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alderaani · 3 years

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more than gold

summary: A lost Jedi Temple, a riddle, some literature, and feelings that Cody isn't ready to speak out loud. | AO3

note: written for @codywanweek and the alt day 5 prompt Sith/Jedi Artefact Shenanigans! sliding in on the last day with one more thing written than expected, so i’m happy with that! i’m pretty ill today so i hope it actually makes some coherent sense 😂 also if the riddle was super obvious, soz, never written one before and turns out it’s really hard.

“You know, I could have sworn I told you not to touch that,” Cody says conversationally, from where he’s splayed out on his back.

“Really? I’m sure I didn’t hear you,” Obi-Wan says, cheerful despite being crumpled in a heap. His elbow is in Cody’s gut. Cody glares at him.

The room they’re lying in is circular, stone, carved out of some Forced-damned mountain and according to Obi-wan, practically thrumming with power. The ceiling is high and vaulted, letting in slivers of light where intricate mirror systems catch the sunlight of double suns and project it deep underground. It takes on a slightly blue cast, reflecting off the huge pool of water they were lucky to not fall into. Four walkways at each cardinal point lead to a central platform, and interspersed between them are four waterfalls.

It should be serene. Except now the waterfalls are travelling backwards, and all the doors, including the one they came in by, are blocked. Cody scrambles up onto his elbows, dislodging Obi-Wan with a grunt.

“What did you do?”

Obi-Wan follows his gaze and gasps, delighted. “Now, will you look at that?”

Cody is looking. Frankly, he doesn’t trust this place enough to not keep his eye on it at all times. Obi-Wan keeps saying that this temple was built long ago, by ancient, peaceful Jedi as a place of learning, and that it won’t hurt them. After they got cut off from the rest of their men at the entrance, however, Cody thinks he could be forgiven for having his doubts.

As Obi-Wan himself proves, peace-keeping hardly rules out danger.

“Amazing,” Obi-Wan breathes, hoisting himself to his feet without a second glance, to walk back up to the plinth and stalk round it, examining the incomprehensible runes engraved there.

Cody is left to peel himself off the floor, and instead goes to prod at the barriers now sealing the exits with the end of his blaster. He tries not to look too much at Obi-Wan, at the soft sweep of his hair and the span of his shoulders. Being on their own like this is something he’s avoided, of late - not because he doesn’t enjoy it, but because he’s starting to enjoy it all too much.

He doesn’t trust the way his heart leaps when Obi-Wan smiles, when he asks him to call him ‘Obi-Wan’, when the cycle draws on and they’re up late again, companionably finishing reports and debating strategy. Or, as they had been doing until Cody got cold feet and started finding excuses, debating novels, which Obi-Wan checked out of the Temple archives and read aloud, one chapter at a time, before they turned in for the night.

He doesn’t trust himself not to ruin this by overstepping. There’s something about his general that makes him lose all control of his tongue, and puts him in danger of voicing thoughts that really he should not be having at all.

It’s agony. It’s bliss. It’s stretching him to breaking point, and this is possibly the worst situation they could have ended up in, really.

“These are made out of water,” he says over his shoulder, grunting as he tries to push his blaster through. He is, of course, unsuccessful.

“Ingenious,” Obi-Wan says. “How did they manage that, I wonder?”

Cody cuts a glance back at him, and grins, despite his exasperation.

“You’re not more worried about how we’re going to get out?”

Obi-Wan waves a hand. “I’m sure the path will reveal itself, in time. Oh, look - Cody, I think this is a puzzle!”

Cody bites back a groan. They do not have time for this. They never really had time for it, but Obi-Wan promised it would be a brief detour on their way to the capital for hyperspace lane access negotiations. He’d looked so excited by recon reports of a lost temple that Cody just hadn’t been able to say no. He’s never able to say no to Obi-Wan, even when he isn’t following orders. It’s probably his fatal flaw.

“I don’t suppose there’s an off switch? A back button?” He asks hopelessly. The Force, at least the Jedi sort, very rarely seems to work that way. Obi-Wan is always talking about moving through problems, about seeking balance and adapting to what’s around you, rather than manipulating it. It’s not Cody’s favoured approach; he was trained to leverage his environment to its maximum advantage, and finds he has little patience for anything else.

Obi-Wan snorts. “This is a defensive mechanism, I’m afraid. Judging by the architecture this was built at the height of the Sith Wars. This artefact is designed to trap us here until we understand the mechanism and progress, or until, back when the temple was occupied, someone would come and deal with the intruder.”

“That doesn’t sound very peaceful,” Cody says.

Obi-Wan shoots him an amused look, the warm, soft kind that makes heat rise from the pit of Cody’s belly right up to his ears.

“Even a pacifist may defend himself,” he says, then leans over the pedestal. “Now, how about you stop grousing and come help me with this?”

Cody rolls his eyes, but goes, slinging his blaster across his back and crossing his arms.

“And stop looming,” Obi-Wan laughs, catching one of Cody’s gloved hands and pulling it down to rest at his side. The simple touch makes Cody’s cheeks burn.

“Don’t see what help I can give you, Sir,” he says, frowning down at the characters surrounding the bright blue artefact. “I was never any good at Ithorian.”

Obi-Wan pauses, then tilts his head up. “Ah. Is that what it is?”

“I - I think so?” Cody was never any good at his language flashtraining; he never had the proper patience for it, but he can usually figure out the basics.

“No, no,” Obi-Wan muses, stroking at his beard with his free hand. “You’re quite right. Goodness me, it's been a long time since I last saw this dialect. Let’s see now…”

Cody steps back and waits, keeping his attention firmly split between their blocked exit points while Obi-Wan ponders. The slow upward movement of the waterfalls is eerie - it still makes noise, but none of it is right. Instead of the gentle patter he expects of water joining a larger pool, there’s a faint gurgling as they move further into each grate, travelling somewhere he cannot see.

Obi-Wan finishes his fifth circle round the platform, and the hand at his chin goes still. Cody stands at attention, expectant.

“It’s a riddle,” Obi-Wan says, and if possible, his delight grows. “Yes - the language is coming back to me now. Do you know, I haven’t looked at Ithorian in maybe 12 years?”

“Sir?” Cody says, tilting his head to look at the characters more closely. He doesn’t have even a passing proficiency at modern Ithorian, and presumably it’s changed a bit over the millennia. His training was focused on the basics, and only the useful bits, at that. He thinks he can make out the words for ‘ water ’, and ‘ enemy’ , both of which are either unhelpfully descriptive or frankly discouraging, but that’s about the extent of it.

“My old master - he loved prophecies. When I was a teenager I could never see the point of it, but it meant I spent a lot of time learning the old Ithorian dialects. They’re known as the most peaceful species, did you know?” Obi-Wan shakes his head. “They’ll exile anyone violent, it’s quite remarkable, really. I suppose in some sort of idealistic emulation, a lot of the early Jedi texts are written in their dialect.”

His blue eyes are keen, his laser sharp focus firmly on the podium. It gives Cody a moment to observe his clever fingers, the long line of his neck, the open delight with which he tackles this new problem. It’s a rare thing, to see him so relaxed, and Cody can’t help the fond smile that creeps up on him despite the circumstances. This almost makes it worth it, and on reflection, he’d rather an ancient temple than the last thing that had made Obi-Wan so happy; a wretched, bioluminescent fungus, which had infected half the battalion and given them hives. Their general had studied it for weeks.

Obi-Wan’s lips quirk up. Cody barely trusts himself to speak.

“I didn’t know, Sir,” Cody croaks, then pauses, fishing for something normal to say. “Didn’t we have to defend the governor’s daughter from an Ithorian bounty hunter on Ganaris-IV?”

“Well,” Obi-Wan grins. “Those exiles have to go somewhere, don’t they?”

Cody huffs a laugh and reaches up to scratch his neck at the seam of his bucket.

“Let’s just hope they didn’t all come here. What’s this riddle, then?”

Obi-Wan shifts to the side, then points at a spot on the podium. “As I said, it’s been a long time, but I think it starts here, and goes something like:

A thing to be forged, where water is thicker,

Worth more than gold, unless it’s pyrite that glitters.

An enemy of my enemy, or in hard times, in need,

Sometimes fair-weather, or in high places indeed.

What are you, traveller? ”

All of Cody’s hopes that it would be something nice and obvious, like “lightsaber” or, given what’s going on around them, “gravity”, escape from him like smoke. Jedi and their metaphors. It’s not just a quirk of Obi-Wan’s, clearly.

“Does that mean anything to you, Sir?” he asks, turning the words over in his head once, twice, then frowning when nothing comes immediately.

Obi-Wan’s brow is also furrowed, but in a leisurely, meditative manner.

“...I have some ideas, I think,” he says. “How about you, my friend?”

What does he think? He thinks that there are other sorts of puzzles he is much better suited to. Word play and idioms...what does a clone have to offer that?

Still, Obi-Wan is watching him, expectant and gentle, and he sifts back through the lines, a little more seriously this time.

“Ice, maybe?”

Obi-Wan nods, slowly. “Perhaps. Walk me through it.”

Cody swallows. “Ice is something that can be made, right? It’s not exactly forged, but…”

He trails off in uncertainty.

“Go on,” Obi-Wan says with another one of those soft, devastating smiles. It fractures all the thoughts in Cody’s head, and he has to stop, clear his throat and gather up all the pieces.

“I suppose...it’s just thicker water, isn’t it? On warm planets it’s a valuable commodity, it’s found in high places, and I suppose if you wanted snow, a freeze would be fair weather.”

Obi-Wan is rubbing his beard again, and he’s still smiling. “Fascinating. I would never have thought of that...only, I don’t think it’s quite there. That mention of pyrite is troublesome, and the ‘enemy of my enemy’, where does that fit in?”

Cody shrugs his shoulders, frustrated, and feels a hot flush creep up his neck. “Don’t know why you’re asking me, to be honest, Sir. Kamino hardly covered poetry.”

There’s a slight pause, then Obi-Wan’s hand is on his again, tugging it slowly down from where he’s crossed his arms.

“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” he says, soft.

“Do what?” Cody’s voice is gruff.

“Dismiss yourself. You do it sometimes when we’re reading together. There is often no right and wrong answer to these things, no secret. There is only perspective, and you see things I never would, if only you would trust yourself.”

Cody looks down and away, back towards the waterfalls and their slow, glacial climb. He isn’t sure that’s true. He enjoys what Obi-Wan shares with him, what other lives he gets to touch in their books, but more than anything they convince him that, beyond war, he knows very little of anything at all. He would like to, someday.

His eyes land on Obi-Wan’s lips briefly, before he tears them away. Particular experiences he would like to know more than others.

There was one book that Obi-Wan had read early on, back when this infatuation was just setting its first tendrils into him, about a forbidden romance at the heart of the old Mandalorian court. Two heirs of rival clans battling to be together against the good approval of their noble relatives. It had been torrid, ridiculous and entirely unexpected when Obi-Wan had suggested they break up their reports with some literature.

But what it had done was give him the words to express the crawling heat in his stomach, the urge he has to reach out, to touch, to soothe, to care for. He’d known what he wanted before that, of course, in a more rudimentary manner, but it had gifted him the language of yearning.

Suddenly, a particular passage springs into his mind and he straightens.

“You don’t think it could mean ally, do you? In Beneath the Armour, Mata threatens Clan Riza by saying he has ‘allies in high places’.”

Obi-Wan pauses, and then a brilliant smile spreads over his face. “Yes, that’s it! Pyrite - Fool’s Gold; a false friend! Brilliant Cody, whatever made you think of that?”

Cody grins, even though Obi-Wan can’t see it, and doesn’t answer.

“Is that really it?”

“I think you’re very close,” Obi-Wan says. “The characters engraved into the platform...yes! Stand close to me, Commander.”

Cody does, watching curiously as Obi-Wan lifts his hands, shuts his eyes, frowns, and pushes . Six blocks that make up the platform lift, the characters on each glowing bright, lurid blue. Under their feet, something scrapes, shifts and clunks, before the platform lurches upwards, spinning gently.

There’s a thunderous gurgling sound, before all of the pool beneath drains away.

“The answer,” Obi-Wan says, slightly breathless, his hair a little out of place. “Was friend.”

“The doorways are still blocked,” Cody notes drily. The plinth with the blue orb that started this whole mess has also risen, and underneath it are a set of very wet, slimy looking steps. “I don’t suppose it’s as simple as just walking down these and getting in?”

“Likely not,” Obi-Wan agrees, then inexplicably shifts a little closer, so that they are sharing space. Cody’s heart skips a beat. “But it’s like I told you, Cody. You are far greater than what you have been given.”

Cody coughs and looks at his feet, at their boots almost toe to toe, pleasure at the praise singing low through his body.

“Now,” Obi-Wan says, too close and not close enough. “How do you feel about another puzzle?”

Cody groans, laughing, and after a moment, follows his General into the dark.

#codywanweek2021 #codywan #obi wan kenobi #commander cody #alderwrites #i would tag this jedi culture but i literally pulled this out of my ass #there is absolutely no basis in canon here #only vibes #the clone wars #star wars #codywan week 2021

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violasmirabiles · 4 years

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got tagged by @panwriter, thank you xx

1. what do you prefer to be called name-wise? ali. pronounce it however you like i dont really care lol

2. when is your birthday? march 26. so just a few weeks from now. oh boy

3. where do you live? joensuu, finland babey

4. three things you are doing right now? pretending im reading the essays i shouldve read for methodology class weeks ago, making a list of things i need to get from the university library (and where those books are exactly - i dont actually go to the uni library very often at all but for some reason rather many of the books i need arent available as ebooks), trying to drink the second bucket of coffee of the day without spilling it everywhere

5. four fandoms that have piqued your interest? re-animator; stephen king multiverse (was gonna just say the shining and doctor sleep but we all know its more than that); saw franchise; the godfather. though with sk and godfather im basically just playing in my own little isolated sandbox and im more than fine with that thank you

6. how has the pandemic been treating you? ah well. its been treating me. got my ba degree and generally have been able to study more so thats good. spent five months with my family in tampere last year and itd probably be good for me to go there again but as it is im stuck in my apartment because of doctors appointments. like thats the only reason i cant just Go. also i recently realized i havent seen my grandma in over a year and cried about that. choir stuff is obviously all fucky and uncertain. also having time to think about things and stuff means ive been figuring out gender stuff so thats been.....interesting....and energy consuming.....and crisis inducing

7. a song you can’t stop listening to right now? täällä on joku by absoluuttinen nollapiste, its finnish weirdness hours in my head 247

8. recommend a movie. i mean, yeah, re-animator

9. how old are you? 25. 26 in a few weeks

10. school, university, occupation, other? university of eastern finland, babey! english language and culture major, literature minor. did my ba thesis on the shining. the novel, fuck the kubrick film, and wouldnt have been allowed to do my thesis about a film anyway. so right now im a masters student and will start working on my ma thesis next year, trying to get as many classes out of the way before that as possible. dont know what im gonna be once i graduate and id really rather not think about that but i do like studying in spite of everything

11. do you prefer heat or cold? heat. but, like... thats relative, isnt it? what i consider warm is Definitely Not warm to someone who lives in, like, texas. and i Tolerate cold and, christ i dont know. my favorite season is spring.

12. name one fact others may not know about you. once came second in a school skiing competition! i was ten. we didnt get medals, we got like pins/brooches and i still have my silver brooch somewhere

13. are you shy? sometimes. often. im anxious

14. pronouns? they/them. like i said ive been trying to figure out gender stuff and the only thing im Very sure of is that i am Not Cis, and im scared, and i get easily defensive about it all, and i have a lot of internalized issues i need to work on. gendered pronouns are like my number one personal enemy, i need the sort of....neutrality, ambiguity, yknow. finnish does not Have gendered pronouns, we have hän for he/she/they/every neopronoun - and we dont even fucking use that one, everyones just se (it) and thats all fine and dandy when you dont want to Think about your Gender every time someone refers to you and im rambling because i am once again getting defensive for no reason sdfdsfs yeah theres still a lot to unload here i swear were getting there

15. biggest pet peeves? on a bad day? everything. but to give an actual answer, people not realizing their experiences are not universal and that their actions can and will have an effect on others

16. what is your favorite “-dere” type? glad to say im temporarily illiterate so i dont know what this says

17. rate your life from 1 to 10, 1 being crappy and 10 being the best it could be im afraid i cant do that luv i dont want to have a breakdown

18. what’s your main blog? this one babey

19. list your side blogs and what they’re used for. i have @ihmekukkavesi for my photography and @shineondoc for university hell and occasional doctor sleep/the shining yelling. im not gonna call it my studyblr cos it....its really not....its not. im not a good student. im not organized, i dont feel like im Doing This right. im definitely not exemplary. everything becomes a crisis and i need to let it out somewhere and thats what shineondoc is for.

20. is there something people need to know about you before becoming friend? oh boy. uh. im not good at keeping a conversation going. yet at the same time i cannot fucking shut up if were talking about something im excited about. i dont know how Real this is but i feel like i might come across as like...arrogant or something but i swear im just scared and trying to keep myself from Rambling(tm) and. well. trying to sound like a normal fucking person.

tagging @nowendil @appelssiini @librarytraveller @sailonacrossthesea @stokoetopia @kirsikkaprinsessa and anyone whos bored and wants to do this

#got tagged #once again. no pressure if you dont feel like doing this

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amosanguis · 5 years

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i have a lot of feelings about how different aos kirk and tos kirk are. *taken from a twitter rant and only edited slightly*

aos kirk has a lot more shit to deal with than tos kirk did –

he was shot straight up the chain w/o "being a kid" so to speak

it's my headcanon that him driving frank's car off the cliff led frank to send him to tarsus iv (in the #collisioncourse novel, george kirk is the one who sends his own son to tarsus iv)

the enterprise itself gets to live a much longer life - pike has her for a few years before kirk takes over; aos kirk doesn't even make it through their first five-year mission before the ship is destroyed (i have some feelings about this too, ugh ugh ugh)

tos kirk is so hesitant to kill even in defense of himself/the crew; but aos kirk is forced to in ****his first mission as captain**** when he destroys nero's ship (+everything that happened on vulcan, like, jfc, just fuck off, i'm not gonna start in on survivor's guilt and SPOCK or even CHEKOV)

there's that whole business of him being the one to die in STID, instead of spock, and yeah, tos kirk "died" a few times, too, but let's talk again about how much more *experience* he had in starfleet and space missions and all the bullshit that can happen than aos kirk.

relatively speaking, aos kirk is BABY - a genius baby, yes, but knowing and reading about how things go is VERY DIFFERENT than having first-hand experience.

i'm sure there'a lot of officers out there who are furious that aos kirk has jumped straight to the top - there's only something like 12? starship captains and kirk was literally still in the academy (i'm assuming he went back and finished his courses while the enterprise was undergoing repairs after the first movie) but i can't imagine what kind of grief/bs he's dealt w from other captains - not even pike can protect him from politics and gossip

gdi where was i? i got distracted.

EXPERIENCE IS IMPORTANT and tos kirk has it where aos kirk does not, SO where tos kirk may be smoother at working things out, aos kirk being rougher about it - maybe more people injured/dead, he's far less hesitant to kill than tos kirk is, the enterprise not quite making it through the first five-year mission - makes sense.

and i'm sad about it.

tl;dr

aos kirk has all the same responsibilities as tos kirk but almost none of the critical starting foundation which predictably has devastating consequences despite everyone's (and not just the main 7, STB shows BEAUTIFULLY aos kirk's relationship w his crew and I WILL CRY FOREVER) v best efforts and that

h u r t s

so fucking

m u c h.

I've been binging on TOS and gdi it just makes me SAD thinking about how AOS Kirk would deal with some of these things.

#star trek tos #star trek aos #jim kirk #how i love thee #character study #this is relevant to my latest fic #rant #character theory #rolling into the club a hundred years too late like #what up wanna talk about james tiberius kirk

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ahiddenpath · 6 years

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Seven Years of Writing Fanfics

I’m being a little premature- I’ll celebrate seven years of writing as ahiddenpath in September- but I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what I’ve learned. Please read on if you want to hear about the writing habits I wish I had when I started in 2012, and about the habits I wish I didn’t have back then!

I’ll also be talking about my writing plans in general. Check it out below the cut!

1.) Make a story bible.

A story bible is a reference document for your story. Before you post a new fic, I strongly suggest creating one. For digimon specifically, this means making some choices before you begin:

Which version of the character names will you use? Do you intend to remain consistent with this choice? For example, I’ve seen a lot of writers use Japanese character names and English digimon names. Will you use official honorifics? Custom honorifics? Will you use terminology from one translation of the show, or a mashup?

Make these choices upfront, create reference charts, and remain consistent.

After that, you can also keep references for topics such as characterization details (if you say that Bob’s favorite drink is coffee in one chapter and tea twenty chapters later, be prepared for a flood of comments pointing out the inconsistency), setting details, and anything that you don’t want to forget. Spending half an hour hunting down a silly detail instead of writing is a huge bummer.

Growing Up with You is my worst offender of ‘problems a story bible would have fixed.’ It’s got... every issue you can imagine, lol! For example, pairing Hikari with Gatomon (instead of Tailmon), using ‘digitama’ and ‘digimental’ interchangeably in the 02 arc, using the English terms for evolution stages while using Japanese names for other things, confusing Bakemon and Bakumon, it’s a mess. It’s so bad that a complete, painstaking edit is the only thing that can fix it... Which is enough to make me weep, given that the story is over 400K words long.

Organize yourself before you start. Here’s a link to some printable Digimon Adventure and Digimon Adventure 02 references.

2.) Avoid Longfics.

I know I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating. NEVER PUBLISH A NEW STORY WITHOUT HAVING AN ENDING IN SIGHT FROM THE BEGINNING.

I’m not saying you can’t write huge, epic tales. God knows I’m unlikely to stop doing that. But, if I could go back in time, I would separate Growing Up with You into four fics. It would be something like this:

Growing Up with You I: Childhood

Growing Up with You II: Digimon Adventure

Growing Up with You III: Liminal Space

Growing Up with You IV: Digimon Adventure 02

I’m sure some arcs would be longer than others, but this way, I’d have four stories that are roughly 100K words long.

A lot of folks just... don’t want to read a 400K story. It’s intimidating, man! Although it varies by genre, the average word count for a fiction novel aimed at adults is 80K words. That 400K fic is like FIVE NOVELS, DUDE!!!! That’s a commitment for readers!

Shorter stories are more reader friendly, but there’s also a huge benefit to you, the writer. Separating your longfic into multiple stories allows you more opportunities to write towards an ending. Breaking your story into digestible chunks decreases the writing paralysis that comes with being nowhere near the ending. It also cuts back on meandering chapters that don’t carry the narrative closer to that ending. Furthermore, thinking of the story in arcs before you start writing forces you to plan more... Something I never did in 2012!!!!

Best of all, once you reach the end of an arc, you can take a break before launching the next one. It’s hard on a writer to continue endlessly producing without a break. It’s hard on a reader to hit the final available chapter in a fic and wonder if it will ever update again. But if you complete an arc and take a break to plan and write a few buffer chapters, the tension and impatience is gone for your audience, and you get to breathe. It’s a win-win!

3.) Avoid long chapters.

Back in 2012, I often posted chapters that were 10K words and longer! Here are some benefits to posting shorter updates more frequently:

-Shorter wait times between updates.

Let’s say your planned chapter is 15K words long. I could update my story once in the span of a month, or I could break the chapter into three parts and update three times in a month! This keeps readers happy and interested in your work.

Over time, you’ll develop the ability to create sub arcs/movements, finding spots to break them up into separate updates. This also creates natural moments for cliffhangers, tension, and mini resolutions. It’s a great way to insert more moods and movement into your narrative.

-More exposure for your story.

Every time you update your fanfic, it gets pushed to the top of the update list on fanfiction.net or AO3. The more you update it, the more hits your story will receive, thanks to all the extra time it will spend on the first page of newly-updated fics.

-Easier editing.

I do my best editing when I’m working with 5K words or fewer at a time. Personally, I can only focus on close editing for about 90 minutes before I start missing mistakes and forgetting details. I could edit a 10K word update in two sittings, but then it’s possible to forget about details and moods from the previous editing session! So, unless your story bible is really hardcore, your editing process could benefit from shorter updates.

-More feedback/support

I have a few amazing readers who leave some form of feedback/appreciation for me whenever I post a new chapter. A supported writer is a happy, productive writer! More updates means more chances for feedback and support from your readers, which in turn can fuel and direct your writing! Again, everyone wins! (Thanks, guys, I love you!).

4.) Publish your story on both fanfiction.net and AO3.

Why reach one audience when you could potentially reach two? There are plenty of readers who only use one platform or the other.

At this point, it would be ridiculously difficult to post my 70+ chapter fanfics to AO3... Do yourself a favor and post to both from the start!

5.) Remember: writing and editing are two separate processes.

Guys guys guys guys guys. Lemme be real here.

I used to painstakingly write a first draft, check for spelling/grammar errors on my word processor, and then post it.

Here’s what my process looks like now: word vomit a first draft, do an edit in my word processor, print the edited draft, make edits on paper, transfer edits to word processor, print new draft, make edits on paper, transfer edits to word processor, final read through, post

If my new method looks more time intensive... In a way, it is, but in a way, it isn’t? I bang out that first rough draft without a care in the world, where I used to agonize over every word. Agonizing is not fun. Word vomiting can produce some, ah, discouraging results, but it feels like creative play. It’s fun, it’s flexible, it’s fast... And you can fix it later through the magic of editing. And if you’re having fun, you’ll keep writing. If you’re agonizing, you’ll find yourself making excuses to avoid writing.

Plus, my current method produces tighter, more deliberate prose, while maintaining the freedom and energy of word vomiting... And avoiding the angst and doubt. This is my best defense against writing paralysis and my greatest weapon in the battle of producing words.

My method can’t be right for everyone, but I do encourage you to try it out, especially if your writing hasn’t been joyful lately.

6.) Don’t run too many fics at one time.

I encourage writers to have one longer fic open and one shorter fic, preferably of different tones/settings/main characters. This gives you a way to keep writing when you’re sick of one project without bogging you down.

You will likely have some readers who love everything you do (god bless), but many people have particular genre, character, and setting preferences. If you have three fics open, then readers of any one story have to wait much longer for the next update while you alternate updating each fic.

And more importantly, having a ton of open stories just... It feels heavy, guys. It’s a weight, a pressure. Trust me. Forgive me, fanfic gods, for I have sinned.

7.) Maintain a buffer

Okay, so my Nanowrimo project for 2018 was to write 50,000 words for After August, my current open fic. By the end of the month, I had a roughly 80% complete first draft of the entire fic.

Guys! Guys! It’s so cool to know exactly where the story is going, from start to finish. My editing is so deliberate on this piece! I can spot repetition and inconsistencies, since the draft is printed and sitting in front of me in a binder. I can tweak emphasis and maintain more balance between character appearances. It’s a whole new ballpark for me, someone who always wrote one update at a time and posted it upon completion (or worse, wrote ahead and lost the material when I changed my mind about the plot before reaching that future point).

Plus, even if my life gets extra busy or hard, I can still maintain my updating schedule. I can print out a chapter, take it to work, and do hard edits during my lunch break (I realize that makes me antisocial, but have you ever endured coworkers telling you all of their problems while you try to eat a sandwich in peace? The editing is much more fun. I am antisocial, is what I’m saying. Born into it, baby).

Regular updates are a big part of maintaining steady readership, so having a buffer both increases the quality of your work (since you know where the story is going for sure) and ensures that more people read it. Awww yisssss.

Okay, well, my concentration is gone now, so that’s the end of my advice! If I think of anything else, maybe I’ll add it?

I do want to touch base with my writing plans, though. Currently, of course, my goal is to complete After August. If I can post one chapter per week, it will be compete in early March, but I’m going to aim for completing the story in May, to allow for any issues that might come up (for example, Kingdom Hearts III is coming out soon!).

After that, I want to complete Seeking Resonance... Although I have no idea how long that will take? I just know that the heavy atmosphere was really starting to weigh on me.

After that... Well, do you remember that survey I made a while back? It looks like my next project should probably be completing Four Years.

I might simultaneously work on one of these two stories and Tales of REM, or maybe I’ll alternate between SR and FY for a while? To be honest, though, I would really like to wrap up SR as soon as I can.

Either way, completion is the name of the game this year. Please look forward to it! Let me know if you have any ideas for future fics, or if you have a favorite from my list of potential future projects!

#writing advice #seven years of fanfiction #fanfic advice #fanfiction advice #faves

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snickletastic · 6 years

Text

Clue {Reader x Jason Todd + brother!Damian Wayne}

warnings~cursing and a little bit of sexual innuendo

a/n~ okay...in my defense, i havent written in a super long time and im a bit rusty. this isnt really my favourite writing but ive definitely written worse. im super sorry for disappearing, but school is dropping the utmost amount of work on my lap this year. hopefully when summer comes on full swing, i can write some more. also, if you sent in a request im aware its most likely been some time since you submitted it and im really, really sorry about that. ill do my best to get to it soon! anyways, i hope you guys like this one!

“Come on, Y/N. I’m sure he’s too busy reading a book or some crap like that,” Jason whined.

“No, Jay,” you gave him a half-smile, “It’s far too risky. Besides, we’re too loud, anyways.” You went to lift yourself off of his lap, but he pulled you back with a low growl. “We can be quiet,” he whispered.

You giggled at his sincerity, but Damian had the ears of a cat. Once, in the middle of the night you got up to get a glass of water and Damian must have heard you get out of bed from across the hallway, and ran down to the kitchen before you did.

“Please?” Jason was practically begging, “We can go back to my apartment, Damian’s old enough to not need a babysitter.”

“Bruce said-”

“Bruce says everything, babe. Come on. You know you want to,” Jason said slyly.

“Absolutely not. I can’t leave Damian here with no solid reason as to why.”

Jason huffed and let you get off of his lap, “i swear you like that damned kid more than me sometimes.”

You snorted and gently hit his shoulder, “Don’t be ridiculous, you know that you’re my favourite person.”

“If I was then you’d sit on my face,” Jason pouted.

You laughed vehemently at his comment, which made him laugh at you, and in a matter of seconds, the both of you were laughing at each other. When your laughter eventually calmed, Jason leapt on top of you and started to tickle you. You pushed on his shoulders with all your strength, but he wouldn't budge. Your laughter only grew louder and louder as you tried to pry him off of you. Suddenly, Jason got hit in the head with something, knocking him from the bed.

“A book? You hit me with a fucking book?” Jason roared at Damian, who was in a protective stance next to the bed.

You were out of breath from laughing, and didn’t get the chance to pacify the situation in time.

“Maybe you shouldn’t be attacking a woman!” Damian yelled back at Jason, who was now rubbing his head.

“Are you stupid?” Jason looked almost hurt by the accusation that he may have been hurting you.

“No, but you clearly are!” Damian said lividly, then turned to you, “Are you okay, Y/N?”

You blinked a couple times at the 12 year old, thought about what to say next, then nodded your head. “Of course, Damian. We were just fooling around, no harm done. Yeah?” You sat up and patted his back.

He looked confused at first, then embarrassed. His cheeks turned a pale shade of pink and he tried not to make eye contact, “Why were you so loud? I thought he was hurting you.”

“Why the hell are you acting like I hurt her on some daily basis or something? When have I ever hurt her? What the fuck, kid?” Jason seemed more stinged by the accusation than the book itself.

“I’m-I don’t know,” Damian whispered, “I am not sorry for trying to protect Y/N, though. I guess I should have looked at the context of this situation before incorporating myself into the mix.”

“Was that a sorry?” Jason crossed his arms.

“I suppose, if that’s what you want to hear,” Damian shrugged.

Jason rolled his eyes, “You’re forgiven. Now beat it.”

“Jason!” You scolded his brashness.

“It’s fine, Y/N. I was planning on leaving anyways.” Damian turned and walked out of the room calmly.

Jason let out a sigh of relief and dropped himself onto the bed, next to you. “You were an asshole, Jay.” Jason mumbled quietly in response. “Did you hear me?” Jason mumbled again. You hit him in the back of the head just hardly enough to make him groan.

“Damn it, Y/N. I already got hit by a book there,” Jason whimpered.

“Sorry, I forgot,” You apologized and patted your lap for him to put his head on. He obliged, and laid down between your legs as you rubbed his head. “You should be nicer to him,” you said quietly.

“I should be nicer to him? I’m the one who got hit in the head with a book!”

“Yeah, but you know he’s troubled. He doesn’t really know how to interact with other people and clearly has trouble communicating with you, most of all. You’re too harsh towards him,” you ran your fingers through his hair.

“Once again, I got hit in the head with a fucking book.”

You sighed and shuffled out from under Jason’s head, then picked the book off of the floor. “Huh. The Emperor of All Maladies.”

“What the shit does that mean?” Jason looked at you curiously.

“It’s the name of the book, dumbass,” you showed him the cover.

“Sounds boring.”

“It probably is,” you scanned the back, “but maybe not. I’m going to go give this back to Damian, he might want it back but is too scared to ask.”

“Whatever. Tell him I hate him while you’re down there.”

You rolled your eyes and left the room. As you went down the bifurcated staircase, you saw Damian sitting in the kitchen, staring at his bowl of melted ice cream.

“Hey, kiddo. What’s up?” You said cheerfully.

Damian let out an awkward cough, surprised by your presence. He then swiftly jumped off of the stool and picked up his bowl of soupy ice cream from the counter. “I was just having dessert,” he said as he poured it into the sink.

“We didn’t even eat dinner yet,” You looked curiously at his facial expression, “I was going to order pizza.”

“I didn’t want to wait,” Damian turned the faucet on to rinse the bowl.

After an awkward silence, you spoke up, “I brought your book! It’s pretty heavy. If I had to attack someone, I would definitely do it with a 600 page novel,” You chuckled and slid the book across the counter.

“Thank you, Y/N,” Damian picked up the book and walked away.

“Hey! Wait a minute!” You swiftly caught up to him as he walked into the living room.

“Yes?” Damian looked up at you with discontent.

"You can't just act like nothing happened. Why did you freak out like that earlier?"

Damian avoided your eyes and looked at everything else in the room except for you. He cleared his throat and stared at the floor, "I thought he was hurting you, is all. It's what anybody would do if they heard someone practically screaming."

You crossed your arms, "We both know that's not why. You're too smart to think something so dumb."

Damian walked past you and put the giant book down onto the coffee table, then threw himself onto the couch, "I just...I didn't know he was going to be here with you while you were watching me."

"Oh...I see," you sat down next to him, "I should have let you know...but that still doesn't explain why you freaked out."

"I was hoping it'd just be us two. I wanted to hang out with you, we haven't really been able to play any board games because-" Damian stopped.

"Because?" You pushed for an answer.

"Because you are too busy with Jason to really care about me," Damian said blatantly, "Nobody ever has time for me anymore."

The sullen sound in his youthful voice broke your heart. It was true, everyone really was too busy. Bruce and Dick have been busy with the Riddler for the past month, and Tim was too focused on school and his new girlfriend to have time for a child. That pretty much left just you, but between work and Jason, you had been just as busy as the rest of the family.

"I'm sorry, Damian," you said sincerely, "I didn't mean to alienate you."

Damian shrugged, "It's fine, really."

"But it's not...What can I do to make it up to you?"

"You can go get Clue from the game cabinet," Damian said slyly.

"Deal."

masterlist

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asterdeer · 6 years

Note

flower ask meme: arum-lily, aster, baneberries, basket of gold, black-eyed susan, blazing stars, borage, bulgeherb, camelia, candytuffs, carnation, cock's comb, common boneset, daisy, false goat's beard, freesia, garden cosmos, gladiolus, rosemallows, transvaal daisy, and tropical white morning glory

Arum-Lily: What’s the farthest you’d go for a stranger? gave a man my lunch and cash when he came up to my window while i was idling at a red light? stayed five minutes past closing time to tell someone how to get somewhere even tho im terrible at directions

Aster: What’s one of your favorite quotes? “I believe that if a woman poet survives, if she sets out on that distance and arrives at the other end, then she has an obligation to tell as much as she knows of the ghosts within her, for they make up, in essence, her story as well.”contrariwise“I am not well-adjusted. More often than not, I am barely keeping it together. I’m constantly texting, and there’s no one on the other end. I’m just a grown man who can’t even look his own friends in the eye for too long because I’m afraid that they’ll see that I’m broken. So, you get credit for that. One time, when I was in 7th grade, I told everybody at school I had appendicitis. I wanted somebody to worry about me, but when Beth Brennan asked to see the scar I didn’t wanna get found out. So, I took mom’s scissors, and I made one. It hurt like hell. But it was worth it because I got 17 cards, and I still keep them in a box underneath my bed 22 years later because it proves that someone at some point cared about me. Want to see the scar?”

Baneberries: Favorite song? atm its either “high hopes” by panic!, “quarter past midnight” by bastille, or “when the night is over” by lord huron

Basket of Gold: Describe your familyim best friends with my mom, my brother terrifies me bc i love him so much, my granddad was my best teacher of selflessness and sacrifice, my cousin who was my best friend fell apart at exactly the same time i did and we never really got back together, i met my twin when i was like fourteen and needed them most, i have a grandmother who ended up teaching me more of what not to do than anything else, and i did in fact have a father, all evidence to the contrary

Black-Eyed Susan: If you could be any animal for a day, what would it be?a giraffe. no doubt

Blazing Stars: What are you afraid of? Is there a reason why? 101 things ! spiders because one crawled into my bed when i was 12 at five in the morning and my cat woke me up because it was just there at my feet, also never having someone fall in love w me, also watching everyone leave me when they figure out im worthless ! mostly spiders

Borage: Give a random fact about your childhood. there was a very shallow sort of…. gorge? ravine? it was like a steep drop off in the land down to a v rocky stream that cut behind our house in our old neighborhood. they didnt let us play there often bc my brother’s then-best friend slipped and cut his foot bad but i loved it back there + if i had been reading warriors at that point it would have been my clan camp fs

Bugleherb: How would you spend your last day on Earth? slashing the tires of as many animal abusers as i could find. then go rent a boat and take my family/friends out on the water. pass out some macarons maybe? gravestone shaped macarons? make everyone read some of four quartets out loud. also cuddle my cat a whole WHOLE whole lot

Camelia: If you could visit anywhere, where would you want to go? ive wanted to visit ireland for literally as long as i can remember

Candytufts: When do you feel most loved? when i havent eaten for a good while

Carnation: What are you currently wearing? mucha-esque loki tee shirt and my mom’s fluffy cloud pajama pants

Cock’s Comb: Favorite font?lydian bc it reminds me of when i was 10 and my cousin and i were writing our stories on the same computer and that was the font we used

Common Boneset: What are you looking forward to?everybodys workin for the weekend. captain marvel comes out next week too

Daisy: What do you feel is your greatest accomplishment? 1) winning the novel contest 2) making people laugh during my thesis defense 3) not offing myself during 2014 or 2017

False Goat’s Beard: What is something you are good at?embarrassing myself!

Freesia: What are three good things that have happened in the past month? 1) job 2) sushi 3) staying till almost midnight at a friend’s house talking whcih was the most ive actually been touched by a person besides my mom in weeks

Garden Cosmos: How was your day today?exhausting but i got a lot of reading done

Gladiolus: What is something you hope to do in the next year or two? submit a novel for publication. try to get into an editing program. grow potatoes and cucumbers, revive/expand my catnip and rosemary. donate money and buy art and take trips and make better food

Rosemallows: What’s your favorite memory? literally the only memory that doesnt feel like a rebuke or a warning rn is the day i met you in person

Transvaal Daisy: What’s your favorite item of clothing? thats either the high waisted bell bottom jeans my aunt gave me a while back or the black and green striped top that ive worn holes into ive had it so long

Tropical White Morning Glory: Describe your aesthetic. i literally dont have one, its a hideous + boring mishmash of four different aesthetics frankensteined together that doesnt make good art ever

#the ask + the answer #bruh........ thank u........#deadtreeclub #long post

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brightbeautifulthings · 6 years

Text

Les Misérables: Part II, Book IV - Part III, Book VIII

Once again, I'm great at reading and bad at posting updates about it. I can consistently manage one thing on my blog--book reviews--and everything else gets fit in at random. I'm still reading Les Misérables regularly, and I just finished the Marius section this week so it seemed like a good time to post an update (although last month would have been better). This is slightly over half the book, which I'm really excited about because that means I'm slightly ahead of my schedule, and the prognosis is good for actually finishing it before the year is over.

Somewhere a while ago, I was starting to warm up to this book and actually look forward to reading it, and then I hit a bunch of dry sections including Terrifying Nuns & Their Living Habits, and the warm feelings went away. I've never had a book go so far in either direction as far as my feelings about it. Sometimes I can barely get through a section, and other times I'm completely drawn into the plot and the characters. I feel like there's probably a better way to balance this, but I don't know what it is. Maybe there's just no way to make boring historical things less boring. (In the novel's defense, history has never been my subject.) In those sections, I typically feel like I need another book just to explain to me what it is Hugo's getting at. There are probably some really good companion books out there, so I'm open to suggestions if you've read one.

"The bishop had taught him the meaning of virtue; Cosette had now taught him the meaning of love."

It's difficult not to love Jean Valjean as a character, and the contrast set up between him and Javert is one of the best I've ever seen in literature. Valjean is an ex-convict, but he's pretty much always the most (or the only) morally good character on the page. Javert is a police inspector, but he's so rigidly committed to the law that morality escapes him sometimes. He's the danger of a doctrine that only sees in black and white. The chase scene when Javert first discovers Valjean's identity is very tense. I wished the narrative hadn't moved away from describing Valjean and Cosette's relationship over the years in more depth. The next time we see them, a lot of time has passed.

Things pick up again with the introduction of Marius and Les Amis de l'ABC. I found Marius easy to identify with, since he's like a lot of academics I know. We're terribly committed to whatever theory has caught our attention lately, have difficulty resurfacing from our books, and have absolutely zero chill when the person we like is nearby. I nearly died laughing in the chapters where he walks by Cosette (again and again and again) and basically acts like a super-kook whenever she's around. Hello, my name is Marius. I am a Dork Fish extraordinaire. Except he'd never make it past hello, as most dork fish do not. If that isn't my college love life in a nutshell, I don't know what is.

I'm still having trouble distinguishing all the members of Les Amis de l'ABC. In typical Hugo fashion, they're introduced in great detail and then not mentioned again for two hundred pages. Alice and I were making each other laugh sending videos of Aaron Tveit coaching people on how to pronounce Enjolras (very helpful). Then there’s the obvious romance between him and Grantaire. "He was austere, seeming not to be aware of the existence on earth of a creature called woman." There's a word for that, Hugo. It's called gay. "But, skeptic that he was, he had one fanatical devotion, not for an idea, a creed, an art or a science, but for a man - for Enjolras. Grantaire admired, loved, and venerated Enjolras." As if it needed more angst, Enjolras kind of hates Grantaire. Ships are built on way less than that, and I can see why they're the couple who have launched 10,000 fics on AO3. I think I care more about their potential love story than Marius and Cosette's actual one.

"In the animal world no creature born to be a dove turns into a scavenger. This happens only among men."

I hope there's more Eponine later in the book, since she's my favorite character in the movie. She's played a much smaller role so far, and I'm interested to see how she moves from barely knowing Marius to being in love with him and how Marius moves from distracted bookworm to revolutionary (and I'm going to be sad if that's purely an invention of the musical). Hugo proves once again that he can build tension when he puts his mind to it, but Marius's crisis of conscience when Thénardier corners Valjean is much less satisfying than some earlier in the novel, given the outcome (trying not to be spoilery). I'm back to having mostly good feelings about the book, but also nervous about how many more sections might be passionately dedicated to a single day in history or the minutiae of the Paris sewer system.

#yrstruly #les mis readalong #readalong #les miserables #victor hugo

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braindamageforbeginners · 6 years

Text

In Case of Emergency

Cycle 9, Day 4

So, welcome if you’re here from the Gryt article (the-gryt-blog/patricks-story-of-gryt-fefee6dd6a27), feel free to root through the archives, which cover parts of Tumor #2 (2014) forward through the current crisis (which is about eight months of progression-free according to my calculations). Speaking of the current crisis, even though I can’t speak for everyone, most people would consider getting a tip of the hat and take a day off. Sadly, I am not most people. I mean, I’ll take encouragement or adulation, but there are no days off when you’re sick; even if you’re on disability (if you do have brain cancer, or any other serious, debilitating illness, check out the federal government’s list of “compassionate allowances”). This is also why, even though I’d love to fictionalize or novelize my experiences (Hey Zoe)(and Zoe)(yes, two separate women named “Zoe” have asked me about that, which is probably a sign), I honestly don’t have time - the disease-based stuff just comes so fast and constantly that it’s all I can do to manage the situation as best as I can (the verb “manage” implies far more agency and control over the situation than I actually have, but I don’t think English has an appropriate verb) and take careful notes. Speaking of which, for those of you wondering if anything about my overall health has changed, I don’t think so, although I have had something of a brief hiccough today.

So, if you start chemotherapy, everyone - your doctors, nurses, friends who recently figured out how to spell “chemo,” random taxicab drivers - will warn you that chemo causes constipation. The Warlocks warned me from day 1, and gave me a few recommended drugs available over-the-counter that I could use to, ah, “alleviate” the situation, with the addendum that, I should fee free to call them if I needed any further help, recommendations, or prescriptions regarding that particular problem. I shrugged and made a note of it; however, further interactions with these guys (yes, I refer to my physicians a “The Warlocks”), suggested that my first impression - that they don’t screw around, and go straight for the nuclear option if there’s any doubt (again, bless him, Warlock Sr had my knee x-rayed after I got wobbly and sprained it on an elliptical). So far, that’s excellent oncology policy, but you want a somewhat softer-touch when it comes to your GI system.

I noticed, ah, occasional irregularity somewhere during the initial treatment, and just changed my diet to keep everything in me moving at high speed, along with lots of protein because I know, based on previous experience (at the recommendation of a neurofeedback specialist). Good news, a diet that’s good for the Fluten Gator, as Dad calls it (it’s German for “flood gate,” which I only discovered this afternoon, which is eerily accurate, as it turns out) is pretty easy to lose weight on (all it takes is eating 10 kilos of fruits and vegetables a day; you can keep anything else you manage to pile on top of that - realistically, that is the only dietary change I’ve made). What was only hinted at prior to this - which you also should know if you ever have to undergo chemo - is that the side-effects from chemo seem to get worse and more intense with repeated cycles (that’s been my experience)(although I should say the “chemo brain” has gotten better, with CBD and getting more sleep). And that kept me going until last night, when things reached a head.

In order to tell today’s tale properly, I should point out that my disinclination to laxatives has nothing to do with any sort of opinion about what’s natural or healthy (at this point, “natural” would be dying from cancer by March of next year), it’s because I have a rather sordid history on the subject (of course I do). Way back in 2002 - at the end of the last Ice Age - I had Tumor #1 removed. There were an awful lot of side effects and long-term mental/cognitive issues I attributed to that (Not that I’m a paragon of sanity and rationality now, but this is all in comparison). At that time, most doctors on my team were not only fine prescribing various opiates and narcotics for pain, I’m not sure they’d be above anaesthestising me to get me to stop complaining and/or griping (in my defense, the next time you take a hatchet to the frontal lob, you’ll have a lot to moan about, too). The second that you’re out of the OR and somewhat alert, the nurses were giving me laxatives with every dose of various steroids, pain-killers, anti-seizure drugs, etc. Unlike McConnell’s next SCOTUS pick, I will admit that I blacked out. A lot (although I’m not sure it’’s “blacking out” if you’re just so exhausted you fall asleep every 10-20 minutes).. However, one of the fragments of memory is waking up at some late hour, realizing the nurses’ fiendish laxatives were about to start working, and screaming into the bathroom (possibly literally, which would be no mean feat, since I think I still had an IV in my arm). I’ve rather successfully repressed most of the rest of that memory and replaced it with the warning, “DON’T USE LAXATIVES.”

Cut to last night, when I realized that I hadn’t moved my bowels in over 24 hours (there’s more than a few women with kids who are reading this and thinking, “He doesn’t realise how easy he has it.”)(which is not inaccurate, but I’ll swap an eventually-terminal disease for permanent pooper problems any day of the week, if that’s a swap I’m allowed). Anyway, after taking last night’s bedtime meds (including Temodar), I made a mental note to address the issue if it was still unresolved this morning. So, instead of descriptions, let me just give you the hour-by-hour-break-down of current events. 9 am - wake up, after ten-ish hours sleep (that’s my recommendation for Temodar nights). While noting sharpness of focus and memory (NO CHEMO BRAIN, HOORAY), note odd cramp-y feeling in guts that’s still unabated. 9:30-10:30 - standard mega high-fiber breakfast. Nothing. 11 am - take dose of Warlock-approved OTC laxative, which, oddly, starts like an “S.” Make there are clear lines of sight to the closest bathroom.

11-12:30 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMyCa35_mOg 12:45 - Look up how long it takes for - 8 hours?! Jesus, GI surgery would take less time. 1:00 pm - Take small dose of second laxative recommended by Warlocks (also a stimulant laxative). 1:30 pm - sensation of impending doom, rush to bathroom, memory cuts out 1:45 - Regain control of mind and body (which is feeling almost-normal again) while closing bathroom door. Privately vow never to use that bathroom again, which, given how badly I just got burned after breaking my own rule about laxatives, seems fair. 2 pm - While looking up laxative antidotes, realize I have five hours before the first laxative hits the system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9IfHDi-2EA

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maruwrites · 7 years

Text

The Revolution Pt. IV

Summary: Dustin thinks he’s finally gonna have a quiet, normal childhood after the events with the Demodogs and Dart, until a new threat shows up at his house in the form of a 17-year old girl.

Warnings: None?

Pairing: Steve Harrington x Henderson!Reader

Word count: 1,960

Part I :: Part II :: Part III

It was actually surprising he’d recognized her voice.

Steve had only heard her once the day before, when she’d been rude to him for no reason. Now, she was being all polite and sweet, and it sounded radically different, like it was another person. It sounded nice.

“Just 2 dollars? It’s in near mint condition,” (Y/N) pleaded. She was too wrapped up in the conversation with Mr. Watkins to even notice Steve walking in the bookstore. He quickly hid behind one of the shelves of used books.

This hadn’t been on purpose. He promised himself he’d keep an eye on her, but he wasn’t stalking the girl. Steve was just trying to make amends with Dustin and he thought buying him a new edition of The Three Musketeers had been a good idea, seeing as the boy’s book was all torn up and falling apart. Not to mention a bit ironic, sure.

Yeah. Steve Harrington was going soft.

But he didn’t have a choice, really. He felt bad. He thought about calling the Henderson house when he got home that day, but didn't want to intrude or get in the way of anything that might be happening, especially if Dustin stopped being such a hard head and actually took the older boy's advice. Steve had even turned on the walkie-talkie the kid gifted to him right after the events with the Demo-dogs (because "you're one of us now, buddy. Don't even try to deny that."), but not a sound. Not only was Dustin not saying anything, which was rare and the whole reason Steve would groan loudly and leave the walkie off most of the time, he was actually ignoring the other boy's attempt to contact him on their channel. (Yes, they had their own channel.)

So... Drastic measures, right? The first thing he did the next day was get on his car and go to the store. Yeah. Soft.

"I'm sorry, sweetheart. That's the price I would pay you for this book," Mr. Watkins, the 65-year old owner of the bookstore, lamented, a sympathetic look on his face. "Now, if your offer still stands, I'm sure we could work something out. You would help me here for a while, organize this mess, as you so kindly pointed out to me the other day-" At that, (Y/N) let out a hearty laugh. Yeah, Steve thought, definitely nice. "And you can read all the books you want. When you decide to leave, I can trade you, how about that? The books in that bag of yours for a few from the store."

"And you'd still pay me, right?" Her voice had been rough the day before, now it was all soft edges, a nice cadence. "I don't mean to be an ass, but I very much need the money."

Mr. Watkins laughed. "Of course, I'd pay you. I can't believe I'm gonna be paying the ass who showed up here every day for almost a week, pointing out all the flaws in my shop and how she would help me fix them. But don't worry, I'm gonna pay you."

(Y/N) laughed again. She was at ease, that much Steve could tell. "Thank you, Mr. Watkins." A thought crossed her mind. "Uh, you know, if you don't want me working here, it's fine. I hear the movie theater is looking for a new employee, and-"

"Save it, kid. It's done." He gave her a smile. "You showed up every day for the past seven days, reading everything you could get your hands on until closing time. I think you might be a good asset.”

She gave him a shy smile, and he pointed out to the room in the back, telling her where to keep her stuff. (Y/N) went inside for a moment and came back, starting to organize the new arrivals at the shelves.

Steve took a deep breath and planned on hiding out at least until she went back inside again. But then, Mr. Watkins voice resonated throughout the bookstore.

"Anything I can help you with, young man?" Steve winced. He got out of his not-so-great hiding spot and went over to the counter where the old man was, not missing the undecipherable look on (Y/N)'s face he caught with the corner of his eyes.

"Uh, yeah. I'm looking for The Three Musketeers."

"Ah, Alexandre Dumas' magnum opus. Yes, yes. A tale about d'Artagnan as he tries to join the Musketeers of the Guard. A fine novel, young man. You know, he wrote that book when he was 42-years old, and it's largely based on the author's close experience with the military, since his father had been a well-known General in France's Republican army..." He went on. Steve was trying to concentrate on what the man was saying, but he was way too aware of the fact that the girl had disappeared right after she saw him. But it didn't take too long for her to show up again.

"Here, Mr. Watkins. The book he was searching for." (Y/N) smiled at the man, and scowled at Steve, keeping her eyes focused on him. Steve was cursing himself in his mind.

"Ah, thank you, (Y/N)."

(Y/N). In all of the talks he had with Dustin, he'd never thought to ask her name, and the boy certainly didn't use it. He kept calling her the girl. (Y/N).

Steve was pulled away from his thoughts by the old man's voice, who was telling him his total and wrapping up the book. Steve payed for it, took the bag and gave (Y/N) a look. It couldn't have been worse than the look she was giving him. That's not what he wanted. He wanted to say Let's talk. He wanted to convey a Don't hate me look. For some reason. What did he have to say? What did he want to say? He just felt like he had to talk to the girl. Damn you, Dustin.

Steve went outside and leaned against the cool glass of the bookstore, hoping she would understand him, waiting for her to follow his lead. As soon as he picked up a cigarette, the door opened.

"What. The. Fuck. Are you following me?," (Y/N) whisper-yelled at him. He turned and saw Mr. Watkins eyeing them curiously. He wondered what she'd said to him before going out.

"Don't flatter yourself, okay? I didn't know you'd be here, I'm just buying something for Dustin." He didn't mean to bite back, really. But he got defensive, he was tired from all the emotional stuff from yesterday between Dustin and his mum, and Dustin and him, and this girl who had just shown up, who gave her the right?, and why did she have this intensity in her eyes?, it made it very hard for Steve to even think about looking away.

At the mention of the boy, her body tensed, but her facial features softened. Steve didn't have a choice. He had to notice the way her eyes dropped down, the way she rubbed her hands on each other, how she bit her lower lip.

"Oh. Right. Okay, then." She turned her back to him and Steve's mind went into overdrive.

"I could help you out," he practically yelled. He winced at how loud he'd been. (Y/N) turned around. "What?"

"I... Uh, I'm...," Steve sighed. "Can you meet me at the diner right around the corner? Say, noon? I... I wanna help.”

She stared at him, suspiciously. 'This is a mess. What are you doing?', she thought. What does he have to gain? Why is he doing this? He's just a random dude who was giving Dustin a ride, why on Earth would he want to talk to her? What would he have to say? Would he tell her to leave them alone? Leave Claudia and Dustin be and just go away? That wouldn't be the first time someone would forcefully suggest her that.

Steve waited and braced himself. For her to say no, to tell him to go fuck himself, to flip him off. Maybe what Dustin needed wasn't a book, maybe what Dustin needed was to sit down and talk to her, find out more about her, just get to know her. Maybe that would be a better gift to repair his friendship with the boy, but in order to do that, first Steve needed to help her. He was so sure she wouldn't take his offer, she would just ignore him.

His heart broke a little when in a rare moment of vulnerability, she just whispered: "Why?”

It was 12:15 and there was no sign of her.

‘It’s only been fifteen minutes, man,’ he thought, trying to calm himself down, but he was wreck. Steve was a doer, not a talker. He would try ease into things, but maybe he couldn’t fix this, maybe this was something that couldn’t be fixed at all. But he owed to Dustin to at least try and help out his friend. Which was who he was doing this for. He was certainly not doing this for the unruly-haired girl, crossing the streets absentmindedly, in an oversized sweater, mom jeans and Converse sneakers. Definitely not for the girl who was so quick to lower her eyes at a stranger while he held the door open for her, a quiet thank you leaving her lips. No, not for this girl who looked at him with daggers in her eyes, a hard exterior taking over her. The vulnerability and softness were gone.

(Y/N) sat down in front of Steve and stared at him.

Boy, this was gonna be tough.

“So... You, um... We should probably get something to eat.” The waitress came to their table, took their order and left. Steve noticed she was always polite, to everyone but him apparently. “Uh. Congrats on getting a job.”

‘What? Why the fuck would you say that? Moron.’

“It’s Steve, right?,” she snapped, giving him an exasperated sigh. He couldn’t blame her now. “What’s in this for you? Why are you even in this? Nothing about this concerns you.”

So no easing into things, right?

“It does, in a way.” She lift her eyebrows, and he explained. “Dustin is a good friend of mine.”

“Why are you hanging out with middle schoolers?”

He rubbed his neck. “It’s... complicated.”

“Look, if you don’t wanna tell me, it’s fine-“

“I don’t.” Steve was quick to add. He almost missed the tiny lift of the corner of her lips.

“But isn’t you telling me things the whole point of this? Don’t you wanna help me with Dustin?” Something Steve did notice. Anytime Dustin was brought up, she visibly changed, her posture, her features, everything. As if dealing with everything else, absent parents and being left behind was nothing compared to having a half-brother.

“I was hoping you would tell me things.”

“And why would I do that? I don’t know you.”

“Because I’m your best tool to get close to Dustin.”

“Well, you’re a tool. I’ll give you that.”

Steve quirked his brows and there was a silence. (Y/N) thought maybe she’d crossed a line. Not that she cared, because she didn’t. But her thoughts were interrupted by a loud laugh coming from the boy in front of her.

“That was good. Funny.”

She tried not to blush or feel proud for having made him laugh. (Y/N) rubbed her eyes in hopes that that would at least help her get her shit together. Their food arrived and the first thing (Y/N) did was take a handful of fries and dunk them on the chocolate milkshake she’d ordered. At that, Steve grinned.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing. I just- I have a feeling you and Dustin are gonna get along just fine.”

Tags: @moltars @sociallyimpairedme @hufflepeople @ uncle-jjezzy @ bitchinmouthbreather @hanasamara @lexannani

#stranger things #stranger things 2 #stranger things fanfiction #steve harrington x reader #steve harrington imagines #steve harrington #steve harrington fanfiction #steve harrington x oc #harrington x henderson!reader #revolution series

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ebola-chan-love · 5 years

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The Chinese COVID-19 Coronavirus Is Being Used To Push Us Into A State Of Fear And Panic Not Seen Since 9/11 So What Are They Planning Now?

From October 1, 2019 to February 29, 2020, approximately 49,000,000 Americans have had the flu, with approximately 20,000 – 52,000 dead from flu. No one is quarantined, no panic, nothing cancelled but tens of thousands have died in only 6 months time! Are you smelling a rat yet? I sure am.

If ever there was a disproportionate reaction to a disease outbreak, this is surely it. While the headlines scream fear and danger, the COVID-19 disease itself does not. According to every metric, people are recovering at a rate equal to or faster than the rate of new cases occurring. COVID-19 has leveled off in China where it originated from, and the Chinese people are beginning to return to a semi-normal life. So why here in America are we being told that doomsday has arrived?

“Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” John 14:1-3 (KJB)

Look, you know me, this site is called NOW THE END BEGINS for a reason, because we live in the end times, and in the end times wacky stuff happens as the Bible tells us it will. I scan the headlines all day every day, looking for news of the end times to bring to you. COVID-19 is very far from a biblical pestilence, yet we are watching as everything is being cancelled for fear of infection. The NBA yesterday just cancelled their entire season, colleges all across the country have switched to online only. Let’s take a look at the numbers, shall we?

As of right now, these are the facts:

There are 127,759 confirmed cases of COVID-19, with 80,932 of those case being in China. So 63% of every case is in China.

The mortality rate as of this morning is 3.69% with 4,717 people having died from it to date.

The rate of people recovering from COVID-19 is 53% and rising with 68,307 people recovered thus far.

In America, 1,323 people are infected with 34 people dead, giving you a 2.57% mortality rate. Keep in mind that 23 of of those 34 people were elderly living in a nursing home and quite ill to begin with. Take those 23 already sick senior citizens out of the equation then the mortality rate drops to 0.83%, and that is nothing to be afraid of.

No children have died from COVID-19 in the United States or in any other country as well. Zero.

WARNING: From October 1, 2019 to February 29, 2020, approximately 49,000,000 Americans have had the flu, with approximately 20,000 – 52,000 dead from flu. No one is quarantined, no panic, nothing cancelled but tens of thousands have died in only 6 months time! Are you smelling a rat yet? I sure am.

The headlines today read like the pages of a bleak, dystopian novel of a world where the inhabitants have been exposed to a global pandemic and the bodies are stacking up like cord wood. The stock market is suffering recording drops and losses, schools are closing, everything is being cancelled, but why exactly are these things happening? Why are we being told to fear and panic?

Yesterday, the headlines blared “OSCAR WINNER TOM HANKS AND WIFE TEST POSITIVE FOR CORONAVIRUS!!!!” and everyone started freaking out, but how are Tom and his lovely wife Rita faring? Their statement is quite telling, and it reads in part “Hello, folks. Rita and I are down here in Australia. We felt a bit tired, like we had colds, and some body aches. Rita had some chills that came and went.“. Hmm, no one is hooked up to ventilators or IVs, they are not bound to a hospital bed, not even close. They sound exactly like two people who have caught a bad cold or a slight case of the flu. This is the reality, people, wake up.

NOT SINCE 9/11 HAVE WE BEEN TOLD BE FEAR AND PANIC ON THIS LEVEL, IS HISTORY REPEATING ITSELF? CLICK TO REFRESH YOUR MEMORY

Virus can be deadly, whether it be polio, the flu, SARS, Ebola, COVID-19 or anything else, and when these things hit, weak and infirm people die first and they die fast. This happens in any outbreak of anything throughout recorded history. The American Indians were nearly wiped out by the measles. You should be talking COVID-19 as seriously as you would be taking anything else that could make you sick. But as I have been saying all along, I see nothing in COVID-19 that is worthy of all the endless fear and panic they have been shoving down our throats day and night since it began. So why are they doing it?

I believe it is happening on a level where the shadowy denizens of the New World Order live and operate, if you want to have great change in society you need to have a great crisis to move the people into action. Look at what happened with 9/11, that was a great crisis that terrified people. When it was done, endless wars were started in the Middle East, the Patriot Act took away untold freedoms from Americans, the implantable RFID microchip was created and released, our phone calls and text messages are monitored, and everything that was done was done through fear and panic. Take a look at this:

Bill Maher: I’m “Hoping” For “A Crashing Economy” So We Can Get Rid Of Trump, “Bring On The Recession”

I believe that this is what we are seeing now, the Liberals who control the media, the Liberals who control social media, and the Liberals who control the markets are telling us to fear and panic so they can take control of America in November. And they don’t care who gets hurt or what it costs.

In my opinion, COVID-19 is being used worldwide to collapse markets and create massive financial instability. George Soros collapsed the entire British financial system all by himself, he sure has been quiet lately, I wonder what he has been up to in all this? Here in America, I believe the fake news media and Democrats they love so much are working tirelessly around the clock to weaponize COVID-19 to prevent a Trump win in November. We have been warning you for years that this day was going to come, has it now arrived? Stay tuned.

Now The End Begins is your front line defense against the rising tide of darkness in the last days before the Rapture of the Church

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The post The Chinese COVID-19 Coronavirus Is Being Used To Push Us Into A State Of Fear And Panic Not Seen Since 9/11 So What Are They Planning Now? appeared first on Now The End Begins.

Now The End Begins https://www.nowtheendbegins.com/covid-19-coronavirus-flu-has-been-weaponized-to-take-control-of-us/

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ryukoishida · 7 years

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Quan Zhi Gao Shou | King’s Avatar Fic: In which Shaotian makes observations about Wenzhou’s hands.

Title: These Broken Hands of Mine Fandom: The King’s Avatar / Quan Zhi Gao Shou Character(s)/Pairing(s): Yu/Huang (Wenzhou/Shaotian) Summary: Five times Shaotian makes observations about Wenzhou’s hands + one time Wenzhou keeps Shaotian’s hands warm. Rating: Part v. is NSFW; otherwise it’s PG A/N: Based on @andthenabanana‘s precious Yu/Huang HCs! I’m still reading the novels so I’m writing this based on the knowledge I have of the anime only. If there are inaccuracies in the fic, please forgive me!

Writing Commission | Editing & Translation Services

---

Huang Shaotian hates it when people teases his captain about his hands — “crippled”, they call him, often accompanying the comment with sympathetic gazes. Even if it isn’t meant to be derogatory, just a harmless joke, even if the captain himself laughs it off because he’s so used to it already, Shaotian still hates it.

“Let me go teach those bastards a lesson, captain, come on, come on, come on! I won’t let them get away with dissing Blue Rain’s brilliant leader like that! I’ll kick their ass so hard they won’t even know what’s coming for them—”

“Shaotian,” he calls his name with his usual tone — frustratingly calm, like the mirror surface of a summer lake, undisturbed by the wind. The two syllables are enough to shut the other man up, and from his seat at the computer, Wenzhou looks over at his vice-captain and gives him a reassuring smile, an expression Shaotian has seen so many times, before shifting his attention back to the game.

The captain doesn’t need his protection, Shaotian knows that — knows Wenzhou well enough that even without a terrifying hand speed, the man can carry himself and his team using clever tactics and deliberate strategies. He doesn’t doubt Wenzhou’s strength and prowess in Glory.

Shaotian finishes off his opponents within about fifteen seconds, but he does so in a surprisingly quiet manner. As he stands up and stretches, his gaze falls onto Wenzhou’s figure: he has his headphones on, and he’s completely immersed in the game before him, his fingers tapping out a gradual but melodic rhythm that has Shaotian mesmerized.

They may not be fast, but the movements of his fingers are precise and calculated, similar to well-practiced choreography that brings out the beauty and grace of his avatar’s attack and defense. It’s something that both baffles and intrigues Shaotian even after all these years of watching Wenzhou play.

The logo of Glory flashes across Wenzhou’s screen, signifying his victory, and Shaotian snaps out of his reverie when Wenzhou turns around and looks at him with an expectant smile.

Always unfathomable. Always warm.

ii.

“Yo, vice-captain, I think Captain Yu left this.”

One of the members of Blue Rain throws a notebook at him without another warning, and Shaotian catches the corner of it with quick reflex, all the while swearing nonstop at his teammate.

The other man just flashes him a grin and waves goodbye as he steps out of the training room, closing the door behind him as fast as he can before Shaotian decides to throw something at him.

The notebook is the one that Wenzhou always carries around with him wherever he goes. He has a habit of jotting down notes — he’s the Master Tactician and an immaculate analyst after all — so whenever the members are at a meeting and discussing about various tactics before an important match, or when he’s hastily noting down new ideas while being engrossed in the world of Glory, the notebook, its cover slightly battered and the corners dog-eared, is always in Wenzhou’s hands.

Curiosity is singing temptation in Shaotian’s mind, and he casually start to flip through the spiraled notebook. He sees the captain’s neat handwriting, the flow of blue ink across paper elegant yet powerful like sweeping rivers that carve and create valleys. It’s all data and numbers and tables — nothing Shaotian is genuinely interested in — but then he spots the little doodles on the margins that makes him sputter out a chuckle: there are messy sketches of cartoon birds and kittens, as well as more realistic drawings of plants and flowers that dotted Blue Rain Club’s hallways.

Probably products of boredom.

And here Shaotian thinks their team captain is always preoccupied with nothing but Glory gameplay.

As he continues flipping through the notepad, he stops towards the end. Shaotian frowns in confusion: there is no writing on these pages, but the space is filled with sketches of the same person from different angles and with various expressions.

A short moment later, his eyes widen in realization, and he mutters with disbelief, “Wait, wait, wait, what the fuck, that’s me, isn’t it, what the fuck?!”

Splattered all over the lined pages are rough drawings of Shaotian sketched in pencil. A few are of him in different poses and in mere outlines and crisp shadings, though the body shape is familiar enough that Shaotian can recognize it as his own; however, most of the sketches are embarrassing close-ups of his face: his expressive eyes, the side and back of his head, the hard, impelling lines of his mouth when he talks a mile a minute and the sensual curves of his lips when he’s silent and smiling.

‘What the hell is this?’ Shaotian wonders in confusion, his cheeks burning warmer and warmer the longer he stares at the detailed portraits of himself drawn by the careful hand of his captain.

“Ah, so I did leave my notebook here,” Wenzhou starts from the doorway, his arms crossed over his chest and an amused smile grazing along his lips.

Shaotiao snaps the notebook shut, the sound like the firing of a bullet in the stillness of the room.

“Uh, yeah, you did! You shouldn’t leave your shit just lying around, you know? Who knows what would have happened if I haven’t picked it up, huh? What if—” he babbles on and on, unable to shut up as he feels Wenzhou’s gaze penetrating through his frail wall of words.

“Did you read what’s inside?” Wenzhou interrupts, his eyes glimmering with a knowing look.

“I-inside? Why would I — does it look like I would do such a thing? I do know to respect privacy, okay?”

“You did, didn’t you?” Wenzhou isn’t fooled, and Shaotian should have known better.

He sighs, and hands over the notebook in defeat when Wenzhou finally walks over to stand before him.

“I didn’t know you draw,” Shaotian mutters, head turned to the side with a pout. He has thought that he knows everything about him, but this is clearly not the case. For some reason, this fact irritates him, and it’s starting a lick of flame in the pit of his stomach that’s impossible to put out, and so the statement comes out like an accusation more than anything else.

“It’s just a hobby,” Wenzhou replies, “something to occupy my hands with.”

Shaotian considers asking about the drawings on the back of the notebook, but he doesn’t, and Wenzhou doesn’t talk about it, either.

iii.

Wenzhou’s hands can be terribly distracting, Shaotian notes — not for the first time — as he leans back against his chair during one particularly boring meeting in Blue Rain Club’s conference room.

It’s three days before the big match against Excellent Era, and the core members of the Blue Rain team have gathered here to discuss tactics and strategies.

As Wenzhou talks, his serene voice washing over the room like waves lapping gently against the shore, Shaotian finds his mind wandering, and his eyes, which have been previously focusing on the stormy weather beyond the windows smeared with raindrops, have now turned their attention back to the speaker at the front of the room, or more specifically, the speaker’s hands.

For Wenzhou’s hands are constantly moving in interesting little gestures even when he talks about dry topics like laying sieges and attacking opponents — whether it’s rhythmic tapping against his notebook, or twirling his mechanical pencil ‘round and ‘round, just as he’s currently doing.

The writing utensil is twirled back and forth with so much speed that it has become nothing but a blur of yellow and black, and Shaotian is transfixed. How much control Wenzhou must have, and how nimble his fingers must be in order to balance and spin the thin pencil between his digits while he walks and speaks.

Well, the captain isn’t speaking anymore, Shaotian thinks a little belatedly.

And the pencil has stopped spinning, too.

The room has become quiet except for the humming of the air condition, and when he finally realizes that everyone has their eyes on him, including Wenzhou, who is staring at him with those chilling blue eyes, Shaotian gives them all a bright, harmless grin.

Wenzhou sighs softly, and asks, his fingers instinctively starting to twirl the pencil again, “Shaotian, what do you think of the tactic we’ve just been going over?”

“Uhhh…” Shaotian hasn’t heard or retained a word for the last ten minutes, and Wenzhou probably knows that, “it’s… it’s good?”

Wenzhou cocks up one of his eyebrows, clearly unamused.

iv.

Shaotian likes vegetables; he will argue his tongue off about this topic if he has to.

It’s just that people tend to put certain vegetables in the weirdest, grossest dishes. Like, who the fuck in their right mind would put okra in a stir fry? Not him, and he definitely won’t allow Wenzhou to ruin a good dish if it’s the last thing he does.

On the other hand, stewed okra with tomatoes, onions, and spicy sausages — he can consume that delicacy over two bowls of rice. So, that’s what they’ve decided to make for tonight’s dinner, along with steamed carp fresh from the market, and broth with watercress and pork.

He should probably be paying attention to the pot over the open flames, but Wenzhou has picked up a knife and started expertly chopping the scallions for the steamed fish into fine, soft ribbons. Water droplets slither down between knuckles and disappear into the gaps between his fingers, his manicured nails a contrast against the spring green of the herb he’s chopping, and the way he gently eases the blade over the stems as he cuts them, as if he’s taking the greatest care to doing it right, is somehow even more enthralling than watching his fingers flying over the keyboard while playing Glory.

Shaotian thinks he may have a huge problem: namely, Wenzhou’s hands.

“Shaotian, your stew is boiling over,” Wenzhou looks over, brows puckered in concern.

“Oh shit, shit, shit!” he tries to pick up the lid after turning down the heat but the steam gets him first, and he yelps in pain as the torrent of hot steam scalds his skin into an angry shade of red, his swearing going off like rounds from a machine gun.

The blond immediately turns the tap and lets cool water run over his injured hand, and the angry cussing quickly transforms to pained hissing as the water splashes over the burned area.

“Here, let me take a look.”

Standing close behind him with his chest touching Shaotian’s back, Wenzhou winds his arms around the vice-captain’s smaller frame and pulls his hand lightly towards them, his head lowered to inspect the wound more closely so that Shaotian can feel the other man’s every warm exhale against his cheek.

“You should be more careful,” Wenzhou murmurs, soft like his caresses against Shaotian’s sensitive skin along the inner wrist, meticulous like the way he handles a knife, calculating like he’s about to launch a final attack with a few presses of keys. “These hands are your livelihood. Last time it was the knife; this time it was a pot; what shall I do with you, hmm?”

“U-umm, I’m fine, this is fine, I’m absolutely fine. This is nothing serious at all. I’ll just go and get the ointment for it, okay? Okay.”

He’s trying to squirm out of Wenzhou’s embrace, but it’s useless because the moment Wenzhou drops a soft kiss on his forehead and finally releases him with a “I’ll go get it,” Shaotian knows he’s been utterly defeated.

Ever since they’ve started sleeping with each other, Shaotian discovers another talent that Wenzhou’s hands are capable of.

“Ah fuck, fuck, fuck, stop fucking teasing me and get on with the actual fucking, will you? Goddamnit…” Shaotian whines into the crook of his elbow as Wenzhou’s fingers — two fingers drenched with lube — skim that spot again that scatters stars along his spine, making him shudder and curve up from the mattress with an embarrassingly loud mewl.

Wenzhou chuckles and continues the sweet torture by adding a third finger, the speed painstakingly slow — slow enough that Shaotian can feel every inch of his skin, every knuckle of his finger, entering and pulling out, leaving pinpricks of flames that spread and grow along the surface of his skin, sinking into his flesh, swimming in his blood.

“Captain…” Shaotian gasps, and the title makes him pause despite his desire for more; it sounds too stifling, too formal for what they’re doing — for what they’ve been doing for months now — but he doesn’t know how else to address him, so he tries the name he hasn’t called him with since their training camp days. “Wenzhou, Wenzhou… please, let me— I’ve gotta—”

Wenzhou doesn’t think too much of it when he sticks his index finger into Shaotian’s mouth in an attempt to muffle his mindless babbling, and it works a little until the little demon starts licking him with some sort of deliberation. Golden eyes watch him hungrily as he licks the length of Wenzhou’s finger, taking care to fondle every crease and nook, and humming appreciatively when he swallows his digit whole. He sucks on it with such enthusiasm that Wenzhou is starting to feel the effect, making him imagining that talented tongue and mouth licking and sucking on something else.

The image is too much, too real, and like the opportunist that he is, Shaotian takes advantage of the moment Wenzhou breaks his momentum and focus, and strikes back with a vengeance.

+ i.

When Wenzhou passes the folder filled with research data of their next opponents to his vice-captain, he exclaims, “Shaotian, your hand is freezing! Are you sick?”

“Hmm?” Shaotian looks down at his hands and flexes his fingers experimentally, “No. My hands are always like that during this kind of weather — shitty circulation, y’know. I left my gloves at home, so that’s probably why they feel especially cold right now. Don’t worry though!” he quickly says, “I’ll warm up properly before we start.”

“Ah,” Wenzhou nods once.

It’s true that Shaotian always seems so much more sensitive to the cold than everybody else. His hands are especially bad — the chill seeps deep past his flesh and stiffens his bones, so before every match or training session, he needs to spend at least half an hour warming up his fingers.

As the weather becomes bleaker in the winter, Shaotian’s wardrobe goes from a scarf around his neck, a long coat, and a pair of gloves to a thicker scarf long enough to wind around his neck and cover his head, earmuffs, a puffier coat, and two pairs of gloves with hand warmer packs stuffed inside.

Even wearing all those layers, Shaotian can still be seen shivering and burying his face into the warmth of his scarf during snowy days or when the temperature drops below zero. His cheeks flush with cold then, and the tips of his nose, too, and Wenzhou always finds that part of the chatterbox vice-captain sort of endearing, though of course he’ll never admit so.

The captain of Blue Rain checks the time; there are still twenty minutes until they start, so he decides to make the best of it.

“Hold on,” Wenzhou calls for him, and Shaotian turns around, topaz eyes round with confusion. He takes the few steps to close their distance, reaches out for Shaotian’s hand, and before the other man can protest, Wenzhou pulls them into one of the deserted hallways that they both know most people won’t normally trespass at this time of the day.

“Captain? What’s up?” Shaotian looks up at him through his blond fringes, the folder tucked securely under his arm when Wenzhou takes hold of both of his hands.

“We still have some time, right?” Wenzhou only says, cupping the other man’s hands into his slightly bigger, warmer ones. He starts to rub them back and forth gently, allowing the soft friction to generate heat and encourage blood circulation in Shaotian’s limbs.

“Right,” Shaotian ducks his head low, cheeks heating up.

After a few minutes of silence, Wenzhou laughs, the sound soft like dawn mist, “It’s kind of strange when you’re not chattering away about one thing or another when you’re around me.”

“That’s so incredibly rude, captain!” Shaotian jumps in to defend himself, eyes flashing with mock irritation, “if you’ve missed my voice that much, you only need to tell me. No need to go about it in such a convoluted way and no need to be shy either, Captain Yu. Also, reverse psychology won’t work on me at all.”

“No?” Wenzhou’s tone drops a degree lower, one corner of his lips curling upwards, “I think it’s working rather well.” He nudges the turfs of blond locks by Shaotian’s temple and places a kiss there with another knowing smile.

“Hmph, whatever, whatever. Just warm me up properly,” he tilts his head up, his ardent eyes beckoning him, his message never clearer.

“Of course,” Wenzhou leans forward without a second thought.

#quan zhi gao shou #qzgs #the king's avatar #huang shaotian #yu wenzhou #huang/yu #shaotian/wenzhou #bowie's crappy writing

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pilatesembodiedsf · 4 years

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Why Boosting Your Immune System Makes You Feel Sicker (And 8 Other Facts That Will Protect Your Health)

“You have a supercharged immune system…and that is why you’re so sick.”

I’ll never forget the words from my immunologist. It was the same speculation I heard a week earlier from my oncologist, right after a relieving conversation where she shared that I didn’t have cancer. If I’m being open, this was the third time I’d heard about my overachieving immune system, as the words echoed what my rheumatologist had suspected, as well.

Now, before you think this is about some rare disease or a catchy headline, I’m sharing my story because it’s an important lesson for you and how you can protect your health. In the face of coronavirus concerns and immune system hype, I’ve watched helplessly as supplement manufacturers have blatantly lied about the realities of “boosting” your immunity.

For more than 20 years, I’ve suffered from inexplicably high fevers without any answers. My fevers would last for more than 60 days and run upwards of 104 degrees, forcing me into delirium, causing me to lose upwards of 30 pounds, and leaving me a shell of a human.

Of all the things I expected to find out — cancer, infectious disease, the plague (that’s what I called my mysterious illness — a “boosted immune system” was the last thing on my mind. But, this became my reality once I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder.

If you want to really understand what you can do to work with the natural functions of your body, it’s important to know that a “boosted” immune system is not what you think and not what you want. Instead, it’s time to rethink sickness and disease — and follow these science-backed recommendations to help you stay as healthy as possible.

How Your Immune System Really Works

It didn’t take the outbreak of coronavirus to make you worry about your immune system. The multivitamin industry is a multi-billion dollar business. From Vitamin C gummies to antioxidant drinks and zinc lozenges, there’s no shortage of options that promise to protect your immune response.

The only problem is, like most supplements, there’s a lot more smoke (read: marketing) than substance.

With a few exceptions, most vitamins and minerals won’t do anything for your immune system unless you are severely malnourished and deficient. And, we’re not talking about missing your daily fruits and vegetables. We’re talking about you living in a perpetual state of sickness.

The idea that you can pop a pill, drink a fizzy potion, chug kombucha, super-charge with billions and billions of probiotics, mainline IV cocktails, or do anything else to “boost” your immune system is…well…how can I put this clearly…

It’s bullshit.

This is not doom and gloom or a haters anthem. Just the opposite. There are a few impactful things you can do (without spending money) to protect your immune system. But, there just happen to be many (many) more potentially useless options that don’t.

A quick disclaimer: if you take multivitamins, Greens drinks, or other supplements for a variety of other reasons — or just to fill the gaps in your diet — there’s no need to stop if it works for you. This is just about what you can really do to help support your immune system.

Here are 8 truths that will change the way you think of your body, save you money, and — most importantly — make it easier to course-correct and take care of yourself both before and after you get sick.

Immune System 101

Your immune system might be the most impressive design of the human body. You have two different components that protect you from disease — the innate and the adaptive.

Your body has a first line of defense, like your skin and mucous membranes. Once a disease passes through, that’s when your innate immune response kicks in. These the proteins and cells that fight against any disease or infection by increasing inflammation (yes, inflammation can be a good thing — more on this later) to create a protective barrier aimed at preventing the spread of any infection that has penetrated your body.

The easiest way to think about this is imagining the behind-the-scenes magic your body works after you get a cut anywhere on your body and you need to heal with simultaneously preventing the creation or spread infection.

On the other hand, the adaptive immune response is what you probably think about as your immune system. This how your body responds when you get sick and your body quickly works to recognize the disease, create antibodies or immune cells, and defeat the infection, bacteria, or virus.

This function (and limitations) of your adaptive immune system is both what makes coronavirus so dangerous — and what makes your immune system so fascinating.

If your body has no way of recognizing a disease (this is what makes a virus novel), then you’re going to get sick. But, assuming your body can overcome the disease and create immune cells to overcome the infection, your newfound immunity (the cells) stays in your body forever.

It’s why many doctors believe that it might be impossible for you to suffer from the exact infection twice. Once it’s learned, you’re protected. That’s also why you shouldn’t worry about being inside weakening your immunity. It’s not how your body works.

It’s the same mechanism that allows vaccines to be effective. The disabled version of the bug is introduced into your body, you “learn it” and creates the methods to defeat it, and then you can use this newfound defensive mechanism to keep you safe.

Therein lies the most important part of your adaptive immune system. You have to adapt to the disease, and to do so you must come in contact with it.

But, you can’t improve your immune system’s database without fighting infections first.

An Immune “Boost” Is Not Good For You

Your immune system can’t be easily manipulated. Anyone that tells you they can “boost” one part of your immune system is lying. Not to mention, doing so could be a massive mistake.

Think about the story of my autoimmune disease. As my doctor’s made painfully clear, I have a “boosted” immune system. When I get sick, my body responds by triggering high fevers. This is a natural reaction.

Despite what you might think, a fever is a good thing. It’s your body’s way of fighting disease by heating up your internal system, making the illness uncomfortable and vulnerable so you can kill it off.

But, my reaction is broken. It’s a supercharged response that means my body heats up even hotter — and there’s no off-switch. So, I stay hot — long after the original bug has been killed, and my entire body suffers as a result. This, in a nutshell, is what happens with all autoimmune conditions (but not all result in symptoms like fevers).

Now, apply that same concept to your own body. When you think about boosting your immune system, you probably imagine being healthier, feeling stronger, and recovering faster.

But, when your immune system is actually boosted and working — much like my fevers — the “effectiveness” would result in you being miserable.

Think about when you’re sick. The aches and fevers and even the snot (yeah, I just wrote snot) are not the symptoms of sickness; they are all a byproduct of your innate immune system at work.

The same goes for allergies. The itchy eyes and burning throat are your immune system reacting, learning, and fighting.

So, if you truly boost your immune system, you would intensify those uncomfortable symptoms.

Safe to say, unless your body is in fight-mode, you don’t want an overactive (AKA “boosted”) immune system because that’s what causes autoimmune disorders, a disease to which there is no cure.

Instead, you want a healthy, functioning immune system that knows when to fight infection when it’s needed, can relax when it’s not, and is able to maintain a strong barrier against disease. To make this your reality, stop looking for boosts and start focusing on the things take make it harder for your body to function normally.

Stress Is The Original Immune System Killer

If you really want to help your immune system, start by looking at your stress levels. Whether you feel it or not, stress disarms your immune system and prevents it from working at its normal levels.

As far back as the 1980s, breakthroughs in the stress-immune system relationship occurred in research that focused on students and how their immune systems were suppressed leading up to exams. The research found that your T-cells (the fighters that protect you against everything from viruses to life-threatening diseases like cancer) decrease in the face of stress.

There was also fascinating research at Carnegie Mellon, which found that people who had less stress in their lives were better able to fight off the common cold when exposed to the virus. Similar responses immunosuppression was mimicked in other stressful situations, including studies that show people in difficult relationships heal slower if they suffer cuts or other wounds.

So what’s happening? A great immune system is one that isn’t being dragged down by life (as opposed to “boosted” by pills). Better health starts with seeing big-picture immune sabotage, and (thankfully) they are all easy concepts to understand

Your immune system has an army of cells that keep you happy (T and B cells are your main immune fighting cells). And those cells produce an immune response that produces cytokines (friendly protein cells that help your body) and antibodies that destroy foreign pathogens.

Unfortunately, stressors shut down your natural immune response, which means your fighter cells can’t function as they normally do to keep you healthy.

If you need to destress, 10-15 minutes of meditation is a great place to start. If you’re new to it, try. an app like Stop, Breathe & Think, Calm, or Headspace.

Not feeling your inner zen? Here are two additional options with science on their side.

Stress-relief option 1: Take 2 deep breaths when you feel your heart racing, or before you answer a call or have a meeting. According to the Program on Integrative Medicine at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, the deep breath will make you sound more confident and reset your heart rate to reduce stress.

Stress-relief option 2: Grab coffee with your friends. Researchers at the University of Bristol in England discovered that when stressed-out men consumed caffeine by themselves, they remained nervous and jittery. But, when they caffeine-loaded as part of a group, their feelings of stress subsided.

Count The Hours You Sleep — Or Else

Sleep deprivation is the other part of the 1-2 combo that can knock out your immune system. If stress stresses out your immune system, then sleep deprivation exhausts your body into making mistakes that leave you vulnerable.

A lack of sleep can prevent your immune cells from making their way to your lymph nodes (where they help you fight disease) or confuse your body and make it harder for them to create the right antibodies to fight back against infection.

How bad can it be? One study showed that regularly sleeping only 6 hours per night makes you four times more likely to catch a cold compared to sleeping 7 hours per night. And the risk gets even worse if you sleep fewer than 5 hours per night.

If you need help improving your sleep, here are a few simple guidelines that can make it easier to fall (and stay) asleep.

Go to bed around the same time every night

Time your sleep in 1.5-hour increments. This is a full cycle, so it will help ensure you don’t wake up in REM sleep, which could leave you groggy and tired.

Sleep in a colder room than your preferred “room temperature.” Some research suggests between 60-70 degrees.

If possible, exercise earlier in the day.

Don’t consume alcohol before you sleep. (Yes, we realize this might be tough sometimes.)

Limit screen time about 1-hour before you sleep.

Clear your mind. Either watch a comedy, do a puzzle, or journal right before you sleep. This will trigger a part of your brain that will help “calm” your thoughts so it’s easier for you to fall asleep.

Movement Might Be The Best Medicine

If you go back in time just 10 years ago, many people believed that exercise actually weakens your immune system. Turns out, nothing could be farther from the truth.

Whether you lift weights, run, cycle, or walk — any type of exercise, especially when combined with more sleep and less stress — is a key part of keeping your immune system functioning well.

Exercise works in many ways to make sure your immune defensive systems can act quickly and effectively, and it can even help offset stress or sleep difficulties. (This all assumes that you’re allowing for proper recovery.)

Recent research found that regular exercise:

Helps the overall health of your immune system

Decreases your risk of illness

Helps mediate the correct inflammatory and anti-inflammatory responses

Delays the onset of age-related immune decline

Even better, a review of studies found that movement truly is medicine. From the study conclusion:

Contemporary evidence from epidemiological studies shows that leading a physically active lifestyle reduces the incidence of communicable (e.g., bacterial and viral infections) and non-communicable diseases (e.g., cancer), implying that immune competency is enhanced by regular exercise bouts.

When you exercise, your body recognizes stress. Even though it’s good stress, it’s still a strain on your body, so you produce neutrophils and lymphocytes (the T-cell and natural killer cells we mentioned earlier), which flow throughout your body to keep you strong, fight off invaders, and help create antibodies when necessary.

In other words, exercise helps spark more activity in these cells for about 3-4 hours, which means your body is both more likely to find and disable potentially harmful germs and diseases.

As an added bonus, the cells perform “immune surveillance” and patrol your body searching for infection.

It’s likely the reason why people who exercise regularly (at least 5 times per week) miss nearly 50% fewer days from sickness than those who don’t.

What’s more, exercise has been shown to help decrease stress and improve sleep. In other words, exercise might be the first domino to keeping you healthy because it’s insurance for the other two vulnerabilities (stress and sleep) that weaken your normal immune system function.

Here are bodyweight workouts that can help you get in your movement in any situation or location.

Protein Protects (Much More Than Muscle)

We’ve mentioned how protein plays a role to help keep your body safe. You might think of protein as the key ingredient in muscle building (it is), but — when you look at the bigger picture — protein plays a vital role in every cell in your body. This includes your immune system and helping create the cells that help fight disease.

Proteins are a key component of the very antibodies developed by your immune systems designed to keep you safe. Eating protein ensures that your body has enough of the raw materials needed to allow your immune system to respond to bacteria and viruses in your body.

Proteins (cytokines, in particular) also help ensure that your immune system doesn’t go overboard and start working too hard. It’s all part of a system designed to give your body what it needs and prevent it from targeting your healthy cells.

High-quality complete protein options include:

Dairy products, such as milk, cheese/cottage cheese, and yogurt

Whey protein

Eggs

Seafood and fish

Beef

Chicken

Bison

Pork

Pea Protein

Soybeans

Blended meals (beans and rice)

Vegan protein powders with multiple protein sources

If You Supplement, Focus on Vitamin D

While no one supplement can even come close to providing the benefits of good sleep, less stress, and consistent exercise, there is one vitamin that appears to be more important than others.

More research is still needed, but a lot of emerging data — especially since the COVID-19 pandemic — has suggested that Vitamin D deficiency is closely linked to immune system vulnerabilities.

One study found that taking higher levels of vitamin D (in older individuals) led to a 40 percent decrease in respiratory infections over the course of a year.

This makes sense because Vitamin D is thought to play a vital role in both your innate and adaptive immune response (although scientists are still studying to learn how it all works). And Vitamin D plays an essential part in producing antimicrobial proteins that fight back against sickness, especially in the respiratory tract.

Plus, unlike many vitamins and minerals which can be produced by your body naturally or are rarely deficient, Vitamin D deficiency might impact more than 1 billion people worldwide.

To support your body naturally, try to get about 15-20 minutes of sun per day. If that’s not happening, look towards natural food sources such as:

Fatty fish rich in Omega-3’s, such as salmon or mackerel (or you can use cod liver oil)

Whole eggs

Mushrooms

Milk fortified with Vitamin D

Otherwise, you can use supplements that offer at least 2000-3000 IU of Vitamin D3. (Just be sure to ideally look for products or brands that are NSF Certified for Sport.)

You Booze, You Lose (That’s Your Immune System Speaking)

You won’t hear us telling you to completely avoid alcohol (life happens, and that includes rough days and celebrations). But, if you’re consistently drinking in essence, then your immune system is the one that’s suffering.

If you look at the research (there’s a lot of it), too much alcohol — and binge drinking moments — prevent the normal functioning of your immune system, and it leaves you more susceptible to everything from upper respiratory infections to slower recovery from cuts and muscle injuries.

And, to add insult to injury, it might also alter your gut microbiome in a way that weakens your immune system.

If you find yourself drinking every day — or drinking too much when you go out, take the old 1-2-3 method to establish more control.

Step 1: Carve out non-drinking days. This is a commitment and a way to create guardrails and build habits. (If you know you drink every Friday night, don’t start by removing that day. Make it easy to succeed and build from there.)

Step 2: Remove alcohol from your home. Just like a dieter who struggles with dessert, increasing the difficulty of accessibility makes it easier to drink less.

Step 3: Track your drinks, so you can hold yourself accountable and be honest about how much you’re drinking and how much you need to cut back.

If you love technology, you can try out the Less Drinks app and see if that helps.

The Bottom Line: How to Protect Your Immune System

Remember, no matter how well your immune system functions, if you come in contact with a novel pathogen or virus, you still might get sick. In situations like battling COVID-19, your best line of defense is being smart about your social contact, avoiding touching your face, and washing your hands frequently.

And, while you can’t prevent yourself from getting sick or boost certain aspects of your immune system, you can be sure to do the little things that won’t weaken your immune system or leave you unnecessarily vulnerable.

If you need help creating a plan designed for your lifestyle, check out our online coaching program. Simply fill out an application, and you’ll be assigned 2 coaches who will assess your exact needs, create habits that are easy to master, and build a customized plan that will upgrade your fitness and nutrition.

The post Why Boosting Your Immune System Makes You Feel Sicker (And 8 Other Facts That Will Protect Your Health) appeared first on Born Fitness.

#Born Fitness

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bluewatsons · 5 years

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Daniel J. Solove, “I’ve Got Nothing to Hide” and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy, 44 San Diego L Rev 745 (2007)

Abstract

In this short essay, written for a symposium in the San Diego Law Review, Professor Daniel Solove examines the nothing to hide argument. When asked about government surveillance and data mining, many people respond by declaring: "I've got nothing to hide." According to the nothing to hide argument, there is no threat to privacy unless the government uncovers unlawful activity, in which case a person has no legitimate justification to claim that it remain private. The nothing to hide argument and its variants are quite prevalent, and thus are worth addressing. In this essay, Solove critiques the nothing to hide argument and exposes its faulty underpinnings.

I. Introduction

Since the September 11 attacks, the government has been engaging in extensive surveillance and data mining. Regarding surveillance, in December 2005, the New York Times revealed that after September 11, the Bush Administration secretly authorized the National Security Administration (NSA) to engage in warrantless wiretapping of American citizens’ telephone calls.1 As for data mining, which involves analyzing personal data for patterns of suspicious behavior, the government has begun numerous programs. In 2002, the media revealed that the Department of Defense was constructing a data mining project, called “Total Information Awareness” (TIA), under the leadership of Admiral John Poindexter.2 The vision for TIA was to gather a variety of information about people, including financial, educational, health, and other data. The information would then be analyzed for suspicious behavior patterns. According to Poindexter: “The only way to detect . . . terrorists is to look for patterns of activity that are based on observations from past terrorist attacks as well as estimates about how terrorists will adapt to our measures to avoid detection.”3 When the program came to light, a public outcry erupted, and the U.S. Senate subsequently voted to deny the program funding, ultimately leading to its demise.4 Nevertheless, many components of TIA continue on in various government agencies, though in a less systematic and more clandestine fashion.5

In May 2006, USA Today broke the story that the NSA had obtained customer records from several major phone companies and was analyzing them to identify potential terrorists.6 The telephone call database is reported to be the “largest database ever assembled in the world.”7 In June 2006, the New York Times stated that the U.S. government had been accessing bank records from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Transactions (SWIFT), which handles financial transactions for thousands of banks around the world.8 Many people responded with outrage at these announcements, but many others did not perceive much of a problem. The reason for their lack of concern, they explained, was because: “I’ve got nothing to hide.”9

The argument that no privacy problem exists if a person has nothing to hide is frequently made in connection with many privacy issues. When the government engages in surveillance, many people believe that there is no threat to privacy unless the government uncovers unlawful activity, in which case a person has no legitimate justification to claim that it remain private. Thus, if an individual engages only in legal activity, she has nothing to worry about. When it comes to the government collecting and analyzing personal information, many people contend that a privacy harm exists only if skeletons in the closet are revealed. For example, suppose the government examines one’s telephone records and finds out that a person made calls to her parents, a friend in Canada, a video store, and a pizza delivery place. “So what?,” that person might say. “I’m not embarrassed or humiliated by this information. If anybody asks me, I’ll gladly tell them where I shop. I have nothing to hide.”

The “nothing to hide” argument and its variants are quite prevalent in popular discourse about privacy. Data security expert Bruce Schneier calls it the “most common retort against privacy advocates.”10 Legal scholar Geoffrey Stone refers to it as “all-too-common refrain.”11 The nothing to hide argument is one of the primary arguments made when balancing privacy against security. In its most compelling form, it is an argument that the privacy interest is generally minimal to trivial, thus making the balance against security concerns a foreordained victory for security. Sometimes the nothing to hide argument is posed as a question: “If you have nothing to hide, then what do you have to fear?” Others ask: “If you aren’t doing anything wrong, then what do you have to hide?”

In this essay, I will explore the nothing to hide argument and its variants in more depth. Grappling with the nothing to hide argument is important, because the argument reflects the sentiments of a wide percentage of the population. In popular discourse, the nothing to hide argument’s superficial incantations can readily be refuted. But when the argument is made in its strongest form, it is far more formidable.

In order to respond to the nothing to hide argument, it is imperative that we have a theory about what privacy is and why it is valuable. At its core, the nothing to hide argument emerges from a conception of privacy and its value. What exactly is “privacy”? How valuable is privacy and how do we assess its value? How do we weigh privacy against countervailing values? These questions have long plagued those seeking to develop a theory of privacy and justifications for its legal protection.

This essay begins in Part II by discussing the nothing to hide argument. First, I introduce the argument as it often exists in popular discourse and examine frequent ways of responding to the argument. Second, I present the argument in what I believe to be its strongest form. In Part III, I briefly discuss my work thus far on conceptualizing privacy. I explain why existing theories of privacy have been unsatisfactory, have led to confusion, and have impeded the development of effective legal and policy responses to privacy problems. In Part IV, I argue that the nothing to hide argument— even in its strongest form—stems from certain faulty assumptions about privacy and its value. The problem, in short, is not with finding an answer to the question: “If you’ve got nothing to hide, then what do you have to fear?” The problem is in the very question itself.

II. The “Nothing to Hide” Argument

When discussing whether government surveillance and data mining pose a threat to privacy, many people respond that they have nothing to hide. This argument permeates the popular discourse about privacy and security issues. In Britain, for example, the government has installed millions of public surveillance cameras in cities and towns, which are watched by officials via closed circuit television.12 In a campaign slogan for the program, the government declares: “If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear.”13 In the United States, one anonymous individual from the Department of Justice comments: “If [government officials] need to read my e-mails . . . so be it. I have nothing to hide. Do you?”14 One blogger, in reference to profiling people for national security purposes, declares: “Go ahead and profile me, I have nothing to hide.”15 Another blogger proclaims: “So I don’t mind people wanting to find out things about me, I’ve got nothing to hide! Which is why I support President Bush’s efforts to find terrorists by monitoring our phone calls!”16 Variations of nothing to hide arguments frequently appear in blogs, letters to the editor, television news interviews, and other forums. Some examples include:

I don’t have anything to hide from the government. I don’t think I had that much hidden from the government in the first place. I don’t think they care if I talk about my ornery neighbor.17

Do I care if the FBI monitors my phone calls? I have nothing to hide. Neither does 99.99 percent of the population. If the wiretapping stops one of these Sept. 11 incidents, thousands of lives are saved.18

Like I said, I have nothing to hide. The majority of the American people have nothing to hide. And those that have something to hide should be found out, and get what they have coming to them.19

The argument is not only of recent vintage. For example, one of the characters in Henry James’s 1888 novel, The Reverberator, muses: “[I]f these people had done bad things they ought to be ashamed of themselves and he couldn’t pity them, and if they hadn’t done them there was no need of making such a rumpus about other people knowing.”20

I encountered the nothing to hide argument so frequently in news interviews, discussions, and the like, that I decided to blog about the issue. I asked the readers of my blog, Concurring Opinions, whether there are good responses to the nothing to hide argument.21 I received a torrent of comments to my post:

My response is “So do you have curtains?” or “Can I see your credit card bills for the last year?”22

So my response to the “If you have nothing to hide . . .” argument is simply, “I don’t need to justify my position. You need to justify yours. Come back with a warrant.”23

I don’t have anything to hide. But I don’t have anything I feel like showing you, either.24

If you have nothing to hide, then you don’t have a life.25

Show me yours and I’ll show you mine.26

It’s not about having anything to hide, it’s about things not being anyone else’s business.27

Bottom line, Joe Stalin would [have] loved it. Why should anyone have to say more?28

Most replies to the nothing to hide argument quickly respond with a witty retort. Indeed, on the surface it seems easy to dismiss the nothing to hide argument. Everybody probably has something to hide from somebody. As the author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn declared, “Everyone is guilty of something or has something to conceal. All one has to do is look hard enough to find what it is.”29 Likewise, in Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s novella Traps, which involves a seemingly innocent man put on trial by a group of retired lawyers for a mock trial game, the man inquires what his crime shall be. “‘An altogether minor matter,’ the prosecutor replied . . . . ‘A crime can always be found.’”30 One can usually think of something compelling that even the most open person would want to hide. As one comment to my blog post noted: “If you have nothing to hide, then that quite literally means you are willing to let me photograph you naked? And I get full rights to that photograph—so I can show it to your neighbors?”31 Canadian privacy expert David Flaherty expresses a similar idea when he argues:

There is no sentient human being in the Western world who has little or no regard for his or her personal privacy; those who would attempt such claims cannot withstand even a few minutes’ questioning about intimate aspects of their lives without capitulating to the intrusiveness of certain subject matters.32

Such responses only attack the nothing to hide argument in its most extreme form, which is not particularly strong. As merely a one-line utterance about a particular person’s preference, the nothing to hide argument is not very compelling. But stated in a more sophisticated manner, the argument is more challenging. First, it must be broadened beyond the particular person making it. When phrased as an individual preference, the nothing to hide argument is hard to refute because it is difficult to quarrel with one particular person’s preferences. As one commenter aptly notes:

By saying “I have nothing to hide,” you are saying that it’s OK for the government to infringe on the rights of potentially millions of your fellow Americans, possibly ruining their lives in the process. To me, the “I have nothing to hide” argument basically equates to “I don’t care what happens, so long as it doesn’t happen to me.”33

In its more compelling variants, the nothing to hide argument can be made in a more general manner. Instead of contending that “I’ve got nothing to hide,” the argument can be recast as positing that all law- abiding citizens should have nothing to hide. Only if people desire to conceal unlawful activity should they be concerned, but according to the nothing to hide argument, people engaged in illegal conduct have no legitimate claim to maintaining the privacy of such activities.

In a related argument, Judge Richard Posner contends: “[W]hen people today decry lack of privacy, what they want, I think, is mainly something quite different from seclusion: they want more power to conceal information about themselves that others might use to their disadvantage.”34 Privacy involves a person’s “right to conceal discreditable facts about himself.”35 In other words, privacy is likely to be invoked when there is something to hide and that something consists of negative information about a person. Posner asserts that the law should not protect people in concealing discreditable information. “The economist,” he argues, “sees a parallel to the efforts of sellers to conceal defects in their products.”36

Of course, one might object, there is nondiscreditable information about people that they nevertheless want to conceal because they find it embarrassing or just do not want others to know about. In a less extreme form, the nothing to hide argument does not refer to all personal information, but only to that subset of personal information that is likely to be involved in government surveillance. When people respond to NSA surveillance and data mining that they have nothing to hide, the more sophisticated way of understanding their argument should be as applying to the particular pieces of information that are gathered in the NSA programs. Information about what phone numbers people dial and even what they say in many conversations is often not likely to be embarrassing or discreditable to a law-abiding citizen. Retorts to the nothing to hide argument about exposing people’s naked bodies to the world or revealing their deepest secrets to their friends are only relevant if there is a likelihood that such programs will actually result in these kinds of disclosures. This type of information is not likely to be captured in the government surveillance. Even if it were, many people might rationally assume that the information will be exposed only to a few law enforcement officials, and perhaps not even seen by human eyes. Computers might store the data and analyze it for patterns, but no person might have any contact with the data. As Posner argues:

The collection, mainly through electronic means, of vast amounts of personal data is said to invade privacy. But machine collection and processing of data cannot, as such, invade privacy. Because of their volume, the data are first sifted by computers, which search for names, addresses, phone numbers, etc., that may have intelligence value. This initial sifting, far from invading privacy (a computer is not a sentient being), keeps most private data from being read by any intelligence officer.37

There is one final component of the most compelling versions of the nothing to hide argument—a comparison of the relative value of the privacy interest being threatened with the government interest in promoting security. As one commenter to my blog post astutely notes: “You can’t talk about how people feel about the potential loss of privacy in any meaningful way without recognizing that most of the people who don’t mind the NSA programs see it as a potential exchange of a small amount of privacy for a potential national security gain.”38 In other words, the nothing to hide argument can be made by comparing the relative value between privacy and security. The value of privacy, the argument provides, is low, because the information is often not particularly sensitive. The ones with the most to worry about are the ones engaged in illegal conduct, and the value of protecting their privacy is low to nonexistent. On the government interest side of the balance, security has a very high value. Having a computer analyze the phone numbers one dials is not likely to expose deep dark secrets or embarrassing information to the world. The machine will simply move on, oblivious to any patterns that are not deemed suspicious. In other words, if you are not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide and nothing to fear.

Therefore, in a more compelling form than is often expressed in popular discourse, the nothing to hide argument proceeds as follows: The NSA surveillance, data mining, or other government information- gathering programs will result in the disclosure of particular pieces of information to a few government officials, or perhaps only to government computers. This very limited disclosure of the particular information involved is not likely to be threatening to the privacy of law-abiding citizens. Only those who are engaged in illegal activities have a reason to hide this information. Although there may be some cases in which the information might be sensitive or embarrassing to law-abiding citizens, the limited disclosure lessens the threat to privacy. Moreover, the security interest in detecting, investigating, and preventing terrorist attacks is very high and outweighs whatever minimal or moderate privacy interests law-abiding citizens may have in these particular pieces of information.

Cast in this manner, the nothing to hide argument is a formidable one. It balances the degree to which an individual’s privacy is compromised by the limited disclosure of certain information against potent national security interests. Under such a balancing scheme, it is quite difficult for privacy to prevail.

III. Conceptualizing Privacy

For quite some time, scholars have proclaimed that privacy is so muddled a concept that it is of little use. According to Arthur Miller, privacy is “exasperatingly vague and evanescent.”39 As Hyman Gross declares, “[T]he concept of privacy is infected with pernicious ambiguities.”40 Colin Bennett similarly notes, “Attempts to define the concept of ‘privacy’ have generally not met with any success.”41 Robert Post declares that “[p]rivacy is a value so complex, so entangled in competing and contradictory dimensions, so engorged with various and distinct meanings, that I sometimes despair whether it can be usefully addressed at all.”42 “Perhaps the most striking thing about the right to privacy,” Judith Jarvis Thomson observes, “is that nobody seems to have any very clear idea what it is.”43

Often, the philosophical discourse about conceptualizing privacy is ignored in legal and policy debates. Many jurists, politicians, and scholars simply analyze the issues without articulating a conception of what privacy means. However, conceptualizing privacy is essential for the analysis of these issues. Those working on legal and policy issues all have some implicit conception of privacy. In many cases, privacy issues never get balanced against conflicting interests because courts, legislators, and others fail even to recognize that privacy is implicated. It is therefore of paramount importance that we continue to work on developing a conception of privacy. But how? Why have existing attempts been so unsatisfying?

A. A Pluralistic Conception of Privacy

Many attempts to conceptualize privacy do so by attempting to locate the essence of privacy—its core characteristics or the common denominator that links together the various things we classify under the rubric of “privacy.” I refer to this as the traditional method of conceptualizing. This method seeks to understand privacy per genus et differentiam—by looking for necessary and sufficient elements that demarcate what privacy is.

In my article, Conceptualizing Privacy, I discussed a wide range of attempts to locate the common denominator of privacy.44 I examined several different candidates for the common denominator in the existing philosophical and legal literature. Some attempts to conceptualize privacy were too narrow, excluding things we commonly understand to be private. For example, several theorists have contended that privacy should be defined in terms of intimacy. According to philosopher Julie Inness: “[T]he content of privacy cannot be captured if we focus exclusively on either information, access, or intimate decisions because privacy involves all three areas. . . . I suggest that these apparently disparate areas are linked by the common denominator of intimacy—privacy’s content covers intimate information, access, and decisions.”45 The problem with understanding privacy as intimacy, however, is that not all private information or decisions we make are intimate. For instance, our Social Security number, political affiliations, religious beliefs, and much more may not be intimate, but we may regard them as private. Of course, intimacy could be defined quite broadly, though then it merely becomes a synonym for privacy rather than an elaboration of what privacy means. The purpose of defining privacy as intimacy is to develop a bounded and coherent conception of privacy, but it comes at the cost of being far too narrow.

On the other hand, some attempts to conceptualize privacy are far too broad, such as Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis’s understanding of privacy as the “right to be let alone.”46 What exactly does being let alone entail? There are many ways in which people are intruded upon that they would not consider privacy violations. If you shove me, you are not leaving me alone. You may be harming me, but it is not a problem of privacy.

Ultimately, any attempt to locate a common core to the manifold things we file under the rubric of “privacy” faces a difficult dilemma. If one chooses a common denominator that is broad enough to encompass nearly everything, then the conception risks the danger of being overinclusive or too vague. If one chooses a narrower common denominator, then the risk is that the conception is too restrictive. In Conceptualizing Privacy, I surveyed the various proposed conceptions and found all to suffer from these problems.47

I argued that instead of conceptualizing privacy with the traditional method, we should instead understand privacy as a set of family resemblances. In Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein argued that some concepts do not have “one thing in common” but “are related to one another in many different ways.”48 Instead of being related by a common denominator, some things share “a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing: sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail.”49 In other words, privacy is not reducible to a singular essence; it is a plurality of different things that do not share one element in common but that nevertheless bear a resemblance to each other.

In my work on conceptualizing privacy thus far, I have attempted to lay the groundwork for a pluralistic understanding of privacy. In some works, I have attempted to analyze specific privacy issues, trying to better articulate the nature of the problems. For example, in my book, The Digital Person, I argued that the collection and use of personal information in databases presents a different set of problems than government surveillance.50 Many commentators had been using the metaphor of George Orwell’s 1984 to describe the problems created by the collection and use of personal data.51 I contended that the Orwell metaphor, which focuses on the harms of surveillance (such as inhibition and social control) might be apt to describe law enforcement’s monitoring of citizens. But much of the data gathered in computer databases is not particularly sensitive, such as one’s race, birth date, gender, address, or marital status. Many people do not care about concealing the hotels they stay at, the cars they own or rent, or the kind of beverages they drink. People often do not take many steps to keep such information secret. Frequently, though not always, people’s activities would not be inhibited if others knew this information.

I suggested a different metaphor to capture the problems: Franz Kafka’s The Trial, which depicts a bureaucracy with inscrutable purposes that uses people’s information to make important decisions about them, yet denies the people the ability to participate in how their information is used.52 The problems captured by the Kafka metaphor are of a different sort than the problems caused by surveillance. They often do not result in inhibition or chilling. Instead, they are problems of information processing—the storage, use, or analysis of data—rather than information collection. They affect the power relationships between people and the institutions of the modern state. They not only frustrate the individual by creating a sense of helplessness and powerlessness, but they also affect social structure by altering the kind of relationships people have with the institutions that make important decisions about their lives.

I explored the ways that legal and policy solutions were focusing too much on the nexus of problems under the Orwell metaphor—those of surveillance—and were not adequately addressing the Kafka problems— those of information processing.53 The difficulty was that commentators were trying to conceive of the problems caused by databases in terms of surveillance when, in fact, these problems were different. The way that these problems are conceived has a tremendous impact on the legal and policy solutions used to solve them. As John Dewey observed, “[A] problem well put is half-solved.”54 “The way in which the problem is conceived,” Dewey explained, “decides what specific suggestions are entertained and which are dismissed; what data are selected and which rejected; it is the criterion for relevancy and irrelevancy of hypotheses and conceptual structures.”55

In a subsequent article, A Taxonomy of Privacy, I developed a taxonomy of privacy—a way of mapping out the manifold types of problems and harms that constitute privacy violations.56 The taxonomy is my attempt to formulate a model of the problems from studying the welter of laws, cases, issues, and cultural and historical materials. The taxonomy I developed is as follows:

Information Collection

Surveillance

Interrogation

Information Processing

Aggregation

Identification

Insecurity

Secondary Use

Exclusion

Information Dissemination

Breach of Confidentiality Disclosure

Exposure

Increased Accessibility

Blackmail

Appropriation

Distortion

Invasion

Intrusion

Decisional Interference

The taxonomy has four general categories of privacy problems with sixteen different subcategories. The first general category is information collection, which involves the ways that data is gathered about people. The subcategories, surveillance and interrogation, represent the two primary problematic ways of gathering information. A privacy problem occurs when an activity by a person, business, or government entity creates harm by disrupting valuable activities of others. These harms need not be physical or emotional; they can occur by chilling socially beneficial behavior (for example, free speech and association) or by leading to power imbalances that adversely affect social structure (for example, excessive executive power).

The second general category is information processing. This involves the storing, analysis, and manipulation of data. There are a number of problems that information processing can cause, and I included five subcategories in my taxonomy. For example, one problem that I label insecurity results in increasing people’s vulnerability to potential abuse of their information.57 The problem that I call exclusion involves people’s inability to access and have any say in the way their data is used.58

Information dissemination is the third general category. Disseminating information involves the ways in which it is transferred—or threatened to be transferred—to others. I identify seven different information dissemination problems. Finally, the last category involves invasions. Invasions are direct interferences with the individual, such as intruding into her life or regulating the kinds of decisions she can make about her life.

My purpose in advancing the taxonomy is to shift away from the rather vague label of privacy in order to prevent distinct harms and problems from being conflated or not recognized. Some might contend, however, that several of the problems I discuss are not really “privacy” problems. But with no satisfactory set of necessary or sufficient conditions to define privacy, there is no one specific criterion for inclusion or exclusion under the rubric of “privacy.” Privacy violations consist of a web of related problems that are not connected by a common element, but nevertheless bear some resemblances to each other. We can determine whether to classify something as falling in the domain of privacy if it bears resemblance to other things we similarly classify. In other words, we use a form of analogical reasoning in which “[t]he key task,” Cass Sunstein observes, “is to decide when there are relevant similarities and differences.”59 Accordingly, there are no clear boundaries for what we should or should not refer to as “privacy.” Some might object to the lack of clear boundaries, but this objection assumes that having definitive boundaries matters. The quest for a traditional definition of privacy has led to a rather fruitless and unresolved debate. In the meantime, there are real problems that must be addressed, but they are either conflated or ignored because they do not fit into various prefabricated conceptions of privacy. The law often neglects to see the problems and instead ignores all things that do not fall into a particular conception of privacy. In this way, conceptions of privacy can prevent the examination of problems. The problems still exist regardless of whether we classify them as being “privacy” problems.

A great deal of attention is expended trying to elucidate the concept of privacy without looking at the problems we are facing. My goal is to begin with the problems and understand them in detail. Trying to fit them into a one-size-fits-all conception of privacy neglects to see the problems in their full dimensions or to understand them completely.

Conceptions should help us understand and illuminate experience; they should not detract from experience and make us see and understand less.

The term privacy is best used as a shorthand umbrella term for a related web of things. Beyond this kind of use, the term privacy has little purpose. In fact, it can obfuscate more than clarify.

Some might object to the inclusion or exclusion of certain problems in the taxonomy. I do not advance the taxonomy as perfect. It is a bottom- up ongoing project. As new problems arise, the taxonomy will be revised. Whether a particular problem is classified as one of privacy is not as important as whether it is recognized as a problem. Regardless of whether we label the problem as part of the privacy cluster, it still is a problem, and protecting against it still has a value. For example, I classify as a privacy violation a problem I call distortion, which involves disseminating false or misleading information about a person. Some might argue that distortion really is not a privacy harm, because privacy only involves true information. But does it matter? Regardless of whether distortion is classified as a privacy problem, it is nevertheless a problem. Classifying it as a privacy problem is merely saying that it bears some resemblance to other privacy problems, and viewing them together might be helpful in addressing them.

B. The Social Value of Privacy

Many theories of privacy view it as an individual right. For example, Thomas Emerson declares that privacy “is based upon premises of individualism, that the society exists to promote the worth and the dignity of the individual. . . . The right of privacy . . . is essentially the right not to participate in the collective life—the right to shut out the community.”60 In the words of one court: “Privacy is inherently personal. The right to privacy recognizes the sovereignty of the individual.”61

Traditionally, rights have often been understood as protecting the individual against the incursion of the community, based on respect for the individual’s personhood or autonomy. Many theories of privacy’s value understand privacy in this manner. For example, Charles Fried argues that privacy is one of the

basic rights in persons, rights to which all are entitled equally, by virtue of their status as persons. . . . In this sense, the view is Kantian; it requires recognition of persons as ends, and forbids the overriding of their most fundamental interests for the purpose of maximizing the happiness or welfare of all.62

Many of the interests that conflict with privacy, however, also involve people’s autonomy and dignity. Free speech, for example, is also an individual right which is essential to autonomy. Yet, in several cases, it clashes with privacy. One’s privacy can be in direct conflict with another’s desire to speak about that person’s life. Security, too, is not merely a societal interest; it is essential for individual autonomy as well. Autonomy and dignity are often on both sides of the balance, so it becomes difficult to know which side is the one that protects the “sovereignty of the individual.”63

Communitarian scholars launch a formidable critique of traditional accounts of individual rights. Amitai Etzioni, for example, contends that privacy is “a societal license that exempts a category of acts (including thoughts and emotions) from communal, public, and governmental scrutiny.”64 For Etzioni, many theories of privacy treat it as sacrosanct, even when it conflicts with the common good.65 According to Etzioni, “privacy is not an absolute value and does not trump all other rights or concerns for the common good.”66 He goes on to demonstrate how privacy interferes with greater social interests and often, though not always, contends that privacy should lose out in the balance.67

Etzioni is right to critique those who argue that privacy is an individual right that should trump social interests. The problem, however, is that utilitarian balancing between individual rights and the common good rarely favors individual rights—unless the interest advanced on the side of the common good is trivial. Society will generally win when its interests are balanced against those of the individual.

The deeper problem with Etzioni’s view is that in his critique of liberal theories of individual rights as absolutes, he views individual rights as being in tension with society. The same dichotomy between individual and society that pervades liberal theories of individual rights also pervades Etzioni’s communitarianism. Etzioni views the task of communitarians as “balanc[ing] individual rights with social responsibilities, and individuality with community.”68 The problem with Etzioni’s communitarian view is that individuality need not be on the opposite side of the scale from community. Such a view assumes that individual and societal interests are distinct and conflicting. A similar view also underpins many liberal conceptions of individual rights.

In contrast, John Dewey proposed an alternative theory about the relationship between individual and community. For Dewey, there is no strict dichotomy between individual and society. The individual is shaped by society, and the good of both the individual and society are often interrelated rather than antagonistic: “We cannot think of ourselves save as to some extent social beings. Hence we cannot separate the idea of ourselves and our own good from our idea of others and of their good.”69 Dewey contended that the value of protecting individual rights emerges from their contribution to society. In other words, individual rights are not trumps, but are protections by society from its intrusiveness. Society makes space for the individual because of the social benefits this space provides. Therefore, Dewey argues, rights should be valued based on “the contribution they make to the welfare of the community.”70 Otherwise, in any kind of utilitarian calculus, individual rights would not be valuable enough to outweigh most social interests, and it would be impossible to justify individual rights. As such, Dewey argued, we must insist upon a “social basis and social justification” for civil liberties.71

I contend, like Dewey, that the value of protecting the individual is a social one. Society involves a great deal of friction, and we are constantly clashing with each other. Part of what makes a society a good place in which to live is the extent to which it allows people freedom from the intrusiveness of others. A society without privacy protection would be suffocating, and it might not be a place in which most would want to live. When protecting individual rights, we as a society decide to hold back in order to receive the benefits of creating the kinds of free zones for individuals to flourish.

As Robert Post has argued, privacy is not merely a set of restraints on society’s rules and norms. Instead, privacy constitutes a society’s attempt to promote rules of behavior, decorum, and civility.72 Society protects privacy as a means of enforcing a kind of order in the community. As Spiros Simitis declares, “[P]rivacy considerations no longer arise out of particular individual problems; rather, they express conflicts affecting everyone.”73 Several scholars have argued that privacy is “constitutive�� of society and must be valued in terms of the social roles it plays.74 Privacy, then, is not the trumpeting of the individual against society’s interests, but the protection of the individual based on society’s own norms and values. Privacy is not simply a way to extricate individuals from social control, as it is itself a form of social control that emerges from a society’s norms. It is not an external restraint on society, but is in fact an internal dimension of society. Therefore, privacy has a social value. Even when it protects the individual, it does so for the sake of society. It thus should not be weighed as an individual right against the greater social good. Privacy issues involve balancing societal interests on both sides of the scale.

Because privacy involves protecting against a plurality of different harms or problems, the value of privacy is different depending upon which particular problem or harm is being protected. Not all privacy problems are equal; some are more harmful than others. Therefore, we cannot ascribe an abstract value to privacy. Its value will differ substantially depending upon the kind of problem or harm we are safeguarding against. Thus, to understand privacy, we must conceptualize it and its value more pluralistically. Privacy is a set of protections against a related set of problems. These problems are not all related in the same way, but they resemble each other. There is a social value in protecting against each problem, and that value differs depending upon the nature of each problem.

IV. The Problem with the “Nothing to Hide” Argument

A. Understanding the Many Dimensions of Privacy

It is time to return to the nothing to hide argument. The reasoning of this argument is that when it comes to government surveillance or use of personal data, there is no privacy violation if a person has nothing sensitive, embarrassing, or illegal to conceal. Criminals involved in illicit activities have something to fear, but for the vast majority of people, their activities are not illegal or embarrassing.

Understanding privacy as I have set forth reveals the flaw of the nothing to hide argument at its roots. Many commentators who respond to the argument attempt a direct refutation by trying to point to things that people would want to hide. But the problem with the nothing to hide argument is the underlying assumption that privacy is about hiding bad things. Agreeing with this assumption concedes far too much ground and leads to an unproductive discussion of information people would likely want or not want to hide. As Bruce Schneier aptly notes, the nothing to hide argument stems from a faulty “premise that privacy is about hiding a wrong.”75

The deeper problem with the nothing to hide argument is that it myopically views privacy as a form of concealment or secrecy. But understanding privacy as a plurality of related problems demonstrates that concealment of bad things is just one among many problems caused by government programs such as the NSA surveillance and data mining. In the categories in my taxonomy, several problems are implicated.

The NSA programs involve problems of information collection, specifically the category of surveillance in the taxonomy. Wiretapping involves audio surveillance of people’s conversations. Data mining often begins with the collection of personal information, usually from various third parties that possess people’s data. Under current Supreme Court Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, when the government gathers data from third parties, there is no Fourth Amendment protection because people lack a “reasonable expectation of privacy” in information exposed to others.76 In United States v. Miller, the Supreme Court concluded that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in bank records because “[a]ll of the documents obtained, including financial statements and deposit slips, contain only information voluntarily conveyed to the banks and exposed to their employees in the ordinary course of business.”77 In Smith v. Maryland, the Supreme Court held that people lack a reasonable expectation of privacy in the phone numbers they dial because they “know that they must convey numerical information to the phone company,” and therefore they cannot “harbor any general expectation that the numbers they dial will remain secret.”78 As I have argued extensively elsewhere, the lack of Fourth Amendment protection of third party records results in the government’s ability to access an extensive amount of personal information with minimal limitation or oversight.79

Many scholars have referred to information collection as a form of surveillance. Dataveillance, a term coined by Roger Clarke, refers to the “systemic use of personal data systems in the investigation or monitoring of the actions or communications of one or more persons.”80 Christopher Slobogin has referred to the gathering of personal information in business records as “transaction surveillance.”81 Surveillance can create chilling effects on free speech, free association, and other First Amendment rights essential for democracy.82 Even surveillance of legal activities can inhibit people from engaging in them. The value of protecting against chilling effects is not measured simply by focusing on the particular individuals who are deterred from exercising their rights. Chilling effects harm society because, among other things, they reduce the range of viewpoints expressed and the degree of freedom with which to engage in political activity.

The nothing to hide argument focuses primarily on the information collection problems associated with the NSA programs. It contends that limited surveillance of lawful activity will not chill behavior sufficiently to outweigh the security benefits. One can certainly quarrel with this argument, but one of the difficulties with chilling effects is that it is often very hard to demonstrate concrete evidence of deterred behavior.83 Whether the NSA’s surveillance and collection of telephone records has deterred people from communicating particular ideas would be a difficult question to answer.

Far too often, discussions of the NSA surveillance and data mining define the problem solely in terms of surveillance. To return to my discussion of metaphor, the problems are not just Orwellian, but Kafkaesque. The NSA programs are problematic even if no information people want to hide is uncovered. In The Trial, the problem is not inhibited behavior, but rather a suffocating powerlessness and vulnerability created by the court system’s use of personal data and its exclusion of the protagonist from having any knowledge or participation in the process. The harms consist of those created by bureaucracies—indifference, errors, abuses, frustration, and lack of transparency and accountability. One such harm, for example, which I call aggregation, emerges from the combination of small bits of seemingly innocuous data.84 When combined, the information becomes much more telling about a person. For the person who truly has nothing to hide, aggregation is not much of a problem. But in the stronger, less absolutist form of the nothing to hide argument, people argue that certain pieces of information are not something they would hide. Aggregation, however, means that by combining pieces of information we might not care to conceal, the government can glean information about us that we might really want to conceal. Part of the allure of data mining for the government is its ability to reveal a lot about our personalities and activities by sophisticated means of analyzing data. Therefore, without greater transparency in data mining, it is hard to claim that programs like the NSA data mining program will not reveal information people might want to hide, as we do not know precisely what is revealed. Moreover, data mining aims to be predictive of behavior, striving to prognosticate about our future actions. People who match certain profiles are deemed likely to engage in a similar pattern of behavior. It is quite difficult to refute actions that one has not yet done. Having nothing to hide will not always dispel predictions of future activity.

Another problem in the taxonomy, which is implicated by the NSA program, is the problem I refer to as exclusion.85 Exclusion is the problem caused when people are prevented from having knowledge about how their information is being used, as well as barred from being able to access and correct errors in that data. The NSA program involves a massive database of information that individuals cannot access. Indeed, the very existence of the program was kept secret for years.86 This kind of information processing, which forbids people’s knowledge or involvement, resembles in some ways a kind of due process problem. It is a structural problem involving the way people are treated by government institutions. Moreover, it creates a power imbalance between individuals and the government. To what extent should the Executive Branch and an agency such as the NSA, which is relatively insulated from the political process and public accountability, have a significant power over citizens? This issue is not about whether the information gathered is something people want to hide, but rather about the power and the structure of government.

A related problem involves “secondary use.” Secondary use is the use of data obtained for one purpose for a different unrelated purpose without the person’s consent. The Administration has said little about how long the data will be stored, how it will be used, and what it could be used for in the future. The potential future uses of any piece of personal information are vast, and without limits or accountability on how that information is used, it is hard for people to assess the dangers of the data being in the government’s control.

Therefore, the problem with the nothing to hide argument is that it focuses on just one or two particular kinds of privacy problems—the disclosure of personal information or surveillance—and not others. It assumes a particular view about what privacy entails, and it sets the terms for debate in a manner that is often unproductive.

It is important to distinguish here between two ways of justifying a program such as the NSA surveillance and data mining program. The first way is to not recognize a problem. This is how the nothing to hide argument works—it denies even the existence of a problem. The second manner of justifying such a program is to acknowledge the problems but contend that the benefits of the NSA program outweigh the privacy harms. The first justification influences the second, because the low value given to privacy is based upon a narrow view of the problem.

The key misunderstanding is that the nothing to hide argument views privacy in a particular way—as a form of secrecy, as the right to hide things. But there are many other types of harm involved beyond exposing one’s secrets to the government.

Privacy problems are often difficult to recognize and redress because they create a panoply of types of harm. Courts, legislators, and others look for particular types of harm to the exclusion of others, and their narrow focus blinds them to seeing other kinds of harms.

B. Understanding Structural Problems

One of the difficulties with the nothing to hide argument is that it looks for a visceral kind of injury as opposed to a structural one. Ironically, this underlying conception of injury is shared by both those advocating for greater privacy protections and those arguing in favor of the conflicting interests to privacy. For example, law professor Ann Bartow argues that I have failed to describe privacy harms in a compelling manner in my article, A Taxonomy of Privacy, where I provide a framework for understanding the manifold different privacy problems.87 Bartow’s primary complaint is that my taxonomy “frames privacy harms in dry, analytical terms that fail to sufficiently identify and animate the compelling ways that privacy violations can negatively impact the lives of living, breathing human beings beyond simply provoking feelings of unease.”88 Bartow claims that the taxonomy does not have “enough dead bodies” and that privacy’s “lack of blood and death, or at least of broken bones and buckets of money, distances privacy harms from other categories of tort law.”89

Most privacy problems lack dead bodies. Of course, there are exceptional cases such as the murders of Rebecca Shaeffer and Amy Boyer. Rebecca Shaeffer was an actress killed when a stalker obtained her address from a Department of Motor Vehicles record.90 This incident prompted Congress to pass the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act of 1994.91 Amy Boyer was murdered by a stalker who obtained her personal information, including her work address and Social Security number, from a database company.92 These examples aside, there is not a lot of death and gore in privacy law. If this is the standard to recognize a problem, then few privacy problems will be recognized. Horrific cases are not typical, and the purpose of my taxonomy is to explain why most privacy problems are still harmful despite this fact.

Bartow’s objection is actually very similar to the nothing to hide argument. Those advancing the nothing to hide argument have in mind a particular kind of visceral privacy harm, one where privacy is violated only when something deeply embarrassing or discrediting is revealed. Bartow’s quest for horror stories represents a similar desire to find visceral privacy harms. The problem is that not all privacy harms are like this. At the end of the day, privacy is not a horror movie, and demanding more palpable harms will be difficult in many cases. Yet there is still a harm worth addressing, even if it is not sensationalistic.

In many instances, privacy is threatened not by singular egregious acts, but by a slow series of relatively minor acts which gradually begin to add up. In this way, privacy problems resemble certain environmental harms which occur over time through a series of small acts by different actors. Bartow wants to point to a major spill, but gradual pollution by a multitude of different actors often creates worse problems.

The law frequently struggles with recognizing harms that do not result in embarrassment, humiliation, or physical or psychological injury.93 For example, after the September 11 attacks, several airlines gave their passenger records to federal agencies in direct violation of their privacy policies. The federal agencies used the data to study airline security.94 A group of passengers sued Northwest Airlines for disclosing their personal information. One of their claims was that Northwest Airlines breached its contract with the passengers. In Dyer v. Northwest Airlines Corp., the court rejected the contract claim because “broad statements of company policy do not generally give rise to contract claims,” the passengers never claimed they relied upon the policy or even read it, and they “failed to allege any contractual damages arising out of the alleged breach.”95 Another court reached a similar conclusion.96

Regardless of the merits of the decisions on contract law, the cases represent a difficulty with the legal system in addressing privacy problems. The disclosure of the passenger records represented a “breach of confidentiality.”97 The problems caused by breaches of confidentiality do not merely consist of individual emotional distress; they involve a violation of trust within a relationship. There is a strong social value in ensuring that promises are kept and that trust is maintained in relationships between businesses and their customers. The problem of secondary use is also implicated in this case.98 Secondary use involves data collected for one purpose being used for an unrelated purpose without people’s consent. The airlines gave passenger information to the government for an entirely different purpose beyond that for which it was originally gathered. Secondary use problems often do not cause financial, or even psychological, injuries. Instead, the harm is one of power imbalance. In Dyer, data was disseminated in a way that ignored airline passengers’ interests in the data despite promises made in the privacy policy. Even if the passengers were unaware of the policy, there is a social value in ensuring that companies adhere to established limits on the way they use personal information. Otherwise, any stated limits become meaningless, and companies have discretion to boundlessly use data. Such a state of affairs can leave nearly all consumers in a powerless position. The harm, then, is less one to particular individuals than it is a structural harm.

A similar problem surfaces in another case, Smith v. Chase Manhattan Bank.99 A group of plaintiffs sued Chase Manhattan Bank for selling customer information to third parties in violation of its privacy policy, which stated that the information would remain confidential. The court held that even presuming these allegations were true, the plaintiffs could not prove any actual injury:

[T]he “harm” at the heart of this purported class action, is that class members were merely offered products and services which they were free to decline. This does not qualify as actual harm.

The complaint does not allege any single instance where a named plaintiff or any class member suffered any actual harm due to the receipt of an unwanted telephone solicitation or a piece of junk mail.100

The court’s view of harm, however, did not account for the breach of confidentiality.

When balancing privacy against security, the privacy harms are often characterized in terms of injuries to the individual, and the interest in security is often characterized in a more broad societal way. The security interest in the NSA programs has often been defined improperly. In a Congressional hearing, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales stated:

Our enemy is listening, and I cannot help but wonder if they are not shaking their heads in amazement at the thought that anyone would imperil such a sensitive program by leaking its existence in the first place, and smiling at the prospect that we might now disclose even more or perhaps even unilaterally disarm ourselves of a key tool in the war on terror.101

The balance between privacy and security is often cast in terms of whether a particular government information collection activity should or should not be barred.

The issue, however, often is not whether the NSA or other government agencies should be allowed to engage in particular forms of information gathering; rather, it is what kinds of oversight and accountability we want in place when the government engages in searches and seizures. The government can employ nearly any kind of investigatory activity with a warrant supported by probable cause. This is a mechanism of oversight—it forces government officials to justify their suspicions to a neutral judge or magistrate before engaging in the tactic. For example, electronic surveillance law allows for wiretapping, but limits the practice with judicial supervision, procedures to minimize the breadth of the wiretapping, and requirements that the law enforcement officials report back to the court to prevent abuses.102 It is these procedures that the Bush Administration has ignored by engaging in the warrantless NSA surveillance. The question is not whether we want the government to monitor such conversations, but whether the Executive Branch should adhere to the appropriate oversight procedures that Congress has enacted into law, or should covertly ignore any oversight.

Therefore, the security interest should not get weighed in its totality against the privacy interest. Rather, what should get weighed is the extent of marginal limitation on the effectiveness of a government information gathering or data mining program by imposing judicial oversight and minimization procedures. Only in cases where such procedures will completely impair the government program should the security interest be weighed in total, rather than in the marginal difference between an unencumbered program versus a limited one.

Far too often, the balancing of privacy interests against security interests takes place in a manner that severely shortchanges the privacy interest while inflating the security interests. Such is the logic of the nothing to hide argument. When the argument is unpacked, and its underlying assumptions examined and challenged, we can see how it shifts the debate to its terms, in which it draws power from its unfair advantage. It is time to pull the curtain on the nothing to hide argument.

V. Conclusion

Whether explicit or not, conceptions of privacy underpin nearly every argument made about privacy, even the common quip “I’ve got nothing to hide.” As I have sought to demonstrate in this essay, understanding privacy as a pluralistic conception reveals that we are often talking past each other when discussing privacy issues. By focusing more specifically on the related problems under the rubric of “privacy,” we can better address each problem rather than ignore or conflate them. The nothing to hide argument speaks to some problems, but not to others. It represents a singular and narrow way of conceiving of privacy, and it wins by excluding consideration of the other problems often raised in government surveillance and data mining programs. When engaged with directly, the nothing to hide argument can ensnare, for it forces the debate to focus on its narrow understanding of privacy. But when confronted with the plurality of privacy problems implicated by government data collection and use beyond surveillance and disclosure, the nothing to hide argument, in the end, has nothing to say.

Footnotes

James Risen & Eric Lichtblau, Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts: Secret Order to Widen Domestic Monitoring, N.Y. TIMES, Dec. 16, 2005, at A1.

John Markoff, Pentagon Plans a Computer System That Would Peek at Personal Data of Americans, N.Y. TIMES, Nov. 9, 2002, at A12.

John M. Poindexter, Finding the Face of Terror in Data, N.Y. TIMES, Sept. 10, 2003, at A25.

DANIEL J. SOLOVE, THE DIGITAL PERSON: TECHNOLOGY AND PRIVACY IN THE INFORMATION AGE 169 (2004).

Shane Harris, TIA Lives On, NAT’L J., Feb. 25, 2006, at 66.

Leslie Cauley, NSA Has Massive Database of Americans’ Phone Calls, USA TODAY, May 11, 2006, at A1; Susan Page, Lawmakers: NSA Database Incomplete, USA TODAY, June 30, 2006, at A1.

Cauley, supra note 6, at A1.

Eric Lichtblau & James Risen, Bank Data Sifted in Secret by U.S. to Block Terror, N.Y. TIMES, June 23, 2006, at A1.

See infra text accompanying notes 12–33.

Bruce Schneier, Commentary, The Eternal Value of Privacy, WIRED, May 18, 2006, http://www.wired.com/news/columns/1,70886-0.html.

Geoffrey R. Stone, Commentary, Freedom and Public Responsibility, CHI. TRIB., May 21, 2006, at 11.

JEFFREY ROSEN, THE NAKED CROWD: RECLAIMING SECURITY AND FREEDOM IN AN ANXIOUS AGE (2004).

Id. at 36.

Comment of NonCryBaby to http://www.securityfocus.com/comments/articles/2296/18105/threaded (Feb. 12, 2003).

Comment of Yoven to http://www.danielpipes.org/comments/47675 (June 14, 2006, 14:03 EST).

Reach For The Stars!, http://greatcarrieoakey.blogspot.com/2006/05/look-all- you-want-ive-got-nothing-to.html (May 14, 2006, 09:04 PST).

Comment of annegb to Concurring Opinions, http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2006/05/is_there_a_good.html#comments (May 23, 2006, 11:37 EST).

Joe Schneider, Letter to the Editor, NSA Wiretaps Necessary, ST. PAUL PIONEER PRESS, Aug. 24, 2006, at 11B.

Polls Suggest Americans Approve NSA Monitoring (NPR radio broadcast, May 19, 2006), available at 2006 WLNR 22949347.

HENRY JAMES, THE REVERBERATOR (1888), reprinted in NOVELS 1886–1880, at 555, 687 (1989).

Concurring Opinions, supra note 17 (May 23, 2006, 00:06 EST).

Comment of Adam to Concurring Opinions, supra note 17 (May 23, 2006, 16:27 EST).

Comment of Dissent to Concurring Opinions, supra note 17 (May 24, 2006, 07:48 EST).

Comment of Ian to Concurring Opinions, supra note 17 (May 24, 2006, 19:51 EST).

Comment of Matthew Graybosch to Concurring Opinions, supra note 17 (Oct. 16, 2006, 12:09 EST).

Comment of Neureaux to Concurring Opinions, supra note 17 (Oct. 16, 2006, 14:39 EST).

Comment of Catter to Concurring Opinions, supra note 17 (Oct. 16, 2006, 11:36 PM EST).

Comment of Kevin to Concurring Opinions, supra note 17 (July 24, 2006, 12:36 EST).

ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN, CANCER WARD 192 (Nicholas Bethell & David Burg trans., Noonday Press 1991) (1968).

FRIEDRICH DÜRRENMATT, TRAPS 23 (Richard & Clara Winston trans., 1960).

Comment of Andrew to Concurring Opinions, supra note 17 (Oct. 16, 2006, 15:06 EST).

David H. Flaherty, Visions of Privacy: Past, Present, and Future, in VISIONS OF PRIVACY: POLICY CHOICES FOR THE DIGITAL AGE 19, 31 (Colin J. Bennett & Rebecca Grant eds., 1999).

Comment of BJ Horn to Concurring Opinions, supra note 17 (June 2, 2006, 18:58 EST).

RICHARD A. POSNER, THE ECONOMICS OF JUSTICE 271 (1983).

RICHARD A. POSNER, ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF LAW 46 (5th ed. 1998).

Id.

Richard A. Posner, Our Domestic Intelligence Crisis, WASH. POST, Dec. 21, 2005, at A31.

Comment of MJ to Concurring Opinions, supra note 17 (May 23, 2006, 17:30 EST).

ARTHUR R. MILLER, THE ASSAULT ON PRIVACY: COMPUTERS, DATA BANKS, AND DOSSIERS 25 (1971).

Hyman Gross, The Concept of Privacy, 42 N.Y.U. L. REV. 34, 35 (1967).

COLIN J. BENNETT, REGULATING PRIVACY: DATA PROTECTION AND PUBLIC POLICY IN EUROPE AND THE UNITED STATES 25 (1992).

Robert C. Post, Three Concepts of Privacy, 89 GEO. L.J. 2087, 2087 (2001).

Judith Jarvis Thomson, The Right to Privacy, in PHILOSOPHICAL DIMENSIONS OF PRIVACY: AN ANTHOLOGY 272, 272 (Ferdinand David Schoeman ed., 1984).

Daniel J. Solove, Conceptualizing Privacy, 90 CAL. L. REV. 1087, 1095–99 (2002).

JULIE C. INNESS, PRIVACY, INTIMACY, AND ISOLATION 56 (1992).

Samuel D. Warren & Louis D. Brandeis, The Right to Privacy, 4 HARV. L. REV. 193, 193 (1890).

Solove, supra note 44, at 1099–1124.

LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN, PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS § 65 (G.E.M. Anscombe trans., 3d ed. 2001).

Id. § 66.

SOLOVE, supra note 4, at 6–9.

GEORGE ORWELL, 1984 (Signet Classic 1984) (1949); SOLOVE, supra note 4, at 7.

FRANZ KAFKA, THE TRIAL 50–58 (Willa & Edwin Muir trans., Random House 1956) (1937); SOLOVE, supra note 4, at 8–9.

SOLOVE, supra note 4, at 27–75.

JOHN DEWEY, LOGIC: THE THEORY OF INQUIRY 112 (Jo Ann Boydston ed. 1991) (1938).

Id.

Daniel J. Solove, A Taxonomy of Privacy, 154 U. PA. L. REV. 477 (2006).

Id. at 516–20.

Id. at 522–25.

CASS R. SUNSTEIN, LEGAL REASONING AND POLITICAL CONFLICT 67 (1996).

THOMAS I. EMERSON, THE SYSTEM OF FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION 545, 549 (1970).

Smith v. City of Artesia, 772 P.2d 373, 376 (N.M. Ct. App. 1989).

Charles Fried, Privacy, 77 YALE L.J. 475, 478 (1968); see also INNESS, supra note 45, at 95 (“[P]rivacy is valuable because it acknowledges our respect for persons as autonomous beings with the capacity to love, care and like—in other words, persons with the potential to freely develop close relationships.”); BEATE RÖSSLER, THE VALUE OF PRIVACY 117 (R.D.V. Glasgow trans., Polity Press 2005) (2001) (“Respect for a person’s privacy is respect for her as an autonomous subject.”); Stanley I. Benn, Privacy, Freedom, and Respect for Persons, in NOMOS XIII: PRIVACY 1, 26 (J. Roland Pennock & John W. Chapman eds., 1971) (“[R]espect for someone as a person, as a chooser, implie[s] respect for him as one engaged on a kind of self-creative enterprise, which could be disrupted, distorted, or frustrated even by so limited an intrusion as watching.”).

Smith, 772 P.2d at 376.

AMITAI ETZIONI, THE LIMITS OF PRIVACY 196 (1999). 65. Id. at 187–88.

Id. at 38.

Id. at 187–88.

Id. at 198.

JOHN DEWEY, ETHICS (1908), reprinted in 5 THE MIDDLE WORKS: 1899–1924, at 268 (Jo Ann Boydston ed., S. Ill. Univ. Press 1978).

JOHN DEWEY, LIBERALISM AND CIVIL LIBERTIES (1936), reprinted in 11 THE LATER WORKS, 1935–1937, at 373 (Jo Ann Boydston ed., S. Ill. Univ. Press 1987).

Id. at 375.

Robert C. Post, The Social Foundations of Privacy: Community and Self in the Common Law Tort, 77 CAL. L. REV. 957, 968 (1989).

Spiros Simitis, Reviewing Privacy in an Information Society, 135 U. PA. L. REV. 707, 709 (1987). In analyzing the problems of federal legislative policymaking on privacy, Priscilla Regan demonstrates the need for understanding privacy in terms of its social benefits. See PRISCILLA M. REGAN, LEGISLATING PRIVACY, at xiv (1995) (“[A]nalysis of congressional policy making reveals that little attention was given to the possibility of a broader social importance of privacy.”).

Julie E. Cohen, Examined Lives: Informational Privacy and the Subject as Object, 52 STAN. L. REV. 1373, 1427–28 (2000) (“Informational privacy, in short, is a constitutive element of a civil society in the broadest sense of that term.”); Paul M. Schwartz, Privacy and Democracy in Cyberspace, 52 VAND. L. REV. 1609, 1613 (1999) (“[I]nformation privacy is best conceived of as a constitutive element of civil society.”); see also Ruth Gavison, Privacy and the Limits of Law, 89 YALE L.J. 421, 455 (1980) (“Privacy is also essential to democratic government because it fosters and encourages the moral autonomy of the citizen, a central requirement of a democracy.”).

Schneier, supra note 10.

United States v. Katz, 389 U.S. 347, 360–61 (1967) (Harlan, J., concurring).

425 U.S. 435, 442 (1976).

442 U.S. 735, 743 (1979).

SOLOVE, supra note 4, at 165–209; see also Daniel J. Solove, Digital Dossiers and the Dissipation of Fourth Amendment Privacy, 75 S. CAL. L. REV. 1083, 1117–37 (2002).

Roger Clarke, Information Technology and Dataveillance, 31 COMM. OF THE ACM 498, 499 (1988); see also Roger Clarke, Introduction to Dataveillance and Information Privacy, and Definitions of Terms, AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, Aug. 7, 2006, http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/DV/Intro.html.

Christopher Slobogin, Transaction Surveillance by the Government, 75 MISS. L.J. 139, 140 (2005).

Daniel J. Solove, The First Amendment as Criminal Procedure, 82 N.Y.U. L. REV. 112, 154–59 (2007).

Id.

Solove, supra note 56, at 506–11.

Id. at 522–25.

Risen & Lichtblau, supra note 1.

Ann Bartow, A Feeling of Unease About Privacy Law, 155 U. PA. L. REV. PENNumbra 52, 52 (2006), http://www.pennumbra.com/issues/articles/154-3/Bartow.pdf.

Id.

Id. at 52, 62.

SOLOVE, supra note 4, at 147.

Id.

Remsburg v. Docusearch, Inc., 816 A.2d 1001, 1005–06 (N.H. 2003).

SOLOVE, supra note 4, at 93–97, 100–01, 195–208; Daniel J. Solove, Identity Theft, Privacy, and the Architecture of Vulnerability, 54 HASTINGS L.J. 1227, 1228 (2003).

SOLOVE, supra note 4, at 93.

334 F. Supp. 2d 1196, 1200 (D.N.D. 2004).

In re Nw. Airlines Privacy Litig., No. 04-126, 2004 WL 1278459 (D. Minn. June 6, 2004).

Solove, supra note 56, at 526–30.

Id. at 520–22.

741 N.Y.S.2d 100 (N.Y. App. Div. 2002).

Id. at 102.

Wartime Executive Power and the National Security Agency’s Surveillance Authority: Hearing Before the S. Comm. on the Judiciary, 109th Cong. 15 (2006) (statement of Alberto Gonzales, Att’y Gen. of the United States).

Daniel J. Solove, Fourth Amendment Codification and Professor Kerr’s Misguided Call for Judicial Deference, 74 FORDHAM L. REV. 747, 775–76 (2005).

#privacy #nothing to hide #data mining #surveillance #data collection #government #NSA #executive power #fourth amendment #constitutional law

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