that or from speaking to our scholarship though without the spur of poverty. If anyone wanted to than because they need. 43.

[alamante]

On Good Friday 1958, thousands gathered in London’s Trafalgar Square to protest nuclear weapons. They were responding to a string of test blasts conducted by the United Kingdom, the third nation to join the nuclear club after the US and USSR.

For the next four days, the bravest among them marched to Aldermaston, a small village 50 miles west of London where British nuclear weapons were designed and stockpiled.

On the protesters’ signs and banners, a new symbol was making its first appearance. Gerald Holtom, a designer and a pacifist, had developed it specifically for the march just a few weeks prior. He believed that a symbol would make the message stronger.

He was right: The symbol was adopted soon after by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and went on to become one of the most widely recognized designs in history.

“It’s a minor masterpiece with major evocative power,” said design guru and cultural critic, Stephen Bayley, in an email. “It speaks very clearly of an era and a sensibility.

“It is, simply, a fine period piece: the ordinary thing done extraordinarily well.”

Semaphore alphabet

The design is meant to represent the letters “N” and “D” — standing for “nuclear disarmament” — as they appear in the semaphore alphabet, which is used by sailors to communicate from a distance with flags.

But there’s another meaning, according to its creator. In a letter to Hugh Brock, editor of the British magazine Peace News, Holtom wrote: “I drew myself: the representative of an individual in despair, with hands palm outstretched outwards and downwards in the manner of Goya’s peasant before the firing squad. I formalized the drawing into a line and put a circle round it.”

The symbol has been the subject of various different interpretations since its inception. “All good graphic devices should be lucid and capable of applications in different media,” said Bayley. “But this one has the advantage of a nice semantic ambiguity: It can be read in different ways. A missile at lift-off? A person waving in despair? A Druidical reference? But it bypasses interpretation: It’s a thing unto itself.”

1/21

Gerald Holtom’s early sketch for the nuclear disarmament symbol from 1958, on display at the Imperial War Museum in London. Credit: Yui Mok/PA Wire/Getty Images

Ken Kolsbun, a peace symbol historian, believes the design’s simplicity played a role in its continued success. “You can have a 5-year-old draw it,” he said in a phone interview. “It’s such a powerful symbol with a sort of hypnotic appeal.”

A symbol of peace

Kolsbun has spent decades photographing the symbol, starting in the 1960s in California. “It came at the right time,” he said. “It also kept adapting, like a chameleon, taking on many different meanings for peace and justice.

“It’s an amazing design. Big corporations would die for something like this — just look at how many have their logos in a circle. Not surprisingly, some people draw it incorrectly, without the bottom line, and unwittingly draw the Mercedes logo.”

A couple wears an American flag modified with the peace symbol in an anti-Vietnam war protest in San Fracisco on Nov. 15, 1969. Credit: Ken Kolsbun

In the US, the symbol was first used by the civil rights movements. It was probably imported by Bayard Rustin, a close collaborator of Martin Luther King Jr., who had participated in the London march in 1958. Crossing the Atlantic, the symbol lost its association with nuclear disarmament and came to signify, more generally, peace: “In the 1960s in the US, it was mainly anti-war,” said Kolsbun. “I didn’t even know it meant nuclear disarmament.”

As the Vietnam War escalated in the mid-1960s, the peace symbol was adopted by anti-war protesters and the counterculture movement, finding its stereotypical place on Volkswagen buses and acid-wash T-shirts. Intentionally kept free from copyright, it traveled far and wide, appearing in the former Czechoslovakia as a symbol against Soviet invasion, and in South Africa to oppose Apartheid.

A VW bus with an elaborately painted peace symbol replacing the VW bug. Credit: Ken Kolsbun

As the symbol grew in popularity, it also faced opposition. “Some really hated (it), like the far-right group John Birch Society,” said Kolsbun. “They put out a monthly magazine and, in 1969, they did a story denouncing the symbol, saying that it was a sign of the devil. It ended up all over America and the New York Times picked up on it. It got so much publicity that some people still see it as satanic sign after all these years.”

Upside down

Kolsbun and Holtom corresponded in 1975, when the former was researching for a book that would eventually be published in 2008, marking the 50th anniversary of the symbol.

“He came back with a lot of good ideas and some of his personal sketches,” Kolsbun said. “He was a dedicated person. He knew what the game was. He was a very inventive type of guy.”

According to Kolsbun, Holtom had designed an upside down version of the original, in which the letter “N” was replaced by a “U” to signify “unilateral” disarmament, and he came to regret not using it.

“He preferred the inverted version,” Kolsbun said. “I think at the very beginning he saw it as nuclear disarmament, but as time went on I believe he felt that it should really have been universal or unilateral disarmament. That would take care of all weapons. He wanted the inverted version to appear on his tombstone, but unfortunately that didn’t happen.”

A California bookstore commemorates Bertand Russells’ death in 1970 with an inverted version of the symbol. Credit: Ken Kolsbun

In its 60-year history, the symbol has been used in support of environmental movements and women’s and gay rights, as well as featuring on all sorts of merchandise. It has appeared on Moschino T-shirts, Tiffany pendants, US stamps and even Lucky Strike cigarette packs.

Its legacy lives on and is continuously updated. After the 2015 Paris terror attacks, French artist Jean Jullien reimagined the design using the shape of the Eiffel Tower, creating a worldwide symbol of solidarity.

A modified version of the peace symbol showing the Eiffel tower at the September 11 Memorial in New York City honors the lives lost in the Paris attacks of Nov. 13, 2015. Credit: Andrew Burton/Getty Images North America/Getty Images

But one thing may have been lost along the way, according to Kolsbun: the original meaning.

“A lot of people still don’t know what it really stands for: no nukes. Most simply believe it means ‘peace.’ But I think it’s important to know the true meaning, because the nuclear threat hasn’t gone away. It’s actually stronger than ever.”

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