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flightfoot · 4 years ago

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Let It Be Enough To Reach The Truth That Lies Ch.1

Thanks to my betas, @miabrown007, @khanofallorcs, and Marby!

AO3

-------

Well, so much for THAT test.

He’d found a Holder for the Ladybug Miraculous quickly. That girl from the bakery would do nicely.

The Black Cat was proving trickier.

Apparently, an old man on the ground, straining to reach his cane wasn’t even worth stopping for, much less helping. Granted, he didn’t see any kids around; it was just random adults. Which was weird since he was right outside Collège Françoise Dupont and he was pretty sure Bakery Girl was running here to her class.

Though, she seemed like she was late… maybe he should’ve waited until lunch period to try the test. Most of the students were probably inside by now.

With a sigh, he got up and trudged off. Hopefully whoever held the Butterfly Miraculous now would wait just a little longer before activating it.

He didn’t notice the small box he had left behind.

------

Adrien sighed as he sank into the car seat.

Of course Nathalie and Gorilla caught him. His father probably hadn’t even noticed he was gone, but those two? They actually looked after him. They’d notice — especially Gorilla.

Though he had a feeling Gorilla hadn’t been the one to draw attention to him being gone. His job might be to protect Adrien, but well… even he seemed to realize that the lockdown his father had put him under wasn’t so much ‘protecting’ him as ‘stifling’ him.

At least, that was what he thought from Gorilla’s facial expression, body language, and him very conspicuously going to the bathroom for an extended period of time right about when Adrien would need to leave in order to run to school.

Unfortunately, Nathalie wasn’t so lenient.

He played around with the box he’d scooped up as he ran to school. He’d intended to bring it to the lost and found (assuming a student or faculty member lost it, judging by its location), but it looked like he wouldn’t get the chance.

Maybe she’d return it for him?

“Hey, Nathalie, I know you probably won’t let me head back there but… could you at least make sure this gets to the school? I think someone left it behind and I wouldn’t want them to not get it back because of me.”

She was silent for a minute. He didn’t even think she heard him at first.

Finally, she let out a deep breath and stuck her hand back. “Very well. Give it to me.”

She brought it up in front of her where she could see it.

And choked and spluttered.

“This- how did you- where did you get this?!”

Adrien blinked, surprised. Why would just a small box — albeit a very ornate one — garner such a strong reaction? “I found it on the ground just outside the school.”

She turned halfway around in her seat, her face deadly serious. “Adrien. Do you remember anyone around? Anyone at all?”

“I- I mean, there were some random people, but I don’t-”

“Adrien. This is important. Think.”

He closed his eyes, concentrating hard.

But-

“Sorry, Nathalie. I don’t remember. I wasn’t paying attention to that.”

She stared at him a moment, searching his face, then nodded. “Very well. They may have left already in any case.”

“They who?”

She ignored him.

“Nathalie? What’s up with that box?”

She pulled out her phone. “Mr. Agreste? I’ve got something you need to see.”

----

She refused to acknowledge him for the rest of the car ride.

He stopped trying after the third attempt. Clearly, he wasn’t going to make any headway like this.

It was like talking to his father; once he made a decision nothing Adrien said or did would sway him.

When they entered the house, Nathalie headed straight for his father’s study. He tried to tag along but-

“Adrien. I must speak to your father privately.”

He frowned. “Is this about the box?”

She just turned around, closing the door behind her.

With a sigh he walked to his room, depositing his school bag on the floor before making a flying leap onto his bed, burying his head in his pillow.

What was Nathalie hiding?

Why was that random box so important?

And why couldn’t he go to school?

He’d always had a very… constrained social circle, limited to Chloé, and occasionally Félix, whenever he happened to visit. It could get lonely sometimes and he really wanted to spend time with more kids his own age, but he’d at least always had them, plus his mother.

A deep ache filled his stomach. She’d only been gone a couple months, but it felt both like no time had passed at all, and like an eternity.

And when she passed away, so it seemed had his father.

He’d ordered a full lockdown, not allowing Adrien to see ANYONE but Nathalie, Gorilla, and himself. Not that that meant much. He seemed to live in his study now.

Adrien had been trying to give his father space.

But… while his father had lost his wife... he’d lost his mother.

And he still needed people.

He couldn’t stay locked up in this house forever, slowly going insane with only his spiraling thoughts and memories to keep him company.

*rumble*

What was that?

He ran out the front door, expecting to see… he didn’t know.

But definitely not what was actually there.

A giant stone monster?

What the hell?!

Could this day get any stranger?

The police shot at the monster, which seemed like a pretty ineffectual choice to Adrien. If it was made of stone like it looked, that wouldn’t do much more than annoy him.

It glowed, growing even bigger.

Well.

So much for that.

Rushing back inside, he turned on the TV.

A surge of excitement ran through him as he listened to the newscaster.

A supervillain? Here in Paris?

Maybe it wasn’t a good thing. Wasn’t something to hope for. That supervillain was causing a lot of damage, and judging by the police chief’s broken arm, had already hurt people.

But Adrien’d grown up on tales of superheroes and supervillains, of good versus evil, of epic battles and the triumph of the best of human nature.

He may have practiced some superhero moves a few times. His climbing wall was great for perfecting the landings.

Of course, not all superhero tropes were created equal. While he liked the regular human superheroes showing how even ordinary (well, for certain values of ‘ordinary’) people could fight against the most extraordinary foes, he loved seeing people who had superpowers intrinsically fight for what was right as well, his favorite superheroes weren’t even usually called ’superheroes’.

When he was a couple years younger and flicking through TV channels, he’d stumbled across a show in a style he hadn’t seen before, but had grown quite familiar with since.

A pigtailed teen girl struggling against a supervillain, not knowing what to do, thinking all hope was lost and she’d failed-!

Until a rose embedded itself at her feet.

A mysterious dashing stranger dressed in black giving her the words of encouragement that she couldn’t find for herself.

He continued watching, later discovering that the show was named after the titular heroine Sailor Moon.

Tuxedo Mask — at least, while transformed — remained his favorite element of the show, the sort of hero he secretly wished he could be.

Though with a cooler transformation sequence. Tuxedo Mask’s was pretty boring. The Sailor Scouts were far more interesting to watch.

He may have made up his own transformation sequence for Tuxedo Mask, practicing it a few times.

A few hundred times.

With what had happened in- in the past few months, he’d stopped watching it.

Stopped daydreaming.

But now it all came rushing back.

He jumped up, about to race out again-

And paused.

What exactly could he DO here?

He didn’t have superpowers, and his attempt at karate…

Well. There was a reason he’d dropped the class after a few sessions.

Right now he wished he’d kept at it. Fencing didn’t seem like it’d be that useful here.

Oh who was he kidding, even KARATE wouldn’t do much. The police had already tried firing at the monster and that only made it stronger.

He’d go and follow it, see what might happen — hey maybe he could still help from the sidelines, and who knew? Maybe a superhero would show up to help! — but somehow he doubted Gorilla would let him.

Look the other way so he could go to school? Sure.

Look the other way so he could follow a dangerous, unknown supervillain? Kiiiiinda went against his entire job.

Though, that didn’t stop him from feeling a pang of jealousy when he saw a girl around his age on TV, following the supervillain on her bike. Absurdly dangerous, most definitely, but he’d change places with her in a heartbeat.

Unfortunately, all he could do was watch.

A superhero DID show up a short time later. There wasn’t much info on her — the only recording was from that girl on the bike from before, and she didn’t catch the full fight — but he thought she was pretty cool from what he saw. A bit camera shy, though.

He understood that sort of thing. He’d been pretty anxious whenever the press gathered around when he was younger and less experienced.

Not so much anymore, he was used to it now, even enjoyed it at times, but for someone not used to the attention? It helped having someone there with you for reassurance and guidance.

For him, that had been his mom.

But this girl didn’t look like she HAD anyone.

Adrien flicked through the news channels, trying to devour any info on her, the supervillain, all of this, that he could.

And then-!

“A new wave of panic is sweeping across the capital as dozens of people are mysteriously transformed into stone monsters”

Well.

That wasn’t good.

Ladybug had managed to take down one supervillain by herself (who was apparently a kid named Ivan who didn’t even remember it?) but that many?

With no backup?

The supervillain had grabbed her during the fight. It’d been part of her plan… but with no backup, she couldn’t afford to make any mistakes, and that could easily have gone wrong.

That was a lot of pressure to put anyone under, especially a kid who looked no older than himself.

Maybe staying up until midnight, browsing online forums, speculating about Ladybug, the supervillain, and the rock monster clone army hadn’t been his best plan.

Going to bed early might not have made a difference, though, he was too hyped up.

Still, even exhausted, he was determined to give escaping to school another shot…

...Aaaand was quickly shot down. Turned out Gorilla wasn’t going to let him run out there when people were turning into frozen stone monsters. Who knew?

He contemplated trying to turn his bedsheets into a makeshift rope (he’d seen it in several movies and TV shows, it had to work, right?), but eventually scrapped the idea. He may have been climbing the walls of his room, but he wasn’t THAT desperate. Yet.

The superhero Ladybug returned, but her confidence seemed pretty shaken. She stuttered and fidgeted in front of the camera a lot and seemed to wilt under some particularly harsh statements by the police chief.

Which - seriously dude? She was TRYING!

But even as unsure as she seemed, she persevered. When the giant butterfly head man, Hawkmoth, tried to blame her for causing the damage to the city, she snapped. She was NOT taking that crap.

Adrien may have jumped up and down and cheered a few times during her subsequent speech, grinning like an idiot. She was AWESOME! And that Lucky Charm thing? Inspired! He wished he knew more of how that power worked. Did she make the plan and then summon the object? That would make sense but from her look of confusion after summoning it, that didn’t seem quite right.

Sitting back he sighed. He really, REALLY wished he could be there with her.

A door opened behind him.

He turned his head.

And did a double-take.

His FATHER?! Actually coming to speak to him UNPROMPTED?!

That hadn’t happened since-!

...Actually he couldn’t remember the last time that happened. It only ever seemed to coincide with him wanting something from Adrien or chastising him for something or other.

Oh no.

He- he couldn’t be that mad about him running to school yesterday right?

Or- or maybe this was about the box? There was something unusual about it, maybe he just wanted to know more about it? Or tell him what was so important about it?

Probably not that last one.

A hand rested on his shoulder.

“Adrien, there’s something I need to show you.”

-----

His father had a secret passage by his mother’s portrait.

WHAT.

Seriously, when had he had THAT installed?! Was that just part of the house and he’d altered it to work via pressing part of the painting?!

...Were there more?

He’d scoured the house when he was younger, searching for the cool secret passages that all mansions seemed to have in the movies he watched and books he read. Only to come to the depressing conclusion that that was NOT, in fact, an intrinsic quality of mansions.

Might have to rethink that now.

He fidgeted as they descended in the secret elevator (he was still not over that) into some large, underground chamber.

...Okay, he REALLY thought he would’ve noticed this place being excavated, it had to have already been here.

Superheroes, supervillains, secret passages, hidden chambers… he was beginning to think he was dreaming. Or maybe trapped in a comic book.

The elevator came to a halt.

Lights slowly came on as they walked down a long suspended hallway.

At the end? A nature area with grass and bushes, some sort of pod among them, a giant window looming over everything.

Was… was his father part of a secret underground cult?!

Was Adrien supposed to be indoctrinated in as its newest member against his will?

Or was he led here as a human sacrifice?!

Normally he’d calm himself thinking that this was real life and not like, a comic or movie — but considering everything that’d happened in the last twenty-four hours (heck, in the last twenty-four MINUTES), that wasn’t much of a reassurance.

His father turned around as his own steps slowed. “Keep up, my son. I don’t have all day.”

With a shaky breath he willed his feet to move.

It- it probably wasn’t a secret underground death cult.

There’d be more people around, right? Hooded figures in dark cloaks?

Just his father (and maybe Nathalie?) wouldn’t make for much of a cult.

Yeah! So… so there must be a perfectly normal, reasonable explanation for all of this. He didn’t have the slightest idea what that could be, but he was sure it existed!

They came to a stop in front of the pod.

...it looked entirely too much like a coffin.

He’s not using me as a human sacrifice, he’s not using me as a human sacrifice, HE’S NOT USING ME AS A HUMAN SACRIFICE-

“When I- when I told you that your mother passed away… I may not have been entirely truthful.”

Wh-what?!

But that meant-!

“She’s alive?!”

His father simply moved forwards and pressed a button on the pod.

The cover opened.

Adrien forgot how to breathe.

He hadn’t seen her for two months.

Hadn’t expected to see her ever again outside of portraits, photos, and films.

And yet, here she was.

But she wasn’t moving. No medical equipment was attached to her either.

He tore his gaze away from her. He needed to know. To read his father’s expression and know he wasn’t lying. “She’s ALIVE, right?!”

Father gave a slow nod. “She’s in a magical coma… but she isn’t dead.”

...Magical?

“How…?”

Father stared forwards, lost in thought.

A moment later he sighed. “She used a magical artifact she shouldn’t have, did something she should not have done… and paid the price for it.”

Turning around, his father turned his attention back to Adrien. “You gave me half of the cure. With your help we can acquire the other half and save her.”

Gave him half?

The box!

“Was that why Nathalie was so insistent on taking that box? What was it?”

“It contained a powerful magical artifact known as a ‘Miraculous’.”

Adrien frowned. He’d heard that term before. “That’s the thing the evil butterfly man wants, right?”

Father scowled. “She should’ve just handed it over. That pesky little girl doesn’t know what she’s doing!”

Something about that — his tone, his body language, his words — caused Adrien to take a step back.

“Father?” he asked cautiously. “What do you mean? How would that help you? What does Hawkmoth wanting Ladybug’s Miraculous have to do with anything?”

Adrien had a bad feeling about this.

In answer, his father took off his candy cane-striped tie, revealing the purple jewel underneath.

“Nooroo, Dark Wings Rise!”

A purple light flashed over him.

Leaving a man in a silver helmet and purple coat, a butterfly shaped jewel on his chest.

WHAT?!

Wildly, Adrien’s mind cast back through the extraordinary things he’d seen in the last few minutes, the secret passages, the underground chamber, his mom in a coma; all kept secret from the world.

All being recast in light of this new information.

They weren’t signs his father was part of a cult.

The secret passage, the underground chamber — both part of a secret evil lair.

And his mother being in a coma?

The hero refusing to give up an item that could cure her?

He’d seen this sort of thing before.

Sometimes the villain wanted an item, wanted something from the hero for a good cause.

But there was often a good reason the hero would fight tooth and nail to prevent them from acquiring it.

“Ladybug’s Miraculous, when combined with the Black Cat Miraculous, will allow me to save her.”

That was frustratingly vague.

“How? What do you need to do? What are the risks, the consequences?”

His father looked down on him. “I thought you missed her. That you wanted her back. What a poor excuse for a son you are.”

“No! Of course I-!”

“Do you wish for her to remain like this forever?”

“No I just-!”

“That Miraculous is the only thing standing in the way of reviving her. We MUST retrieve it.”

“We…?”

His father took a small box out of his coat.

A very familiar box.

Being held right in front of him.

“Open it.”

It wasn’t a request.

Gingerly he opened the lid.

A small black ring with a green glowing pawprint sat in the middle.

“Put it on.”

Swallowing hard, he did as his father commanded.

A light shot out.

“Wah-!”

It dimmed, revealing a small black catlike creature.

Who shook himself, looked around-

And locked eyes with his father.

“LET ME GO THIS INSTANT, YOU TERRIBLE EXCUSE FOR-!”

“I forbid you from speaking.”

The creature's mouth vanished.

“MMMMM! MMmm- MMMM!”

“Ah… much better.”

Adrien just stared, slack-jawed.

“Father, what did you just- what did you just DO?!”

“I shut up an annoying pest. If he insists on misbehaving and acting out, he no longer gets the privilege of having the ability to do so.”

WHAT.

Adrien opened his mouth to protest… and then shut it.

If he spoke up, ‘acted out’... would his father do the same thing?

He didn’t think his mouth could be sealed off.

But he wasn’t certain of it.

And there were plenty of other things he could do to him.

Suddenly, he was VERY acutely aware of how much bigger, how much taller his father was than him.

How much stronger.

Would Father ever hurt him?

Before today he’d have said ‘no, of course not’.

Now he wasn’t so sure. He certainly paid no mind to hurting others.

The small cat creature gave his father a death glare, making gestures he guessed would be extremely rude if his forearms had actual fingers to gesticulate with.

“That,” his father pointed at the cat, “is a Kwami. They give the owners of their Miraculous powers. Simply say ‘Plagg, transform me’ and he will be sucked into the ring, much like what happened with my own kwami earlier. Each grants special powers unique to their Miraculous on top of the standard super strength, endurance, and agility. The Black Cat Miraculous gives the power of destruction; simply say ‘Cataclysm’ and you’ll be able to destroy anything you touch. But since you are a child, you will detransform five minutes later, same as that accursed Ladybug.”

He could transform?

Gain superpowers like Ladybug?

Become a superhero?!

He glanced at Plagg.

The kwami’d gone still, simply looking at him with lidded, narrow eyes, mouth still missing.

No. Not a superhero. Not while under Father’s control.

A superVILLAIN.

He swallowed hard.

He wanted to have superpowers, to run around the city, to fight and be free.

But if he had to be a supervillain, he’d rather not have powers at all.

Hesitantly he grasped the ring, slowly pulling it off.

Too late, his father spoke up. “I wouldn’t do-”

The ring was off his finger.

Plagg dropped like a rock.

“WHA-!”

Dropping to his hands and knees he cupped his hands around the violently twisting tiny creature.

His eyes bugged out as he spasmed wildly, flailing uncontrollably.

If he’d had a mouth, Adrien was sure he’d be screaming.

“What’s wrong with him?!”

“You activated my failsafe,” Father replied. “I wouldn’t want you just leaving the ring lying around. Best you keep it on at all times, unless I allow you to remove it.”

His father did this? INTENTIONALLY?!

Ok, ok, don’t panic! Prioritize. The failsafe activated because he took the ring off, it was meant to incentivize him keeping it on at all times, so…

Fumbling around, he put the ring back on one of his shaking fingers.

Instantly, Plagg relaxed, sinking into his palm, eyes half-closed.

This… this little creature was at his father’s mercy.

And it didn’t seem like Father had much of that.

“F-father?” he said, looking up at him.

Quickly, he dropped his eyes. Best not to seem like a threat, like he was challenging him.

Maybe Father would assert his dominance by taking it out on him.

Or maybe he'd just take it out on Plagg.

“Please. Please, could you return Plagg’s mouth to him?”

“Hmmph. Perhaps later, provided that he’s well-behaved. Keep him under control or else I’ll do so myself. Right now, I have a task for you.”

That normally would not sound ominous.

Normally, his father would not say that after revealing he was a supervillain and torturing someone.

“Yes, Father.”

His father smiled.

Adrien’s spine stiffened.

“Transform. Let me see what you can do.”

----

Left. Right. Dodge. Jump.

OOPH

He wasn’t used to being caned in the stomach.

It didn’t hurt much — the Miraculous was pretty protective as it turned out — but it was still a pretty harsh impact.

While he was off-balance Father hit him again, sending him flying into a wall.

And again.

Each time before he could even begin to recover.

Father walked over to him as he lay on the ground, struggling to get up.

Adrien braced himself for another hit.

“I expect better from you. As an Agreste, and as my son.”

He turned his back to him. “We will spar every day until you can put up even a paltry fight. I cannot have you putting up such an embarrassing performance.”

Every day?

This was going to be EVERY DAY?!

He understood training. Understood the need to practice to get better. But training was supposed to include guidance, helpful tricks, being shown a few moves. Not just being beaten by a stronger, more experienced opponent.

He grit his teeth. “Yes, Father.”

“You need to be stronger if you are to take Ladybug’s Miraculous. If we are to heal your mother.”

Mom…

He looked over at her, still peacefully sleeping, entirely unaware of everything that had happened.

If she knew, would she be okay with this?

An hour ago, he would’ve choked at the thought and yelled ‘Of course not!’

He knew his parents after all.

But finding out how little he truly knew his father made him doubt.

His father glanced at him. “You may leave for now. Tomorrow, you go out in the field. Do NOT disappoint.”

As he made his way to the elevator, he felt a hand rest on his shoulder. “Not while transformed. Say ‘detransform’ to release it.”

“Detransform!”

Plagg spiraled out of the ring.

His mouth was still gone, but he seemed in better shape than he was right after being tortured, at least.

Oh god, Adrien didn’t want to risk accidentally upsetting his father but-

“I- I think Plagg’s learned his lesson. Please Father?”

He rested his gaze on Adrien for a moment. Then-

“Very well. But if there’s one peep out of him...”

“Thank you, Father.”

He snapped his fingers.

Plagg’s mouth came back. He opened and closed it many times as if testing that it’d truly returned.

“Y-”

NOPE.

Quickly snatching Plagg out of the air, Adrien ran for the elevator.

------

If he ever got his paws on that candy-cane son of a bitch…!

Plagg floated wildly around the room.

Well. For certain values of ‘around’. That complete and utter BASTARD had decided that in addition to preventing Plagg from harming him, from interacting with anything or anyone else except for eating food, and forcing him to hide whenever others were around, he was ALSO on a leash.

Five feet.

He couldn’t wander more than five feet away from his Miraculous.

And since that- that torture spell would take effect the minute his ring slipped off of his Holder’s finger, that meant he was, in effect, tied to staying within five feet of Adrien.

Adrien…

He didn’t really know what to make of the boy just yet.

His father? Very clear opinion on him.

But his son didn’t exactly seem thrilled with Candy-butt’s actions.

Just his luck. OF COURSE the ‘dark power’ Wayzz had sensed had stumbled on his Miraculous. Naturally.

He may have been the Kwami of Destruction, but sometimes it felt like he was the Kwami of Bad Luck instead.

Not that assholes getting their hands on him was entirely new, but well, usually they weren’t quite as well-versed in putting up safeguards to stop him from stealing his Miraculous back, or in extreme cases, Cataclysming their asses.

He hadn’t even been activated when the curses were applied. Which hey, on the upside, meant he didn’t have to feel them taking effect! ...On the downside, it meant he didn’t know exactly what the curses were or how many of them there were. Some of them he’d been told about, others he’d figured out for himself, but… there could still be others. He hadn’t known about the “torture if ring is removed” curse until Adrien actually did it.

Not that that would STOP him from looking for loopholes, but well… not right now. He’d been through quite enough pain already without risking stumbling across a curse that would activate the torture again.

He shuddered.

Kwamis by themselves rarely got hurt. But when a Holder transformed, fusing the two of them together, he’d feel the same pain as the Holder.

The only time he’d felt pain that bad, his Holder had had the brilliant idea to extend his staff upwards a few thousand feet into a stormcloud, just to see what would happen.

They’d both been okay afterwards, but being electrocuted hurt.

“So, uh… is there anything you want to do? Or talk about? Or- or not do, whatever you feel like!”

Plagg blinked.

Adrien looked around awkwardly. “I know this isn’t exactly ideal and it sucks and I’m so, so sorry, but is there anything I can do to help?”

“...Camembert.”

“What?”

“Camembert cheese. The stinkier, the better.”

The kid made a face, but nodded.

------

Thirty minutes and a trip down to the kitchen later, Plagg was completely surrounded with the delectable aroma of smelly, smelly cheese.

Adrien looked about ready to gag, but gave an attempt at a smile whenever he looked over at him.

A small part of Plagg got some satisfaction out of the kid’s discomfort. At least, he wasn’t the only one suffering because of the five-foot leash.

“Do you want to watch anything?”

Plagg stifled a laugh. Kid’s nose was still wrinkled up from the cheese’s fumes and his eyes watered slightly, but he was making a valiant effort to pretend he was fine.

As far as TV went… well. He hadn’t left the Miracle Box much and Fu’s taste in shows was pretty dull, so-”

“Whatever you feel like. Unless it has to do with cheese, I don’t care. ...IS there a cheese TV show?”

“...I’ll check the guide.”

#enemies au #ml fanfic #Miraculous ladybug #let it be enough to reach the truth that lies #love square #adrien agreste #marinette dupain cheng

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ifitlookslikeaduck · 3 years ago

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The Legalization of Drugs

Most every consciously aware American has heard of “The War on Drugs” at some point in their life. Unfortunately, most even have at least one personal encounter with the adverse and negative affects of this “war”. Over the years there have been changes as to which narcotic garners the most attention, examples being the crack epidemic of the 80’s and the current opioid crisis of the last decade. Being born in an inner city and growing up around a tri-state metropolitan area, I was no stranger to the harsh realities of drug usage. Even more so now living in the most impoverished county in the state of Maryland, which is sometimes called the heroin capital, I have a very personal understanding of the negatives of use as I have encountered many users throughout my time and lost many friends to their addiction. The pain of these losses often makes us jaded in our understanding of narcotics use, but I believe a deeper look is warranted into what is to blame for our current predicament. Is it the use of narcotics themselves, or is our society’s approach to combating narcotics the true cause of such negative results? Are there any alternatives that may yield a positive outcome? And how does the current state of our society’s relationship with narcotics affecting our overall culture?

Although many would cite prohibition of alcohol to be the beginning of drug regulation in the United States, these measures actually began in San Francisco, California in 1875 as a way to control the spread of then popular opium dens (DEA Museum). While this was a state level action it laid the groundwork for these kinds of bans and legal actions to be taken on a federal and therefore national level. In 1906 with the passing of the Pure Food and Drug act national drug control measures began to combat the abuse of prescribed medicines by forcing drug manufactures to publish the ingredients used to make their products effectively killing the industry of patent medicine (DEA Museum). The Harrison Narcotics act of 1914 was the initial legislation that began a chemical scheduling of substances which was followed up by the Marijuana Tax act of 1937 (DEA Museum). Each of these federal actions set up our current system of drug control which is established through the Federal Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970, better known as the Controlled Substances Act (NCBI). Under the provisions of this act narcotics and chemical agents are separated into five classes or schedules varying depending on the medicinal applications of the substance and its level of addiction. In this system, schedule 1 narcotics are considered to have the highest potential for abuse whereas schedule 5 are considered to have the lowest. A more elaborate explanation can be found on the website for the National Center for Biotechnology Information website which describes schedule 1 as “high abuse potential with no accepted medical use; medications within this schedule may not be prescribed, dispensed, or administered", while describing schedule 5 as “medications with the least potential for abuse among the controlled substances" (NCBI). Examples of schedule 1 narcotics are marijuana, heroin, and LSD, with mid-level schedule 3’s such as anabolic steroids and ketamine, while schedule 5 includes items such as Robitussin.

The government in part serves a paternalistic function of creating structured laws and rules to ensure the safety of its citizens. For instance, wearing a seatbelt is mandated by law as a measure to ensure the safety of motorists and this same logic is applied to the scheduling and criminalization of narcotics. However, in the text The Legalization of Drugs philosopher Douglas Husak introduces two compelling arguments that counter the current system of drug control. In the first Husak speaks on the value of drugs as they apply to a recreational activity, and in the second, he addresses the counterproductivity of drug enforcement. The first argument contextualizes narcotics in comparison to legal drugs such as alcohol which is regulated and sold throughout the Unites States. Alcohol has adverse effects not only on an individual level, but also socially as the drug is highly addictive and is a leading cause of death yearly whether by vehicular accidents, alcohol poisoning (effectively an overdose), or a plethora of other related deaths. Further comparisons can be drawn to other life-threatening activities such as scuba diving, sky diving, racecar driving, and even combat sports which are all legal recreational activities. Through this lens banning narcotics is an egregious affront to personal freedom and liberty as it takes away an individual’s right to their pursuit of happiness.

Husak’s second argument is the most pertinent to our current situation. As it currently stands our methodology for drug prevention and enforcement creates a variety of issues which are counterproductive to the original intent. According to the RAND corporation, an organization dedicated to researching and addressing issues of public policy, in 2016 American spending on marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine reached almost 150 billion dollars which is comparable to what was spent on alcohol (RAND). RAND also states that the sale of marijuana increased from 34 billion to 52 billion, a 50% increase between 2006 and 2016 meaning that marijuana sales are comparable to both cocaine and methamphetamine sales combined (RAND). The report details that heroin sales through the decade increased at a rate of almost 10% each year now making the heroin market closer to the market for marijuana than any other illicit substance (RAND). This is one of the most concerning facts as opium has been a target of drug control since the inception of these measures in the U.S. Recalling the action taken in San Francisco which initiated drug control, how is it that the longest regulated narcotic is the one with the highest increase in usage? If these current measures were working shouldn’t there be a steep decline in this area by now?

Between 2008 and 2020 there have been 324 fatal overdoses in Allegany County with 52 of those being in 2020, accompanied by another 715 overdoses being non-fatal (Prescribe Change). These numbers are continuing to rise here at home and are much more severe in areas like Baltimore City which totaled 1,028 fatal overdoses in 2020 (PC). In a 2018 survey conducted by the organization 67, or 4.9% of middle school students in Allegany County responded that they have abused prescription medications in a way other than intended and this number jumps to 212 or 13.4% of high school students who responded in kind (PC). In context to the earlier statistics, the trend is continuing with kids beginning opioid usage at a young age with the number of users increasing as they get older. The current methods just are not working. If the goal of these drug control measures is in fact harm reduction, what other options are available?

The most common answer to the current epidemic seems to be a new method of harm reduction. Understanding the reality that people will always find a way to use if they truly wish to, safe injection sites have been authorized in some places around the world to help with the regulation of use and decrease the chances of fatal overdoses and overdoses in general. The largest majority of these safe injection sites (SIS) are located in Europe, Australia, and Canada and according to a group of 75 studies conducted in 2014 it was determined that SIS allow for better access to healthcare for marginalized users, reduce overdoses, and promote safer injection practices (NPR). The largest amount of research stems from two locations, the Medically Supervised Injecting Centre in Sydney, Australia, and Insite which is a location in Vancouver, Canada. Insite opened its doors in 2003 and has had over 3.6 million supervised injections take place at the facility whilst dealing with over 6,000 overdoses, all with no fatalities (NPR). If the goal of harm reduction is mitigation, these numbers tell the story alongside the facility reporting that there has been no statistical data to allude to an increase in drug usage. It was also discovered that within the first four years of operation Insite’s presence averted about 50 deaths, safer needle practices were used averting HIV, and more people were likely to begin drug detox than those who hadn’t had access to a SIS (NPR). Applying this information to the earlier numbers about Allegany County, a program such as this could have a substantial effect on the death toll.

There are an ever growing number of subtopics related to potential drug legalization and decriminalization including the dangers of creating a black market, however safe injection sites are so far a proven methodology to help combat the harms created by the restriction of narcotics. This method offers a significant reduction of harm to society by regulation and education which should always be the main goals when addressing societal issues at large,

#philosophy #law #drug education #Frostburg State University

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familyagrestefanblog · 5 years ago

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Identity theory to the Black Cat knight in “Feast”- Part 1

There is one detail in “Feast” that has me almost upset because of my own short coming. Not because it’s badly written, out of nowhere or anything, quite the opposite, its brilliant! It’s the detail of the former cat miraculous holder, the knight

You know why this has me almost upset? I had this as serious theory since one evening I rewatched “Darkblade” and researched the historical background given there, since miraculous takes real life history and changes it to fit into their universe. The people and events are more or less accurate (as we know from episodes like “the pharaoh”). But I never completed the research nor did I made my theory into a post.

Well anyway. I guess it’s never to late to present my theory to who this former cat was.

This is Part 1, here I will cover: Who is the black knight? And the entire basis for the theory

Part 2 is about: The flag comparison is “Darkblade” and “Feast”

And part 3: Are the Cat Miraculous holder knight and Darkblade the same people?

Alright guys buckel up, it’s history time and these are gonna get LONG

Part 1 - Who is the Black knight?

I was and am pretty sure this Black cat knight we are being presented here is Edward of Woodstock.

Prince of Wales, born 1330 and known through history as the “Black Prince”. Why he’s called that is not known for sure. One theory is that he’s called the “Black” prince because of the color of his battle amour (which would fit the miraculous painting above) and badge but frankly no one can say with any certainty at all that he ever wore black amour.

Theory two is much more likely in my opinion. Edward was the first born son of Eduard lll, one of the most significant rulers of England in medieval times. And my GOD, Prince Edward was a game changer in the beginning of the hundred years war between Britain and France for the right to wear the French crown. He was one heck of a great (read: BRUTAL) medieval military leader, archiving his very first grand victory for England against the French at the incredibly young age of 16 (an age fitting to the trend in Miraculous giving powers to minors). This victory brought the 16 years old Edward a lifetime of glory as a formidable knight and army leader. Meaning: in my opinion he is most likely called the “Black Prince” because of his brutal and deadly campaigns through France.

Concidering that Miraculous is a French show also taking place in France, I think it’s completely fine depicting him with the Cats miraculous, the power to destroy everything and kill anyone with a single touch. From a French point of view, yeah that’s fine (he wasn’t nicknamed “le terrible Prince/ Homme Noir” (The terrible/gruesome black prince/man) by 1400s France for no reason I may say) I’m completely down with that and think myself that he would be a very fitting Cat who used his miraculous’ power more to its brutal limits (Not every Cat in the past was a pacifist like our present Chat Noir, Adrien, mostly is).

Cuz in general, through his status as Prince, army leader and knight of the order of the garter, an order of charity founded by his father, Edwards life mostly prioritized fighting and waging war. Dude was down with some serious slaughter. Still one has to say that even though he basically was raised and encouraged to become a killing beast, one can’t say he was outright a monster or something.

To keep this shorter, he genuinely showed respect and mercy to fallen and captured royalty. One example for this was after the victorious battle of Crécy (were he was 16) he walked across the battle field and found the fallen king John of Bohemia. King John was blind but always fought alongside his army (very successful if my may add) and when Edward found his corpse he honored him by adopting John’s motto “Ich diene” (“I serve”) and used and honored it for the rest of his life on his badge. Every prince of Wales after him used it too, keeping this legacy alive.

My reason for believing its Edward of Woodstock who the miraculous crew chose as this former Cat miraculous holder in the painting come down to four mayor factors.

1. One of the most famous objects Edward owned that is still available to the public today is this piece of jewelry

Would you look at that it’s his ring. I’m gonna spare you with the details to it because the only thing really of importance is the fact that HE HAD A RING.

But you know what else? Take a guess where this ring is located today

Jup, in the capital city of France, our very own miraculous Paris. In the freaking Louvre.Giving us not only a perfect reallife history, material match with the Cat ring but also a connection back to France, Paris, where the show takes place.

2. Through “Startrain”/the train we have a straight connection to England the show can and definitely will use in the future. At the end of “Startrain” we got this:

Meaning England/London is not only acknowledged in a side sentence in the Miraculous universe, the Miraculous crew already remodelled the city in CGI and believe me, CGI is hard work. They wouldn’t just put all this work into recreating London (yes even for a small shot like this they would have to recreate much more) if they didn’t had bigger plans coming. And that means, England/London is gonna be a future Location, this makes finding out the origins of a former English miraculous holder quite a possibility. It was also said by Thomas Astruc that in the movie to season 5 we will find out more about former holders, so even if the Show doesn’t include many of the actual historical identities, there is still the promising movie which can go more in detail with them. Especially if the movie picks the miraculous history as one of its main themes which imo is actually very likely.

3. The fact that, well, we are still watching a Tv show here. Imagine you were the creator of a Show like Miraculous were characters get magical jewellery to turn into superheroes and now your task is it to choose historical figures you can include into your show as former holders. You most likely wouldn’t use unknown people. That’s the point where you drop at least two or three recognisable names on significance to make the history of your show more interesting. Here you choose the myths, the legends, the people who went down in history as heroes of their countries. Or at very least you choose the figures with interesting names.

Edward of Woodstock may not be a myth or a legend but he sure counts as a national hero of English history and also a well known figure in France and in French history (giving him once again significance in a French show) and lets be real here, “The black Prince” is just too much of an awesome title of a historical person to pass by for story writing purposes like the ones we are looking for right now. Plus with (well) known names your audience already has a connection to go on with and you don’t have to start from scratch.

4. And this is my favourite reason! Lets talk about: The Black Princes connection with Jeanne de Arc. Oh yes guys, I’m going there. I went nuts on the research and I found a very interesting detail.

As most probably know by now, Thomas Astruc himself declared Jeanne de Arc as a former Ladybug. Jeanne de Arc is a French national heroin and martyr so him honoring her as a Ladybug is of no surprise and makes sense.

While Edward of Woodstock and Jeanne de Arc never lived in the same time (she was born in 1412 while he died in 1376) these two historical figures have a downright fascinating connection.

Their game changing roles in the hundred years war between England and France.

As I said before, Edward basically run into France with his army and won battle after battle. If you were to ask me which people influenced and started the beginning of the hundred years war, Edwards name would definitely fall as one of the first even if he was “only” a prince. Through the immense damage and loss France suffered through him, France was quite… down even after the black prince died (of course France like England had ups as well as downs but the whole war was so complex I’ll not explain it here and keep things really simple, I don’t wanna misinform).

In the time around 1412 where the 18 year old (once again just like Edward very young) peasant girl just a normal girl with a normal life Jeanne de arc lived, France was pretty much hold at gun point and at loss of their hope. History says that she, through unknown (miraculous) ways, was able to convince the french King Charles VII to let her join the battle and support him. The battles with her included were widely successful which paved the way for France’s future victory. In 1430 she was captured and was burned at the stake after being declared guilty of several charges. And to quote Nationalgeographic.com here (because I literally couldn’t put this any better)

“Once her ashes had been scattered in the Seine River, Jeanne’s detractors hoped her name would be erased from history, but her name has burned more brightly in the hearts and minds of the French ever since then. The humble farm girl turned the tide for the French in the closing years of the Hundred Years’ War.”

So while the black prince Edward of Woodstock (the cat) brought great destruction and a war to France around 1346 for a hundred years, for his homeland England and father, the king

Jeanne de Arc (the Ladybug) was the one who gave her defeated homeland France back their hope and strength to end and win the war in 1453

Confirming Names and Miraculous for former Holders + Change of title for the Black Prince

Alright last point of the basics.

But now you may ask yourself why the show refers to him as “Black Knight” and not the “Black Prince” if he really were Edward of Woodstock. To this I would say that there two huge factors that come into play here.

1. The show up to this point doesn’t want to out right say actual names or identities, expect for a few. There are a few more paintings and sculptures Alya goes through while pointing out the former miraculous holder in this episode and frankly, the fact that Alya never mentions names (beside Hercules) stuck out kinda odd to me considering that they are in a museum and she should be able to figure out some names from some of them, bringing a bit more of historical knowledge and facts into the show. But Alya and the show focus solely on the hero identities.This I think is happening because giving us the appearance, the typ of Miraculous AND a definite Identity/name would be too much to just throw at the audience without a proper pay off in near future.

I mean imagine if all these Miraculous holders from “Feast” the Grimoire, the little hero montage in the beginning of Origins part 1 or in this shot from “Le Befana”

had been given an official name, identity and the Miraculous type right of the bat. Don’t get me wrong it would have been NEAT no doubt, but BOAH…dude…too much information, TOO MUCH INFORMATION. What am I supposed to DO with these information’s now while the show is still in the “introductory” state and we will be dealing with the former Miraculous holder on a much later point?? Frankly, nothing. So yeah, its good that the show is being vaguer about the former holders while introducing them. That’s the right way to go.

Interestingly enough though, like I mentioned above, Hercules for example is confirmed to us not only by name, but also that he was the LION miraculous holder. He is the very first holder of the past of whom we have EVERYTHING confirmed. But I don’t think hes the only past holder we have gotten the canon name from already. I’m also 100% convinced that Akhenaton (in the English dub Tutankhamun for some reason???Oh no nononononono xD) and Nefertiti from “the Pharaoh” are former Ladybug and Cat miraculous holders too. This is a theory worthy or it’s own post with quite some points to explain so I’ll not digress here. Just know that they fit into the pattern I theorize with the past and current Cat and Ladybug miraculous holders.

Without too much digressing (I know its to late for that but shhhhhhhhhh) if we do take Akhenaton as Cat, Nefertiti as Ladybug and Hercules as Lion then we actually can pin point a difference down why these three holders were already introduced with names and others (like Knight Noir) aren’t.

Hercules for one is a legend and a myth, a figure you definitely connect more with stories than actual history. And while, yes, we acknowledge Nefertiti and Akhenaton/Tutankhamun as historical figures, they are so, SO so far away in the past that once again we don’t really see them as people who have once lived. Theyre more… concepts of people of the past with names. The fact that they are often used and portrayed in pop culture, Tv shows, movies, books ect in various inaccurate portrayals even furthers the “dehumanization”.

While historical figures like Edward of Woodstock or the Three Musketeer Ladybug above for example are not too far away from us today. We can still identify with them, their lifestyle and their environment in some sorts and as I stated above, in why I think Edward is the former Cat, the influence and meaning these people have to their national history is still great, which brings me to the second factor

2. I’m not sure if Miraculous would even be allowed to call the Black Knight the “Black Prince/Prince Noir (in French)” because as best depicted in the point of his connection with Jeanne de Arc, in a french show taking place in France he would and probably SHOULD not be portrayed in a 100% positive light. Considering what he has done to the French in real life, what his canon actions were in past in the ml universe (more to this in Part 3) I think anything but at least problematic anti-hero with good heart deep down would be historically and canonly… inappropriate. And this is where the problem lies.

Because yes, this is a french show taking place in France made by a french creator but they still cant just take an important ENGLISH historical figure pair him with an important FRENCH hero, let them both (like in real life) influence the same gigantic real life war between two real life nations and then just say: “Your legit english national hero is the bad guy and our legit french national heroin is good.” That’s just nothing they can pull.

With Jeanne de Arc yes, because she is and will undoubtedly be portrait in a good and heroic light (reflecting her real-life actions and influence on the hundred years war) but calling Edward of Woodstock out with his name, in circumstances like these while portraying him as the bad guy of the two (which he was, don’t get me wrong) is just.. it’s in bad taste and would probably offend quite some english people. And that is not something they can risk.

So what I think what they are doing here is that they changed his title from “Black Prince” to “Black Knight” because even though history remembers him as Prince, calling him a Knight is frankly anything but wrong. As I mentioned right in the beginning where I introduced Edward to you, he was one of the original Knights of the order of the garter, an order of charity founded by his father, the king. And man, he was one HELL of a Knight. So yeah, if you cant depict Edward of Woodstock as Prince then you are really not wrong off honouring his Knighthood (which the show does, like DAMN). This way, even though he isn’t called Black Prince he’s still recognisable to the people and historians who know him without much cheating considering his title or outright pointing at him and calling him a butthole (still, kudos to the show for basically doing it in “Darkblade” xD)

Puh Alright, the basics are out of th way.

Next is Part 2:The flag comparison is “Darkblade” and “Feast”

and Part 3: Are the Cat Miraculous holder knight and Darkblade the same people?

#Miraculous #Miraculous Ladybug #ml theory #past miraculous holders #former Chat Noir #ml feast #ml season 3 #ml season 1 #ml Darkblade #Cat miraculous holder in feast #Cat Noir #Chat Noir #guardians of the miraculous #ml spoilers

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un-deux-zero-quatre · 5 years ago

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“come be my teacher”

→ pairing: kim seokjin x (f) reader → genre: fluff, crack, if you squint it’s slow-burn → part i: 2,208 words → author note: inspired by a cute TA and my miserable effort in a korean language course while studying abroad. unlike y/n’s bold self. i never actually made efforts to get to know boys on campus, but then again i was never blessed to attend school with worldwide handsome jin. this is my first fic so hopefully you enjoy it, let me know what you think :)

(gif found on sbs website)

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You dabbed at the sweat droplets that formed on your forehead as the elevator to the sixth floor dinged to signal its arrival (fucking finally, you thought to yourself). You stepped out alongside a few other students heading towards room 605 for intro to Korean. A student sitting on the floor with his back against the windowed wall caught your peripheral. You glanced in the most casual manner you could pull off, but he was too busy looking down at his phone and you were forced to keep walking in the throng of students in the busy hallway. He looked cute, but honestly, half the campus was attractive boys that never gave you the light of day. Plus, having hiked half a mountain and power walked a large portion of your campus, the only thing on your mind was finding a seat to sink into, getting your heavy backpack off your sore shoulder, and downing the ice cold water in your HydroFlask. Not another cute boy who would ignore you. You made a beeline for a desk near the middle of the room, next to the giant windows. After not so carefully dumping your backpack on the desk table, you reached over to pull the window open, wondering why the hell you thought that wearing a long sleeve hoodie over black leggings during spring in Seoul seemed liked a good idea when you got dressed this morning. “I think my last brain cell stopped functioning the minute it started getting warmer,” you say to your deskman and friend, who is immersed in her music but gives you a sympathetic smile. Being that it was just the first week back to school, the classroom was still half empty. Most students would likely pile in gradually after managing to find the correct classroom… Yonsei was not exactly a small campus. Even local students found it difficult at times to navigate the famous campus.

You took this as an opportunity to lazily get going on the notes projected on the board. It was mostly stuff you’d get on the syllabus anyway, but you figured it wouldn’t hurt to have a digital copy; you did have a knack for misplacing important documents when you needed them the most and you did not want to have to suffer anymore than you anticipated from a course titled ‘Survival Korean.’ Despite having lived in the capital city for a couple months, your Korean had barely progressed from being able to order coffee and read instagram captions. Err, 70% of some instagram captions. So here you were at 8:45 am on this warm and cloudy day, sitting next to your practically fluent friend, mentally playing off your anxiety about being forced to brokenly speak in front of people who probably were only taking the class for an easy A. Before you knew it the professor was calling for attention to commence the class. You barely listened but maintained eye contact and nodding confidently to assert dominance. At least thats what you thought your half-assed efforts were doing for you. “Throughout the following weeks you’ll be working closely with a group of hand selected TA’s who will help you on your weekly tasks. They have worked hard to prepare engaging activities for all of you so please look forward to their lessons.” He signaled at a few older students scattered across the wall opposite to your seat, who flashed friendly smiles or lifted their hands up to identify themselves. You scanned and your eyes fell on one boy with wispy bangs and a soft pout on his lips.

Your one brain cell, as lame as it was at times, immediately recognized him as the boy who was sitting outside the classroom before class started. Getting a better chance at seeing his features you realized he was lowkey more handsome than other boys you’d seen on campus. Everyone knew Yonsei was notorious for attractive and bougie students but you did not expect to have a TA that looked like an Oscar nominated actor. You wondered if he was as kind as his eyes presented, or if he was a case of reverse-bitch face. You were brought back to consciousness when he turned and your eyes connected. You remained expressionless when his plump lips curved upward slightly. You felt your chest clench of embarrassment and quickly shifted your eyes at other students, focusing on each one for a few seconds to play off the fact that you were obviously drooling for this stranger. Why did you feel yourself burning up? It’s not like you have never seen a pretty boy. You weren’t the type to get so worked up over that. You cringed at yourself for feeling so affected that you didn’t even notice the professor had finished talking and students were shuffling to put their stuff away.

You felt your friend poke your arm, “Dude, let’s go.” You looked up at her and slammed your MacBook shut. “Oh— yeah sure! Do you have class right now?” She looked at her phone and groaned, “Ugh, I still have a whole hour before it starts. Let’s go chill somewhere.” Swinging your backpack over your shoulder you followed her out the classroom’s back exit, lowering your gaze to fiddle with your AirPod case just in case another opportunity for you to make an ass of yourself presented itself. You snapped the case open, swinging your hair around to plop the earphone in, missing handsome boy who was standing by the podium by the front door, watching you with curiosity, a tiny smile once again on his lips.

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“I seriously cannot believe we never realized they sell kaya toast here! Why do we always play ourselves?!” your friend sighed as you trudged up the massive concrete steps to Daewoo Annex Hall. “Maybe it’s because we always insist on going off campus to our fave cafe, we just can’t help being so loyal.” The main floor was buzzing with the loud chatter of students mingling in between classes, many of them ordering or waiting for their ritualistic iced Americanos to be served. You joined the short line to order, glancing at the menu above the case of baked goods. Your mind foggily drifted back to handsome boy from earlier. You wondered if he found you weird for staring so intently. By no means did you have a resting bitch face, but your natural expression doesn’t exactly scream approachability.

Though it had only been a few seconds of staring, you recall how sparkly his eyes had been. His wispy hair framed them perfectly, and alongside his dark eyelashes it was no surprise you were so immediately entranced… You caught yourself; who can even manage to look that attractive so early in the day?! Since when did good looks even mean that much to you? He was probably an asshole anyway, using the TA position only to exert power over undergrads who couldn’t afford do much but beg for mercy during office hours and rant online about shitty policies.

You felt your nose scrunching up into a frown when a loud laugh brought you back to the present moment. Looking down from the menu to the register you noticed a wavy haired, uniform clad barista throwing his head back at what seemed to be the funniest joke in the world. He flashed a boxy smile at whoever was leaned over the bar waiting for their coffee all while his hands expertly handled the register, tucking away won bills and passing a receipt to the customer who just finished ordering.

“Wow, I guess all the cute boys decided to torture us today,” your friend whispered, raising her eyebrow at you. You couldn’t even try to argue with her, this boy definitely contributed to evidence that only attractive students attended Yonsei… kind of like how handsome boy did as well… As if the universe had heard your mind ruminating, and decided it was time to intervene, the person leaned over the counter turned to look in your direction, and you had to bite your tongue to not gasp when those sparkly brown eyes connected with yours.

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You know those cheesy rom-coms where the protagonist finally meets her true love (or whatever) for the first time and the world magically melts away so that it’s only the two of them? Or how in Bollywood movies when the heroine locks eyes with the bad boy love interest and boom, cue sensual but still cute song with perfectly timed choreography? You loved that shit but never for one second believed it applied to the real world.

So why, God why, did you feel like time had stopped the second his eyes met yours and nothing else, especially not your midday politics class, mattered? “Hey! You’re one our teachers for survival Korean, right?” Your friend’s voice cut through your bizarre cinematic moment. She had stepped forward to order while she greeted none other than mister handsome boy. Although it had felt like an eternity, only a few seconds had transpired so the odds of you looking like a blithering idiot to others was very slim. “Yeah, you have a good eye, there’s about 10 of us there,” he smiled at your friend. “Are you both in the class? My name’s Seokjin, I’ll be teaching the lesson in a couple weeks.” You friend shot a quick smile at him and turned to the barista to order. You glanced quickly at her, the barista whose name tag read Taehyung, and then back at handsome b— err, Jin.

Since both your friend and Taehyung were busy in a transaction, you had no choice but to keep the conversation alive. “Uhh yeah, we are… my name is ____,” your eyes finally settled on his. He straightened up from the coffee bar, starching his arms up and brushing the back of his head.

Fuck, he was tall.

“Are you gonna order coffee, too? Speaking of, where’s mine? Ya! Tae!” He motioned over at the register and you remembered the sole reason for you climbing a steep hill 10 minutes away from your next classroom. You mumbled a soft oh, thanks and faced back to the register to order. It looks like Taehyung had abandoned his spot to make Jin’s drink, so a kind-eyed but sleepy girl took your order instead.

Stuffing your loose change back in your cardholder you made your way over to the main lobby where your friend stood with Jin and two other boys. “Ugh, I think I’ve had enough of feeling awkward for today,” you thought as you slowed down your steps. Always a queen with perfect timing, as you arrived you heard Tae scream out Jin’s name and order and Jin waved goodbye. “See you next week! Don’t forget to pick up a good notebook!”

“What,” you deadpanned as your friend turned on her heel to stare at you with an expression you only saw when stumbling across an aesthetic new cafe.“What are the odds of us getting such a hot TA for the easiest class ever?! And he’s not a complete jerk, wow.” HA, your lips pursed out as your inner monologue from an hour ago quickly flashed in your find. “I mean, maybe now he’s nice before he actually gets to teach us, what if he completely switches up? Also excuse me, but easiest class ever if you already speak Korean only! I’m not ready to take L’s in front of everyone,” your hands ran through your hair as you plopped down on a couch. “It’ll be fine, maybe Jin can be your motivation.” If the eyes emoji were based on anything, no doubt it was your friends iconic expression. As you opened your mouth to protest she dove away back to the coffee bar for your drinks.

Blowing air out gently from your pursed lips you dwelled on what’s to come. Okay… maybe if you kept an open mind the class (and this very specific TA) wouldn’t be so awful. You did choose to come abroad to a country where didn’t speak the language in hopes of eventually becoming fluent, after all. What good would negativity do? And anyway, it’s not like Jin would be teaching the entire course, so he probably wouldn’t even be able to clock how awkward he made you act (not that you understood either, its not the first time you see a cute boy.) As your friend came back holding two iced caramel macchiatos you resolved to just be as gentle on yourself as possible this semester. You had faced high stress and lost enough sleep last semester over things that were not worth it in the long run, and the thought of handling things the same way again felt draining. Even if it meant looking like a dumbass in front of the class asking wtf anything meant after reading a wall of text, you were going to put in effort in doing well to avoid issues later on and nothing was going to distract you. Not even soft, perfectly messy hair or pretty brown eyes or pillowy lips that curled around words so perfectly you had to restrain yourself from daydreaming.

* 。 • ˚ ˚ ˛ ˚ ˛ • 。* 。° 。* 。 • ˚* 。 • ˚ ˚ ˛ ˚ ˛ • 。* 。° 。* 。 • ˚* 。 • ˚ ˚ ˛ ˚ ˛ • 。* 。° 。* 。 • part one: end * 。 • ˚ ˚ ˛ ˚ ˛ • 。* 。° 。* 。 • ˚* 。 • ˚ ˚ ˛ ˚ ˛ • 。* 。° 。* 。 • ˚* 。 • ˚ ˚ ˛ ˚ ˛ • 。* 。° 。* 。 • ˚

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deniscollins · 5 years ago

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Who Killed the Knapp Family?

The stock market is near record highs, but working-class Americans (often defined as those without college degrees) continue to struggle. If you’re only a high school graduate, or worse, a dropout, work no longer pays. If the federal minimum wage in 1968 had kept up with inflation and productivity, it would now be $22 an hour. Instead, it’s $7.25. In some ways, the situation is worsening, because families have imploded under the pressure of drug and alcohol abuse, and children are growing up in desperate circumstances. It would be easy but too simplistic to blame just automation and lost jobs: The problems are also rooted in disastrous policy choices over 50 years. If you owned a business, what, if anything, could you do to address this situation?

Chaos reigned daily on the No. 6 school bus, with working-class boys and girls flirting and gossiping and dreaming, brimming with mischief, bravado and optimism. Nick rode it every day in the 1970s with neighbors here in rural Oregon, neighbors like Farlan, Zealan, Rogena, Nathan and Keylan Knapp.

They were bright, rambunctious, upwardly mobile youngsters whose father had a good job installing pipes. The Knapps were thrilled to have just bought their own home, and everyone oohed and aahed when Farlan received a Ford Mustang for his 16th birthday.

Yet today about one-quarter of the children on that No. 6 bus are dead, mostly from drugs, suicide, alcohol or reckless accidents. Of the five Knapp kids who had once been so cheery, Farlan died of liver failure from drink and drugs, Zealan burned to death in a house fire while passed out drunk, Rogena died from hepatitis linked to drug use and Nathan blew himself up cooking meth. Keylan survived partly because he spent 13 years in a state penitentiary.

Among other kids on the bus, Mike died from suicide, Steve from the aftermath of a motorcycle accident, Cindy from depression and a heart attack, Jeff from a daredevil car crash, Billy from diabetes in prison, Kevin from obesity-related ailments, Tim from a construction accident, Sue from undetermined causes. And then there’s Chris, who is presumed dead after years of alcoholism and homelessness. At least one more is in prison, and another is homeless.

We Americans are locked in political combat and focused on President Trump, but there is a cancer gnawing at the nation that predates Trump and is larger than him. Suicides are at their highest rate since World War II; one child in seven is living with a parent suffering from substance abuse; a baby is born every 15 minutes after prenatal exposure to opioids; America is slipping as a great power.

We have deep structural problems that have been a half century in the making, under both political parties, and that are often transmitted from generation to generation. Only in America has life expectancy now fallen three years in a row, for the first time in a century, because of “deaths of despair.”

“The meaningfulness of the working-class life seems to have evaporated,” Angus Deaton, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, told us. “The economy just seems to have stopped delivering for these people.” Deaton and the economist Anne Case, who is also his wife, coined the term “deaths of despair” to describe the surge of mortality from alcohol, drugs and suicide.

The kids on the No. 6 bus rode into a cataclysm as working-class communities disintegrated across America because of lost jobs, broken families, gloom — and failed policies. The suffering was invisible to affluent Americans, but the consequences are now evident to all: The survivors mostly voted for Trump, some in hopes that he would rescue them, but under him the number of children without health insurance has risen by more than 400,000.

We were foreign correspondents together for many years, periodically covering humanitarian crises in distant countries. Then we would return to the Kristof family farm in Yamhill and see a humanitarian crisis unfolding in a community we loved — and a similar unraveling was happening in towns across the country. This was not one town’s problem, but a crisis in the American system.

“I’m a capitalist, and even I think capitalism is broken,” says Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater, the world’s largest hedge fund.

Even in this presidential campaign, the unraveling of working-class communities receives little attention. There is talk about the middle class, but very little about the working class; we discuss college access but not the one in seven children who don’t graduate from high school. America is like a boat that is half-capsized, but those partying above water seem oblivious.

“We have to stop being obsessed over impeachment and start actually digging in and solving the problems that got Donald Trump elected in the first place,” Andrew Yang argued in the last Democratic presidential debate. Whatever you think of Yang as a candidate, on this he is dead right: We have to treat America’s cancer.

In some ways, the situation is worsening, because families have imploded under the pressure of drug and alcohol abuse, and children are growing up in desperate circumstances. One of our dearest friends in Yamhill, Clayton Green, a brilliant mechanic who was three years behind Nick in school, died last January, leaving five grandchildren — and all have been removed from their parents by the state for their protection. A local school official sighs that some children are “feral.”

Farlan, the oldest of the Knapp children, was in Nick’s grade. A talented woodworker, he dreamed of opening a business called “Farlan’s Far Out Fantastic Freaky Furniture.” But Farlan ended up dropping out of school after the ninth grade.

Although he never took high school chemistry, Farlan became a first-rate chemist: He was one of the first people in the Yamhill area to cook meth. For a time he was a successful entrepreneur known for his high quality merchandise. “This is what I was made for,” he once announced with quiet pride. But he abused his own drugs and by his 40s was gaunt and frail.

In some ways, he was a great dad, for he loved his two daughters, Amber and Andrea, and they idolized him. But theirs was not an optimal upbringing: In one of Amber’s baby pictures, there’s a plate of cocaine in the background.

Farlan died of liver failure in 2009, just after his 51st birthday, and his death devastated both daughters. Andrea, who was smart, talented, gorgeous and entrepreneurial, ran her own real estate business but accelerated her drinking after her dad died. “She drank herself to death,” her uncle Keylan told us. She was buried in 2013 at the age of 29.

In the 1970s and ’80s it was common to hear derogatory suggestions that the forces ripping apart African-American communities were rooted in “black culture.” The idea was that “deadbeat dads,” self-destructive drug abuse and family breakdown were the fundamental causes, and that all people needed to do was show “personal responsibility.”

A Harvard sociologist, William Julius Wilson, countered that the true underlying problem was lost jobs, and he turned out to be right. When good jobs left white towns like Yamhill a couple of decades later because of globalization and automation, the same pathologies unfolded there. Men in particular felt the loss not only of income but also of dignity that accompanied a good job. Lonely and troubled, they self-medicated with alcohol or drugs, and they accumulated criminal records that left them less employable and less marriageable. Family structure collapsed.

It would be easy but too simplistic to blame just automation and lost jobs: The problems are also rooted in disastrous policy choices over 50 years. The United States wrested power from labor and gave it to business, and it suppressed wages and cut taxes rather than invest in human capital, as our peer countries did. As other countries embraced universal health care, we did not; several counties in the United States have life expectancies shorter than those in Cambodia or Bangladesh.

One consequence is that the bottom end of America’s labor force is not very productive, in ways that reduce our country’s competitiveness. A low-end worker may not have a high school diploma and is often barely literate or numerate while also struggling with a dependency; more than seven million Americans also have suspended driver’s licenses for failing to pay child support or court-related debt, meaning that they may not reliably show up at work.

Americans also bought into a misconceived “personal responsibility” narrative that blamed people for being poor. It’s true, of course, that personal responsibility matters: People we spoke to often acknowledged engaging in self-destructive behaviors. But when you can predict wretched outcomes based on the ZIP code where a child is born, the problem is not bad choices the infant is making. If we’re going to obsess about personal responsibility, let’s also have a conversation about social responsibility.

Why did deaths of despair claim Farlan, Zealan, Nathan, Rogena and so many others? We see three important factors.

First, well-paying jobs disappeared, partly because of technology and globalization but also because of political pressure on unions and a general redistribution of power toward the wealthy and corporations.

Second, there was an explosion of drugs — oxycodone, meth, heroin, crack cocaine and fentanyl — aggravated by the reckless marketing of prescription painkillers by pharmaceutical companies.

Third, the war on drugs sent fathers and mothers to jail, shattering families.

There’s plenty of blame to go around. Both political parties embraced mass incarceration and the war on drugs, which was particularly devastating for black Americans, and ignored an education system that often consigned the poor — especially children of color — to failing schools. Since 1988, American schools have become increasingly segregated by race, and kids in poor districts perform on average four grade levels behind those in rich districts.

Farlan’s daughter Amber seemed to be the member of the Knapp family most poised for success. She was the first Knapp ever to graduate from high school, and then she took a job at a telecommunications company, managing databases and training staff members to use computer systems. We were struck by her intellect and interpersonal skills; it was easy to imagine her as a lawyer or a business executive.

“PowerPoint presentations and Excel and pivot charts and matrix analytics, that’s what I like to do,” she told us. She married and had three children, and for a time was thriving.

Then in grief after her father and sister died, she imploded. A doctor had prescribed medications like Xanax, and she became dependent on them. After running out of them, she began smoking meth for the first time when she was 32.

“I was dead set against it my whole life,” she remembered. “I hated it. I’d seen what it did to everybody. My dad was a junkie who cooked meth and lost everything. You would think that was enough.” It wasn’t. She bounced in and out of jail and lost her kids.

Amber knew she had blown it, but she was determined to recover her life and her children. We had hoped that Amber would claw her way back, proof that it is possible to escape the messiness of the Knapp family story and build a successful life. We texted Amber a few times to arrange to get photos of Farlan, and then she stopped replying to our texts. Finally, her daughter responded: Amber was back in jail.

Yet it’s not hopeless. America is polarized with ferocious arguments about social issues, but we should be able to agree on what doesn’t work: neglect and underinvestment in children. Here’s what does work.

Job training and retraining give people dignity as well as an economic lifeline. Such jobs programs are common in other countries.

For instance, autoworkers were laid off during the 2008-9 economic crisis both in Detroit and across the Canadian border in nearby Windsor, Ontario. As the scholar Victor Tan Chen has showed, the two countries responded differently. The United States focused on money, providing extended unemployment benefits. Canada emphasized job retraining, rapidly steering workers into new jobs in fields like health care, and Canadian workers also did not have to worry about losing health insurance.

Canada’s approach succeeded. The focus on job placement meant that Canadian workers were ushered more quickly back into workaday society and thus today seem less entangled in drugs and family breakdown.

Another successful strategy is investing not just in prisons but also in human capital to keep people out of prisons. The highest-return investments available in America may be in early education for disadvantaged children, but there are also valuable interventions available for adolescents and adults. We attended a thrilling graduation in Tulsa, Okla., for 17 women completing an impressive local drug treatment program called Women in Recovery.

The graduates had an average of 15 years of addiction each, and all were on probation after committing crimes. Yet they had quit drugs and started jobs, and 300 people in the audience — including police officers who had arrested them and judges who had sentenced them — gave the women a standing ovation. The state attorney general served as the commencement speaker and called them “heroes,” drawing tearful smiles from women more accustomed to being called “junkies” or “whores.”

“I thought we’d be planning a funeral instead,” said one audience member whose younger sister had started using meth at age 12 and was now graduating at 35. Women in Recovery has a recidivism rate after three years of only 4 percent, and consequently has saved Oklahoma $70 million in prison spending, according to the George Kaiser Family Foundation.

Bravo for philanthropy, but the United States would never build interstate highways through volunteers and donations, and we can’t build a national preschool program or a national drug recovery program with private money. We need the government to step up and jump-start nationwide programs in early childhood education, job retraining, drug treatment and more.

For individuals trying to break an addiction, a first step is to face up to the problem — and that’s what America should do as well. Our own reporting in the past focused on foreigners, affording us an emotional distance, while this time we spoke with old friends and had no armor. It has been wrenching to see them struggle. But ultimately we saw pathways forward that leave us hopeful.

One of our dear friends in Yamhill was Rick (Ricochet) Goff, who was part Indian and never had a chance: His mom died when he was 5 and his dad was, as he put it, “a professional drunk” who abandoned the family. Ricochet was a whiz at solving puzzles and so dependable a friend that he would lend pals money even when he couldn’t afford medicine for himself. We deeply felt Ricochet’s loss when he died four years ago, and we also worried about his adult son, Drew, who is smart and charismatic but had been messing with drugs since he was 12.

Drew’s son, Ashtyn, was born with drugs in his system, and we feared that the cycle of distress was now being passed on to the next generation. We exchanged letters with Drew while he was in prison but lost touch.

Then, when we were visiting a drug-treatment program in Oregon called Provoking Hope, a young man bounded over to us. “It’s me, Drew,” he said.

We have been close with Drew since, and he fills us with optimism. With the help of Provoking Hope, Drew will soon celebrate two years free of drugs, and he holds a responsible job at the front desk of a hotel. He has custody of Ashtyn and is now an outstanding dad, constantly speaking to him and playing with him. Drew still has a tempestuous side, and occasionally he has some rash impulse — but then he thinks of Ashtyn and reins himself in.

“I’m a work in progress,” he told us. “The old me wants to act out, and I won’t allow that.”

Drew keeps moving forward, and we believe he’s going to thrive along with Ashtyn, breaking the cycle that had enmeshed his family for generations. With support and balance, this can be done — if we as a society are willing to offer help, not just handcuffs.

“It’s a tightrope I’m walking on,” Drew said. “And sometimes it seems to be made of fishing line.”

#Working Class poverty

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cainov · 6 years ago

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nonbinary — ever hear people say CAIN ROMANOV looks a lot like BILL SKARSGARD? I think HE/THEY is about 24, so it doesn’t really work. The ANTIQUE BOOKSHOP OWNER has lived in Livingstone for TWENTY-FOUR YEARS. They can be RIGHTEOUS, but they can also be EVASIVE. I think CAIN might be A SHEEP. ( snot goblin. 20. EST. she/they. )

hi hello ... decided 2 bring in my son ... my soft boy ... my light ... some of u may know him from watershed but ! here he is again ! forced upon u all. please love him as i’m very fragile. ** i’ve changed parts of his bio so !! if u think u knew all the deetz ,,, but please be warned that it’s PRETTY HEAVY STUFF !!

pleathe LIKE this to PLOT and i promise i will not abandon u all like the other times usfdg

TW: CULT LIFE, HEROIN USAGE / ADDICTION, DRUG ADDICTION / USE / ABUSE, EMOTIONAL MANIPULATION, ABUSE, MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES ( PTSD, ANXIETY ). if i forgot anything PLEASE tell me !!

a e s t h e t i c s

dangling limbs from tree branches, yellowed book pages, opened bottles of vintage wine, oversized sweaters and deep under eyes, bleached denim, worn leather gloves, cat hair against black cloth, fields of wheat, broken windows, descending staircases, tight-lipped smiles during public appearances, golden skies, light spilling from windows, stumbling over one’s own words, wire-framed beds, linens, wool scarves, making the wrong decisions; running, from others and yourself.

general information !!

full name: cain alexei romanov

nickname(s): cock and ball torture, N/A

b.o.d. - feb 19th, fuckin pisces

label(s): the fallen, the phoenix, the crestfallen, etc. etc.

height: 6′4″ jfc

hometown: livingstone, VT babey !!

sexuality: bi…? bi. yes. bi.

stats

biography !!

the eldest to vermont senator vaughn romanov and philanthropist adelaide romanov - they were born into a life of privilege in a very prominent family. they’re the eldest of five.

with this background in mind - cain was taught to be the perfect citizen, the golden child, the all american ( willfully ignoring the fact that his father came from russian immigrants ) son. they were obedient, always staying within line.

several expectations for them included joining clubs at school such as model UN, debate, DECA, etc., sports (soccer, track, basketball, lacrosse - all throughout the years), student government (class president for at least one year), and maintaining a GPA status valedictorian-worthy.

was made to volunteer on the weekends at homeless shelters and food banks - to show the community how much of a gem he was, a darling - a perfect member of society.

his eagerness to impress pleased his parents and thus, he never had a problem with them. life was good for them. they attended church on sundays, sometimes wednesdays, did everything as a family. dinners and christmas photoshoots and new years eve parties, easter egg hunts and family reunions.

lived northside, not on the beach but close enough to it - a big fancy, seven bedroom, eight bath, two fireplaces and an expansive dining room - no pool, but a sturdy treehouse made by scratch.

his ~model citizen~ persona was just that - a persona, a charade. in the community and his family, cain was a hardworking citizen who upheld standards to follow. to classmates - from elementary school all the way to college - cain was the worst.

they were arrogant, harrowing, an outright bully who tore down others when he felt like it, often unprovoked - they were the senator’s son, and a rich one at that - rules never applied to him because of his father and their family’s presence in the community. tattlers faced more consequences than cain ever did.

was the sort of person who’d genuinely look down at somebody if they had less than him. a narcissistic dickhead who cared about two or three people, tops, outside of his family. he was never physically violent, nor did he raise his voice - but that was what’s made it worse. cain spewed his classist bullshit with ease.

his best friends since childhood have been brooks hunter and michael green - a very troublesome trio based on their mutual love for power highs.

only redeeming quality back then was probably their protectiveness over his siblings - wasn’t the best person, but family was family.

went into political science + business to please their father, mainly - everything they’d been taught growing up was essentially to build them into a perfect little presidential candidate.

probably joined a frat though didn’t participate in parties too often - known for keeping his composition even when others resorted to violence, because he never liked to leave a bad press image. this attitude was the same when it came to parties and other ... taboo subjects,

sometime during college, two important things happened.

the first one was that he became a middleman / broker / whatever you’d like to call it. wasn’t producing product, but wasn’t dealing it. was the middleman, the connection between producers and dealers. it was for fun - never for profit. very hush-hush.

the second is that he met earl and may meyers. they were fellow volunteers at a thanksgiving food drive, and the older couple were immediately drawn to cain - and him to them, essentially. to this day he can’t tell you what about them had been so appealing. just, the air around them was something else entirely. some would probably call it unhinged, some would call it comforting. they were kind folks, very down to earth, very religious and warmhearted. they liked his name being cain a whole lot; told him that he reminded him of their late son.

it was the beginning of his senior year in college for cain - a few years after he’d gotten started in the drug business - the couple volunteered more and more at the same places that cain would, the same times, almost as if they were learning his schedule. in retrospect, it was odd, but cain had never thought to suspect the elderly of anything ... deceiving. kept talking to them and it became a genuine friendship.

a few months into it, the couple started talking about the sin of wealth - god choosing only a select few when he cleanses the earth - only the worthiest souls - eventually they’d gotten into the rhythm of claiming cain was special. they could see he would be selected - see it in his aura, in their dreams - god personally speaking to to them, etc. etc.

it was ... oddly appealing to cain - like, maybe i am being constrained by capitalism and disappointing god - even though it had felt nearly ridiculous - it seeped into his mind.

this was essentially the result of emotional manipulation over a period of time - cain unsuspecting, unwilling to believe that he could be manipulated - always so sure in himself.

earl and may told him that they were going to leave livingstone - that there were so many more who had the same ideals as them, that it was time to join them - that it was time to prepare. cain held off from it, at first - having just graduated.

he had so much in livingstone - loyal companions and a close-knit family, a blooming side-business and a long-term girlfriend and an engagement ring burning in his pocket. he was still the same boy - cruel without cause. but he’d found himself surrounded by others, anyway.

within a month of newfound freedom - cain had a change of heart. the third most important event in his life had happened.

it was an average day - june, hot enough that sweat stuck to your skin, but not hot enough that you weren’t glad for it. a family bbq the entire day - relatives from all around - cain had been cleaning up with his mother when, out of nowhere, she had broken down in sobs.

essentially - after a long ... discussion, cain learned that they were not his father’s son.

in a fit of petty anger towards the beginning of their marriage, adelaide had cheated on vaughn. the result was cain.

it was the sort of news that breaks a person. his entire life - he idolized his parents, done everything they’d ever expect of him - let them mold him into whatever they pleased. to find out that his mother - a woman who, he had previously believed, could never tell a lie in her life - was a liar, and that his father - the man he looked up to most as a child - didn’t share the same blood as him.

cain unraveled. that week. several altercations, both sober and drunk - landing in county jail overnight - only to disappear without notice on june 21st, 2018.

it was treated as a missing persons’ case, the first week or so - until it had been determined that cain left on his own accord, then it was dropped much to the dismay of his family.

BEGINNING OF CULT / DRUG / MOST OF THE TRIGGER WARNINGS

only earl and may knew where cain went - because they had left together, cain’s last minute decision. cain’s mistake. the fourth most important thing to happen to him.

only hours away from livingstone - on the border between new york and vermont and not nearly far away as cain would had liked - was the cult’s location. they wore white linens and cotton - never mixed, and technology had been abandoned. prayers and daily chores.

it felt ... natural, at first - for the first three months - it was grand, in the beginning, peaceful, mind-clearing. they treated him differently - as if he were something special, as if his birth was a gift - a sign from the heavens above. cain come to undo his past’s damage. a leader, perhaps. the longer he stayed - the more apparent it became that he wasn’t who they had long waited for.

once they began slipping up - the members became displeased with him and punishments occurred - sometimes once a week, sometimes multiple. the memories are suppressed, for the most part - but they can’t forget the hands. pulling, and tugging, and gripping, and begging - asking him to repent, please, repent - head held underwater, counting seconds until his vision goes out - pulled out gasping and sobbing. it repeats in their mind - each day blurring into one another.

once he started reacting violently - they found ways to subdue him.

heroin intake - little by little, everyday - enough to leave him in a high he wouldn’t remember - enough to burn a hole through his memory.

with memories becoming dimmer each day - cain managed to sneak paper and pencil into his ~living arrangement~ and he wrote everyday - wrote as much as he could remember about livingstone, about his family, about his life before. sometimes he couldn’t remember what he’d written previously.

when these were found - it had been the final straw. they had dragged him, kicking and screaming and mind-numbingly high into place - a twisted reenactment / retelling of the mark of cain and a brand of the mark burnt permanently into his skin right above his heart - forehead not an option due to difficulties fully subduing cain (he bit them).

left to die in the middle of woods afterwards, with nothing but his writing and the clothes on his back - cain shouldn’t had had the strength to go on - but they did. they didn’t know what day it was - really, what year it was - but cain got up and cain ran. and cain, obviously, survived.

it was pure luck that cain had run into a truck driver who wasn’t doubling as a murderer - one who took him to the hospital - who essentially, gave cain another chance to live. cain was found on june 21st, 2019.

END OF CULT / DRUG / MOST OF THE TRIGGER WARNINGS. PROCEED WITH CAUTION. STILL MENTIONS OF TRAUMA / MENTAL HEALTH / RECOVERY / ADDICTION BEYOND THIS POINT.

immediately reunited by his family - everything went very fast. he couldn’t recognize his youngest sibling, but couldn’t remember why he’d left in the first place. couldn’t remember the name of his girlfriend, but the color of her hair and the way she smelled.

put into therapy and recovery for their addiction - vaughn romanov makes his announcement that he’s running for the 2020 election the day after cain is found and brought home. they’re not expected to be alright within a few weeks of therapy - but cain feels restrained, in a way - confined to the role he’d always had to play. expected to up, and continue with life as if he hadn’t endured an extremely traumatizing year.

is essentially forced to stay in livingstone for the time being - but cain has taken a few things into his own hands. they’ll go to therapy, work on their recovery - but, having no further interest in what he’d gotten a degree in - has decidedly bought himself an antique bookshop off of the owner looking to retire, and has taken shelter in the apartment above it.

with their four cats, of course. his parents agreed - purely to give him the space to recover whilst keeping him close to them. if only he hadn’t found recovery to be most helpful in the form of pills - his old business now turned into a way for him to get what he believes will make him better.

personality !!

to clarify - cain is no longer the douchebag they once were. kind of .. learned to be a better person with his entire experience - mostly a lot of self-blaming that boils down to karma and deserving what happened to him.

he’d always been a pretty ... quiet, person - even with the massive ego - but now, cain’s ... quieter. kinder, if not a little sarcastic. distant and not much for parties - that never changed - but it’s more of a ... restrictive, distance, than one of comfort.

smokes weed but rarely drinks - as if it’d make a difference with the pills addiction he’s using to battle his heroin one.

like mentioned - they’ve got four cats. that’s their personality. had two of ‘em before he’d disappeared, and just got the other two probably ... yesterday, tbh. they’re named frank (big chungus when yelled - white and gray), brock (orange. fluffy. stoic. devours food.), shoelace (black-furred and missing an eye), and crunchwrap supreme (crunch for short, calico with bent ears).

probably has photos of their cats in his wallet.

parents help pay for the cost of owning the bookshop - though cain’s expected to fully take on the financial responsibility when he’s ‘well again’.

their memory is fucked. forgets a lot of things - short term, long term, it’s a struggle. managed to keep the notes they used to take back at the cult - so it helps, but not always. forgets dates, faces, names, events. he wakes up sometimes and doesn’t know where they are.

they don’t sleep a lot, regardless - night terrors came with his trauma, and in an attempt to avoid ‘em, they don’t really ... sleep. only a few hours each night because it gets so bad.

cain suffers from severe touch aversion. skin-to-skin contact of any sort is enough to send them into an intense panic attack. they wear leather gloves more often than not, in an attempt to combat it without hindering them too much. not the biggest fan of body contact in general, even with clothes - but it won’t send him into a panic like bare skin will. makes it obvious from the get-go that he doesn’t like physical contact if somebody gets too close.

also dealing with ptsd and attends therapy every week - therapist recommended he kept writing after looking at his notes - so he does, keeps an entire journal where they write and like ... sketch a little, because it helps them cope. means more to them than it would seem.

they’re pretty blunt. won’t go out of their way to announce that they joined a cult, hence the disappearance - but won’t lie about their disappearance if the topic comes to it. cain doesn’t like delusions, doesn’t like secrets - doesn’t like unnecessary attention, either.

being said uh ... cain sort of hates the new division ? anything that resembles a cult, he instantly hates. hates the watershed app too.

being in town keeps cain anxious, because they’re aware they’ve wronged a good amount of people - but it’s hard to remember who, and what, and when, and why - and it’s just. an entire ordeal of figuring out how to ... redeem himself to multiple people.

screwed over a lot of people when they left ! from their plugs / customers to their ex-girlfriend who they are, undeniably, still in love with - you can’t forget that feeling - to his friends.

isn’t ... aware that michael is in prison. isn’t aware that kieran is dead. hasn’t been told yet.

is high often ! says it’s just weed but ... it’s not !

hates cars and swimming and crowds - hates feeling trapped and will avoid it when possible. doesn’t want to be seen as unsociable, but it’s difficult.

climbs trees when overwhelmed and needs a space to think - has a tall tree right outside of the window of his apartment, on the side opposite of the street if that makes sense ?? can be found there often. like - won’t leave a conversation to go climbin’ but. y’know.

feels the need to redeem themself to ... everybody, really. wants to avoid conflict and wants to be a better person - they’re trying really hard but not everybody believes them.

really .. wouldn’t be surprised if people from livingstone were suspicious of cain, for whatever reason - they don’t have the best track record anymore !

they’ve got a stutter that developed as a result of the trauma - their voice is damaged from screaming a lot. working on being less self-conscious about it, thinks there’s more important things to worry about. in general cain looks ... gaunt, too thin, generally unhealthy.

they can still definitely hold a conversation, and like i said they’re pretty…lowkey. soft, sort of. generally a quiet person and while they’re not the most social, they won’t be a direct asshole or anything. likes people! just…has low energy.

goes by he/they, doesn’t really care which one as he alternates pretty frequently.

very happy with being the owner of a bookshop - especially antique. feels more genuine than political science or whatever.

got really into the investigation of the cult he was part of - they got uncovered and arrested due to cain’s escape but there’s still branches out there - you could call him obsessed. willing to stick his nose where he shouldn’t, even though he really ... really shouldn’t.

wanted connections !!

so first and foremost - people who he’s grown up with his entire life. people he’s just. wronged. people who idolized him - people who envied him, who despised him, etc. etc.

would love ! a good amount of antagonistic connections because it fits the bill.

exes he’s dumped, old hookups, ex-friends, people he got into an argument with / fought before he disappeared last year.

ex-gf would be gr8 ! thanks ! will be holding american-idol-esque auditions.

any prominent families in livingstone that his family would know. family friends - family rivals. his siblings.

people he’s trying to redeem himself to - trying to prove his worth, that he’s better now. y’know.

old clients that he left in the dust !

people from his frat - people he used to go to the occasional party with.

people angry at cain, still. just. so mad. pissed completely.

some good ol’ reconnecting / reconciliation plots ! i’m a slut for slowburn friendships. enemies to friends.

people he used 2 bully.

wholesome shit, angst shit. i said slowburns but i love them. friends to enemies. enemies to bigger enemies. anything.

no. hookups. please. only previous encounters. nothing in the present. for obvious reasons.

except MAYBE sexual tension but the kind that hurts. maybe a fun, casual sexting thing. they’ve got needs too.

people who just hate his dad b/c politicians suck !

i imagine a lot of conversations between him n other people start out ... aggressive, because they’re mad at him. :/

people who are soft for them ?? people who are hard on him ?? make his life difficult but also uwu him.

i’ll rly take anything !! just like this so i can slither in !!

#cult tw #drug addiction tw #drug abuse tw #abuse tw #heroin tw #mental illness tw #ptsd tw #livingintro

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disorderedgamer · 6 years ago

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The Stigma of Gaming

Somehow, a stigma has bred over the concept of gaming: "games are too violent"; "games destroy your brain"; or, my personal favourite: "but.. you're a girl?". I ask those who would dare pose such questions: could you live without your cell phone for even a second? Even the older generations are attached to their phones as if by glue, yet it is unacceptable for me to play a game for a few hours a week? Let's debunk some gaming stereotypes, shall we?

I am a 27 year-old woman. This poses two problems to the average adult: why do I waste time playing video games at my age?, and why am I not married and having babies? This imaginary timeline that seems to exist in gaming asserts that, if you game regularly after the age of 23, it's no longer cool. In fact, it's frowned upon and pitied. The image non-gamers have of adult gamers is not a pretty one.

There are a myriad of stereotypes that gamers are subjected to, even before the age cut-off limit. I'm here to set the record straight. There will, of course, be those who do not agree with my opinions; all I can say to the naysayers is: "Well, then don't read further, and find a stupid meme on Facebook instead".

WOMEN SHOULD BE HOLDING BABIES, NOT GAME CONTROLLERS

Well, men shouldn't play with their "joysticks" constantly, but that's not about to change either. Anyone with this mentality should buy a time machine and teleport back to the '50s. Women make up almost half of the gaming demographic. Get used to it.

ALL ADULT-GAMERS ARE OVERWEIGHT AND SOCIALLY DISCONNECTED

Social media can become as addictive as cocaine or heroin. That doesn't mean that every Facebook user is dissociated from reality and biding their time for their next "fix" of likes. Just like any other pleasure in life, gaming can become addictive, but that doesn't make us all addicts. Yes, NWBZPWNR (short-hand for 'noobs pawner', South Park's representation of gaming addiction in the picture above) is a realistic portrayal of a gamer whose preference for the people in games to the people in the room, has gone a tad too far.

Then again, the next time you are at a restaurant or public gathering, sit for a moment and watch those around you. How many are on their phones, Instagramming pictures of their food or checking in on Facebook? At least gamers have the decency not to be rude in public.

It's true that some gamers choose to lock themselves away for hours - maybe even days - at a time while gaming. If they are responsible enough to realise that they have work in the morning and need to call it quits, then what is the harm?

VIDEO GAMES INCITE VIOLENCE

Possibly the most controversial of gaming topics is the notion that video games are to blame for tragedies across the world. Of course, events such as Columbine and the countless other mass shootings across the world are horrific and shocking, but blaming video games is a fallacy in reasoning. See, when I played The Witcher series, I killed thousands of people. I killed even more in DmC (in fact, I got a trophy for it). However, not once did I feel the urge to buy a katana and decapitate whoever crossed my path at my local shopping centre.

"Research" which claims that video games are the sole reason for violence are committing a grave disservice to the scientific community by concluding false arguments. Video games may be a factor contributing to such tragedy, but the truth is, it takes a disordered mind to re-enact his/her favourite video game at school. The main contributing factor to school shooting and mass killings - that were blamed on violent video games - is a sociopathic personality coupled with a psychotic detachment from reality.

There is, of course, a solution for those who insist that games harm children: parents should start parenting. If you believe your child is being harmed by a violent game, then do not buy it. Age restrictions are clearly printed on the game case. They're there for a reason. I'd like to reiterate though, seeing blood and gore does not make you a psychopath. In most cases, it would only give your children nightmares.

VIDEO GAMES ARE MINDLESS AND SENSELESS

I can say without doubt, that I learned more about history from the Assassin's Creed series than any History teacher could ever have taught me at school. One of the first games I ever played, Pink Panther's Passport to Peril, taught me about the customs and traditions of multiple cultures and ethnicities, and - I would go as far as to say - made me a far more tolerant individual today.

Of course, there are some games that are senseless distractions from reality, but the value of gaming as an educational tool is severely underrated by society. Games like Alice: Madness Returns, and the @NinjaTheory title, Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, offer a candid experience of mental health issues that has not been seen in gaming thus far. Gaming is an interactive experience: what could be more educational than living in Renaissance Italy, or experiencing the terrors of auditory hallucinations as though you were having them yourself?

Gaming is a means of educating the world about the lives of others; some games literally force empathy from the player in order to offer the most interactive experience, and in the process, gamers are becoming more tolerant of issues such as mental health and cultural discrimination. This is a revolutionary idea that can only become more influential over time: imagine a world in which everyone can understand the value of tolerance? With various political controversy of late, like building a giant wall to keep an "unwanted" ethnicity out, or banning entry into a country based solely on religion, gaming could aid in making players understand the pressures and prejudices of the world. Tropico and Civilization explore both the dubious undercurrents of politics, but also the enormous responsibility of running a country. Even games based on economics, such as Capitalism teach players the value of money, and how harrowing the business world can be.

Even though it is a frivolous fantasy, given the stigma of gaming in mainstream society, I could envision an education system in which simulators are used to give learners a taste of their chosen field of study, so as to avoid the large-scale dissatisfaction - and subsequent drop-out - of university courses based on the fact that students didn't know what the hell they were signing up for.

Games can change the world. The world just hasn't realised it yet.

#debunk #gaming #lies #myths #psychology #rant #real life #sexism #social media #stereotypes #stop stereotyping #gamers unite #violence

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gurubuckaroo · 7 years ago

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A Tumblr looks at 50

Tomorrow, the 21st of February, I turn 50 years old.

#what are you going on this hell site #delete your account #go pay taxes or something #hes literally twice the ops age

Go ahead, get it out of your system. Those are all things I’ve had replies to me tagged with. A lot of people think a lot of things about people my age being on Tumblr, and they’re not shy about saying it. If there’s one -ism I’ve learned that’s perfectly acceptable to most Tumblr users, it’s ageism. That doesn’t bother me. The last time I got anonymous hate, I donated to the ACLU on their behalf.

There are a lot of things being old (ugh) means. There are a lot of things it doesn’t mean. I don’t deserve your respect because of my age. It doesn’t make me better, or wiser, or smarter or more educated. It doesn’t make me more interesting.

The only thing I’ve got on you is that I’ve had a lot more time to make mistakes than you have. And boy have I taken advantage of those opportunities.

They say people can’t learn from the mistakes of others - they have to make their own, and only then do they learn the lesson. Well, that may be. Maybe it’s true for my generation but not yours. Maybe if I can prevent just one person from making some of the mistakes I’ve made in my life, this will be worth it.

Stop hating yourself. There are plenty of people out there willing to do it for you. Don’t be like them.

Stop berating your talent. You think your art is bad. Your music is bad. Your cosplay is bad. You know what? Everyone who has ever expressed a talent feels the same way about theirs. If there’s one constant about artists, it’s that they always feel like their own stuff is trash. Stop being your worst critic. Again, plenty of other people out there willing to do that job. You don’t want to be like them, so don’t agree with them.

Drink. Do drugs. Or not. But always in moderation. Moderation in all things - including moderation. Be moderate in your moderation. Although stay away from crack, cocaine, heroin, and anything prescribed - unless it’s your prescription (more on that later). I’ve seen those first three kill far too many friends. Worse, some of those killed are still walking around, pretending to be alive.

If you’re going to do LSD or other hallucinogens, do it with someone you trust who’s done it before. Bad trips happen - but almost always because of something you or your tripmates bring in with them. An experienced tripguide can walk you back out of a bad trip. Never do it alone. It’s almost impossible to have a bad experience on shrooms, but they might give you stomach cramps - if so, make tea out of them instead of eating them.

Take your Brain Pills. If you’ve been prescribed antidepressants or some other psychoactive meds, take them. My first psychologist appointment was when I was 5. I’ve literally fought clinical depression my entire life, to the extent that I was hospitalized for 45 days just before my 18th birthday. It’s not something to be ashamed about any more than having Diabetes or Sickle Cell or Grave’s Disease or Autism. Depression, Schizophrenia, Bipolar, these are all brain diseases, not failings, and taking medication for them is how you treat them. If you’re terrible about remembering whether or not you’ve taken your meds, they sell pill bottles now with caps that show how long it’s been since you opened it last. They’re great for my chronic pain meds. If you can’t afford them, you’ve got a Tumblr - make a draft post and update it every time you take a pill.

Don’t over-rely on safe spaces and trigger warnings. I can hear you now - “Oh here he comes, about to call us all snowflakes or something.” On the contrary. Safe spaces are wonderful. My wife is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and teenage sexual assault. I worked for most of our (so far) 27 year marriage helping her to heal, only to see so much work thrown out because of a well-placed trigger from someone who proudly considers herself a SJW and doesn’t care who she offends.

The mental immune system we build up in our psyche is every bit as important as the biological immune system we build up in our bodies. Excessive trigger warnings are no less damaging than refusing vaccination, and can in some cases be triggering themselves. In both cases, the individual will be perfectly fine living in a sealed bubble, but will be completely unable to survive in the world at large. Like biological defenses, the young brain is the best at developing coping mechanisms. As individuals age, those systems become more difficult, and more traumatic, to develop. I’m not suggesting that there should be no trigger warnings or safe spaces. I am suggesting that, like in all things, moderation is the best course.

Fact-check. Snopes is your friend. Google Reverse Image Search is your friend. You may really want to believe that new rumor from a .info site. It takes 20 seconds to check before you powerslam “reblog.” It could save your reputation. It could save someone else’s. (Oh, and any website ending in .info is trash. That domain costs the least to register, so it’s essentially disposable). And for god’s sake, don’t believe everything Anonymous says. Bryan P. Willman, a part-time police dispatcher, had his life ruined because Anonymous claimed he was the shooter who killed Mike Brown, and half of Tumblr and Facebook reblogged the accusation without pause.

Be yourself. Shakespeare said it - “This above all else: to thine own self be true.” Of course, knowing him, it was probably an elaborate dick joke that I still don’t get. But it’s still true. Capital-T True. Possibly the biggest Truth I’ve ever learned.

See, we all like to have friends. And we start off thinking that the best way to have friends is to be what our friends what us to be. Doesn’t help that we probably don’t really know what our friends want us to be, but that’s beyond the point. The problem starts when we end up feeling like we’re being drawn and quartered - because we are trying to be all things to all people. God help young people today who have potentially hundreds of friends through Tumblr or such - they’re trying to be perfect in the eyes of too many observers. Throw social forces into this, and we start to try to be perfect to entire movements. It cannot be done.

There’s another perfect truth we have to realize. It’s simple and absolute: People are jerks. Not all the time, and not to everyone! But we are. And here’s why: We’re all individuals. At some time, we’re going to rub someone the wrong way. And if we’re trying to be exactly what everyone else wants us to be, we’ll end up being jerks to everyone. If we’re true to ourselves, we’ll only be jerks to those who just naturally deserve it. Because we aren’t trying to be perfect for the wrong people.

Be yourself. First and foremost. Be the best yourself you can be, but be it because you are it, not because someone else wants you to be it. Let’s face it, other people quite probably don’t have your best interests at heart. If being yourself means that you don’t fit well with a few people, that’s OK - because it means you will fit better with some others.

When you first met the people you call friends, you probably acted like yourself. Because you didn’t know what they wanted yet. Imagine how much more they’ll like you when you go back to being that person they first met, rather than being a mirror.

Regrets are OK. Self-recrimination is not. There are so many decisions I’ve made in my past that I regret. One decision I made I will never be content with, even though I know (then and now) it was the correct action. My regret from that is purely for my own lost chance. Every once in a while I look back through hindsight and say “well maybe it would have been OK to make the other choice”, but I know I’m lying to myself. I just end up wallowing in self-pity over having lost the experience. Don’t be like me. I’m still trying to learn this one. It’s possible I never will.

You will hurt people. Don’t be afraid to apologize. Some of my actions ended up hurting people - some accidentally, some deliberately, some through sheer childishness. I’ve managed to apologize to most of the people I’ve hurt. A few have left this world before I got the chance, or the courage, to face my own failings. And in almost every case, it was my own failing that hurt them. Growth comes when we recognize our own failings, and learn to overcome them. And if we’re going to grow, we’ll need a good ecosystem - and that means friends, who may be hurting because of what we did.

Life is too short to spend with toxic people. There can be a case made that you become an “adult” when you no longer need to tolerate toxic people. This is especially the case regarding parents. I first cut my father out of my life (to my mother’s delight) when I was 11 and refused to come visit him over the holidays. Later we attempted a reconciliation - that experiment lasted 3 terrible years. Since then, I’ve exchanged maybe an hour’s worth of words with him, over three in-person visits and a few phone calls. I doubt I’ll attend his funeral, should he ever get his shit together enough to die.

Unfortunately, there will always be times when you have to tolerate toxicity. Usually at the workplace. The really nasty stuff can often be abated (but not always cured) with a trip to Human Resources - but not always. At least, not yet. Things in the workplace are better now than they’ve ever been, regarding this at least. One can only hope the trend continues.

Life is an experience. Don’t be afraid of it. Imagine yourself on a roller coaster. You’re locked into the car, and slowly it starts climbing the first hill - clack clack clack - and the ground is falling away, and ahead you see the turn. Excitement builds. You crest the hill - and pull quietly into the station. Oh boy, can’t wait to try that again, right? Life exists in the dips, the valleys, the turns and rolls.

Every day you keep pushing through, every day that you groan and pull yourself out of bed anyway, every day you curse while tying your shoes, pulls you kicking and screaming through life. I’m not going to promise you it’ll put you one day closer to your dream job, or one day closer to happiness, or contentment, or whatever. Life isn’t about reaching a goal. It’s an experience. And every day you keep moving, you get to keep having that experience - the highs and the lows. And the highs make the lows so very much worth it.

If you’re still hung up on my age, and think someone my age doesn’t belong on Tumblr, tell me - at what age are you going to give up your fandoms and delete your account?

#happy birthday #life #self care #mistakes

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moodboardinthecloud · 4 years ago

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The Descent of Inanna’s Descendants

Sandy Ibrahim

https://medium.com/@sandyibrahim/the-descent-of-inannas-descendants-3609d5e538ea

“From the Great Above she opened her ear to the Great Below. From the Great Above the goddess opened her ear to the Great Below. From the Great Above Inanna opened her ear to the Great Below.”

About 5000 years ago in Sumeria, more stories were told about Inanna, the Goddess of Heaven and Earth, than any other deity. Among other things, she was famous for her beauty, love, passion, desire for justice, and her quest for control. Inanna may have believed that being desired by men and envied by women was the source of her true power. She may have been the archetypal female celebrity. In her most famous myth, she ends up in the underworld and dies for her hubris.

Before she reaches her final judgment, she passes through seven gates, sacrificing something precious at each one. It also happens that the Goddess of the Underworld is Inanna’s ‘dark’ and rejected sister, Ereshkigal, who takes no mercy on her. With one look, she kills Inanna and hangs her from a meat hook. While Inanna is left to rot, Ereshkigal’s painful grief destroys her from the inside.

The story ends well for our heroines. Three days later, medicine comes that heals both Ereshkigal’s pain and revives Inanna, which makes this the first-known written resurrection story.

A critical key in this story is that the medicine of compassion is first delivered to the rejected and wild Ereshkigal before Inanna can be restored. Jungians often interpret this to mean that we need to deliver the medicine of compassion to the wild, dark and exiled aspects of ourselves before we can be whole.

Approximately two hundred and fifty generations later, this myth survives and is told, studied and acted out in the modern world. Whether we know it or not, westerners live in the consequence of the world-view and choices of our ancient ancestors. Many of us may even be survivors of these devastated lines and carry their DNA in our bodies.

There is little left of Sumerians except for the signs that they were here. Like us, they were heavily invested in warfare and their ceaseless attacks on one another played a strong role in taking them down. Also familiar is that their technical knowledge surpassed their understanding of nature. The irrigation systems they channeled into farmlands gave rise to the possibility of civilization but salinized the soil which eventually killed all their crops. This was followed by a drought of biblical proportions which ultimately destroyed all they had built.

Unlike us, they couldn’t predict the abrupt climate change that would take their livelihood away, but the story of Inanna’s descent into the underworld suggests that maybe the women knew something wasn’t right in the state of Sumer.

Long before Inanna goes into the underworld, she delivered the tools of civilization to mankind. She took on a mortal lover and made him King. She loved all things male and they loved her. Her mother doesn’t appear to play much of a role in her life. She may have been an Earth goddess, but was also reared by Sky Gods. I think of her as the first goddess of patriarchy/kyriarchy.

Inanna wasn’t sent to hell, rather she was called to the underworld upon hearing of the death of her sister’s husband. She claimed to want to support Ereshkigal with the funeral arrangements, though some speculate it was a power grab for her territory. As part of the ascending patriarchal conditioning, Inanna’s appetite for power may have been encouraged.

Regardless of her motives, the great below summoned and the Sky Gods forbade it, saying ‘no one should crave such things’. In their minds, the underworld was a wild, chaotic and unpredictable compost bin for mortal bodies and souls — far from the intellectual, controlled and calculated environment they prized. But, Inanna undertook the journey without her fathers’ blessings.

She went through seven gates. At each one she sacrificed something of her identity. Her crown, her chest plate, her ego, her armor, her fanciful ideas about who and what she was. When she finally met her sister, Inanna was naked and humiliated. But it wasn’t enough. She needed to be destroyed so she could live anew.

Students of the myth contemplate whether Inanna’s descent is a map into our subconscious, a dire warning of the emergence of patriarchy and Earth dominance, or both.

Since the time of the Sumerians, there have been several profound collapses yet global civilization has obviously been on the rise. Ascension has been the name of the game for thousands of years. The church fathers demanded that we keep our eyes on the sky and devote our souls to the one God in heaven above. And where the church lost ground, the fathers of capitalism stepped in and demanded we keep our eyes on the profits and the GDP. All growth, all the time, convincing most of us that Earth was the backdrop for the play of human life.

In the modern world, there is little Earth consciousness left at all, even though we live here. It’s hard to imagine “A Star is Born” surviving hundreds of generations when today’s youth may be the last to walk the Earth. We live with a growing awareness that the unthinkable may be upon us. Humans have caused the sixth mass extinction and we’re the lucky ones who may be alive to see it all go down. It may have taken hundreds of generations to get here but we’ve got one generation to turn it around.

We may be witnessing the death of our planet, or at the very least, the extinction of thousands of species and the end of status quo. Our current trajectory is a dangerous road and every day, we all know it a little more. Like popcorn popping, one by one, we are becoming more conscious of what is at stake. The shock, grief, regret, panic, rage, guilt, despair and confusion are beyond what any one of us can handle. This is a time when we need the very best of us to emerge, yet many feel they are spiralling down.

For us not to slide into extinction (which I don’t imagine will be gentle), we may need to willingly sacrifice our well-cultivated hubris and give into the Earth program. Since our culture and personal identities are deeply rooted in consumption and self-importance, saving ourselves may still feel a lot like death.

Since we’re heading towards the unknown anyway, shall we take the ‘easy’ road and descend into the underworld with a possibility of renewal; or the hard one, extinction as a consequence of our unyielding arrogance?

I vote we follow Inanna down deep into the inferno and sacrifice the hubris and core beliefs that have led to this state of profound disconnection. For the future’s sake, let’s at least try to make ourselves whole.

I am beginning by sacrificing the destructive idea that humans are the most superior species in the world. And the equally devastating notion that white ones are the greatest of all. I abandon the conceit that I can be happy at the expense of others. Together, let’s sacrifice the idea that love and belonging must be earned and that ‘success’ means the manifestation of our personal desires. Let’s release the impossible pressure of ‘figuring life out’. Let’s surrender the whole concept of ‘progress’. Let’s live more with less.

Some of us must sacrifice our entitlement, knowledge, and comfort. Some need to sacrifice victimhood and fear of rocking the boat. Some need to relinquish self-righteousness and a demand for justice above all. We may need to forfeit our belief in our smallness, in the belief that one person can’t make a difference. Or stop telling the story that hard work pays off, or that if we ‘do what we love the money will follow’. We may need to let go of the idea that everything happens for a reason. Or that climate change is a ‘problem’ that can be ‘solved’. Or that we can plan for a protected future.

Let’s examine and relinquish our desire to consume and ‘improve’ ourselves. Why do we travel to exotic locations to take photos of those who stay home? Why do we want to have perfect lawns, perfect bodies and chef’s kitchens? Let’s look at our relationship with youth and celebrity culture. Let’s lay down our devotion to fame, self-importance, and external validation.

Imagine shaking off the illusion that we are separate from one another and from Life herself. Whatever thread that most contributes to the killing of our world — lay it down.

Lay it all down.

And rest.

In the dark.

In the void.

Listen for the heartbeat of the world.

Allow the worms to gobble up our decaying ideas until there is nothing left but the fertile soil of imagination. And from there, let’s dream a new village. One without the soul-sucking drudgery that we all want to escape from. One where we know our neighbors, we know our land, we know our history and we make amends. Let’s dance within the impossible possibility of it all.

WRITTEN BY

Sandy Ibrahim

Canadian writer of Egyptian and German descent who doesn’t know if her grandmothers are cheering her on or rolling over in their graves.

www.sandyibrahim.com

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serpent-energy · 7 years ago

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My Immediate, Bewildered, Emotionally Charged: Post-Election 2016 REACTION (through quite expressive language)

Post-Election Feelings; Who is Needy?

Can We Divide The Greedy?

Written by Sean Kadagian

Scattered, yet Organized

Hollow, yet always,

is there a prize.

This massive, omnipotent, and the great: Economic Wheel--which I capitalize by the way due to its obvious and vast, and clearly apparent greatness-- in which America has created, ever and perpetually being moved in every direction, visible in waves with its motion being dictated by this invisible hand that feeds on pettiness, classism, and greed--its movement has been rapid and inconsistent and now the country divides. We stand, we move, in divided patterns. Static interrupted vibrations to feel across the lands.

Protests in masses of White because the "minorities" know there's no use and worse has happened to them so the whining Whites march in anger because their apparent, and only other possible, savior, Hillary Clinton-- the rigid, two-faced, emmy-award-winning politician who lost to none other but a reality-TV star with one of the weirdest haircuts and owner of the strangest most ridiculous faces to have ever been politically behold. Which would you want? I'd rather a blind date show up and see what they got.

Is this the best America has to offer? Some people say it is. That they grew up in American families, being taught at a young age American values and what to aspire to. But it isn't. It's not the best we got and to think so is naive and ignorant. We have better. But the money isn't in better. At least it wasn't during this political race and the multiple comical debates that so many people had to watch as the dutiful and informed Americans they are. And we were all left with the most appaulling two options in history.

Bullying and ripping on eachother is what America saw their two presidential candidates doing on stage for hours when we were supposed to get down to what's going on in our country. I, for one, am a recovering heroin junky, addict, whatever--among (of course) many many other things. It's been a little over a year since I've been off the junk, but I lost five years of my life to it including multiple overdoses. During the presidential race, I maybe heard mention of it...I don't know, I can probably count it on one hand. And I'd really have to think about it and if they even mentioned it five, loud and clear times.

And I'm not being selfish. It's an epidemic. Each candidate coined it this actual term unveiling the gravity of the situation. Even the current and momentarily remaining president, Barrack Obama said this probably the clearest and most seemingly heartfelt. He sure he is good at what he does though...Who knows if it really is a concern of his, or the others that can really, actually change the current status-quo pertaining to the epidemic. But, and again, like I already said, I can count on one hand how many times it's been mentioned in combination of all three people.

Addicts are dying to a drug many do not fear anymore because once painkillers (opiates and opioids) began becoming more regulated, and OxyContin went off the market not too long after it got sued for originally and initially stating that their drug, which is essentially so close to the feeling of heroin that many call it "pharmaceutical heroin", is not addictive. They got sued hundreds of millions of dollars. Did they care? Of course not. They must be showering in their hundred dollar bills daily. Profiting off the deaths and terrible addictions to what many people originally addicted to Oxys and other painkillers switched to, and with little fear, like I had--heroin.

My greatest problem, which also inludes a kind of question, is I want to know exactly how Wall Street is proffiting off the opium being manufactured to heroin and many millions of pharmaceutical opioids and opiates, sent across seas from Afghanistan (mainly), as well as Mexico? How much are they proffiting and do they feel any remorse or guilt? Or is money really the most addictive and destructive creation man ever gave birth to? I blame money. But I also blame the psychopaths and sociopaths walking around Wall Street proffiting off screwing so many people over.

I still struggle with temptations, because, as we all know, heroin is heroin. And heroin always fixes things. Temporarily of course, but it also grabs you by the crotch after that first shot.

Do they want a youth dying out to an epidemic the government is literally completely to fault here? Sure, some doctors were crooked and would take certain favors in order to write out extra scripts to people, as Florida became known as not too many years ago, the Pill Mill.

It's known. So sure, it's an epidemic. But what do we do?

Do we revert to things like eastern philosophical approaches like meditation, finding our true selves and some peace within, as well as the practice of mindfulness? It's an idea. It's a start. It's an approach. And it's being done with some success. But when an ex junky is truly uncomfortable, out comes the voice tempting one to reach for the syringe one more time. Just to feel okay.

Or is the reason because our society doesn't offer much hope to our youth as they grow to teenagers and struggle with their identities and existential questions, like Do I fit into this society? And then into their early twenties...

With so much competition...With such an overwhelming number in our nation's populus...it sure gets a little bit crowded and just a tad overwhelming up in here...

When a friend wants you to try something saying it makes you feel better and you already don't feel comfortable in your own skin, what is your first instinct? I was a curious cat. And boy did it help. And then ruin...everything. The amount of tears and worry my family had gone through during my days of active addiction is heart-breaking.

And now...

Now, readjusting and re-entering a society that was already one that angered me before my addiction because of its size, intimidation in the amount of people doing what I wish to do...I feel like I lost out on years of learning. And although I'm not particularly an unintelligent person, I have lost years of chances to learn and harnass life skills which I lack and am only now learning

This entry of feelings through words was, at first thought, going to be about the nation and its clear divide because of the election results. But instead I brought up a problem that I went through and am still dealing with, because my learning takes place almost everyday. And this is happening in every single state of our great goddamn America.

Donald Trump said a lot of words. A lot of things he wants to not exist anymore. One of which, is the drugs that come through the border like it's water through a siv. He wants that to be eliminated. So many things, to me, it seems he doesn't understand. Although I do, and seemingly always get the feeling that he just says things for shock value and for votes...also for division and exitement. We must remember, he was a reality television star, as I mentioned somewhere in the beginning. He's a show-man who, out of mass division and disagreement and lack of seeing things through one lense instead of way-too-many, became the elected president to take office in January.

He talked about rebuilding America's infrastructure. That's a thought. His 100 Day Plan sounds completely naive and unreachable. I don't know what will happen...but as I merely mentioned one problem pertaining to the heroin epidemic, though a terribly horrific, and worst of all-- realistic problem--other problems such as the now-clearer-than-ever: systemic racism that is evident where minorities live and where and how whites live.

Yes our country is still segregated, and if you don't think so, just take a walk around some inner cities and then take a drive through a suburbia where upper-middle-class whites live. It's just a visual. Most of the time, visuals don't lie. They just tell. The actual blunt truth in so many ways is hard to accept at one's core and then still walk around with a kind of lightness and have empathy for all of mankind. I certainly don't. Though I am moreso than not, a highly sympathetic and understanding, and (well, I'd like to think so) a person than tries to embody and radiate kindness and benevolence.

Working like ants in a farm and buzzing bees to their flowers and back to their nest for more and more honey. How much money can we stack before we can say we've done it?We've reached the final level and now we can explore this world for what it really is, and not what the American media and national blue-tube shining artificial light and colors and loud dialogues demeaning other people, all trying to one up eachother--tells you.

I wish to lift you up.

I see colors, sure. The color of one's skin I am speaking of now, of course . But I know, as it is a fact, that we are all human beings. Really...period. One species. The only difference between I, a considered white person, and another person with black skin (just for this example), is our backgrounds and where we came from. Which is vast. Sure. But my background and where I came from can vary greatly from just another white person's. To have this in the forefront's of our collective conscience is important. To blame, maybe, just the American government. The whole lot. Maybe, no definitely, the god damn mother fucking media. God, it's really starting to just sound like a dirty, scummy word. "Telling you the truth, but of course, only how we see it!" Should be most of their slogans with a white man's face smiling a fake-white, fake-inviting smile.

Usually I get along with all different colors, ethnicities, races, and hopefully the aliens that I'm waiting for to come down and show me something exciting and meaningful.

What I'm trying to say is, as long as you wish and remain aware of the energy and vibrations (vibes) you are giving off to others, more often than not, the reaction from the opposite person you are interacting with will be that of, nothing more, than a human. True humanness is openness, benevolence, a hint of curiosity, and hopefully a sure feeling of kindness.

If my openness and kindness in turn breaks through the possible shell that another person had to create as a protection to the brutalities and hard-to-handle emotions that any pill could barely touch....if I can break through that wall--a wall in which we all have in one form or another...it's just adaptation to our surroundings...But yes! If I can break that wall, there is nothing like your good vibes being reciprocated with enthusiasm and comfort by the opposite person.

"Come play over here, man. What's your name by the way?" he said with some excitement and curiosity.

"I'm Sean. You follow the Knicks?" I replied with a kind of joy resulting from the clear fact that I'd just broken through a seemingly hard-shelled-wearing human being.

Another human being's shell they created over time for safety to outside stimuli eventually becomes one of familiarity, therefore, comfortability. We like what we know. To open up and break that kind of shield from the discovered dangers of the world, it's a scary process. Makes me wonder why something like romance isn't being preached and put on a pedastal for being one of the most wonderful things in the world anymore.

My journey is to become naked. Metaphorically of course. I can get literally naked anytime I want... Anyway, point is, my aim--my long, elongated aim--is to shed myself and rid myself of my hardened and old and, in spots, witheringshell. Like a turtle that just needs to get out. Maybe then they could run fast. Maybe then I'd be laughing last.

All I know is that I blame Society. There. I said it. Well, typed it.

I blame Society.

Oh, how you raised me!

The fear and the letdown from childhood to the years of my confusing teens.

Excitement to letdown. My creative creations and of how they lay around in the thousands all around my entire life. Poetry. Short stories. Writings, songs, broken instruments, and instruments needing tuning.

So I hope.

I hope because wishing is childish. Look at what happened to my Santa Clause. Sure I don't blame my parents, but maybe Society could've dropped that fairytale decades ago...start raising some realists instead of people still believing that that Utopia we've all daydreamed and drempt of at one point or another throughout our lives still could happen if only people just tried a little harder. Perfection is a myth, yet we are driven, and we are driven, and we are set to be constantly driven, and I think sooner or later we'll be driving straight into these god damn brick walls like drunken fools. Just right into them. Fucking....

Crash.

So crash the Market! Erase those irritating, really, meaningless and useless numbers and abbreviations rolling by constantly at the bottom of the screen. Maybe some sexy french girl speaking in english with her seductive accent in a smokey, breathey voice will tell us: "A new era is coming. We must, and we are now starting, as you see: completely eliminate all that is meaningless, useless, loveless...drenched with countless people trying to get one up on eachother...forever attempting this endless climb up a ladder wrongly labeled success...Paradise is in meditation in the most basic form of the word. You now must become aware of your surroundings, your body, others, and how you act towards and around others. Today is the first day of the rest of your life."

If I truly heard something like this I wouldn't give a shit what hi-tech anarchist group hacked the whole thing and gave and laid out this kick-ass short and sexy interrupted speech. I'd be psyched. Ecstatic probably. Do you think you would you agree with enthusiasm as well? Also, maybe, with a kind of exhaustion and some word like finally banging around the outer-layers of your mind?

Are you waiting for something to be done to change these ways that really are so immature and beneath our growth--and when bringing up how long humans have been on this planet, and more specifically pertaining to us: how long America has been a nation--don't you think we should be a little further a long than we are? Just a tad? Not technologically. Referring to products and all the useless fun stuff that's sold in our country while other human beings across seas are starving to death every few seconds....I'm reffering to all that....we're good on that part. So good it's sickening. The fact is: so much of what is in our country is outdated and must be updated with not profit in mind, but of betterment for the entire country. Until a movement in government begins and makes any progress regardless of how slow it is, it's clear that all the fun -isms will remain engrained into our country's way of life. Classism and racism am I hinting towards especially. Sexism...that's a whole 'nother horse. I'll just leave that over here for now...

And Art is scattered in the airs of the internet and searching for reads, views, likes, acceptance, appreciation, and of course, somebody saying: A job well done Bucko. Do you like my face? Maybe soon they'll have reconstructive facial surgery for people just simply discontent with the appearance of their own face, disregarding any actual injury.

But that's how bad power--and the lack thereof--can make somebody. In this instance I am pertaining this reference to the many people in power truly, actually dictating how the millions inside their nation lives. Okay, maybe not dictating because what they're really doing is merely perpetuating a system that's been in place for almost close to a century now. The only positive I see with Donald Trump becoming president and taking office in January of 2017 (what a laugh even writing that out) is that there's no doubt he will create much needed tension and create an exciting kind of friction within the government, and congress. Tell you what, I'll be watching the news everyday once he's president. I can't imagine a more hysterical and perfect man to run the country. He's the epitome of our country really if you think about it. In two big ways. Self-absorbed, pretends to be somebody he's not. I'm not even sure who or what the guy is really about...besides himself I mean. I'm no doctor or nothin', but if I were, I think it'd be a safe to assume that our soon-to-be president Donald Trump might just be a sociopath. Sure is a funny one though. As long as you don't take this thing too seriously that is.

How much more self-absorbed do you think we can really become as a nation? The media, the just so awesome five-minute long commercials on TVwhile I'm just trying to watch Old School and let my brain melt a little bit (meanwhile I'm being told if only only ONLY I had some odd-word for a pillow that I'd dream of the most beautifully seductively enticing naked women in HD, or something better than HD they were saying...I don't know...they're really all just words to me)--and the many billboards throughout the cities and highways all across the country. Yes, you, whoever is reading these lonely, probably overly-extended words trying too hard to get you to understand that...never mind...the writer is of no importance here....I am only, and innocently, wondering, how often do you feel less than because of how often one in America is told by these things (the media, comwmercials, billboards, filtered news stations) that without many certain products, their attraction to the rest of mankind...to the rest of humanity, is nil to lesss than. Hideous. Prozac nation, right?

If one were to think abstractly for a second, yet with a simple lense on, that all humans need is sleep, food, and sex, then one can let go of all the materialistic American bullshit and maybe go on a hike and close your eyes in the sun and tell yourself as long as I can neutralize all the hectic westernized false-needs by false-claims like a burn on one's skin with the right ointment, you must tell yourself that it's okay. That once that thought--that it's okay--makes its way to the very depths of your mind and becomes, in the future, part of your foundational structure in your consciousness and even subconscious, then you will find contentment. Then you will know what peace is. It's transcendental. It's transformational. It's enlightening. To grab, grab, grab, or just lazily watch what's on TV, the individual is feeding their psyche too much negative stimulation. It creates a path for us of shallowness unless we question what is and wha is being presented by the millions and zillions. I believe Trump as President may actually spark this to happen more across the seas of people in the country. I don't believe the average American accepts everything that funny man with a sick hairdoe says. When one disagrees with something, it's either because they have the actual knowledge and know it to be false, or they just feel it deep at their core that they're getting jerked around--then they either wonder why and search for the truth, or if their an apathetic old bloke, they do what apathetic people do: they don't care.

So I ask only you: How much more can they make us American people feel less than whole and perfect, even in our imperfections? You know most none of the crap being advertised to "better our hollow and meaningless lives" is something your average--or any-- actually needs?

You ever think they'll let us be? My creativity is dwindling and I've been forgetting to read. A real statistic for no one to see. Is that how you might possibly feel? Hold on, I have another thought. I'll be right back. Just wait on the dot.

Of that which I disagree and don't approve of, I find a deep-seeded kind of resentment inside of me...sometimes lazily and apathetically it lives, and sometimes quite dramatically, and at times seemingly tragically-- it screams. All aimed towards the terribly angering act and overall facade that our government puts on and wears like a designer robe, exposing some terrible truths sporadically, but then tying the belt around the waist and once again recoiling into itself to hide all the things that normal citizens "just wouldn't understand" (in a demeaning voice just like how it'd sound).

I also blame quite seriously and heavily our American society as a whole--if you couldn't already strongly tell.

Yes. Fact.

And this was just a quick entry into a computer that actually baffles me most of the time in all my honesty to give, which brings in itself a kind of embarassment and slight shame that I, a "first-world", white American male of 24 years old, am quite technologically retarded pertaining to all the new phones and new computers that put out their new updates and (at times, so they hope) aesthetically more pleasing devices. It's all just confusing to the point of pointlessness. Settle down guys. Maybe go work on the holograum idea or something or other boys. All these contraptions being manipulated and sold to thinking they are far more superior to the prior device that came out only six or so goddamned prior to this one! At second thought...I don't believe I should feel any type of less for not staying up to date on the countless updates these corporate devices keep putting out. Instead I just don't buy into every new... New, if that makes any sense. I used to like shiny Pokemon cards when I was a kid. But I'm not a kid anymore. I'm fine with what I got. So move on with your whole "You are less if you do not buy and consume and become our latest piece of trash truly pointless product". Because if you have the last couple, I'd skip the next few.

See, I'm not here to prove much more than a feeling of frustration and confusion through language and hopefully some interesting clarity. Okay, now flash back to me talking about my not so bright days of breathing my old, wretched Junky air. I lost five years to my heroin addiction, and even had to be revived once. Basically, and I'll say it again for reiiteration, I lost out on learning the ways and tricks to this world and this cunningly, and oh so deceiving: Planet Earth while most others not sticking needles in their bodies advanced and adapted as they did. All I'm saying is I'm trying in a country that seems to be breaking stalemate and coming out of the closet a little bit in terms of all the skeletons that are just standing there like zombies, now with the doors open, we see them, but my wonder is Now what?

So,

If America is the captain of this planet, and does influence through numerous, simply countless things such as (the easy and known ones:) music, movies, our media, and especially pertaining to what we allow other nations to know, and more specifically: what we allow other nations as well as our own to think...

Oh yes, so if we are the Influence...the ones to Look At when the shit hits the fan...if we are the preached endlessly to be Saviors of this world... Then we must start looking within our own country. We must start looking at the faces of the youth. Ages eighteen to twenty five or something or other. Interview. Ask questions. The right Questions. I can gaurantee all the debates on police brutality and the past killings and (most-likely) future killings to come, as well as the sexy topic of "Gun Control", will be idiotically debated back and forth by people that either know the massive amount of stupidity behind their claims, or we just allow dumbasses for average Americans--many of whom pick a news channel and stay with it and either agree, disagree, get mad at, or fall apathetically into a depression about--those Americans are listening to humans much less than a real...

Human...

Being.

It's all choice.

And many are content with the ladder floating around somewhere inside their noggins, aiming to take that next step towards (corporate) ascension and please the God that will be pleased with their job.

And then there are the thinkers. The searchers. The creative types. Could be left brains, or might be right brain people. I forget. Who cares anyway?

Thing is, the disconnection from those many Americans who come back from a shitty day of work doing something they hate, turn on the news and the perfectly blushed faces with too white of teeth--and they are arguing at random how the whites of the middle class and lower are being forgotten and how it became that way and why they are dissatisfied with their lives, and the person that flicks this on...it only heavily and seriously validates his feelings. So why wouldn't this person eventually vote for someone like Donald Trump? The liar, actor, masoginist, childish man with an odd bleached yellow hair cap...the man who spoke to struggling whites of that calibar during his stops in American towns and cities for talks. That's only one reason some voted for Trump. Not that I can sit here all day and just name the many reasons people voted for him besides discontentment, which branches out to many theories.

As I mentioned, segregation by race, and by class, which, and without any kind of humor, seems to mainly (and not-so-curiously) be those of color: black, brown, whatever...if you're not pure, we won't give you different bathrooms, but your living conditions are going to be shit and your schools are going to be and going to remain a joke offering that close to non-existent chance to excel and go to college and see what one of your stature can make of yourself....No. Most end up in jail from selling drugs, getting caught with drugs, trying to make it in the Hip-Hop scene here in America, or practice practice practice the game of basketball till one can shoot with their eyes closed. Stephen Curry is now the bar that has been raised and set and idolized and instead of philosophers or lawyers or other people with like-jobs, most blacks, and even hispanics, have idols that are more often than not, sports players, and/or rappers. A philosopher or lawyer or doctor won't lay out a possible path for success in packed living conditions and the only dreams seemingly possible is sports or music because of the many that have made it of their "color". How so insanely petty when I type the word out...color. Well, many of them aim for those goals. Is that odd? It's logical. I get it. And most of the time, as I said, me, the one writing all this rubbish out, is a (technically) man with white skin...I'm White...it's how we currently label eachother. It makes sense, again, yes, sure-- but it separates.

Will we ever just look at eachother as human beings?

Is kindness looked at as a weakness and is hardness a characteristic of the stereotypical Male in America? Do many wish to hold onto that coldness and hectic spiraling thoughts that must fester inside their being and psyche?

I gave it up. I had to. I still judge at times. Hopefully judge is the wrong word for it. I don't know. All I know is that when I go into Manhattan I see so many people trying to be people. Wearing designer clothes and big, you know, those too-big kinds of arrogant looking sunglasses? I see girls looking at me in my peripherals and when I look they quickly look away. I question why a lot. And also wonder if the beautiful girls I see in the city that I wish I could just take and bring into my life and see what might happen, if they really have an interesting personality and possibly even a fascinating past..but most I just walk past and see in incriments of five seconds or less and then they're gone.

We're all trying to be somebody during one's years in the 20s. I'm twenty-four and I probably wear a new mask every couple weeks. Maybe less. Sometimes it's every other day.

Who should I be today?

If I pretend everything will be just dandy will it snow so we can build snowmen together with bundles of joy in our hearts?! Oh, and bring a carrot for the nose!

I just want to grow. Grow inside a society that constantly feels too hard for me.

I have things to say.

And I love making strangers smile.

I think if you can make another person smile or laugh throughout your day then you made a positive contribution to mankind and just made their day a little more worth while.

It's a tough life. Of that is for sure.

But it's the ride and the waves!

Still learning to behave.

Oh, and you think Osama was really hiding in a cave....?

Words to dissect,

I think I'll go give this brain a rest before Trump comes out and builds us all Trump Tents instead of my cozy, cozy bed....

So Good Rest for now,

my friend of only friends...

For it's always the beginning.

And then it's the end.

oh yes, and we work!

as busy ants and busy bees pollinating their flowers for their honey-comb hives on the trees.

for peace

one day,

We will find it

And if not all of us before I close my eyes for my final time here,

Then I will leave blessed.

Blessed to have known that such a life of Duality exists,

for if one does not know the lower, darker vibrating energies that cause fear and discomfort-- then one will never know the pure beauty, joy, and ecstasy of life;

I'm in love with the Yins and the Yangs.

So just hold me close, for my bed is only so big.

Now I'm thinking of something of greatnes and purpose.

Oh yes, in my heart of only one hearts...I know

I will find you.

Oh yes, here I come

And if this does anything for your comfort due to all my prior words trying to make sense of a confusing American time, I'll say it, for it is nothing less than the truth

Yes I promise,

that one day in the future,

nearing the end

we'll all just float away....you and me, together, all of us

Like all the atoms and tiny molecules that we all are

We will cease to be

and just

disappear

in mid-air

Evaporate,

The Final Scare.

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newstfionline · 7 years ago

Text

Hunting a Killer: Sex, Drugs and the Return of Syphilis

By Jan Hoffman, NY Times, Aug. 24, 2017

OKLAHOMA CITY--For months, health officials in this socially conservative state capital have been staggered by a fast-spreading outbreak of a disease that, for nearly two decades, was considered all but extinguished.

Syphilis, the deadly sexually transmitted infection that can lead to blindness, paralysis and dementia, is returning here and around the country, another consequence of the heroin and methamphetamine epidemics, as users trade sex for drugs.

To locate possible patients and draw their blood for testing, Oklahoma’s syphilis detectives have been knocking on doors in dilapidated apartment complexes and dingy motels, driving down lonely rural roads and interviewing prison inmates. Syphilis has led them to members of 17 gangs; to drug dealers; to prostitutes, pimps and johns; and to their spouses and lovers, all caught in the disease’s undertow.

“Syphilis doesn’t sleep for anyone,” said Portia King, a veteran Oklahoma state health investigator. “We have 200 open cases of sex partners we’re looking for. And the spread is migrating out of the city.”

It took months for investigators to realize Oklahoma City had a syphilis outbreak. Last fall, the juvenile detention center reported three cases--a boy and two girls, the youngest, 14. The center had never had a syphilis case in seven years of testing for it.

Investigators were mystified: The teenagers did not know each other, live in the same neighborhood or attend the same school.

Then, in February, a prison inmate tested positive. In interviews, he listed 24 sex partners--some his own, others the so-called pass-around girls for gangs, usually in exchange for heroin or methamphetamine. Contact information from the Entertainment Manager, as he called himself, pointed the way to a syphilis spread that, by March, led health officials to declare an outbreak, one of the largest in the country.

Although syphilis still mostly afflicts gay and bisexual men who are African-American or Hispanic, in Oklahoma and nationwide, rates are rising among white women and their infants. Nearly five times as many babies across the country are born with syphilis as with H.I.V.

Syphilis is devilishly difficult to contain, but may be even more so now. Because most doctors haven’t seen a case since the late 1990s, they often misdiagnose it. The cumbersome two-step lab test is antiquated. Although syphilis can be cured with an injection, there has been a shortage of the antibiotic, made only by Pfizer, for over a year.

And funding for clinics dedicated to preventing sexually transmitted diseases is down. In 2012, half of state programs that address sexually transmitted infections experienced reductions; funding has largely stayed flat since then. The Trump administration has proposed a 17 percent cut to the federal prevention budget.

Nearly 24,000 cases of early-stage syphilis, when the disease is most contagious, were reported in the United States in 2015, the most recent data. That was a 19 percent rise over the previous year. The total for 2015, including those with later-stage disease, was nearly 75,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The way to shut down an outbreak is to locate all the sex partners of people who are infected and persuade them to get tested, treated and disclose other partners. That task has fallen on a handful of the health department’s disease intervention specialists.

This most recent wave of infections, spread through gang networks and prostitution rings, has made their jobs not only difficult but also dangerous.

Erinn Williams, the lead field investigator for the Oklahoma City outbreak, drove slowly down a one-lane gravel road curtained by overgrowth and bristling with barbed wire and “No Trespassing” signs.

Ms. Williams, 39, life-seasoned by an Alaska upbringing, Air Force training and two small daughters, usually makes these visits alone. She keeps her baby’s car seat in the back, to allay suspicions that she may be an undercover police officer.

“What you do is your business,” she tells the wary. “I’m here because I care about your health.”

She is accustomed to stopping by houses with locks punched out; to being warned off by drug dealers; to wearing comfortable shoes, the better to run away in.

She pulled up to a clearing. Across a ragged lawn, she could see a battered blue trailer surrounded by pickup trucks and a stand of trees. Access was blocked by an iron fence, monitored by video cameras.

Ms. Williams pushed a call button. “Hi, I’m here from the health department. Can I talk to you? I have some news.”

A young woman hesitantly crossed the grass. For months she had avoided health workers. Once, an investigator spotted her slipping in through a side entrance to her mother’s house; at the front door, the mother denied that her daughter was there.

Fresh-faced, her blonde hair in a ponytail, the woman looked healthier than most people Ms. Williams visits, with their grayish skin, abscesses and mottled veins.

Ms. Williams was gentle but direct: “Your blood test results came back. It’s positive for syphilis.”

The woman buried her face in her hands. “I’m so embarrassed,” she sobbed. (Bound by confidentiality rules, Ms. Williams did not disclose her name.)

“Is that why my baby died?” she asked.

Ms. Williams nodded affirmatively.

“Can my kid get it? We sometimes share the same glass.”

No, Ms. Williams said. Just your sexual partners.

The woman insisted she had slept with only two men that year--her boyfriend and her ex, the father of the baby who had died.

Ms. Williams, who knew the woman’s Facebook page revealed many friends in a gang central to the outbreak, asked her to think carefully about whether there were more. We never reveal your name, she said, just as we cannot tell you who gave us yours.

The woman shook her head.

It was time to coax the woman into treatment. Just an injection and you will almost certainly be cured, Ms. Williams said, offering to drive her to the clinic. Her boyfriend too, Ms. Williams added.

He wasn’t around, the woman said, but she promised they would be there in the morning.

Are you sure you don’t want to go now? Ms. Williams asked.

Again, the woman shook her head.

Reluctantly, Ms. Williams got in her car and drove away.

Syphilis, caused by bacteria, has been well known for centuries, chronicled as a scourge since at least the 1400s.

In 1932, the United States government began the ignominious “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male” to observe the progress of the disease in black Alabama sharecroppers. Although penicillin had become accepted as the cure by 1945, Tuskegee researchers left the men untreated until 1972, when the study was shut down.

By then, largely because of treatment and public education, syphilis was disappearing. A generation of physicians rarely learned to recognize it firsthand.

But with the AIDS epidemic, syphilis surged, peaking around 1990. It was most common--and still is--among men who had sex with men, often those whose H.I.V. status made them vulnerable to other sexually transmitted infections.

Once again, public health campaigns sent syphilis into retreat. By 2000, only 5,970 cases were reported in the United States, the lowest since 1941, when reporting became mandatory.

But in the last few years, it has crept back.

Here in Oklahoma City, 199 cases have been connected so far this year. More than half the patients are white and female. The youngest girl is 14; the oldest man, 61. Three stillbirths have been attributed to syphilis and 13 of the infected were pregnant women.

Rare permutations are now more common. Ocular syphilis, which can strike at any stage of infection, often appears as blurred vision and reddened eyes. Congenital syphilis can cause deformed bones in newborns.

Many people never suspect they have the disease. Early symptoms, including genital lesions and, later, rashes on palms and soles, have led patients and health care providers to mistake it for herpes or allergic reactions. The disease can lie dormant for decades and then affect the liver, joints, blood vessels.

Once people are treated, though cured, they will almost always test positive. It is difficult to know whether a positive result indicates a new infection. After transmission, the bacteria may take three months to register. Those who test negative may have the disease.

The cure for syphilis--usually two injections of Bicillin L-A, a type of penicillin--is relatively simple. But supplies have dwindled. Recently in Oklahoma, there were only seven doses statewide. Pfizer announced that stockpiles would be replenished by the end of 2017.

After several months, dispirited Oklahoma investigators acknowledged that old-school tactics for locating contacts, like knocking on doors and cold-calling, were not very effective. Many people they sought are transient and use disposable phones.

“But they want to stay connected to their friends and their drugs,” said Ms. King, a supervising investigator. “So they’re all on Facebook. That’s where we’re finding them.”

Through Facebook, investigators memorize faces and gang tattoos, and follow the flare-ups and flameouts of relationships. As gang members and dealers post partying plans, the sleuths determine where to point their investigation. They send potential patients messages through Facebook.

Ms. Williams’s team realized they were tracking a spread that reached back to last summer, involved members and associates of 17 gangs, and had infected young people from stable backgrounds who had used prescription opioids, then heroin. Patients often had symptoms that were a signature of this outbreak: weeping genital warts, called condylomata lata; patchy hair loss; and mucosal oozes inside the mouth.

The office created a chart of the outbreak, coded with symbols. Diamond: drug user. Blue heart: pregnant. Strawberry: prostitute.

They have come to understand why more than half of this outbreak’s victims are women: “The men give up the women’s names,” Ms. King said. “But the women are too loyal or afraid to give up the men. “

But recently investigators persuaded a gang leader to text members, ordering them to contact Ms. Williams.

Every day, the team checks arrest reports for people they are seeking. Chloe Hickman interviews inmates. Wearing glasses and no makeup, inclined toward modest cardigans, she doesn’t come across as someone who chats up gang members about their sex lives.

“I don’t cuss in my real life,” she said. “But in the jail, I flirt. I wear tight pants, a low-cut top and I use the F-word.

“Most of them don’t know what syphilis is. When I say it’s curable, they relax. And they’ll give me names.”

Usually such efforts lead to sagas of unrelenting grimness: mothers who prostitute daughters, and men who forcibly inject runaways with drugs to hook them, a practice known as guerrilla pimping.

Acquaintances of the investigators often dismiss their work as disgusting. For support, the women call each other daily, to laugh and vent.

Ms. Williams, on the job for eight years, said it gets to her, but she cannot let it go. “I remind myself that I’m not trying to fix all their problems,” she said. “Just one.”

By 10 o’clock the next morning, Ms. Williams had arranged to pick up one person for treatment, been stood up by another and was texting with a man who refused her offer of a blood draw, claiming that needles made him anxious. She had driven a woman to the clinic, after waiting outside her house as, apparently, the woman was getting high on meth.

Now at the clinic, the woman seemed to have fled. Ms. Williams and nurses ran through hallways, looking for her.

One victory: The woman from the trailer was in the waiting room. But she was alone. In the parking lot, her boyfriend sat out the appointment in his pickup truck, motor idling. He would not come inside for treatment.

He would almost certainly reinfect his girlfriend. And Ms. Williams would have to persuade her to be tested and treated, yet again.

#Oklahoma #syphilis #Syphilis in Oklahoma

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genovera942vbucks-blog · 6 years ago

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samanthasroberts · 6 years ago

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Atomic City, USA: how once-secret Los Alamos became a millionaire’s enclave

Home to the scientists who built the nuclear bomb, the company town of Los Alamos, New Mexico is today one of the richest in the country even as toxic waste threatens its residents and neighbouring Espaola struggles with poverty

In August 1945, the US army dropped a secret over Japan: fully functional nuclear bombs, which instantly killed tens of thousands of people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. More than 6,000 miles away, meanwhile, in northern New Mexico, one newspaper carried a headline with uniquely local flair.

Now They Can be Told Aloud These Stoories [sic] of the Hill blared a rushed edition of the Santa Fe New Mexican. The article revealed that Los Alamos a mysterious settlement, built atop a picturesque mesa had been instrumental in the creation of these new weapons of mass destruction.

Today, Los Alamos is a secret no longer: its a small community with about 18,000 people living in the main town and a suburb called White Rock. But the nuclear lab remains, and the city is still an island in many ways: an extraordinary pocket of wealth and privilege, surrounded by some of the poorest counties in New Mexico, one of the poorest states in America.

The city is also partly toxic. The nuclear research lab still disposes of radioactive waste, and an underground plume of hexavalent chromium a contaminant linked to increased risks of cancer and made famous by Erin Brockovich has been drifting from the lab. A September 2016 report from the labs environmental management office said it could take more than 20 years and nearly $4bn (3.3bn) to clean up decades-old nuclear waste in the area.

And yet Los Alamos has more millionaires per capita than almost anywhere else in the country.

Instant city

The city has always been unique. During the second world war, Los Alamos was the site of a classified research laboratory, built as part of the Manhattan Project to develop an atomic bomb. Along with Oak Ridge, Tennessee and Hanford, Washington, it was also home to a secret city built to house thousands of scientists, engineers and their families.

It was isolated, and it was also beautiful, which was something [J Robert] Oppenheimer used when he recruited people, says Jon Hunner, professor of history at New Mexico State University, referring to the theoretical physicist who led the Los Alamos lab.

Los Alamoss once secret nuclear history has become a tourist attraction. Photograph: Brooks Saucedo-McQuade

The goal, he explains, had been to build top secret, temporary research facilities in order to keep US nuclear scientists and their work away from prying eyes and ears.

Hunners 2007 book, Inventing Los Alamos, describes the birth of what he calls an instant city. In some ways, the story sounds similar to that of the hundreds of company towns built across the US in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, to provide labour for single industries: mining, coal and logging towns.

Except here the industry was nuclear weapons. And, officially, the town did not exist.

Those who lived in Los Alamos were forbidden to talk about it. The town was not mentioned on drivers licenses, birth certificates, or postal mail. The whole area was surrounded by fences, gates and guards.

Constructed almost overnight, much of the land was simply appropriated from traditional Hispanic homesteaders and Native American communities, as well as an elite private boys school that counted Gore Vidal as one of its famous alumni.

To guard its secret, Los Alamos was built to be almost completely self-contained. There were schools, a hospital, and theatres that doubled as dance halls on Saturdays and churches on Sundays. Housing was allocated according to ones rank at the lab. By the end of the war, it had a population of 6,000.

Everything was run by the Army Corps of Engineers. There were no private businesses in Los Alamos until the 1950s. Nobody could own property. Nobody could own their home, says Hunner. With its focus on the science behind the bomb, he describes it like a university town that was controlled by the military.

It was also shoddily constructed, he says, because it was only supposed to exist during the second world war. But then the cold war with the Soviet Union gave the US nuclear weapons programme, and Los Alamos, a new raison detre. Both were here to stay.

Los Alamos laboratory in the 1950s those who lived and work there had to keep it at secret. Photograph: Jeffrey Markowitz/Sygma via Getty Images

Its a stark example of the 1% and 99%

Today Los Alamos has become one of the richest cities in America. At least one in every nine people a whopping 12% of the population is thought to be a millionaire. Los Alamos also regularly tops the list in terms of the best education and lowest crime levels in the state. It has one of the countrys highest concentration of PhDs.

On the map of New Mexico, Los Alamos county created in 1949 is a tiny dot next to Rio Arriba, one of the largest counties in the state. In Los Alamos, average incomes are twice as high as those in Rio Arriba. A 2012 Census Bureau report said this was one of the largest wealth gaps between two neighbouring counties in America.

Just 30km from this affluent island is the town of Espaola. Here the median household income is $33,000 and almost 30% of the population live under the poverty line. For years it has also struggled with its reputation as the heroin overdose capital of America.

Hunner describes the disparity between Los Alamos and neighbouring towns as almost inevitable. Were really a poor state, he says. So you plop this federally supported research and development lab, where you have to pay people a lot of money to stay there, and of course theres going to be a disparity between the people who live there and the people in Espaola.

But, he adds, a lot of people who live in Espaola work in Los Alamos. In that whole northern New Mexico area, there is a big commute.

Los Alamos, where benefits have been very insular. Photograph: Brooks Saucedo-McQuade

Others see the inequality between Los Alamos and neighbouring communities as a prime example of a common dynamic across the country and a reminder of how stories of wealth trickling down can be far-fetched.

Its a stark example of the proverbial 1% and the other 99%, says Jay Coghlan, sitting in a large reclining chair in the living room of his home in Santa Fe. A 45 minute drive south-east from Los Alamos, his home doubles as an office for Nuclear Watch New Mexico.

Neighbouring communities have not benefited much at all, with the obvious exception that theres jobs, he says. Benefits have been very insular and privileged to the nuclear enclave itself.

The environmental impact of living next door to a nuclear research lab is another sore issue. Some radioactive waste is still disposed of at the labs Area G compound (although this could end next year), and there is still so-called legacy waste, which has not been cleaned up and will take billions of dollars to address. The carcinogenic plume of hexavalent chromium, meanwhile, which was discovered 10 years ago, is migrating towards nearby Native lands and the regional aquifer.

Atomic City, USA

Los Alamos sits on a hill at more than 7,000ft (2,000 metres) above sea level. The single, steep road to the town winds through picturesque northern New Mexico: arid landscape punctuated with desert plants and native American pueblos, with the Jemez mountains in the background.

On a sunny September afternoon, the town is calm and peaceful. A perfectly landscaped and manicured pond is surrounded by a park of bright green grass. A young couple pushes a baby in a stroller.

Inside a supermarket in Los Alamos, there are fine wines on sale along with cigars, stored in a purpose-built humidor. The supermarkets indoor Atomic Bar serves a range of craft beers on tap. Nearby, a small strip mall houses a chocolatier, an acupuncturist, and a sensory deprivation flotation therapy clinic.

In the waiting room at a bank, there is a Sothebys catalogue of luxury real estate in Santa Fe, from where many of the labs better-paid employees commute. A grand new municipal building stands on the side of the main street much larger than one might expect in such a small town.

Sipping a glass of Atomic beer … Photograph: Brooks Saucedo-McQuade

But while Los Alamos is clean and orderly with hints of privilege, its affluence is relatively understated. It doesnt look like one of the richest counties in the state, let alone the country.

Its not old wealth, says Heather McClenahan, executive director of the Los Alamos Historical Society. Its people who work at the lab. And if youve got two people who work at the lab, whove both got six-figure incomes, thats going to generate wealth in your family.

McClenahan has lived here for more than 15 years. Her husband does environmental work at the lab. Its a great place to raise kids, she says. Its a company town. Most families have at least one person working at the laboratory. There are fabulous schools. Its very safe.

And because its a small town, we dont have traffic problems, we dont have a lot of crime.

And yet references to war and nuclear weapons are everywhere. Atomic City Transit buses rumble down roads with names like Oppenheimer Drive and Trinity Street. Atomic City Salsa is on sale at a gift shop in the town centre, along with bumper stickers and playsuits for babies, including one with a mushroom cloud on the front, and the punchline (Ive been dropping BOMBS since Day 1) on the reverse.

Research at the lab today includes fields like climate change, supercomputing and astrophysics. But still nuclear weapons is the dominant subject.

Pete Sheehey, a Los Alamos county councillor, first moved to the town 30 years ago from California while finishing a PhD in physics. He described the community as very dependent on the one lab contract, but said that it is trying to encourage and keep spin-off companies in the area, so there will be more jobs independent of the lab contract. And we are working to increase tourism as well.

Made in Los Alamos. Photograph: Brooks Saucedo-McQuade

Los Alamos is part of the new Manhattan Project National Park, and a new mobile app released by the lab lets users explore the 1940s Atomic City. Already Los Alamos receives tens of thousands of visitors each year to see the place where the atomic bomb was developed, says McClenahan. Some of the biggest numbers are from Russia, Germany and Japan.

McClenahan says Los Alamos has always been conflicted about the impact of the research done here. From the beginning, she says, there were scientists who were so proud of not only the scientific work they did, but of saying We ended world war two. And then there were others who said, We just killed hundreds of thousands of people.

For decades, she adds, there was also a sense of Stay out of our town, were doing top-secret work and you cant come here. But attitudes have changed. Now, she says, people are thinking: How do we bring tourists to our tiny little town?

Espaola: Its complicated

Espaola is a 25 minute drive north-east of Los Alamos. It, too, is a small town, with a population of about 10,000. But, in many respects, it feels a world away from the nuclear island on the hill.

The road into Espaola passes by brightly painted murals and drive-thru fast food restaurants. Other buildings bear hand-painted signs on storefronts, selling animal feed, boots and party supplies for quinceaeras. Boldly coloured low-rider cars, which have become key cultural symbols of this part of New Mexico, rumble down the towns wide roads.

Sheehey, the Los Alamos councillor, says that thousands of people commute to Los Alamos each day from neighbouring communities like this one. Economic benefit is felt throughout the region, he says. Children from outside the county are allowed to attend Los Alamos schools, which still get a federal subsidy and are some of the best public schools in New Mexico.

The lab has also been generous in supporting education and other community programs in Espaola and other neighbouring communities, Sheehey adds. He gives the example of a free bus service through northern New Mexico, funded partly by a Los Alamos county program called Progress through Partnering.

Like many people in Espaola, Patricia Trujillo, 39, says she has always been connected to the lab in some way. When we talk about the company town its much wider than Los Alamos, she says. Its the whole valley.

Two towns divided by extreme wealth and inequality. Photograph: Brooks Saucedo-McQuade

As a child in the late 1980s, Trujillo says she remembers her teachers sending her and her classmates to wait by the side of the road and cheer as new scientific equipment was brought to Los Alamos by truck. They had us sit outside all day long, she says. Instead of getting us to question it, they had us cheering.

Her own grandmother worked in Los Alamos in the 1940s, as a house matron in charge of a dormitory for other women who worked in the then-secret citys households and offices. And Trujillo herself has worked at the lab, including as a technical writer after university.

There are small businesses in Espaola, she says that have also benefited from subcontracts to provide supplies for the lab.

But the word Trujillo chooses to describe Espaolas relationship with Los Alamos is complicated.

Now professor of literature and Chicano studies at Northern New Mexico College in Espaola, and head of the schools equity and diversity program, she explains: A lot of our middle class, our wealthier parents, will drive their kids to Los Alamos county every day, to send them to school there. But then we lose that parent base here.

Trujillo says Los Alamos has supported projects including those to write science curriculum for schools in Espaola. But these efforts have been piecemeal and problematic, she says, doing little to address structural inequalities between the two communities.

There is instead a pervasive hill-valley disparity, Trujillo argues, which impacts imaginations and limits peoples aspirations. The majority of manual labourers come from the Espaola valley … but theres no trickle down, she says. Its a multibillion dollar industry, but unfortunately theres a lot of inequity.

Secrecy, not safety

In Espaolas Valdez Park, Beata Tsosie Pea, 38, is sitting with her young son near a freshly terraced slope where she will soon help plant trees as part of a new community garden.

Pea was born in the nearby Santa Clara pueblo, and is coordinator of the environmental justice programme at Tewa Women United (TWU), a civil society organisation led by indigenous women in the area (Tewa is the name of a native language group). Trujillo is also on the board of TWU.

Pea describes the Los Alamos lab as intertwined with issues of power and injustice from the very beginning. Much of the land for the lab was taken from Native communities in the 1940s, in what she says started with temporary agreements, and understandings that it would be returned after the war.

Los Alamos is on all these sacred sites, ancestral sites. We knew not to develop there, to build there. We would never have done that, because we were put there as caretakers of the water and the land, she said.

There are also concerns about the labs environmental impact on neighbouring communities. Peas organisation is part of the Communities for Clean Water coalition created to monitor Los Alamoss impact on water for drinking, agriculture, sacred ceremonies, and a sustainable future.

The September 2016 report on nuclear waste came from the the labs own environmental management office. The 20-plus years and $4bn clean-up costs were criticised for being likely underestimates.

The [labs] location was chosen for its secrecy, not its safety. And now theres so much money, its seen as an investment they dont want to lose, says Pea, wondering aloud how many of Los Alamoss residents know on whose land they are, and that the privilege of living here comes with responsibility.

But, again, the word she chooses is complicated.

There needs to be a transition to a different mission [for the lab], to things like clean-up technologies, alternative energy, green energy, she argues. Protest groups come here and say Shut it down. But for us, its much more complicated, because our families are economically tied to the lab.

Travel for this story was supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting

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Source: http://allofbeer.com/atomic-city-usa-how-once-secret-los-alamos-became-a-millionaires-enclave/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2019/03/23/atomic-city-usa-how-once-secret-los-alamos-became-a-millionaires-enclave/

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allofbeercom · 6 years ago

Text

Atomic City, USA: how once-secret Los Alamos became a millionaire’s enclave

And yet Los Alamos has more millionaires per capita than almost anywhere else in the country.

Instant city

Los Alamoss once secret nuclear history has become a tourist attraction. Photograph: Brooks Saucedo-McQuade

The goal, he explains, had been to build top secret, temporary research facilities in order to keep US nuclear scientists and their work away from prying eyes and ears.

Except here the industry was nuclear weapons. And, officially, the town did not exist.

Los Alamos laboratory in the 1950s those who lived and work there had to keep it at secret. Photograph: Jeffrey Markowitz/Sygma via Getty Images

Its a stark example of the 1% and 99%

But, he adds, a lot of people who live in Espaola work in Los Alamos. In that whole northern New Mexico area, there is a big commute.

Los Alamos, where benefits have been very insular. Photograph: Brooks Saucedo-McQuade

Neighbouring communities have not benefited much at all, with the obvious exception that theres jobs, he says. Benefits have been very insular and privileged to the nuclear enclave itself.

Atomic City, USA

On a sunny September afternoon, the town is calm and peaceful. A perfectly landscaped and manicured pond is surrounded by a park of bright green grass. A young couple pushes a baby in a stroller.

Sipping a glass of Atomic beer … Photograph: Brooks Saucedo-McQuade

But while Los Alamos is clean and orderly with hints of privilege, its affluence is relatively understated. It doesnt look like one of the richest counties in the state, let alone the country.

And because its a small town, we dont have traffic problems, we dont have a lot of crime.

Research at the lab today includes fields like climate change, supercomputing and astrophysics. But still nuclear weapons is the dominant subject.

Made in Los Alamos. Photograph: Brooks Saucedo-McQuade

Espaola: Its complicated

Espaola is a 25 minute drive north-east of Los Alamos. It, too, is a small town, with a population of about 10,000. But, in many respects, it feels a world away from the nuclear island on the hill.

Two towns divided by extreme wealth and inequality. Photograph: Brooks Saucedo-McQuade

There are small businesses in Espaola, she says that have also benefited from subcontracts to provide supplies for the lab.

But the word Trujillo chooses to describe Espaolas relationship with Los Alamos is complicated.

Secrecy, not safety

In Espaolas Valdez Park, Beata Tsosie Pea, 38, is sitting with her young son near a freshly terraced slope where she will soon help plant trees as part of a new community garden.

The September 2016 report on nuclear waste came from the the labs own environmental management office. The 20-plus years and $4bn clean-up costs were criticised for being likely underestimates.

But, again, the word she chooses is complicated.

Travel for this story was supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting

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from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/atomic-city-usa-how-once-secret-los-alamos-became-a-millionaires-enclave/

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academiablogs · 7 years ago

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Interview with David Gowey - on Science Fiction and Fantasy Tropes, Aesthetics, and World Building

(Image source) This week on Academia we discussed the trope of the “hero of prophecy” so common in fantasy and even science fiction literature, and whether or not it still has currency in the genre. To discuss this and related issues, we now invite David Gowey, author of fantasy and science-fiction novels such as Kaschar’s Quarter, Jire, and First Instance, and a regular contributor to our Academia community. As a PhD candidate in Sociocultural Anthropology, David’s world building skills draw from many lands and cultures, and always examine what makes his characters—and their respective societies—tick. The wide-ranging conversation that follows will give you a hint as to why his books are so rich and easy to get lost in.

Joshua: Welcome, David! You write both science fiction and fantasy, so for you, what is the biggest difference between the two genres besides one is set in a hypothetical past and the other in a could-be future? What unique challenges does each genre offer you as a writer?

David: I’d say the biggest challenge is that the distinction between the two isn’t very clearcut, at least when it comes to the types of messages each type of story can send. While there’s certainly an element of prediction in sci-fi because verisimilitude goes a long way in deepening the reader’s immersion, the author ultimately has to construct the world of the story around the message they want to send rather than purely what is scientifically possible or even plausible. Predicting a dystopian nightmare future of government oppression can play out as a fictional case study for authoritarianism and why it should be defeated, but that’s not the only story sci-fi can tell. More utopian visions like Star Trek’s Federation also exist to show us what humanity could accomplish if it truly embraced the idea that “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one”. But again, utopias aren’t the only story to tell and they’re inherently constructed as unrealistic literary teaching moments (to paraphrase a past Academia post).

Personally, the most interesting stories come in between these two extremes because they contain a mixture of recognizability, utopian aspiration, and dystopian warning. Something like The Expanse comes to mind, where government increasingly falls behind human progress in space exploration, leaving corporations and tribalism to fill in the blanks. This is what I try to approach in my sci-fi stories, with one human corporation (a joint Chinese-German venture called Interplanetery Resources Incorporated) appearing in many of them as a sort of Easter egg and also prediction about the future of space exploration. Interestingly enough, I’m 1-for-2 in my future predictions so far: Brexit happened and put a kink in my worldbuilding about its role in a joint EU space fleet, while Germany and China have taken what they perceive to be a US withdrawal from global leadership to signal a brighter future as partners. That’s not a bad track record.

As for fantasy, the problem is that the hypothetical past is mired in an awful lot of assumptions that then get turned into an awful lot of lazy worldbuilding. Here’s one example that’s stood out to me recently. I think we’ve all heard plenty about controversial casting decisions regarding characters whose presence in a given story is considered anachronistic based on ethnicity, whether it’s Matt Damon in The Great Wall (which I never saw so maybe it’s internally justified but I really can’t say) or black characters in media depicting medieval Europe. The problem for fantasy is that when we internalize assumptions about who was where in which time periods on Earth, we miss out on opportunities to reflect on diversity that was already there as opposed to merely going with the status quo or else insisting that our creation is entirely unique for its diversity. In reality, history is full of migrations and the concept of pure ethnicity divided into neat little ethnostates starts to collapse once it’s analyzed in those terms. Persian coins found their way to Britain; Africans and Native Americans lived in Western Europe; Japanese ronin fought in Mexico; Indian stories were indigenized in the Philippines; the predominant language in Madagascar is originally from Taiwan; and Polynesians ate South American sweet potatoes with mainland SE Asian chickens. The point is that relying on tired old reconstructions of our past and perpetuating them in fantasy is still a case of the author showing readers the world they want to see, whether that’s subconscious influence or conscious selection of the history they want to tell. Granted, I’m sure the vast majority of authors aren’t malicious about this at all but it’s something else to look out for if we want to conceive of fantasy as a reconstruction of the real world.

Joshua: Speaking of what authors do consciously or subconsciously, many fantasy novels tend to be variations on the “hero’s journey,” where a young, naive hero or heroine learns of an epic quest which they must undertake with the help of a wiser guide, who leads them through numerous perils, all to the tune of an ancient prophecy that foretells his or her triumph or doom, etc. How do you avoid re-writing the same story over and over again while staying true to the elements most readers appreciate from the genre?

David: My first book started about seven years ago as part of a character monologue that didn’t even have a name or a setting, but began with the words “I never wanted to be king”. As I continued to flesh it out, I kept making notes of things that this character could do that eventually turned into a sort of Candide or Guliver’s Travels scenario, where the “hero” found himself in a series of episodes that were basically glorified morality plays and then escaped them through a mixture of cunning and dumb luck. Later research clarified that the form I wanted was the picaresque novel, which the two books I mentioned were satirizing. Another earlier example would be Don Quixote and its deconstruction of medieval chivalric tales. While my inner editor killed off a lot of the more obviously moralizing episodes over time, the core of the story remained: I wanted my main character to be the sole point-of-view and to use those episodes as catalysts for him to change over time.

There’s no prophecy hanging over his head, but he does continually ask himself why he’s still alive. Is it God and if so, why? If not, is he surviving because of any particular skill or just because he’s lucky? He makes a number of choices along the way, many of which are purely for survival, but even that isn’t enough to answer why he manages to live through wars and other events that have killed so many others. In the end, it’s about him finding his agency and living with the consequences of exercising it on increasingly larger stages, from the ruins of his home city after an attack by religious extremists to eventually the capital city of a great empire. That last part isn’t a spoiler because it’s in the prologue but you’ll have to read the books to find out how he gets there.

Joshua: Yes, perhaps the important thing is that the character has to seem to have his or her own agency, or as you say, “is he surviving because of any particularly skill or just because he’s lucky.” That’s a great point. How else, as a writer, are you able to establish a sense of reality (or believability) when writing novels that take place in worlds that have never existed? What does it mean to make the fantastic sound feasible?

David: One of the big things I’ve come away with from reading sci-fi and reading about sci-fi is that a lot of that sense of reality lies in what the characters take for granted. For instance, the FTL drive may have a very convoluted but plausible way of working but it still gets you from point A to point B, at least until the plot demands that it break down for reasons to be explained later. That isn’t to say that everything complex should simply be handwaved away if readers ask too many questions, since that would defeat the purpose of shooting for believability in the first place. What it does mean for me is that I try to write the characters as if they don’t know they’re in a story (as opposed to Deadpool, who knows that he’s in a comic book). Organizations, people, events, and locations that exist in the character’s world will be just as obviously real (again, until the plot demands them to be otherwise) to them as anything in our world is to us. These characters will make pop culture references to things they know: the classic holo movie that everyone can quote, how the Mets in the year 2145 lack bullpen depth, or the famous composers whose music will be heard in the new opera house.

And speaking of opera houses, one thing I’ve noticed in a lot of fantasy is that all the buildings are ancient. Where’s the scaffolding on that “new” cathedral that was begun a hundred years ago but could take thirty more years to complete using only wooden construction equipment and hand tools? When does the king of this stereotypical Western European fantasy kingdom knock down the old castle and build a star fort, or even a new palace out in the country where he can house all the rowdy nobles in an effort to further centralize his power, as was done with Versailles? And for some ultra history nitpicking, why are medieval knights running around in full plate armor from the 17th century but cannons, handgonnes, and arquebuses from the 15th century are nowhere to be found? Making the fantastic sound feasible can and should include research that extends beyond our assumptions of what the past was like or what the future might be, all seen through the lens of characters who’ve lived their entire lives as themselves in that particular setting. When it works, we see a fully formed world through their eyes in much the same way as we see our world through our eyes. It also bears mentioning that this is really, really difficult and always subject to a learning process on my part.

Joshua: That’s a great and hilarious point—where are all the new cathedrals in fantasy? Everything can’t be old, after all, particularly in the ancient world. This relates to science fiction as well, since we can’t just be in a world with warp drives and parallel universes—we sometimes need to see where these come from and who discovered them. So I wonder, how much science should be in science fiction? Or is the emphasis on fiction, meaning that it can stretch scientific possibility to serve the story? How do you approach this balance in your own writing?

David: To paraphrase Asimov’s submission guidelines, I generally shoot for stories that use science to facilitate human experiences. Technology provides either the premise or the background for the premise but is very rarely a character in its own right. Even a recent story I did about a sentient AI tasked with carrying out a terraforming operation on a planet to make it suitable for human habitation is ultimately a human story, since this AI is specifically programmed to act as a mother for her future children. While it could be productive to argue the pros and cons of engineering gendered AI consciousness or the morality of terraforming alien planets, often destroying any chance for native life to survive on the surface, these concerns are secondary to making a main character that the reader can approach as if they’re reading about not just a person, but an authentic one.

Personally, aiming for hard sci-fi is all well and good, but if the story ends up reading like a lecture acted out by cardboard cut-outs instead of human beings, like Asimov himself was sometimes accused of doing, then I’m willing to flub a little science for the sake of a better story. Are humanoid robots fighting in space highly impractical and more likely to end with the pilot reduced to a puddle of goo by gee-forces than appear in a real battlefield of the future? Probably, but I want humanoid robots in my story because they’re cool and I may as well put interesting people in the cockpit while I’m at it.

Joshua: We’re getting a great sense of your personal philosophy and aesthetics as a writer. Of course, not everyone can appreciate the result of our craft. Related to this, what is the most painful feedback you’ve received from a reader? How did you deal with it?

David: Oh boy. The most painful is also one of the most recent, wherein an anonymous user on reddit gave my latest chapter draft for an unpublished story a little over a paragraph before finally quitting in anger and leaving a lot of negative comments all over it. Now I’m naturally biased toward my own work and while I do try to take criticism for what it is, a lot of their comments came off as nitpicking for nitpicking’s sake, as if they thought they could take my chapter through the Cinema Sins or Nostalgia Critic treatment and call it a constructive review. The complaint that stuck out the most was “don’t mention God in your story unless there really is one” and my first thought was that the objective existence of God in the story was irrelevant because that particular POV character believed that there was one. Admittedly, I didn’t respond in the best way and got a little snarky with them because of how angry they got without giving my work what I thought to be a fair reading.

This was not the ideal response on my part. What I should’ve done was shrugged it off instead of getting snarky, no matter how tempting it was (and it was very tempting). Instead, I learned some lessons about how to take critiques that can hopefully be of some use to other writers as they were to me.

Joshua: Perhaps, but I’m just as guilty of the same responses—and the same wounded ego. Readers can’t always be our validation, of course, and ultimately a writer has to decide whether or not his or her work “works” as an artistic whole. So how do you know if a work is successful when you’ve finished it? What are the signs you look for during the writing process and afterward? Is external validation the only true way to measure a book’s success?

David: Personally, the sign that a story is successful isn’t just when it has a clear beginning, middle, and end (though this is also important for obvious reasons) but rather when I no longer think about it. What this means for the novel and novelette I’ve published (Kaschar’s Quarter and Jire respectively) is that I don’t sit around anymore with lingering doubts about whether that story accomplished what I wanted it to or if it could’ve used something more. The same goes for many of my short stories. In all honesty, I can’t quite say the same for my novella First Instance; my lone Amazon review for that one was a roundabout way of asking for that “something more” and after further reflection and distance between the narrative and myself, I’ve come to agree. I wouldn’t use that to deter someone from reading it but the fact that I think the story has more to say leads me to believe that it’s not quite finished yet. I wouldn’t consider this a defect, though. Composers often rearranged arlier pieces later in their careers because they felt the music had more to say (or simply because they wanted to extend their copyright, like Stravinsky did with The Firebird). Not to say I’m Stravinsky or anything. Of course, other people liking my stories and/or giving me money for them is always appreciated.

Joshua: Ha…though Stravinsky is a great example, since he continually tinkered with his works, as much as to extend copyright as to discover new possibilities in them—often new orchestrations (and the original Firebird of 1910 had an enormous orchestra—not financially feasible for most modern orchestras to pull off!). Speaking of the classics, one final question to round out a fascinating discussion: if you could write the Preface to one classic novel of science fiction or fantasy, what would it be? In general, what would you want people to appreciate about this book that you would single out in your Preface?

David: I’d have to go with Frank Herbert’s Dune. Picking a single topic to focus on would be pretty difficult, given that there are so many sequels (and spin-offs if you’re inclined to count those) and even the first book has so many threads that it’s hard to keep track of what’s really going on the first time through. On the surface, it hits many of the same notes as other sci-fi/adventure stories: retaking a throne, acts of vengeance and betrayal, a love interest, and the white newcomer saving the brown indigenes from their oppressors but really from themselves. We’ve seen variations on these themes in John Carter of Mars, Avatar (the James Cameron movie), Dances with Wolves, The Last Samurai, etc. What Dune does that’s special, especially considering it predates all but one of those aforementioned stories, is that it flips the entire familiar narrative on its head, all while telling you exactly what it’s doing and why. The chosen one prophecy was nothing but cynical propaganda, prescience is a very double-edged sword, and the cost of achieving his final goal leaves Paul an emotional and physical wreck.

Ultimately, the entire series is one big deconstruction of the societal craving for messianic leaders that produces the chosen one narrative in the first place. It’s definitely the single most influential thing I’ve read in terms of how I try to write; constructing setting and characters with compelling, individual motivations.

Joshua: Wonderful response…you write the Preface, I’ll write the Epilogue! :) Thanks so much for exploring these topics with me, and as usual, offering so much passionate insight into what makes these genres exciting for modern readers. For more information on David’s novels, check out his Amazon author page, where you can buy copies of all his novels and story collections here . He can be found on Facebook, Twitter, and his blog!

#amwriting #interview #author #fantasy #scifi #David gowey #jire #reading #booklr

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