#i think maybe queer people could stand to learn from disabled people and the way they deal with conflicting access needs

[lgbtlunaverse]

Everytime I see discourse about kink or nudity at pride I get reminded of the time I went to pride a few years ago with my mother and my sibling- who was 17 at the time and is somewhere on the ace spectrum- and about halfway through, the march went under a gatehouse. Some inhabitants were sitting in their open windows watching the parade. Right before we crossed under them, one of them decided to just... take her shirt off. She wasn't wearing a bra. And you know what happened? People whooped and cheered, and then kept walking. That's it. And there were kids around!! They didn't care. My sibling didn't care. My mother, a cisgender heterosexual woman in her 50s, did not care.

This stuff stops being such a big deal when you go offline. It was basically the same amount of boob you'd see in any perfume ad. No one was like 'what about the children?' And if you didn't wanna see it and looked down, no one would've called you a puritanical prude for that. And it helps to remind myself of that everytime I see kink at pride discourse getting rehashed because at actual pride, people don't care.

[wolfstar-in-color]

July Colorful Column: Remus is a Crip, and We Can Write Him Better.

There is one thing that can get me to close a fic so voraciously I don’t even make sure I’m not closing other essential tabs in the process. It doesn’t matter how much I’m loving the fic, how well written I think it is, or how desperately I want to know how it ends. Once I read this sentence, I am done.

It’s written in a variety of different ways, but it always goes something like this: “You don’t want me,” Remus said, “I am too sick/broken/poor/old/[insert chosen self-demeaning adjective here].”

You’re familiar with the trope. The trope is canonical. And if you’ve been around the wolfstar fandom for longer than a few minutes, you’ve read the trope. Maybe you love the trope! Maybe you’ve written the trope! Maybe you’re about to stop reading this column, because the trope rings true to you and you feel a little attacked!

Now, let’s get one thing out of the way right now: I am not saying the trope is wrong. I am not saying it’s bad. I am not saying we should stop writing it. We all have things we don’t like to see in our chosen fics. Maybe you can’t stand Leather Jacket Motorbike Sirius? Maybe you think Elbow Patch Remus is overdone? Or maybe your pet peeves are based in something a little deeper - maybe you think Poor Latino Remus is an irresponsible depiction, or that PWPs are too reductive? Whatever it is, we all have our things.

Let me tell you about my thing. When I first became very ill several years ago, there were various low points in which I felt I had become inherently unlovable. This is, more or less, a normal reaction. When your body stops doing things it used to be able to do - or starts doing things you were quite alright without, thank you very much - it changes the way you relate to your body. You don’t want to hear my whole disability history, so yada yada yada, most people eventually come to accept their limitations. It’s a very painful existence, one in which you constantly tell yourself your disability has transformed you into a burdensome, unworthy member of society, and if nothing else, it’s not terribly sustainable. Being disabled takes grit! It takes power! It takes a truly absurd amount of medical self-advocacy! Hating yourself? Thinking yourself unworthy of love? No one has time for that. 

Of course, I’m being hyperbolic. Plenty of disabled people struggle with these feelings many years into their disabilities, and never really get over them. But here’s the thing. We experience those stories ALL THE TIME. Remember Rain Man? Or Million Dollar Baby? Or that one with the actress from Game of Thrones and that British actor who seemed like he was going to have a promising career but then didn't? Those are all stories about sad, bitter disabled people and their sad, bitter lives, two out of three of which end in the character completing suicide because they simply couldn’t imagine having to live as a disabled person. (I mean, come on media, I get that we're less likely to enjoy a leisurely Saturday hike, but our parking is SUBLIME.) When was the last time you engaged with media that depicted a happy disabled person? A complex disabled person? A disabled person who has sex? No really, these aren’t hypothetical questions, can you please drop a rec in the notes?? Because I am desperate.

There are lots of problems with this trope, and they’ve been discussed ad nauseam by people with PhDs. I’m not actually interested in talking about how this trope leads to a more prevalent societal idea that disabled people are unworthy of love, or contributes to the kind of political thought processes that keep disabled people purposefully disenfranchised. I’m just a bitch on Tumblr, and I have a bone to pick: the thing I really hate about the trope? It’s boring. I’m bored. You know how, like, halfway through Grey’s Anatomy you realized they were just recycling the same plot points over and over again and there was just no WAY anyone working at a hospital prone to THAT MANY disasters would stay on staff? It's like that. I love a recycled trope as much as the next person (There Was Only One Bed, anyone?). But I need. Something. Else.

Remus is disabled. BOLD claim. WILD speculation. Except, not really. You simply - no matter how you flip it, slice it, puree it, or deconstruct it - cannot tell me Remus Lupin is not disabled. Most of us, by this point, are probably familiar with the way that One Canonical Author intended One Dashing Werewolf to be “a metaphor for those illnesses that carry stigma, like HIV and AIDS” [I’m sorry to link you to an outside source quoting She Who Must Not Be Named, but we’re professionals here]. Which is... a thing. It’s been discussed. And, listen, there’s no denying that this parallel is a problematic interpretation of people who have HIV/AIDS and all such similar “those illnesses” (though I’ll admit that I, too, am perennially apt to turn into a raging beast liable to harm anything that crosses my path, but that’s more linked to the at-least-once-monthly recollection that One Day At A Time got cancelled). Critiques aside, Remus Lupin is a character who - due to a condition that affects him physically, mentally, emotionally, and intellectually - is repeatedly marginalized, oppressed, denied political and social power, and ostracized due to unfounded fear that he is infectious to others. Does that sound familiar?

We’re not going to argue about whether or not “Remus is canonically disabled as fuck” is a fair reading. And the reason we’re not going to argue about whether or not it’s a fair reading is because I haven’t read canon in 10-plus years and you will win the argument. Canon is only marginally relevant here. The icon of this blog is brown, curly haired Remus Lupin kissing his trans boyfriend, Sirius Black. We are obviously not too terribly invested in canon. The wolfstar fandom is now a community with over 25,000 AO3 fics, entire careers launched from drawing or writing or cosplaying this non-canonical pairing. We love to play around here with storylines and universes and races and genders and sexualities and all kinds of things, but most of the time? Remus is still disabled. He’s disabled as a werewolf in canon-compliant works, he’s disabled in the AUs where he was injured or abused or kidnapped or harmed as a child, he’s disabled in the stories that read him as chronically ill or bipolar or traumatized or blind or Deaf. I’d go so far as to say that he is one of very few characters in the Wide Wonderful World of media who is, in as close to his essence as one can be, always disabled. And that means? Don’t shoot the messenger... but we could stand to be a tiny bit more responsible with how we portray him. 

Disabled people are complicated. As much as I’d like to pretend we are always level-headed, confident, and ready to assert our inherent worth, we are still just humans. We have bad days. We doubt our worth. We sometimes go out with guys who complain about our steroid-induced weight gain (it was a long time ago, Tumblr, okay??). But, we also have joy and fun and good days and sex and happiness and families and so many other things. 

Remus is a disabled character, and as such, it’s only fair that he’d have those unworthy moments. But - I propose - Remus is also a crip. What is a crip? A crip - like a queer - is someone who eschews the limited boundaries placed on their bodies, who rejects a hierarchy of oppression in favor of an intersectional analysis of lived experience, who isn’t interested in being the tragic figure responsible for helping people with dominant identities realize how good they have it. Crips interpret their disabilities however they want, rethinking bodies and medicine and pleasure and pain and even time itself. Crips are political, community-minded, and in search of liberation. 

Remus is a character who struggles with his disability, sure. But he’s also a character who leverages his physical condition to attempt to shift communities towards his political leanings, advocates for the rights of those who share his physical condition, and has super hot sex with his wrongfully convicted boyfriend ultimately goes on to build community and family. Having a condition that quite literally cripples you, over which you have no control, and through which you are often read as a social pariah? That’s disability. But using said condition as a means through which to build advocacy and community? Now that’s some crip shit. 

Personally, I love disabled!Remus Lupin. But I love crip!Remus Lupin even more. I’d love to see more of a Remus who owns his disability, who covets what makes him unique, and who never ever again tells a potential romantic partner they are too good for him because of his disability. This trope - unlike There Was Only One Bed! - sometimes actually hurts to read. Where’s Remus who thinks a potential romantic partner isn’t good enough for him? Where’s Remus who insists his partners learn more about his condition in order to treat him properly? Where’s sexy wheelchair user Remus? Where’s Remus who uses his werewolf transformations as an excuse to travel the world? Where’s crip Remus??

We don’t have to put “you don’t want me” Remus entirely to bed. It is but one of many repeated tropes that are - in the words of The Hot Priest from Fleabag - morally a bit dubious. And let’s face it - we don’t always come to fandom for its moral superiority (as much as we sometimes like to think we do). 

This is not a condemnation - it is an invitation. Able-bodied folks are all but an injury, illness, or couple decades away from being disabled. And when you get here, I sincerely hope you don’t waste your time on “you don’t want me”ing back and forth with the people you love. I’m inviting you to come to the crip side now. We have snacks, and without all the “you don’t want me” talk, we get to the juicy parts much faster. 

Colorfully,

Mod Theo

[hillbillyoracle]

Rebooting My Practice

This is going to be pretty rambly, but I always get a lot out of these posts when other people make them so I wanted to make one too.

I hit a point earlier this year, as I started to really see what all astrology could be, when I knew I was going to need to overhaul pretty much my entire practice. For the last decade, I've focused on divination; on doing activities that sharpen my intuition, following up and checking predictions, tracking cards and results to better understand the connection, etc. I did this primarily in the service of my main deity, the Morrigan.

I still work with her, but I'm in a lurch as to how to continue my work with her. I have yet to quite figure out how to balance her general distaste for shrines (with me at least) and deepening my relationship with her in the absence of local folks to read for as I've relied on for years (thanks COVID). I've been praying the Catholic Rosary lately as a way to deepen my relationship with the Virgin Mary and the Saint I'm petitioning lately and I feel her kind of peering in when I do that so I might have to design one for her. I have a feeling whatever I come up with will likely be in a free zine rather than a blog post at some point.

But where that left me was in this weird abyss, where the only really solid things in my practice were like 3 deities (The Morrigan, Hermes, Yinepu/Anubis) I worked with regularly and tarot cards. I think for plenty of people that's fine but I wanted something deeper and more effective. It was around the time that I was rethinking everything that I stumbled on to this post about a magical routine that absolutely enthralled me. It took me another month and ultimately moving house altogether to even begin to piece something together that would set me on the road to something like this. I knew I was not ready but I finally had a picture in my mind something to work towards. Like rehabilitating after an injury, sometimes you've got to do half as much as you think you can before you really take off.

So I wanted to take some time and talk about the way my practice is changing and what the new pillars are slowly emerging to be.

Planetary Petitions

While I don't have the Orphic Hymns for each of the 7 classical planets memorized yet as per the post, I started by doing planetary prayers more days than I do not do them. Thanks to my truly godawful downstairs neighbor at the new place, who's floor shaking door slams throughout the whole night have netted me an average of 3 hours a night, I'm usually up for the first planetary hour of a given day. Hey maybe it's a sign, a big universal push to show the fuck up.

I'm also incredibly lucky I loaded up on some planetary incenses right before COVID when a local store had a huge sale. It's proved well worth it as above all I try to get the planetary incense right, though I did have to default to a Frankincense one when we were first moving in.  I slowly feel like I'm beginning to understand the planetary spirits better but only slightly. I completely see why memorizing the prayer is recommended and I do feel that's standing in the way of me being closer with them.

I have not noticed a huge difference when I petition them truthfully. I get the vibe that it takes time to build up that relationship. Though I'm open to input here - for those who do planetary petitions, what made them click for you?

Saint Veneration + Christian Magic

One thing I put off for many years, though I knew it was coming, was working with more Saints. I knew it'd likely involve having to dip back into Christianity to make it work and I was completely right.

As my partner began revisiting her Catholic roots earlier this year, it got me curious about things like the Rosary, the Chaplet, and Novenas. I was raised charismatic fundamentalist Christian as a child and such things were explicitly forbidden. I remember getting a long talking to when I'd taken to reading about Sainte Jeanne d'Arc. So they aren't loaded for me the way they are for others, but they’re situated in this fundamentally familiar context that makes them feel like meeting a cool branch of the family you didn't realize existed.

I'm finishing a Novena to a Saint I've been praying to in the next few weeks. I am admittedly not as close with her as I'd like to be. I'm trying to figure out how to move forward with her as I'd really like to have her in my life. I will probably reach back out to Sainte Jeanne d'Arc as she's always felt familiar and been good to me. I also keep her prayer card and medallion in my wallet and have for many years so maybe there's more to build from there. It is my goal to have about 3 saints/Christian figures I can call on when I need help. I'm thinking of approaching Mary Undoer of Knots next but I'm worried it'll follow the same path as this current saint.

My partner and I bought Rosaries back in May and I absolutely love it. I've been saying at least a 5 decade rosary for most days but I'm regularly getting in a 15 decade rosary. I really love it and am totally convinced of the beauty and effectiveness of the system. I've come to understand Christianity in a totally different light through praying it regularly.

So that is on going and evolving and I'd love to hear from people who've cultivated close relationships with a Saint or Angel.

Ancestors

One thing that working with Christianity again has made easier is praying to ancestors. I've often felt a bit at odds with my own ancestors as they were not the most supportive of trans and queer people (and I am both of those) but in coming back to Christianity has given me and my ancestors a common language almost. As long as my disagreement with them over my attraction and gender identity is rooted in the Bible, it's been easier to work with them.

It's very early days with ancestor work. I'm slowly working my way through Ancestral Healing by Daniel Foor. But I'm feeling very heartened by it. I saw a post on twitter somewhere, if I can find it again I'll link it, where someone said that the way they started working with their ancestors was just thanking them everyday. And thanking my ancestors is complicated for me, my family like most have their own issues that also go passed on, but thanking them for what I am glad they gave me has been really beneficial.

My partner requested some divination from me when some of her medical issues were starting to get worse and part of the reading involved a strong push for her to investigate her father's side of the family. She got really into genealogy in the process and she's been teaching me a lot. Through that I actually learned my great grandfather's name for the first time - yes that's how out of touch I am with my own family history. But I was thankful to find out.

Through her own research, my partner found out that that branch of her family likely isn't German but actually German speaking Hungarians which was a revelation. She's in the process of confirming but it got us talking about foods and identity and language and how to honor our ancestors more regularly. We're going to try making a nice dinner on Full Moons with dishes that are tied to branches of our family as a way to trying to cultivate a closer relationship with them. I'll definitely update on that as it evolves.

Conclusion + Some Thoughts on Disability

I'm definitely still in the early days of all of this. It's not become quite the foundation I hope it will be yet. I still need to figure out how to continue and deepen my deity relationships. I still need to attempt some different types of spellwork I've been meaning to. And while I didn't talk about it much here, astrology has been playing a huge role in my practice but mostly in a passive way. More of that divination process I talked about in the beginning where I make predictions based on the charts I'm seeing and then double check my work.

I’ve been doing all this while in the thick of a bad flare. Moving plus lack of sleep as meant my disability has been weighing so much harder on me lately. Normally when I’m feeling well enough, I kind of roll my eyes at a lot of the “spoonie witchcraft” posts I see, but for some reason with this flare they just started making me angry and I’m still trying to parse why. I think I just feel like so many are rooted in this performative idea of “feeling” witchy rather than actually helping me with my disability. They aren’t usually focused on practices that either actually treat the pain I’m in or bring my spirit real comfort. 

I’m really hoping to put together a post or possibly a zine that does provide what I always wanted those posts to be. Honestly these pillars here have proven accessible even as I’ve been in some of the worst pain I’ve been in in years. So for any fellow disabled folks who just aren’t getting much out of those posts, I really recommend starting with these. Recite the Orphic Hymn for the day in the corresponding hour. Pray the Rosary or an adapted set of prayers for Pagan prayer beads. Don’t have much money for those? Look up how to make knotted rosaries and adapt the method. Pray to your ancestors and give them some water and a bit to eat. These are doable for a lot of folks even when they’re in bad shape, especially if you take your time with it. Might not make you “feel witchy” but they do some fucking work, that’s for sure. But idk, those are just my thoughts on it. 

So it hasn't all fallen into place yet but I wanted to share what developing a practice looks like in medias res. It's messy, somethings work better than others, but all and all I'm just glad to finally be making meaningful progress again.

[irkenheretic]

Does Red have that one genetic disorder? What does it do to Irkens who do have it?

OOOHHH OKAY SO this is all gonna be headcanon stuff for ANX (watch me forget to tag the post as such lmao) so itll be canon divergent at points

so The Red Eye Thing, which has no formal name because why would irkens name it, is a linked gene between the gene that causes red eyes, and a genetic disorder that leaves an irken with a little extra chunk of chromosome in a sex cell that made them. (a sex cell is like, either the sperm or the egg, one of those) not an entire extra chromosome, that doesn’t happen among irkens, but a chunk.

you can’t have red eyes without having The Red Eye Thing, so yes red does have it! ^^

i just have to go on record and say that in ANX, irkens still reproduce naturally. they dont mate for fun or keep the young, but its still not artificial. smeets are also VERY IMPORTANT in irken society as they are seen as the future of the empire (like, assaulting a smeet is so universally hated that if someone is jailed for it they will 100% be killed before they ever stand trial. smeet assaulters are so hated that the control brains know this happens and they just let it happen)

so given how societally important smeets are, it tends to be Very Bad for Red Eyes that the main problem their genetic disorder gives them is infertility. theyre basically looked down upon societally because they’re unable to do a basic biological function that even smallers and defectives can do. 

i mentioned they also have hyperpigmented skin in my other ask, but im putting it here again anyway. skin colors from that hyperpigmentation can range from “dark, but still normal irken dark” to “i have never seen a skin color as dark as yours before holy fuck” these edits i did of red are what he looks like in ANX, and hes on the way far end of the spectrum- out of 100+ characters in ANX, some other Red Eyes, he’s the darkest one. the hyperpigmentation is a result of the extra chunk of chromosome lmao

also, Red Eyes have trouble detecting pheromones other irkens give off. this can be just dulled senses, or it can be a total lack of detection, like what Red has. (ur seeing a pattern arent u, red has a more “severe” case of his genetic disorder.)

the gene also causes developmental disorders which... aren’t exactly on a sliding scale per se? it’s kind of like autism where every Red Eye acts differently from each other that there’s no real “universal experience” for how this specific thing presents itself.

the red eye gene is passed on from parent to child, it won’t mutate and it can’t be carried- you either have it or you don’t. 

“but how can that be if they’re infertile!” i said infertile, not sterile. the reason Red Eyes are infertile is because, since the extra chromosome chunk was in a sex cell, at least 50% of their sex cells will be affected with the extra chunk, too. irkens have a biomechanism that purges cells with missing or extra chromosome parts (extra-chromosome irkens are relatively fine, missing-chromosome irkens are like, hatched with no brain or are stillhatches so good that thats... there) 

but since those cells are purged, that’s at least half of the fertile cells. of course if they have a more severe case, like red, it would be more than half. so it is moderatley hard to nigh impossible for Red Eyes to conceive or fertilize, depending on who it is. so since only Red Eyes can pass down The Red Eye Gene, and these bitches rarely have smeets, there’s only like.... one Red Eye per generation, maybe two.

(fun facts: there used to be more Red Eye family lines, but some idiot got it in his head that Red Eyes caused defectiveness and that most defect trials were a false positive so in order to save everyone he needed to kill all Red Eyes, so now there.... aren’t..... any more......) (yes the control brains crazy murdered that idiot. they hate him so much sometimes they go “hey remember the red eye genocide guy? what the fuck, right?”)

so tl;dnr: it’s a genetic disorder caused by an extra chunk of chromosome in either a sperm or egg that made the irken. it causes infertility, hyperpigmentation, low or no ability to detect irken pheromones, and a developmental disorder that presents differently in everyone that has it.

tl;dnr 2: irken down’s syndrome. 

under the cut im gonna go on about how society sees irkens with this condition (under the cut because.... sexual assault tw. also ableism tw)

Red Eyes are seen as... well... broken pieces of shit. before red was tallest, there WAS another Red Eye Tallest in recent history- tallest Zim. (NO RELATION to invader zim haha) zim becoming tallest made Red Eyes not be.... as hated, but there’s still this societal idea of “you are a broken piece of shit and your cells should have been purged.... buuuut if you do something above and beyond whatever it is your job is, we Might think you’re cool. also we probably won’t say this to your face but we’re thinking it really hard at you, and you KNOW we’re thinking it, so there’s no point in not saying it, but we still won’t so you cant claim we hate you. but make no mistake, we do.” so red just had, the BEST time growing up.

remember in my last ask, i said Red Eyes are liked a little too well sometimes? well... due to their infertility, they’re frequent targets for rape, especially in the military, since military irkens aren’t allowed to mate. nab a Red Eye and you can have all the fuck you want without any, er, evidence. red honestly was lucky he was constantly stickied to purple as an elite, otherwise Horrible Things could’ve happened.

was the general populace worried about a Red Eye tallest? yes. yes they were, back when it was tallest zim. they thought he’d be shit at it due to how “broken” he was. there was a LOT of public outcry, especially since zim was on the shorter side of tallests. they were ready to be all “see, Red Eyes are NOTHING,” until zim was actually an amazing tallest. he was so good the control brains liked him, and the only other modern tallest they actually liked was miyuki. he did great things for the empire, everyone loved him. when tallest red became tallest, everyone was much less worried. but they were still thinkin it, ya dig. 

is red related to tallest zim? yes, zim is red’s grandfather.

is red’s tendency to forget words a part of his developmental disorder? it could be, could not be. there’s not much of a sample size due to yknow, the genocide, so there’s no-one to compare his symptoms against. the disorder presents differently in everyone so even if red is the only living Red Eye with that symptom, doesnt mean its NOT a symptom ya dig? but im gonna word of god it and say yes it is

can you have the same chromosome thing without being a Red Eye? yes! in this ask i talk about spork having a learning disability- he has the same chromosome thing, it just gives him different symptoms because he doesnt have the specific instance that red eyes have.

can you have red eyes without the chromosome thing? no, the gene for red-colored eyes is stickied to the Extra Chunk gene, and unlike chromosome issues, which can happen to any irken, an irken will not randomly mutate a gene for red-colored eyes.

is the term “red eye” derogatory? it was EXTREMELY derogatory before tallest zim took power. now it’s just a general term for a red eyed irken, but... irkens will still use it in an insulting way. like... “queer” is the best parallel i can draw. used to be a slur, now is a general term, but some people still clearly use it as a slur against others. 

are red eyes called slurs? YES. they are targets for The Word. The Worst Word In The Irken Language, So Bad You Can’t Even Call It “The __ Word” Because It’s Too Close To Saying The Word. It Is Just, “The Word.” it used to be WAY worse before the genocide, simply because there were more of them. it decreased even more after tallest zim took power, but make no mistake, it’s still out there. also The Word translates out to “condemned obsolete bastard” with a side order of “the beginning of The Word sounds like im spitting on you and thats also exactly what it means.” its an awful slur its like if every human slur had an orgy

(was red called slurs growing up- YES.)

are Red Eyes defective? they can be! defectiveness is in the PAK, not in an irken’s biology. that’s why they’re called genetic disorders and not genetic defects, to separate them from the “we are going to execute you” defectiveness. they’re still scorned as if they are defective, though. sometimes theyre called “worse than defectives” as a jab at their infertility- like, even the empire’s worst can do that, ya dig? 

back in The Old Days, there was probably a mix of defective and non-defective Red Eyes. now they’re all defective by coincidence. 

[persephoneofhades]

i think it is worth pointing out that ben didn't carry that secret about ian on his own, ryn knew from the get go and they were complicit in keeping maddie in the dark and just as ryn said she could have helped ian too and decided not to. i do think it's not really fair to ryn's evolved morality and her sense of right and wrong for maddie to act like her choosing not to save ian is somehow less of an evil than ben making that exact same choice

furthermore as much as i love maddie i can't help but take offence to seeing her say shit like 'what will you do, kill him?' referring to robb as if she thinks ben is actually capable of that now when his choice was essentially made in seconds and following him basically imagining this nightmare scenario in which she dies. i wish he had told her about it because maybe she'd have some compassion and realize it wasn't some on a whim decision

i do hope ben can get the help he needs with his addiction to the songs and now those cells injections and i really hope ben, maddie and ryn can all come together again. i'm a polymarine shipper and very much not for excluding one member of this triad but i'm seeing this trend of people wanting to push ben out of it but ryn and maddie are queer and polyamorous and clearly in love with him and i think they work better as a triad than they are now with ben/ryn together and maddie/ryn together 

Okay, so I’m putting this all in one ask, but I will attempt to treat it like 3 in terms of how I respond to it.

This is going to be SUPER long so it’ll be under a cut.

So I’m going to start with the first bit that people have brought up that it’s unfair for Maddie to absolve Ryn of letting Ian drown and then keeping the information from Maddie but to break up with Ben over it. She says in the episode that it’s “different” for Ryn, though they never have her explicitly state WHY she believes it’s different so all I can do is try to explain my point of view on why I believe it’s different and maybe why I can understand Maddie seeing it as different. Obviously, this becomes super subjective and I do wish they’d had Maddie be a little more eloquent about why she thinks it’s different.

I have not seen that episode where Ian kidnaps Ryn in a while now, but I’m pretty sure I remember Ryn was somewhat disabled due to a drug or just physical exhaustion or something. She couldn’t fight back the way she normally could have and it’s not clear whether that continued after she transformed or not. I can’t even totally remember how Ian’s car ended up in the ocean, something’s telling me Ryn was finally able to do something and it causes him to accidentally steer himself off a cliff, but like I said, I can’t recall it in detail. But I do remember Ryn being not completely herself physically and it’s why he’s able to kidnap her AT ALL and that’s something Maddie would have known, something that’s NOT true of Ben. Ryn has the excuse of being in a far more vulnerable position than Ben, so her reaction to flee from her kidnapper once she’s finally given the ability to do so is more understandable than Ben leaving Ian to die.

Ryn also, while definitely learning, is always going to have her instincts. Honestly, the fact that she LEAVES Ian to drown rather than attacking him in the car is fucking MAJOR for Ryn. And I think it goes to show my earlier point that she recognizes she’s in a vulnerable position and is choosing to flee rather than fight. Ryn has gone from someone who would basically kill nearly any human to a person who will ally herself with some humans but kill the ones who threaten her to someone who seems to hesitate to kill others even when they betray her. She’s made a TON of progress! But it’s never been MADDIE who held her to a standard of not killing people, it was DALE. I can’t even remember if Maddie knows Dale HAD that conversation with Ryn, they were definitely alone in the car together and I don’t know if it’s ever made clear whether Ryn or Dale tell Maddie about the conversation afterward or not.

So from Maddie’s point of view, she’s probably trying to be understanding about Ryn’s instincts and the things she’s been taught in the water about survival. And this combined with the understanding that Ryn FLEES her attacker when she’s somewhat physically disabled means that, while Maddie would obviously have preferred for Ian to live, Ryn has a pretty solid excuse. RYN knows that she’s been told it’s not good to kill people (or let people die I guess) if you can defeat them some other way and her attempt to get Maddie to blame her for it is a sign that she remembers that, even if she didn’t follow that rule at the time. She’s having to see her instinctive actions through a human lens.

Ben also isn’t the one who was kidnapped. So again, like with the fact that Ryn is disabled, Ben is far less at risk than Ryn is in this situation. And they all know it, they know that Ian would not have fought Ben if Ben had freed Ian and helped him up to the shore. Ryn’s secret is effectively out, but she knows she’s not supposed to be revealing herself and this is a situation where it would be MUCH better for her to flee. NONE of that is true of Ben.

And while this isn’t super clear and could be considered a headcanon, we know that Ryn SEES Ben coming, she looks at him as she leaves the car and then swims off and leaves Ben behind. I think there’s something of an unspoken “I’m fine, you don’t need to worry about me” and some kind of understanding on Ryn’s part that he’s going to go check on Ian. She doesn’t go grab Ben to swim back WITH him even though we know she goes straight back to Maddie. She LEAVES BEN WITH IAN. I think Ryn was maybe under the impression that Ben was going to free Ian and try to save him so she didn’t have to. I don’t think Ryn knew any more than Maddie did that Ben LET Ian die. She probably assumed that he either couldn’t get the door open and had to come up for air himself or that Ben was just too late or something and that Ian died despite Ben’s efforts, not because Ben didn’t MAKE any. So while she doesn’t say anything to Maddie, I think she’s under the impression that Maddie knows everything there is to know. Ryn obviously came up before Ben did and Ian was not with her, so there’s nothing to admit to that Maddie can’t figure out for herself.

Finally, Ryn’s actions aren’t out of character for her whereas Ben’s VERY much are for him and I think that’s something Maddie’s picking up on. I’ve discussed a few times how Maddie’s history with substance abuse issues and drug addiction in relationships with someone she loves are a long-standing character trait that has already caused her to break up with Ben once back in Season one. I think she’s recognizing the red flags and the signs that Ben is doing things that are uncharacteristic, but isn’t aware that it’s related to him being addicted again because she has no idea that he’s done that. Maddie KNOWS what she can handle in a relationship and this kind of erratic behavior isn’t it. She’s recognized a red flag and is leaving the relationship because of it. That isn’t true for Ryn. Ryn has already killed someone in Maddie’s defense, so she knows that that is something Ryn COULD do if she feels threatened enough and has clearly already chosen to accept that facet of Ryn’s personality in order to be in a relationship with her. She knows Ryn would not do something like that except under super dire circumstances, and being kidnapped while physically disabled would probably count as a dire circumstance. Again, as I’ve said a few times now, that ISN’T TRUE FOR BEN. Ben is not in dire circumstances, his life has never been in danger, and leaving people to die has just never been something he’s been willing to do before this episode. It’s not NORMAL for Ben, but it’s something Ryn has a history with, so it doesn’t bring up red flags for behavioral issues in Ryn the way it does with Ben, something Maddie recognizes as a dealbreaker for herself.

TL;DR I think Maddie has a POINT that it’s different for Ryn that it is for Ben. Ryn is only just learning that it isn’t okay to kill people in your own defense unless you have zero other choices, Ryn had been physically disabled and was very much more at risk from Ian than Ben was, and I don’t think Ryn lied to Maddie about anything.

Okay, on to the second ask about Maddie making a sarcastic comment to Ben referencing his letting Ian die after he makes some jealous comments about Robb.

Yes, it’s a bit of a low blow, but in her defense, Ben’s being kind-of an ass himself in this scene. He’s making some valid points, but he’s being ridiculously condescending and patronizing about it. They DIDN’T know that Robb was safe at the time, so he has a point that Maddie needs to be careful about how much Robb learns about her life, but it’s not as if Maddie doesn’t KNOW that already. Maddie is getting justifiably insulted and angry at Ben’s behavior and so she throws Ian’s death back in his face to remind him that Ben’s response to people learning things about the mermaids isn’t necessarily any better and he has no platform from which to preach at her about this issue. Especially since Ian got involved in the mermaid stuff THROUGH BEN.

And your argument that Ben made a split second decision based on a paranoid hallucination is kind-of a moot point because, as you said, Maddie doesn’t know shit about it, so how would she be able to take it into consideration when having an argument with Ben about what he did? And honestly, I don’t think she believes it was a premeditated incident, she’d be a LOT more worried about him if she thought he’d planned Ian’s murder somehow. No, she KNOWS it was a split second decision to just, let him drown and pass it off as an accident he couldn’t prevent. And the vision doesn’t change much. She KNOWS that Ben did it to try to protect Ryn and she understands the impulse to try to eliminate the threats to the mermaids, she just sees this as a step too far. I think even if she DID know that Ben had some sort of drug-induced hallucination, she STILL wouldn’t agree with him. She’d still tell him he went too far, that he crossed a line.

i’m a little confused at your argument, though, you say “she thinks ben is actually capable of that now when his choice was essentially made in seconds“ implying that the quickness of Ben’s decision is what exonerates him because it wasn’t pre-meditated but you follow it up with “[she’d] realize it wasn't some on a whim decision“. So is his justification for what he did that it wasn’t pre-meditated murder or is it that he thought it through somehow in like 5 seconds flat and decided it was worth it? Because those are two ENTIRELY different arguments for why Ben’s actions weren’t as bad as they seemed.

Finally, for your last ask, I too want them to find a way to help Ben with his addictions and I do hope the injections do something although next episode’s promo and blurb seem to imply the injections start having some BAD side effects finally which isn’t a good sign.

I agree that Ben/Ryn don’t work on their own well at all, at least not right now while Ben is lying to Ryn all over the place and not really communicating with her effectively.

I DISAGREE, though, that Maddie/Ryn don’t work on their own. I think Maddie/Ryn are the most healthy leg of this triangle right now and have been for a while. I wrote a post a little while ago about how I think Polymarine works because the three sort-of represent a balance of traits within each other and I still believe that and I hope we can get back to that. But I think Maddie and Ryn could absolutely work on their own without Ben in a way that Ben and Ryn DO NOT work without Maddie. Mainly because Maddie is the reasonable one, she’s the least impulsive of the three whereas both Ryn and Ben tend not to think too much before they leap and it gets them into trouble more often than it doesn’t. They each tend to enable each other and Maddie is their voice of reason. She’s also one of the most understanding and tolerant of the three, the one least likely to jump to violence as a first resort. I think that she and Ryn work as balances on each other in the same way that Ben and Maddie worked on their own before they met Ryn. I think for good polyamorous relationships to work, too, that the relationships between each leg needs to be good on its own, not just when they’re all together and that’s where the triad is having issues because Ben is making both of his relationships with Ryn and Maddie dysfunctional and unhealthy.

TL;DR I think there’s a LOT of reasons why Maddie might be seeing a difference between Ryn’s leaving Ian in the car and Ben’s leaving Ian in the car. I think while Maddie’s comment is certainly a low blow, it was done in reaction to Ben being an asshole so I’m letting that one go and Ben is still the first person Maddie calls when she needs help so she clearly still feels like she can rely on him when she needs him. I think Ben needs to work on fixing himself so he can make his separate relationships with Ryn and Maddie healthy again in order for Polymarine to work. I’m not arguing for Ben to be pushed out indefinitely, but I think I’d rather see Ben need to take a back seat than Maddie and there’s a lot of worry about Maddie getting sidelined for Ben/Ryn to take center stage and I can understand that worry.

[theomnilegent]

2019 Upcoming YA Fiction With Transgender, Nonbinary and Gender Non-Conforming Characters!

My last list focused on LGBTQA Fiction with female-led characters. There aren’t many of those this year that also happen to have transgender characters, so I’ve decided to put all the novels covering this topic in one list. It’s unfortunate there aren’t as many stories about transgender characters, let alone #ownvoices stories, but we can all hope that in the next year we’ll see even more! There are a few coming out stories, and a couple of romances in this batch of 2019′s LGBT fiction.

Below you’ll find titles, summaries, and goodreads links. Warning for mentions of transphobia and transphobic violence.

The Hand, The Eye & The Heart by Zoe Marriott Zhilan was assigned female at birth; despite an unusual gift for illusions, they know they will live out their life in the perfumed confines of the women’s quarters. But when civil war sets the country aflame, Zhilan is the only one who can save their disabled Father from death on the battlefield. By taking his place. Surviving brutal army training as a male recruit – Zhi – is only the first challenge. Soon Zhi’s unique talents draw them into an even more perilous fight, in the glittering court of the Land of Dragons, where love and betrayal are two sides of the same smile. The fate of an Empire rests on Zhi’s shoulders. But to win, they must first decide where their loyalty, and their heart, truly belongs. 

Zenobia July by Lisa Bunker Zenobia July is starting a new life. She used to live in Arizona with her father; now she's in Maine with her aunts. She used to spend most of her time behind a computer screen, improving her impressive coding and hacking skills; now she's coming out of her shell and discovering a community of friends at Monarch Middle School. People used to tell her she was a boy; now she's able to live openly as the girl she always knew she was. When someone anonymously posts hateful memes on her school's website, Zenobia knows she's the one with the abilities to solve the mystery, all while wrestling with the challenges of a new school, a new family, and coming to grips with presenting her true gender for the first time. Timely and touching, Zenobia July is, at its heart, a story about finding home.

In The Silences by Rachel Gold When did life get so dangerous? Kaz Adams just wants to read comic books with her best friend, Aisha Warren. And maybe get up the nerve to ask her out, if Kaz turns out to be a gender that Aisha’s into. Kaz figured she’d be the target of violence for her gender nonconformity, but a fatal police shooting thirty miles from their town opens her eyes to the realities of racism. She watches as pressures at school and in their social group mount against Aisha. Kaz would try to stop a bullet for Aisha if she had to, but she has no idea how to stop the waves of soul-crushing disapproval and judgment. When she talks to the other white students and adults in her area, they don’t seem to understand what she’s talking about. Aisha has helped Kaz find a place in the world, but that was about Kaz’s gender expression. Kaz can’t magically change the world for Aisha, but something has to change in their school system or she’ll lose the girl she loves.

I Wish You All The Best by Mason Deaver When Ben De Backer comes out to their parents as nonbinary, they're thrown out of their house and forced to move in with their estranged older sister, Hannah, and her husband, Thomas, whom Ben has never even met. Struggling with an anxiety disorder compounded by their parents' rejection, they come out only to Hannah, Thomas, and their therapist and try to keep a low profile in a new school. But Ben's attempts to survive the last half of senior year unnoticed are thwarted when Nathan Allan, a funny and charismatic student, decides to take Ben under his wing. As Ben and Nathan's friendship grows, their feelings for each other begin to change, and what started as a disastrous turn of events looks like it might just be a chance to start a happier new life. 

My Brother’s Name is Jessica by John Boyne Sam Waver's life has always been pretty quiet. A bit of a loner, he struggles to make friends, and his busy parents often make him feel invisible. Luckily for Sam, his older brother, Jason, has always been there for him. Sam idolises Jason, who seems to have life sorted - he's kind, popular, amazing at football, and girls are falling over themselves to date him. But then one evening Jason calls his family together to tell them that he's been struggling with a secret for a long time. A secret which quickly threatens to tear them all apart. His parents don't want to know and Sam simply doesn't understand. Because what do you do when your brother says he's not your brother at all? That he thinks he's actually... your sister?

Something Like Gravity by Amber Smith Chris and Maia aren’t off to a great start. A near-fatal car accident first brings them together, and their next encounters don’t fare much better. Chris’s good intentions backfire. Maia’s temper gets the best of her. But they’re neighbors, at least for the summer, and despite their best efforts, they just can’t seem to stay away from each other. The path forward isn’t easy. Chris has come out as transgender, but he’s still processing a frightening assault he survived the year before. Maia is grieving the loss of her older sister and trying to find her place in the world without her. Falling in love was the last thing on either of their minds. But would it be so bad if it happened anyway?

Everything Grows by Aimee Herman Fifteen-year-old Eleanor Fromme just chopped off all of her hair. How else should she cope after hearing that her bully, James, has committed suicide? When Eleanor’s English teacher suggests students write a letter to a person who would never read it to get their feelings out, Eleanor chooses James. With each letter she writes, Eleanor discovers more about herself, even while trying to make sense of his death. And, with the help of a unique cast of characters, Eleanor not only learns what it means to be inside a body that does not quite match what she feels on the inside, but also comes to terms with her own mother’s mental illness. Set against a 1993-era backdrop of grunge rock and riot grrl bands, EVERYTHING GROWS depicts Eleanor’s extraordinary journey to solve the mystery within her and feel complete. Along the way, she loses and gains friends, rebuilds relationships with her family, and develops a system of support to help figure out the language of her queer identity.

Kings, Queens, And In-Betweens by Tanya Boteju Perpetually awkward Nima Kumara-Clark is bored with her insular community of Bridgeton, in love with her straight girlfriend, and trying to move past her mother’s unexpected departure. After a bewildering encounter at a local festival, Nima finds herself suddenly immersed in the drag scene on the other side of town. Macho drag kings, magical queens, new love interests, and surprising allies propel Nima both painfully and hilariously closer to a self she never knew she could be—one that can confidently express and accept love. But she’ll have to learn to accept lost love to get there. 

What Makes You Beautiful by Bridget Liang Logan Osborne knows he likes boys, but has not come out to his family or at school, and no one knows that he likes to sometimes wear girls' clothes and makeup. When he starts at a school for the arts he finds a wider range of gender and orientation being accepted. Logan is attracted to Kyle, who has gay dads. But Kyle is straight. Logan finds he doesn't like the way gay boys treat him, and a disturbing hookup with a boy who is fetishistic about Logan's half-Asian background makes Logan even more confused about what he wants and who he is. Encouraged and supported by his friends at school, Logan experiments with nail polish and more feminine clothes in public. Logan begins questioning his gender and decides to use they pronouns while trying to figure things out. Logan meets a classmate's chosen mother, who is a transgender Chinese woman, and begins to come to terms with their gender identity. Realizing they are not a gay boy, but a transgender girl, Logan asks for people to call them Veronica. As a girl, does Veronica stand a chance with Kyle?

[sobdasha]

"I definitely updated my list of books I was reading on tumblr so it's all good" -me, a lying liar, right before spending several months finishing my reread of All The Discworld Books I Own But In Chronological Order For The First Time Ever Which In Fact Makes A Difference.

(and then I did it again after the libraries closed)

The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin Hm, so. I definitely read this. At some point. It was not really for me, not bad, but not really for me. This particular edition had various notes before and after the text, all of which I read, which made it an experience I got more out of. It's important for me to know that the author is aware that the protagonist is a raging misogynist who's stupid, and yes this was on purpose so you'd realize how really incredibly stupid he is and thus maybe be tricked into changing your mind yourself. It is a legit tactic, but one I tend not to enjoy, so if I hadn't been forewarned I'd have been UUUUGGGGGHHHH MAKE HIM SHUT UP ALREADY and probably rage-quit. As it was, I was able to better appreciate what Le Guin was doing here, even if this book didn't win a place in my heart and I probably won't reread. I definitely preferred Ancillary Justice's take, with the feminine pronouns. For my brain, masculine pronouns = they might as well all be men = business as usual = I didn't really get any gender queering from it. I can't really remember much else now. Oh, it was also part "survival in the wilderness" story, which they're big on making you read in school (which I find very suspicious), and which I tolerated and read a few classic ones on my own until they kept assigning these kinds of stories for us to read and now I get nothing from them and mindlessly hate them. Anyway, as I said, not bad at all but not really for me.

Lavinia, Ursula K. Le Guin This one's a reread--I picked it up from the library during college because we were doing Titus Andronicus in class and it didn't occur to me that there might be more than one Lavinia???? But hey it worked out because later in college we did the Aeneid and then I had Background for rereading Lavinia. This is the book that is lyrical and beautiful and pulls me in and makes me care deeply about the world and the characters. This is the book of Le Guin's that makes me feel the way everyone else feels about Earthsea and The Left Hand of Darkness and etc. I would like to find more of Le Guin's work that makes me feel the same way, because as I've said you can really tell from her other stuff that she's a solid writer who knows her stuff. I just…don't enjoy any of the other things. Anyway I recommend. I always forget about this book, and then when I reread I'm like "wow why don't I read this more often?????"

How Long 'Til Black Future Month?, N. K. Jemisin I liked every story in this short story collection. I should just reread it and try writing this up again tbh but also tbh I'll probably do the rereading and then just not write anything up again. Just read Jemisin's stuff I love her writing so much okay. ETA: that’s exactly what I did, I reread this during my covid rereads and said “I should do a proper write-up this time” and lo and behold where is it

Tehanu, Ursula K. Le Guin Okay, this last Earthsea book treated me much better than the others. It's probably not for everyone else, which might be why it's for me. It's much more domestic, much less "plot" happening, full of introspection, and centered on women rather than men. This novel acknowledges and confronts the rampant internalized misogyny in the previous three books, engages it in a way that the misandrist in me finds satisfying even though it never comes to a good solution for the problem. This book is more like a reflection. Earthsea has never been about "light is always good, dark is always bad; be a hero, fight evil" etc. But this one I think shifts the tone a little farther; it's less about balance, and more...I guess I'd put it as, "actions have consequences." It's not concerned with right or wrong, it's concerned with people getting hurt. It's pretty somber and serious, without any humor to balance it out, tons of bad things happen to people, lots of PTSD...but this time I really cared about the characters, and I feel like it was all handled really well? In addition to critiquing internalized misogyny, it also critiqued victim blaming. Seemed like it handled disability pretty well too--was honest about how people are jerks about it in reality, while still being optimistic and treating Therru as valuable; made occasional mentions of considering work-arounds for having only one fully-functional hand, while mostly just having Therru go about living and doing chores and being capable and assuming she did find those work-arounds without having to draw attention to it; and Therru's terrible scars didn't get magically healed at the end, the whole book makes a point all the way through that her physical scars will always be with her the same way her emotional scars will be, and she's simply learned how to go on living with them. Tehanu: a book full of trauma happening to people, where what would normally be the plot in a fantasy novel ended up not even getting started to be resolved, but Le Guin's writing and handling of the subject matter helped heal my jaded soul.

Ninefox Gambit, Yoon Ha Lee A quick summary of my experience: Chapter 1 - ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh what is going on what even Chapter 2 - no, no this is just, this is what sci fi is like, right? Just give it a few chapters and then by the end of the book everything will probably make sense. I'm sure that's how it works. Remember how even in Ancillary Justice I ended up with two separate Battles of Valskay, but now everything is fine??? It's. Fine. Chapter 4 - (ohhhhhhh I still don't know what's going on) Several Chapters Later - still no clue what's going on, but hit my stride with the terminology, my foreign language instinct kicked in where words stopped sounding weird and while I could not for the life of me define any terms for you, I had a vague comprehension of how the words operated In Context. Sort of. And by then I had, without realizing it, begun page-turning and binging, so I guess I liked the book lol! Another serious-but-not-funny one, but with an extra dose of War Memoir and all the gruesomeness that entails (but probably, like any good War Memoir, probably not actually gratuitous and actually in fact the necessary amount of gruesome). Jedao was turned into a woobie at the last minute and, well, damn, guy knows the way to my heart. The novel apparently gripped me enough that I don't even mind that it only came into play at the very end of the game. And hey, there's two more novels to deal with that revelation, which I have picked up from the library to read immediately! Yay! Current personal theory: based on the heavy math references that made me want to cry at the start, but the almost entire absence of actual numbers, and a reference to "there's no way actual physics works like that, it was obviously a calendrical effect" or something…I'm going to throw out a wild guess that the calendar stuff (and all the social structuring that goes with it) is so that they can break and reinvent math. So they can effect a universe where 2+2=5 and therefore a bunch of people standing in this exact position makes a force field or bullets of rose thorns or whatever and some other dude can make himself immortal. This sounded like a pretty terrible theory already and it sounds even worse now I've typed it up but oh well.

Raven Stratagems, Yoon Ha Lee Guess who didn't write this up back when she read it!!! Also, I returned Ninefox Gambit to the library right before the libraries shut down for covid. So, I had Raven and Revenant on hand for months but I didn't have Ninefox on hand to do an immediate reread to see if that made the sci fi make more sense. (It probably wouldn't have, but I would have liked to do a rereading while the ending was still fresh.) By this time there is a lesser degree of visceral viscera. Lee is brutal, however, about continuing to be honest about what war costs and whether war is worth that cost (which depends, really, on whose lives you think matter. Very relevant for these times. Very much prepared me to shut up and not whine about the inconveniences of protests and their fallout. There is no pretty and clean way to have a revolution, since it involves destroying a particular [terrible] way of life, so we're all just gonna have to sacrifice together). Also I think by this point all the character development from the first novel paid off in the form of character dynamics being hilarious now despite, y’know, the gruesome shadow of war.

Revenant Gun, Yoon Ha Lee Continues to discuss the honest price of war and the messiness of fallout. Shuos "The risks I took were calculated, but boy am I bad at math" Jedao. Oh I think this is also the one where every so often one of the characters thinks, "Okay so this person is a tyrannical murderous dictator but he is ensuring that there will never again be food shortages and no one in the space empire ever goes hungry." And then Lee turns around and is like, "Haha but don't forget this same person invented a form of vital infrastructural technology (and also immortality) that is optionally based off ritual human torture sacrifice. Like he didn't have to do that to make it work. He just decided to anyway. And that's always bad :) " (Also useful in our current climate of "Okay but we should consider the other person's circumstances and point of view" and also "Yeah but that doesn't apply if they're literally Nazis tho.")

Hexarchate Stories, Yoon Ha Lee A collection of short stories set in the universe of those three books. There's one story at the end that does satisfy the "But I wanted another sequel!!!" urge. And there's a bit of backstory for Jedao and Cheris. But by and large what you should be in the mood to read is flash fiction snippets that simply happen to be set in the same universe but have no bearing on the plot. Which is pretty cool and interesting if you are in the proper mindset! Even better, Lee includes author's notes at the end of each story to talk about the story, or the influences, or the context of his life at the time, etc etc. That is always my absolute favorite part of a short story collection. Also these notes told me everything I needed to know about why I liked certain things about his writing. "I wanted to write my own AUs," "If I get stuck I go on TV Tropes," "My only regret is that I had to cut the scene where Jedao goes to ~Halloween~ dressed as himself and trolls people" ahhhh that's also a regret I share.

Dragon Pearl, Yoon Ha Lee This one is YA! There is a lot less gore although I guess there was still genocide! Read this when you are in the mood for something that doesn't attempt to hide the fact that the plot is completely, conveniently contrived to give you fast-paced action and fun. Min sure has a lot of coincidental meetings that should stretch my disbelief but I don't care. Also, I am enjoying reading books with girls as protagonists that do what I'm tired of being told to love about boy protagonists--just keep barreling along with complete self-assurance that you are right and, if you run into trouble, you can egotistically figure your way out.

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N. K. Jemisin Gods and mortal ruling family's messy soap opera sexcapades is not exactly my favorite genre, but luckily it is handled by Jemisin so it's all good. Lots of Souma Family Values. I'm really appreciating how Jemisin considers choice of narrator very carefully and uses it to brilliant effect in this trilogy. Stories are things told by a narrator to an audience; why should we rely on the artifice of an "impartial" "reliable" "omniscient" 3rd person narrator writing into the void? This trilogy was Jemisin's first, I believe, so it's a little awkward coming back to them now, only because Jemisin is such a powerful writer that the themes she's begun working with here have only gotten stronger with each successive work.

The Broken Kingdoms, N. K. Jemisin This one I rated as I read for Protagonist Is Blind based on the scale of a sighted person going "but some of my best friends are blind!" In that regard, I think the book does really well! Blindness doesn't define Oree's life and value; Oree doesn't get magical powers that make her a blind person who isn't really blind; Oree moves away from home and gets a job and lives on her own which seems very accurate to me based on my knowledge of one (1) person who is blind; instead of being ~cured~, Oree actually gets more blind at the end of the story and this is considered a Good Ending. Also personal bonus points are awarded for references to her stick being handy for hitting people with. Some stuff was stereotypical, but Jemisin's intent was not. A+, will read again, please support including way more characters who are blind in media. Anyway I enjoyed this one.

The Kingdom of Gods, N. K. Jemisin First off, Jemisin directly up front critiques the narration choices she made in the first two books and then pays it off like a boss at the end. Like holy crap. I admit by now I was getting a bit bored of the genre, but the book was still very engaging because Jemisin is a master. It may also have been affected by how much increasing pain I've been in lately.

The Awakened Kingdom, N. K. Jemisin I'm dead. This one was way more my speed and you need the other three books to understand this novella but ohhhh my god it's perfect. I read a lot of choice passages of this aloud to my roommate because how could you resist. It's still heavy but it's hilarious. Bless Shill.

[radiqueer]

As a future high school teacher (only 6 months from teaching full-time), I want to ask any advice, complaints, or info you wish more teachers would take into account when interacting with their teenage students. Thank you so much for your time in advance. :)

[crowdsourced from the adultism discord]

let people fucking pee

to whatever extent you can downplay the significance of grades, that's probably good

you can extrapolate this post about college students to school students

to whatever extent you can let your students customize things to their own needs/interests that's probably good

don't be racist

"the more control your students have over their education, the better" is a good maxim 

maybe you can quietly not enforce some of the shittiest aspects of school like the pledge of allegiance, dress code, etc

it's much less pressuring to lead by example. if you're sitting down, no one will stand up. literally no one cares but the teacher doing it makes you think you have to.

im sorry that the entire rest of the school system will be fighting you every step of the way in doing anything really decent for kids

fuck homework

teens who behave "badly" are probably dealing with a lot of shit! i doubt a teacher's going to get away with not punishing anyone ever but please don't lose your compassion

apologize to your students when necessary

a good rule of thumb for if something is ageist is simply "would i do this to an adult in the same situation?" it's not 100% but if the answer is no, ask yourself why not

don’t stab anyone?

don't publicly humiliate your students. don't micromanage them (e.g. chastising someone for doodling in class). on that note, if a student needs an alternate workaround for something, recognize that standing up for your unique needs is commendable and be as flexible as you can. don't be overtly ageist (e.g. calling young people 'brats' or showing 'hilarious' videos of cruelty to children). don't flex your power and privilege! you shouldn't be emphasizing your power over students unless the topic of conversation is specifically adultism and how to combat it

laziness does not exist

walking around all the time like some racist police officer when students are doing independent work. don't do that!!! you're saying that we can't be trusted. depending on the subject, you might want to walk around to check if anyone needs help. but make sure to announce your intentions before.

bathroom policy - unless the school actually cares about it, having a bathroom pass is dumb, and also verrryy unhygienic. the sign in and sign out thing is a waste of paper and you're definitely not gonna check who went to pee at what time. just let them go like normal people jfc. and make sure to explicitly say your bathroom policy. it's hard for students to memorize bathroom policies for 6+ classes, so you could have a poster with the rules on it or something

explicitly telling students stuff. If you're going to go against the practices of everyone else, like bathroom policy, and  the pledge. you can't just imply stuff, or else the students WILL micromanage themselves.

Give time for homework, if assigned, to be done in class

to add to that, doing multiple deadlines for aspects of the project. for example, having a rough draft ready in 1 week, having the 2nd draft ready in 2 weeks, etc

Also, for the love of all that is good in this world, talk about term projects? Like, if it’s known at the beginning that it’ll be due towards the end, mention that it needs to be done more than like two days before it’s due

learn the symptoms of CSA, parental abuse, depression, anxiety, adhd, and autism. the inclusive versions. look for resources on identifying trauma and mental illness among black and brown people separately. 

learn how to advocate for your students without landing them in shit with their parents.

just, generally, advocate for your students. help them figure out how to get treatment or support for their mental illnesses, and just treatment and support in general

look out for disabled kids! esp kids with invisible disabilities.

try to be as supportive of queer and questioning kids as possible. 

I hope this helps!

[jackednephi]

I feel posting what all I sent my mother on Skype is worth copying and pasting into its own post here. I combined messages into more coherent paragraphs for easier reading but I'm on mobile with no cut so heads up for the long post

--------------

https://captaintoughfluff.tumblr.com/post/185744166784/hey-so-uhhh-heres-an-important-update-on-whats

Read this. Do not look away. Read it to dad, to Daniel, and to Heather. Share it with everyone you know. You voted for this. All of you voted to do this to human beings. He told you he was going to make this happen and you voted for him anyway. May God have mercy on you for these poor souls surely won't

I'm not saying this to be unkind but for you to witness the harm you yourself have done with your vote. You allowed a Nazi regime to rise because you knew you would be protected by your whiteness. You did not give a thought to people of color, the disabled, queer individuals. Because it was more important to "make America great again" than it was to have an ounce of decency

You can be sorry and feel terrible all you like but your privileged tears mean nothing in the light of your actions. Impact will always mean more than intent and you and others like you have done this. You and dad taught me to think critically, to read between the lines, to research and compare instead of being taken in by false promises or a glittery circus. And you have failed to uphold that which you taught me

Do not look away. Do not flinch. This is what you said you wanted when you cast your vote. You must vote in the primaries and come the general election, if you vote for him again, I will know exactly what kind of people you are at your heart. The kind of people you raised me to be better than. And there will be no room in my life for Nazi sympathizers so you and dad can see yourselves out if it comes to that

I'm going to hold you accountable for the egregious wrong you have committed because somebody has to. You need to see the harm you've done. And you need desperately to repent and hope the lord has forgiveness to spare and pray these thousands of people do not condemn you at the judgement seat. You are responsible for this. You and so many others

You once told me when I was a child that I must have done something great before this existence. I was a powerful spirit to be pregnant with and that I was born in the covenant and had great spiritual powers and whatnot. If that is true then I can tell you exactly what I did. I condemned Satan for all he was worth to you, to dad, to our whole family. I stood up and told you to turn back. That all he had to offer was pretty lies that would only hurt you

That is what I'm doing now. It made me unpopular with [my older brother] when I called him on his racist behavior in 2014 and he hasn't spoken with me since. I did it with [aunt] when she was being transphobic and she has since disowned me as well. I did it with [my younger brother] when he told me I was a dirty sin just for existing. [Eldest brother] and [older sister] may have led armies. I don't know. But I helped convince my family to choose the right and accept mortal existence. I helped you all realize that Lucifer's path was full of pain. I failed to help you realize that Trump was full of pain for people who aren't us but you are also responsible for your own actions. It is my duty to stand for what is right even if it isn't popular. Even if my own family condemns and disowns me. I helped get you all here and I'm trying to get you all back. And maybe I failed to do that

So I will continue to condemn what is wrong with everything I have. And I will continue to use my knowledge that I have gained looking into social issues and current events to show you what is objectively right and good. It's what I did before because it's what I'm doing now and we do not fundamentally change with mortal existence. Our core is still the same. I am as bright and beautiful as I ever was, as good and righteous and strong as I have ever been. I will not allow myself to walk a path of hatred, of pain, of wrong and I cannot in good faith allow my family to do that either. That's why I rail so hard, send you such painful truths. Because you and dad, grandma and [uncle] are all I have left

No one else talks to me. No one else reaches out. I have to help who I can help and hope that who I help can help everyone else. If I achieve nothing else in this life, to bring you back because I could help you understand and choose the right and be better people, that's something powerful. Maybe I can't save everyone this time but at least I'll have saved you. At least I'll have helped the people who taught me to think critically, stand for the defenseless and weaker than myself, to be good and just and bright, and, above all, to be the kindest person I can be

I say all of this not for an apology or explanation. I know why you voted the way you did in your own words. I also know what other factors influenced you. It's not me you owe an apology to at all or an explanation. But rather than apologies, I need you to BE better. I need you to do the work of unlearning racism, classism, ableism, xenophobia, queerphobia, and other forms of bigotry. It isn't going to happen overnight. It's taken me slow progress over several years and I'm far from perfect. I make mistakes all the time. The key is learning from those mistakes, dusting myself off, and continuing to press forward and educate myself. I apologize to those I hurt and then I work to not make those mistakes ever again

Just the other day, I was drawing something for [redacted] and accidentally did something racist with the eyes I was drawing. So I fixed it. I said something antisemitic about Anne Frank I didn't even know it was an issue. Someone brought it to my attention, I educated myself, then I apologized and deleted the offending comment and have done my best to educate others on why what I said was antisemitic to other people making the same mistake I did. The key is continually improving myself

I know this is a wall of text but you need to be told all of these things. You need to see wherein you've made an egregious error and then improve yourself. You need to use your voice of privilege to call others on bigotry. If you do not correct wrong where you see it, if you stay silent or do nothing, you are siding with that wrong. So educate yourself so you never stand with wrong, so you minimize your hurt on other people. Just like I'm doing. I'm using my knowledge to educate to the best of my ability so someone else can then do that. Good and bad are both like snowballs at the top of a mountain. Get them rolling and either can be an avalanche. The key is making sure that we ourselves are a good snowball

I love you or I would never say any of this. I don't go to all this effort for people I don't love and cherish

-------------------

I just feel like I said some really powerful, really strong things and had some good metaphors like the snowball I wanted to share. I just felt like I was really eloquent spur of the moment this morning after I read that tumblr post I sent before anything else. I know my words can be harsh but I also feel like I did this much more kindly than I have in the past and I'm overall really proud of myself here

Feel free to reblog this by the way or to interact. Sometimes I tell y'all not to but this is free game

[tyrus-time]

my perspective on TJ’s story (as of 3.13)

Over the past few days, I’ve gone back and forth several times about whether to post my response to, yknow, the Gay Angst. OBVIOUSLY I’m heartbroken, as a Tyrus shipper and someone who is deeply invested in their characters as individuals, to see the two of them hurting. But I know this drama is a plot device and that Tyrus, one way or another, will be endgame. 

Currently, I am feeling anxious about how much development we will actually get to see for them... but that’s in the future, and I’m trying to focus on the now.

No, there’s some other stuff that made me feel angry and disappointed and honestly, foolish when I first watched the episode.... I wrote out a rant on my phone, and then I added to it later, and now I’m trying to make some sense out of it... now that I’m calmer (but still sad) about it. 

This is a pretty long, critical post, so feel free to keep scrollin! 

(I reallyjust need to get this out of my system so I can move on.)

I know some people are actually glad that TJ’s storyline is addressing homophobia, but I gotta be honest with yall: I, personally, am not. I’m honestly devastated that this is the route they took, especially since it still seems the gay themes are mostly subtextual. 

As of now, there is a LOT of room for interpretation regarding what is going through TJ’s mind and what Kira’s implied threat was actually implying. I don’t interact with children, like, at all... so I really have no idea how much they’d be picking up on.

And I feel kinda uncomfortable with the show using themes of homophobia/the threat of being outed/etc... just to create drama and conflict between characters? Using homophobia as a plot device in this way, without even beginning to deconstruct homophobia, comes off as semi-exploitative to me?? Which is probably because I’m just so tired of Gayngst, which is really my main issue with this storyline...

I am exhausted of the pattern of gay characters struggling with homophobia (internalized or otherwise) and this then causing them to hurt/betray their (gay) love interests. 

Being gay and having relationship angst is one thing. But always having angst related to being gay? It is a well-worn trope that I am do not like.

It’s “realistic,” yes, but it’s frequently been done before — hence the TV tropes page on it.

While it is important to portray the affects of homophobia upon LGBT+ and questioning individuals, there must be a balance! 

When Gayngst-y representation is the main representation you see, it feels like that’s the ONLY narrative. You are left with the idea that being LGBT+ means you WILL suffer, that you NEED to struggle with your sexuality/gender because that’s how the identity development process is ‘supposed’ to go. And it shouldn’t have to be that way.

(I speak from personal experience)

This is why I’m so passionate about studying LGBT+ media representation. Media informs us of social norms, scripts, expectations; what is acceptable and what is appropriate; how we’re supposed to think and feel and behave. It’s often very subtle, but all of those images and narratives become internalized and affect how you understand yourself, the world around you, and how you fit in to that world.

Media images shouldn’t just reflect society as it is today; it should offer images of a brighter future.

There’s this resonant quote from the musical Hadestown:

“He could make you see how the world could be, in spite of the way that it is.”

And that’s what I so dearly want to see in LGBT+ representation. 

It breaks my heart whenever people say things like, “it’s unrealistic for a young gay teen to be comfortable with their identity.” It truly breaks my heart and makes me want to change the narrative.

We should have stories that should how the world CAN be, not just how it often ‘realistically’ is. 

I want to see worlds that AREN’T heteronormative, because I’m hopeful for a future in which we truly do dismantle heterosexism. 

I want to see queer relationships that go through the “normal” difficulties of dating someone, such as dealing with typical awkwardness and learning to communicate better... instead of dealing with external and internalized homophobia. 

Perhaps I’m asking too much, and shouldn’t be this hopeful in 2019, but I will continue to assert the need for joyful, celebratory queer stories that diverge from the trend of queer tragedy.

And I really was hoping that Andi Mack could show this radical possibility that gay people can just be HAPPY sometimes, but.... this is Disney channel.... So I guess I’m not really surprised, but I am still disappointed.

Disappointed not just because I was hoping for an unashamedly gay character, but also because I could see TJ realistically having little conflict over his gayness. (I made a post about this months ago, and I’ll probably be repeating those points now.)

TJ’s concern about how people perceive him has been well-established, re: the dyscalculia storyline. However, I’ve always had an affinity for the concept that because he cares about Cyrus so deeply, he is able to come to terms with his gayness without as much turmoil as one might expect. I think this concept is even more valid after the gun incident, with TJ standing up to his previous friends in order to do the right thing, and admitting that Cyrus is the best thing in his life.

“But ash, this is just you being a hopeless romantic!” you might say. But wait! I have more evidence!

I now realize just how much I was projecting myself onto TJ in regards to his insecurities, and it really had nothing to do with romance:

I have always had this complex duality of “I don’t care what people think!! I gotta be true to myself” and “Oh my god, I care so much and I’m so socially anxious.” (I bet some of you can relate.) 

The thing is... while I feel self-conscious about my transness on a near-daily basis... I’ve been pretty unapologetically queer since I realized that I actually had a gay crush. 

Granted, I was already a big ‘ally’ with several LGB friends in a fairly liberal area, and this gay awakening was in high school (not middle school). So TJ wouldn’t have all of that going for him.

But my thought processes (regarding my insecurities) has always been: 

If people don’t like me for who I am, then they’re not worth my time... 

But if people negatively judge me for my abilities? Game over, I’m an insecure mess. THAT’S what I’m most insecure about: seeming dumb or weak or incapable. 

And again, maybe this is just self-indulgent projection, but I think this fits TJ, too.

In S2, TJ clearly is so insecure because he thinks he’s stupid since he struggles with math. And since he’s a jock, perhaps at first he can play off his bad grades with the whole “Oh, I’m a athlete, and getting good grades is for nerds, and I’m cooool” (or whatever rhetoric is used nowadays but middle school boys). BUT having a learning disability is far scarier, because it solidifies (in HIS mind) that there is something inherently wrong with his brain.

I could go on and on, analyzing TJ’s inner psyche, but the point is: 

I could see him being insecure about his physical and mental skills such as basketball and math, yet being self-assured of his sexuality. 

This would also be a realistic option for his character — in my opinion at least, because my own life experiences align well with this interpretation, and well, that’s gotta count for something because I’m pretty sure I’m a real person, even if my experiences aren’t widely shared?

TLDR; The way that they ended taking TJ’s character is a “realistic” option, but it’s not the option that I would’ve chose — both for personal reasons (personally relating to TJ, and wanting to see Tyrus be happy) AND social reasons (believing that children should be able to see a character who isn’t show to struggle with self-acceptance, especially since we already saw Cyrus be scared of himself for being gay).

This isn’t to take away the validity of anyone who DOES relate to/support TJ’s current arc! This is me just sharing my own perspective (and trying to get the sad feelings out of my system). 

My whole approach to media representation is challenging the “good representation” vs “bad representation” binary, because doing so is incredibly counterproductive and oversimplified. Instead, we should be constantly asking “What is the context for this representation? What is valuable about it? What are it’s flaws? How could be possibly do better in the future?” So I can see advantages of this particular storyline, but I also have some criticisms that I believe to be substantiated.

[missytearex]

It’s that time again! I’ve had a lot of free time to read this month, so I think this is gonna be a good one. Here are my favourites!

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Larry

~ you came into my life by disgruntledkittenface | @disgruntledkittenface (57k)

Summary: They stand around talking for a minute and then Jonathan starts to ramble, “Has there ever been, like, an unrequited gay love story in here? Like a Brokeback Mountain moment where, like, someone just fell in love and they didn’t mean to?”

Louis feels bile rise in his throat as Jonathan’s eyes sparkle, pleading for a yes. He manages to look around and see thoughtful looks on his coworkers’ faces before their heads shake no.

“Not here,” Liam says finally.

When the Queer Eye cast and crew sweep into Louis’ small town and fire station to make over his best friend and coworker Liam, Louis’ carefully constructed walls start to fall down and he has to face his fears – and the only guy he’s ever been able to see a future with.

My comment: This one is making it as one of my ALL TIME favourite fics. I completely fell in love with every single character! You can clearly see how Louis gets something different from each of his relationships with the different characters and it is absolutely stunning. Louis’ internal struggle is really well written and I just wanted to give him a hug! Also, I started watching Queer Eye after reading this.

________________________________________________________________

Lilo

~ Which One Of Us Is Caving by wasp | @apayneinthearse (18k)

Summary: Liam doesn't regret hiring Louis, it's the furthest thing from it. He's clever and quick-witted and he's good with people in a way Liam never was. It's amazing, he's amazing and Liam doesn't understand how he survived so long without him. In the professional sense.

My comment: I reeeeeeeeaaaally love slow burn fics! And I mean Louis as Liam’s cheeky assistant? Perfect.

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Lirry

~ fishing in the dark by countthestars | @moondoggiestyle (12k)

Summary: Liam is the night janitor at a clandestine research facility, and Harry is its best kept secret.

My comment: This story is probably as realistic as you can get with mermaid fic. I didn’t expect to love it as much as I did. It’s so beautifully written and emotional - I actually wanted to cry at some point. This fic is a gift and you should read it.

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Narry

~ by your side by littlervoice | @littlervoice (8k)

Summary: “What does Niall look like?”

“Why don’t you ask him yourself?” Zayn counters. Harry can feel him shifting on the bed next to him, moving to sit cross legged as he always does when Harry gets serious. “Because people always talk themselves down,” Harry says. “Like when you told me you’re nothing special even though I have it on good authority that you’re a walking talking god.”

Harry is blind and Niall gets partnered up with him for a project.

My comment: Ok, I have a weakness for disabled characters. And fluff. And Narry. So this was just perfect! Such a fun read!

________________________________________________________________

Niam

~ These Little Things That Bind Us (orphan_account) (76k)

Summary: All of a sudden, there’s a voice at his ear. “How’re you doin’, mate?” Liam jumps about a foot, but somehow manages to stay balanced on his barstool without spilling a drop of his drink. He needs to calm down if he wants to avoid attracting any attention from Malik and his cronies. Steeling himself, he squares his shoulders and turns to face the voice. And then he actually does spill his drink. All over the shirt of one Niall Horan. Liam lives a comfortable life; he works as a policeman, and his lovely girlfriend has just moved into his flat. However, everything changes when he's assigned to go under cover and gather information about a rising star of London’s criminal under world, Zayn Malik, and his ragtag band of criminals. This band just happens include a cheery, fair haired Irishman who quite literally charms the pants off of Liam and, before he knows it, Liam finds himself facing a choice between love and duty.

My comment: Where do I even begin with this one? I kept getting immersed and forgetting that Liam was actually undercover but then I would remember and the ANGST! Certainly an emotional roller coaster. Stayed with me long after I finished reading it. 

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Nouis

~ heart out on my sleeve by temerity (forsanethaec) | @1dgaf (29k)

Summary: After Zayn drops out of Hogwarts just before their last year in Slytherin, Louis is left adrift. In a high-level Charms class tasked with finishing the rebuilding of the castle, he strikes up an unlikely friendship with Niall Horan of Hufflepuff, and learns more than he expected along the way. (A Harry Potter AU set eight years after the Battle of Hogwarts.)

My comment: I absolutely love reading about post-battle Hogwarts. Everything has a different kind of feel to it. Slytherin!Louis and Huffelpuff!Niall complement each other so well and the descriptions of the spells are incredible. Loved everything about this fic!

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Zarry

~ In Pursuit of the Extraordinary by blainedarling | @zaynbastian (31k)

Summary: Zayn is eight years old when he realises that he’s different. Contortion comes as naturally to him as walking does to most people—what doesn’t come naturally is acceptance from people around him. His family find it odd and the children at school think he’s a freak. The closest he comes to acceptance in his time at high school is through his gym teacher, Dave, who teaches him how to train his body and respect his gift; and Harry, a beautifully wild boy he meets by chance at a party who, too, has a secret talent. It's years before he'll see Harry again and find a place where he can excel at his talents.

A Zayn-centric story about the struggles of being different or unusual, and finding family in unexpected places.

My comment: This story was absolutely AMAZING! Reading about Zayn’s struggles was HEARTBREAKING and it made me so HAPPY and RELIEVED when he finally found his home.

________________________________________________________________

Ziall

~ Maybe It's A Hangover, Maybe I'm In Love by lucy_and_ramona (28k)

Summary: summer fling!au. Niall and Zayn meet at one of Harry's parties, where everyone is excited to move on to the next chapter of their lives. Everyone except them. Drunk and out of their depth, they hook up. They keep hooking up, and attempt to start a casual relationship, only Zayn's definitely falling, and Niall's trying to ignore the fact that he is, too.

My comment: I loved how the relationship progressed in this. How Niall kept wanting to hold back but kind of being unable to help himself. It was just so easy to read. 

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Ziam

~ it keeps my veins hot (the fire's found a home in me) by loveontherocks (51k)

Summary: "You think anyone said thanks?" Zayn asks, his voice wrecked and shredded, half whisper, half reminiscent of pubescent teenaged years.

Harry looks at him like he's lost his mind. "Thanks to who?"

Zayn shrugs, finally bringing the cigarette up to his lips, igniting the flame of his lighter. "The firefighters. They're the ones who got us out, right? They're why you and I are here on this couch right now. Right?"

Harry purses his lips. "Dunno. Wasn't a priority of mine, I guess."

It should be, Zayn thinks.

or; the one where zayn survives a fire and falls in love with the firefighter that saved him.

My comment: Firefighter Liam is one of my favourite things! Zayn struggling with his anxiety over what happened seemed so real. And all the pining!! The PINING! Just read it.

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Zouis

~ swing my heart across the line by jarpadsalecki (21k)

Summary: "Louis was trying to come up with all the ways Liam could have died--car crash, he was figuring, but Liam was the safest driver he knew--and ringing up a particularly large order for a thirty-something year old woman and her three kids when a figure appeared out of the corner of his eye. Well, fucking finally he had a bagger. He glanced to his left, hopefully, to see if it was Liam.

It wasn’t."

The one where Louis is the star cashier, Harry is the cafe boy, Niall works in the deli, and when Liam is promoted from bagging to dairy, Zayn from produce is his replacement. Louis is not happy about that.

My comment: This was such a fun lighthearted read! And guys, the scene with the body shots...omg. LOVED these two characters together.

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Gryles

~ The Seaweed Is Always Greener by goseaward (25k)

Summary: The fairytales are pretty clear: Don't go near land. Don't go near humans. Definitely don't fall in love. And whatever you do, don't ask the Sea Witch for help.

A modern-day Little Mermaid AU.

My comment: This was a fun one! Harry’s character is so quirky and Nick just kinda goes along with everything. 

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Tomlinshaw

~ Butter With You by driveinbingo | @joekavaliers (26k)

Summary: ”You’ve got egg on your face”, says Louis.

Nick isn’t quite following. ”What?”

Louis rolls his eyes. ”You’ve got egg on your cheek. Looks stupid.”

Nick could be inside with a cup of tea and a scone right now. Nick had thought – perhaps naively - that they were past all this now. That they could go back to behaving like adults.

”Right, I’m not gonna do th –”, is all he gets out before Louis practically launches himself at Nick, mouth first.

Or, the Tomlinshaw GBBO AU nobody asked for.

My comment: I actually want to cry from how good this is. Enemies to lovers, baking angst, BAKING! asdfghjkl READ IT!

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OT5

~ Let It Be Lightning by alexenglish | @queerlyalex (41k)

Summary: Niall Horan made a choice when he enlisted with the Pan Pacific Defense Corps. Leave his family and try to make a difference. He started out as a Jaeger Tech, elbow-deep in the greasy guts of the machines that were supposed to save the world, but here he is, five years later, fresh out of the Ranger Academy with another choice to make:

Assemble a team of Rangers able to pilot two or more Jaegers at any given moment. Interchangeable partnerships, all Drift Compatible with each other. The implications of pulling off this project are astronomical, but at the end of the day, Niall's just worried about how many people are going to end up inside his head.

My comment: Science fiction! Polyamory! Queer themes! What more could you possibly want? I didn’t want it to end. Just amazing.

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And that’s it for this month! I’m starting a course next month so I won’t have as much time to read. We’ll see how it goes!

You can join me on my reading adventure at @niccihoranson, where I bookmark all my 1D fic recommendations!

[blind-rats]

What’s the difference between fan fiction and “real” writing? It’s a question that main character Claire ponders in Ship It, Britta Lundin’s debut young adult novel. Is it because it’s not published in a concrete book? Because it doesn’t use original characters? Because it doesn’t make money? According to Claire, who’s a fanfic writer herself, “No, we all know it’s none of those things. It’s merely this: “Real writing” is done by serious people, whereas fan fiction is written by weirdos, teenagers, degenerates and women.”

It’s passages like these that help elevate the story, because it’s clear Lundin — who was a fanfic writer herself — has intimate and firsthand knowledge of the subject. Ship It (adapted from Lundin’s own unproduced screenplay) is about a teenage girl who fiercely “ships” the two male leads in a fictional, CW-esque television drama called Demon Heart and who, once she winds up joining the cast for a publicity tour, is on a mission to make that ship a reality.

The just-released book’s recurring themes — fandom, the LBGTQ community, life on the internet (Tumblr, to be exact) and the thin line between art and its consumers — aren’t written from an outside perspective, but from someone who’s been deep in those trenches. (The original Ship It screenplay is what helped land Lundin her first job as a TV writer, on the CW’s Riverdale.)

During a phone interview just days before the book’s May 1 release, Mic spoke with Lundin about Ship It’s origins, queerness and how Hollywood could benefit from listening to enthusiastic, vocal fans.

Mic: How did the book come about? The story is reminiscent of the Supernatural fandom and the controversy that occurred at a convention.

Britta Lundin: I get asked a lot if Demon Heart is a stand-in for Supernatural. I think Supernatural fans will find something very familiar in it, but it’s not. There’s so many shows that have been put in the same position where fans see a gay relationship on the show that the creators never intended to be there, and suddenly there’s conflict between the fans and the writers or the actors about what is the truth [and] who gets to decide what characters are gay. It’s not just Supernatural; there’s Teen Wolf, Once Upon a Time, Sherlock. Hopefully the show feels relatable to any fan who’s been part of one of these fandoms that is looking to see themselves in the media.

I’ve been in fandom for a really long time. It started with X-Files fandom back in middle school — you know, the message boards and the fan fiction that was posted on Geocities. Now, fandom looks a lot different. For instance, I was in House fandom, and House was a show where you could definitely see romantic sparks between House and Wilson. We were all wise back then to know that that was actually never going to happen because you never really saw gay people on TV.

Now I think fans feel a little bit more empowered to be like, “No, why can’t it happen? Why can’t these two characters get together? In fact, I think the world would be a better place if they did get together, if we did have more gay characters on TV.” The root of the story is basically a teenage girl who won’t stand for it.

Ship It is told through the first-person perspective of two characters: Claire and Forest, a lead actor on Demon Heart. Why did you include the dueling viewpoints?

BL: For two reasons. The first was I was looking at the script and I thought, “Well, there’s a lot of parts of this story that Claire’s not privy to,” so if I’m going to tell this in first person, I either have to put Claire in those scenes so she can tell the story, or she’s overhearing it or someone’s telling it to her secondhand. The root of the story is the idea that there’s the side of the show that the fans see, and then there’s the side of the show that’s actually happening. Sometimes those match up and are the same thing, and sometimes they’re very different.

The other thing is, I really wrote this for fans and for fandom. I think they’re going to see a lot of themselves in there and recognize a lot of the references and the tropes. [But] I also wanted it to be accessible to people who knew nothing about fandom. The nice thing about having Forest is he starts off the book knowing absolutely nothing. When he asks really basic, simple questions about fandom — or even when he’s asking Tess [Claire’s love interest] about her sexuality and she’s answering in these really complicated Tumblr terms that sort of are overwhelming — I hope that that is a conduit for people who also don’t know anything about fandom [or] about internet culture.

There’s a recurring theme about fan entitlement, and how Claire doesn’t think the show only belongs to the showrunner. As someone who straddles those two worlds of fan and TV writer, what are your thoughts?

BL: I always struggle with the world “entitlement” when it comes to fans because when you look at what options fans have, their options are very limited. They can either watch the show or not watch the show, and if they’re not a Nielsen Household, whether or not they watch doesn’t even get registered. It doesn’t even matter. The only real option after that is maybe to tweet — they’re using their voice the only way they have. That’s literally the only power they have.

Creators calling fans “entitled” feels like the ultimate punching down to me, because creators are the ones who hold all the power. They’re the ones who get to decide what happens on the show. They’re the ones who make the creative decisions. The fans can’t do any of that. All they can do is try to make their voice heard. That’s where I come from, and I understand that it can be hard as a creator when you log onto Twitter and there’s a lot of people asking you to do your job in the way that makes them happy. That’s what Twitter filters are for, you know?

Let’s talk about Claire and Tess’ relationship because there’s tension there: Claire is figuring her sexual identity out while Tess is more sure of herself, and they clash.

BL: I thought, “How interesting for this girl who is so confident about her fandom and social justice issues [to also be] really unsure about herself.” That’s certainly something that I related to when I was 16. I didn’t know anything about myself, but I sure had very strong opinions about the current political situation. It feels like a very teenager place to be.

A hard thing about sexuality is it’s so squishy and hard to pin down, especially when you’re young and you haven’t had a ton of experiences yet. “Well, I like one girl. Does that make me a lesbian? Does that make me bisexual or pansexual? Or something else entirely?” You have a world of options available to you and you’re trying to define yourself. It feels like a huge commitment because as soon as you define yourself one way [or] you come out to your parents — and even if your parents are super supportive — it feels like that is forever. Later you can’t un-come out, so that’s what Claire is struggling with — even though you totally can do that, and you can redefine your sexuality as many times as you want.

On the other side we’ve got Tess, who totally knows what her sexuality is. She’s having the opposite problem, which is that she’s got her sexuality stuff figured out, but she doesn’t feel confident being open about her fandom. She’s got friends that she thinks wouldn’t accept it if she told them that she wrote gay fanfic for, like, a non-canon ship on a small genre TV show. She’s trying to maintain her social stuff and this secret internet identity. Which is also how I was in high school. I was super into X-Files fan fiction and went hard on that show and didn’t talk about it at all in school. None of my friends knew.

It’s a story of two people learning to accept themselves. Tess has to learn to accept her fandom and be less ashamed of it, and Claire has to learn to figure out what her sexuality is and accept that.

Tess’ fear of her friends learning of her fandom enthusiasm felt really familiar. Why do you think we have that embarrassment?

BL: When you’re in high school, it’s not cool to like anything. The closer you can get to feeling nothing, the cooler you are. I was never very good at that. I talked a little too much and I would go into my own world and feel the reverie that was the thing that I was passionate about. That was always going to be a barrier between me and coolness. Tess has that figured out where she’s like, “If I talk about this, I’m going to lose cool points and I need those cool points to survive high school, so I’m just not going to talk about it.” It’s just like a math equation for her.

Tess also has numerous differences that set her apart from her friends — she’s black and queer — so I was glad to see her bring up intersectionality to Claire, who hadn’t thought about that before.

BL: I think [that conversation] is important. Claire only cares about one thing in this book, which is her ship going canon and queer representation. Claire’s white, so it took someone else to be like, “Yo, Claire, there are other causes you can care about as well — have you even looked at how [few] people of color there are on this show that we love?” That’s not even the only one: Are there disabled people? Are there trans people? There are so many different ways to have diversity.

What do you want readers to take away from Ship It?

BL: I want fans to read this book and feel seen and heard. There’s more books about fandom coming out, so it’s becoming a slightly more common topic, but for a long time it just felt like the only representations of fans was the crazy, hysterical fan. I wanted a more positive representation of fandom. Claire’s not a perfect character — she makes mistakes, over-reaches and crosses lines.

But I hope that people who don’t understand fandom [will] have a little bit more understanding about why, for some people, a TV show can have an outsized importance in their life. Why, for some people, a character being gay can be the most important thing to them. Understand that this is why we make TV and write books and tell stories: because [for] a lot of people it’ll just be a way to spend an evening, but for some people it can mean a lot more than that. We just have to take care with the stories that we’re telling because you never know who’s going to watch it — and it might change their life.

My plea to fans is, Hollywood is waiting for voices like yours: people who understand fandom and understand the importance of issues like queer representation and intersectionality. If we have those people inside the Hollywood machine, Hollywood is going to get better.

[sramirezvillage]

Sara Ramirez receives Trailblazer Award (Speech Transcript)

This is a beautiful recognition and it means the world. Robyn Ochs, Faith Cheltenham, thank you from the bottom of my heart, for all that you’ve done to center the bisexual+ community and our histories, our needs and our beautiful stories. No trailblazer can trail blaze without standing on the shoulders of others who fought for our visibility. I thank you and all of the hardworking bisexual+ community leaders and activists and allies for empowering me to stand here before you tonight to receive this honor. At the same time, I must name the painful reality that while I am being honored for who I am and what I’ve done there’s so many LGBTQ institutions and spaces where I don’t feel safe, where I don’t feel recognized as a bisexual, pansexual, queer person of color. While my platform has given me important access, I am so blessed to have the many privileges that I do. Every time bisexual+ people are erased, every time I am erased, as a bisexual+, queer person of color in the movement spaces that are supposed to be my home, the pain can feel unbearable. If I’m going to be recognized, you must also recognize my community’s vulnerabilities and needs. Whether you are comfortable with labels or not, the fact is, the ability to be seen, to name our truth, to find community and build power around who we are is such a critical part of any political movement for true liberation.

Recently, at a conference focused on ending youth homelessness I had an experience that exemplifies this type of pain. I was in attendance as a representative of the board of directors for the organization hosting the event as well as to listen and learn. After one panel, I was sitting at a table when I was approached by a white gay identified woman who eagerly wanted to get a picture with me for her wife, I told her I wasn’t doing pictures at that time, we then talked. We started talking about the gay rights and gay pride work that she does and I am a curious person, so I asked questions, including questions about how people of color and bisexual+ people were integrated into the work, she seemed uncomfortable, after some more awkward exchanges, the conversation ended naturally and we went our separate ways. Hours later, the same woman tracked me down to say “I didn’t have my glasses on earlier, but now I do and you’re not who I thought you were.” And with that she walked away. “You’re not who I thought you were.” “You’re not who I thought you were.” I remembered those words so clearly, because this exchange is a microcosm of how I often feel as a bisexual, pansexual, queer woman of color in LGBTQ spaces. I am desired until I am inconvenient; I am useful until I am disruptive. This is the experience not just of celebrities or others with platforms but the entire bisexual, pansexual, fluid, non-monosexual, queer identified community, especially those of us whose lives intersect with multiple margins. Those of us who are immigrants, poor, brown, black, disabled, asylum seekers and bisexual, pansexual, fluid, queer, trans and or non-binary. When I thought about what to say here tonight, I considered asking folks in this room who identify as bisexual, pansexual, fluid or non-monosexual to identify themselves, so we could see one another, celebrate one another and maybe feel less alone. But the anticipation of almost no one standing up with me because so many of us don’t feel safe to, can’t, was too painful for me to risk. I have felt so vulnerable, so often.

No matter where I turn, there’s so few resources specifically for bisexual+ people generally, and especially bisexual+ people of color. We are suffering because we don’t have a community, we’re fractured, we’re isolated and this experience of not being seen or recognized or of being out right excluded with hostility, takes a toll. It’s part of why we see such negative health outcomes for bisexual+ people, it is being reported by the CDC that bisexual, pansexual, fluid individuals have the highest rates of suicidality and depression among our lgbtq community and the most recent study published in 2016 by [Heron Greenesmith BiNet USA, Bisexual Organizing Project, Bisexual Resource Center and MAP(Movement Advancement Project)] it is being documented yet again that over 50% of the lgbtq+ community identifies as bisexual, fluid, non-monosexual and yet we are often neglected and erased. There is rarely programming specific to our needs, rarely speakers, trainers and staff for bi+ and can lead bi+ specific work. But it is time for that to change. For us to see bi+ staff at large in LGBTQ institutions, to see brown and black bisexual+ people in top leadership positions. To have bi+ specific programming, to have clear, easy access to culturally competent bi+ resources when going to lgbtq organization websites, to see signs up in their lobby that explicitly celebrate bi+ people, to direct funding to the bisexual+ community’s needs, to have leaders whether they identify as bisexual+ or not. Naming our identities and sharing our stories. Our needs are not identical to the needs of gay and lesbian individuals and it’s okay. People who aren’t bisexual, pansexual or fluid will never understand what it means to be bisexual, pansexual or fluid. Please respect our human dignity despite your lack of ability to understand us. Please stop tokenizing bisexual, pansexual, fluid identified, cis gender, transgender, and or non-binary life experiences to further policies that don’t actually support our lives and experiences. Our stories and history are important and cannot be lost. Tonight I urge us all, to think about whether we have contributed to the erasure of bisexual+ people, whether we’ve thought to ourselves “mm bisexual, pansexual, fluid people are really just straight or really just gay” or any number of other insidious stereotypes. We can do so much together, if we take a step back and reflect on the fears that may drive our discomfort, the assumptions that may cause us to exclude, we all do this and we can all work to change. There is so much struggle right now, but we are also at a critical juncture where movements are building, we are calling out cultural normalization of sexual harassment, we are standing up and naming the importance of black lives, transgender lives, we are uniting on so many fronts and we need to unite here too. We need to honor our bisexual+ elders, fight for our bisexual+ youth and give space and voice to the entire bisexual+ community. I thank you again for this award and I thank you all for joining us here tonight.

I know that there are people in this room who don’t feel safe, or comfortable to openly identify as bisexual, pansexual or fluid. I want you to know that despite this, I see you, I was you, I am you, I love you and maybe in a couple of years we will feel safe enough to show ourselves and celebrate one another openly without fear. Thank you.

[jeremystrele]

BE. Founder Grace Dlabik On Smashing Stereotypes + Parenting A Child With Disability

BE. Founder Grace Dlabik On Smashing Stereotypes + Parenting A Child With Disability

Family

Ashe Davenport

Grace at home with her pup Buzz, featuring beautiful bedding from the Kip & Co. x Bábbarra Women’s Centre collection! Photo – Nynno Bel-Air.

A divine family portrait – Grace, Elijah, Morganne and Buzz. Grace’s fab robe is from Suku! Photo – Nynno Bel-Air.

Left – Grace’s ‘Reclamation Wall’. Artefacts clockwise from left : Woven tray, Southern Highlands, PNG, Small mask, Sepik, PNG, Large mask, Sepik, PNG, Fan, Lese Oalai, PNG, Hair adornment, PNG (origin unsure), Afro bamboo comb, PNG (origin unsure), Woven basket, Highlands, PNG. Right: Morganne, Elijah and Buzz hanging out at home. Photo – Nynno Bel-Air.

Grace, Elijah and Morganne at the dining table – cooking is one of Grace’s great loves. Photo – Nynno Bel-Air.

Left: Grace is the founder of BE. a global creative collective dedicated to establishing new pathways to champion young people. They also have a creative agency arm, BE.ONE CREATIVE. Right: Grace, Elijah and Morganne’s home, which is their sanctuary. Artwork in centre is a Tapa Cloth piece, from Oro Province, PNG.  Photo – Nynno Bel-Air.

Grace and Elijah at the BE.HQ! Photo – Nynno Bel-Air.

Left: Some of the incredible talent at BE. Right: Grace in the studio. Photo – Nynno Bel-Air.

Grace surrounded by some of the incredible talent at BE. ONE CREATIVE (Grace’s creative agency). Photo – Nynno Bel-Air.

Late in her pregnancy, Grace had a feeling her baby was in trouble. She took herself to hospital for some monitoring, but after checking the fetal heart rate, medical staff concluded that everything was fine. This was 17 years ago, before 3D scans had become routine and readily available. Grace accepted the advice and went home, but disquiet settled over the remainder of her pregnancy. 

Elijah was born with his umbilical cord wrapped six times around his neck in a true knot. It caused severe damage to his brain, resulting in quadriplegia Cerebral palsy. Grace, who was 23 at the time, was told that it was very unlikely that he would survive, and if he did, he wouldn’t be able to see, hear or recognise her. She was advised that his quality of life would be too low to justify. 

‘Says who?’ Grace asks me over Zoom, 17 years later, fresh from dropping Elijah at school. ‘Who’s to say what the experiences of each one of us should be like? Everybody’s different, has different experiences of life. Everybody wants to be seen and valued.’

Elijah has curly hair like his mum and a grin that can turn your day around. He can see and hear. He doesn’t just recognise Grace, he loves her deeply. He likes playing the drums. He’s wheelchair bound but he’s thriving and loves his life.

Grace’s experience as a parent directly informs the work she does. It’s a big part of why she founded the collective BE. a creative hub for young freethinkers and BE. ONE CREATIVE. BE. is a place that celebrates difference, creativity and gives voice to young people through a multitude of ways. BE. ONE is a creative agency that not only champions expressive and young people’s work, but also allows for that knowledge to be passed on through their mentorship program for young aspiring creatives. 

Here’s Grace.

Hey Grace! What was your morning like? 

Grace: My day starts at 5am. It means I can get things done and have some time with Morganne. We’ve started going for little walks together. We go through the parklands near our house. There’s no one around, and everything is so soft and tender. The birds are beginning to sing. You might hear a kookaburra, a couple of frogs, but apart from that, everything’s quiet and sleepy. It’s really special.

At the end of the day we’re completely exhausted, and I have my hands full with Elijah. I mean literally my hands are full. The care I need to give to him includes lifting him, changing him, dressing him and tending to him in that way, then I’m smashing out work for BE. while he’s at school, but that morning walk is just mine and Morganne’s.

What’s a typical evening like at your place?

I pick up Elijah at 3, and then it’s all hands on deck until his bedtime at 7. We have dinner together as a family and afterwards I give Elijah a massage. I get his legs out of his wheelchair and rest them on me while I massage them. He loves that part of our daily routine. Touch is such an important and beautiful thing. It gives him a little bit of relief, too, because he’s been sitting all day. It’s a special time for us to bond. He can’t articulate if something’s sore. He’ll communicate to me if something’s really bad, but his pain threshold is so high. He’s used to having niggling discomfort.

How do you and Elijah communicate?

The way that we communicate is through intuition. That’s something to be said for mothers in general. We’re so deeply connected to our children. Elijah understands a lot more than he can say, but because of the extent of brain damage that he had, he also has an intellectual disability. But we’ve been communicating with each other since before he was born. We have our own language and it’s deeply connected.

My experience as a parent directly informs the work I do at BE. I’ve learned huge lessons and I’ve come through the other side of these very complex challenges without a handbook – of course it’s an ongoing and ever-evolving life but now I know how to project my voice when I need to. I also understand the importance of surrendering, and trusting the pathways that life has given me. And don’t get me wrong, it’s really hard sometimes. Especially for people with a disability or people of colour, bla(c)k or Indigenous people, like myself. There’s a lot stacked against you from the get-go. But I’ve been given these tools that I can give to others, so that’s what I do, and I believe a big part of what we’re here to do. 

What does next year look like for you and your family?

Elijah finishes school at the end of this year. I’ve been very overwhelmed thinking about what’s next for him. How will the outside world view him and welcome him? How will he take pride in what he’s able to contribute? Who will give him a chance? Will he ever be able to go to the footy and pay his own way? He doesn’t have those opportunities unless I create them for him, so what does this all look like?

Our society is so ableist and doesn’t really embrace or respond well to people with disabilities. We haven’t learnt how to do that. We don’t have important access to people with special needs, so the stigma builds up. We’ve got to smash these stereotypes around who is “normal” and “not normal.” There’s no such thing. Such a journey of “undoing” that needs to be done.

The National Insurance Disability Scheme (NDIS) was given a bunch of money in this year’s budget. Will that be helpful to you in any way?

To some degree, yes, however it’s a real battle to advocate for the requirements and needs for Elijah. Everything they’re affiliated with is privatised. It costs Elijah $870 for a night in respite care, for example, just so I can have a night off. Or go out on a date with my partner. Before NDIS, it was $560 per night. They’ve increased the price so much, because they can. There’s greed at the core of it, not humanity. It’s ridiculous how much everything costs.

I fought for years for Elijah’s standing wheelchair, so he was able to be upright and have the autonomy to change his position of his body with the aid of this amazing wheelchair. Years. I had support from a number of MPs, even a Greens Senator. In the end I showed up with a team of medical experts and Elijah, too, so they could fucking see his face and be confronted with him, as a person. Not a case number. They ended up overturning their decision, but that’s how much effort it took, to be granted something that he is clearly entitled to and that will benefit him greatly.

What’s it been like going from a two person family to three?

Elijah’s Dad and I split up when Elijah was little, so I’ve mostly cared for him on my own. What we have is very sacred to me, so the person who came into it had to be pretty bloody special. I’ve worked really hard on my own reflection of love, recognising areas I needed to work on and undo a lot of the adopted heteronormative world, and look at what love really is.

Then along came Morganne, who is a proud trans man. I think I’ve always been a queer person, but I had a fairly heteronormative outlook. I come from a generation that didn’t have the language around identity that we have now. Morganne and I just connected. He’s half Jamaican, half black, like me. I love that my partner can identify with my cultural roots and what it means to be black and on the outer. He prioritises community and family in the same ways that I do and views life on a deeper level. 

Morganne has a rescue dog (Buzz) so when we came together as a family unit, it all made sense, with each of us navigating life as an outsider and actively smashing stereotypes. It’s been really hard, beautiful and easy. All at the same time. 

Morganne has beautiful sensibilities and a tenderness that allows him to connect deeply to our lives and apply this to his work as a dog walker/adventurer – but he can also smash out caravan walls.

I saw you guys got a caravan! Any trips planned?

We’ve got to make it accessible for Elijah first, that’s something we’re working on together. It’s a labour of love. And maybe a weekend trip here and there for the two of us if Elijah is in respite care. It’s so hard to find an accessible property, unless we go to a fancy hotel, but that’s not a feasible option, I also like to cook and be in nature when I go away. 

Our ultimate dream is to buy some land and create a fully accessible and creative space, where we could build our dream accessible home and build fully accessible guest houses. On the property there would be private healing rooms, studio spaces where we could have artist residencies and creative workshops, and people could host retreats such as creative writing, painting, etc. I want a gallery/museum and a large space for talks, conferences or classes (like yoga and mediation).

There’s such a need for a space like this to exist – where nature surrounds us, where healing can occur and where creativity can be harnessed and explored and where people who have a family member with a disability or special needs can seek respite and a getaway. I know this is a big vision but this is what I’m manifesting!

I feel certain you’re going to make that happen… What brings you joy?

Being a mama brings me joy. My culture, aunties and sisterhood bring me joy. Massaging my son’s legs brings me joy. Bathing my son brings me joy. Being of service to people brings me joy. Holding space for people brings me joy. Wholesome, critical and inspiring conversations bring me joy. People mobilising brings me joy. When I see people show up at a rally because they care about someone other than themselves, when they feel compelled to say: Enough is enough, that brings me joy. We’re shifting the paradigm and that brings me joy.

When it comes to political and social oppressive structures, it’s especially important that privileged people, those who benefit from those structures, are joining the fight. I feel hopeful because I see all these younger generations standing up and pushing back. We’re making ourselves actively responsible for each other. Most people just need an opportunity to do better, and they will.

Family Favourites

Weekend getaway? Oh wait…

Lol. Not applicable. We can’t find accessible properties to go away to, so it’s not something we do.

Cafe?

Everyday Coffee. We especially love their coffee for home, because we can’t always get over to Collingwood.

Go-to album?

The Whitney Houston radio station on Spotify. It has Mariah Carey, Lionel Ritchie, Luther Vandross, everyone you need, really!

Sunday morning breakfast ritual? 

We often do a big cookup: eggs, greens, roasted tomatoes and mushrooms, whatever we’ve got in the house. Cooking is cathartic and such a loving act for me.

Me time?

Between 6.30-7am I mediate. We have an east-facing window in our living room. I watch the sunrise. It’s nice.

Follow the links to find out more about Grace and Morganne’s projects – BE., BE.ONE CREATIVE, and That Dog Life! You can find Grace on Instagram here. 

[spacecrone]

healing the mother! wound

I’ve wanted to write about my favorite film of 2017 for some time, but it felt too late. Recent events have surfaced that “DON’T SIT THERE, THE SINK’S NOT BRACED!” feeling, so I think I’ll get into it. For awhile I felt so protective of my feelings about Darren Aronofsky’s mother! I gave myself up to the experience of the film and let me tell you, it was a familiar sensation. Bewildering, over - the - top, heightening to a crescendo of madness. Is this not the feeling-tone of the times? What some saw as corny, I saw as camp. What some saw as nonsensical I experienced as an allegory about how we treat things and people perceived as feminine, including nature. In reality, when you punish, gaslight and torment someone or when you rapidly extract all resources (emotional or geological) without replenishing them, systemic breakdown occurs. But in Aronofsky’s fever-pitched horror, all is consumed by fire and renewed in the end for another go-around. That is the perspective of extractive capitalism and the patriarchal paradigm we’re just maybe starting outgrow.

But there was another reason I enjoyed the movie. As with much horror, I get a great sense of catharsis by being lead through an evocation of visceral revulsion and fear. When the outside content mirrors the inside feeling that is trapped in the body beneath all my stories about being reasonable, acting in right relationship with the world, it sucks it out. This feeling is extracted through elicitation and mirroring. It’s why theater was once used to manage the shame of the populus, so that it did not need to be vented onto a sacrificial scapegoat.  People see Donald Trump as an angry authoritarian, which is true, but I think his scariest skill is weaponizing our shame and offloading our blame onto The Other. Be it the immigrant, the trans person, the disability, people reach their catharsis through frothy extroverted blame. Otherwise they might have to feel the shame themselves: the shame of living in a country that even before Trump tortured people, created disposable populations through racism and deindustrialization, and interfered in other countries’ elections.

Do you ever have nightmares where there are people intruding on your home, your workspace, your physical space? That being reasonable does not stop them? I do. This movie was a surgical maneouver in terms of evoking that particular feeling. It’s an archetypal evocation of what trauma does to the senses. And this is where Aronofsky’s well-honed camp sensibility comes into play. Some people think of campiness as a uniquely gay aesthetic, but I think that comes from the fact that campiness is a survival strategy. To be able to take something tragic and make a joke out of it without being flippant may seem corny to some, but for some of us, I think queer people in particular, it has been a way to navigate what it means to be a marginalized person without giving people the satisfaction of knowing that we’re hurting. Aronofsky seems incredibly in touch with this aesthetic and deploys it to soften some of the revulsion. I CACKLED when Kristen Wiig shot a row of hostages in the head and said OH THERE YOU ARE, THE INSPIRATION. WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN HIDING? It could be seen as heavy handed, I guess, but sometimes we have to put the absurdities of the daily emotional reality of living in a world where we don’t even have autonomy over our bodies and wellbeing in bold letters so we can laugh to let the pain out.

On a visceral level, trauma is formed when a person’s boundaries are ignored and violated in a way that is out of their control.  Part of living with trauma is always questioning whether you’re having a reasonable reaction to things. This could be childhood trauma but I think it could also be the trauma of being a woman, a queer person, a person of color living in a white heteropatriarchy. When you constantly question and marginalize your own reactions to things, people can take advantage of that, sometimes through what has come to be called gaslighting. The person who questions her very ability to accurately understand her own suffering and who explains it away is an ideal match for the gaslighter who may or may not even realize that they are taking advantage of this individuals external locus of control. The person who has learned to seek security from sources outside herself — this often happens when a person has to scan their environment for changes in a parent”s mood or volatile outbursts— she learns to mistrust and silence her own internal alarm bells. She has been groomed for manipulation.  A person like this is easy to manipulate through weaponized shame, something narcissists and predators deploy expertly in their selection of victims.

It’s a bit like being Jennifer Lawrence in mother! She questions what her own senses are telling her and ends up entirely consumed by the conflagration of someone else’s narcissism. She is expected to be maternal and accommodating even as her situation escalates from bewildering to that of a military occupation and ultimately her own destruction. Any attention she brings or desire for accountability makes HER the problem.

Speaking of trauma and camp, in in I, Tonya we watch Tonya Harding be groomed by her upbringing to accept abusive treatment from her partner, all set to anthemic party rock.  Harding is not quite the innocent Virgin Mary stand-in of Jennifer Lawrence’s character so she complicates our ability to assign blame. Tonya defended herself. This made her a problem, such that when assigning accountability for Nancy Kerrigan’s assault, Harding was banned for life from her skill and passion on the assumption that she was he puppet master, while the people who planned and carried out the attack dodged any responsibility. Harding was not maternal or accommodating. She was rough and mouthy. She was trained to be ruthless, and endured ridicule from her own mother. We search for someone to blame. Tonya? Her mother? Intergenerational trauma? Welcome to the mother wound, that vortex through which we send ourselves on cycles of perpetuating the very thing we suffered. Trauma is a time warp, sending us in spirals around events and attachments that never properly bonded in our formative years. We see in Tonya Harding a woman who seeks out the type of relationship she has come to feel she deserves, one which revisits her again and again with the treatment she has formed an identity around.

From a Buddhist context, as Sharon Salzberg teaches, “we have to acknowledge that there will always be praise and blame.” Our minds vacillate between the desire to praise one party and assign blame to another for anything that happens in the world. But when things are a little more complicated than that, our attention is short circuited. Either we can be with that complication, or we seek simpler versions of events. I, Tonya made it perfectly clear that the new 24-hour cable news cycle relied on a pretty much fabricated rivalry between Kerrigan and Harding in order to maintain the attention of viewers seeking those endorphin windfalls that happen when praise and blame are appropriately assigned.

I do believe the archaic mother! Is waking up and saying, yes, me too. As feeling restores to the parts of our culture which have been severed and numbed by the isolationist logic of the patriarchal paradigm, there will be pain just as when blood comes back to a frozen limb. Our senses are coming back alive as the restorative nature of speaking truth emerges. This is medicine for a world that has trafficked in silence. When we begin to feel our connection between the individual and the sense of place and collective, we will have to reckon with a lot of pain. But it will allow us to move to a place where Jennifer Lawrence’s character would have been able to replenish her resources instead of being burnt to a crisp. I think we’re in the transition between paradigms and it carries with it a risk of being sucked back into the mother! wound. But we can help each other hold the space through story. I’ll hopefully be doing a little more of that here.

[holdenmgrudges]

Chapter 3 - Helpsies

I know, I’m a couple of days late. I’ve been busy. And I had a bit of trouble writing this for a few reasons. The first was coming up with a reason for Crutchie’s messed up leg. I know he’s canonically supposed to have polio, but since it was pretty much eradicated in the US back in the 90s, I felt that it wouldn’t be a good enough reason. So the reason I came up with is a bit simpler than that, and it opens up a plot point I might use in the future. Second, was coming up with a math problem for the Sprace part of the chapter. I’ve never taken statistics and probability, but seeing as how the problem I used is a probability problem, I felt it worked. Anyway, here’s chapter 3! Enjoy!

Or read on AO3 if you prefer.

The next day, David couldn’t help but feel he was doing a great job of adjusting to his new school. In PE, the kid Crutchie had called Race, completed his usual lap, but just before overlapping him, slowed down next to David to say, “Hi Davey…” with a smile. And then, “Bye Davey…” as he sped off again. In his English class, Katherine gave him a quick smile before taking a seat and huddling with two other boys. Despite ignoring him for the rest of the class, David was satisfied. It was safe to say joining the LGBTQ+ Club was the best decision he could’ve made.

Lunch came around and after waiting in line for a calzone, he headed to the Little Theatre. Inside, he quickly spotted Jack and Crutchie, sitting at two desks that had been pushed together. He also saw a few other kids he didn’t know playing some trading card game he didn’t know, and a few others either reading or doodling. No one else he’d seen yesterday. Even Miss Medda wasn’t there.

“Hey Davey, grab a desk and sit with us,” Jack said, as David approached him and Crutchie. David did as he was told and Jack moved his desk so the three of them were in a sort of triangle. “We were just talking about what kind of trust exercises we could do for the club.”

“He’s been trying to convince me physical activities, like a trust fall, wouldn’t work,” Crutchie chimed in. He grabbed his crutch and tossed it to David. David held out an arm and was able to catch it right before it hit the floor. He looked a bit startled, but Crutchie laughed. “See, I’m good with the physical stuff. I don’t need the crutch to stand and catch someone.”

David let out a small chuckle as he handed the crutch back. “I’d think a trust fall would be too obvious. But I don’t think we should rule out anything physical.” Crutchie stuck his tongue out at Jack. “If Crutchie says he can handle it, I think we should trust him.”

Crutchie laughed again, saying, “I like you, Davey. You got some great ideas.”

Jack crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. “Alright then, Davey with the great ideas, what do you suggest?”

“Hmm...lemme think…” David took a bite out of his calzone and then put it back down on the paper plate it had come on. He scanned his brain for ideas as he chewed, thinking about anything he’d ever done at camp or his family reunions.

While David was thinking, Jack took a second to give David a discreet once-over. Crutchie, however, noticed and gave Jack a light kick in the shin with his good leg. David, in turn noticed this and looked back and forth between the two of them, trying to figure out what was happening. Crutchie was giving Jack and accusatory look and Jack was staring at him as if he didn’t know what he was talking about.

“Uh...what’s going on?” David asked, feeling out of the loop. He thought that he could really benefit from a trust exercise right about now.

“I’m just punishing Jack,” Crutchie answered quickly, “for trying to use my disability against me. As if I don’t get that enough from everyone.”

“I’m just very overprotective of you, Crutch,” Jack replied. “Someone’s gotta be.”

“If I fall, I fall. It’s not a deadly stunt.”

“But it’ll hurt like shit…”

“You’re a shit…”

“You’d be the one eating shit…”

“We’ll see who eats shit when we’re doing the trust fall…”

“Not me, ‘cause I’m not doin-”

“What is your disability?” David interrupted. “Like, what happened to your leg?” The other two fell silent and David felt like he’d messed up. He needed to learn to keep his mouth shut.

But then Crutchie smiled. “People don’t usually ask,” he said. “They just see that I have a crutch and move out of my way.”

“Even I didn’t know until his foster mom mentioned it while I was sleeping over,” Jack contributed.

“Yeah, ‘cause you’re a shit.” Crutchie kicked Jack again before turning back to David. “But to answer your question, I was in an accident. Got hit by a car. I mostly recovered but my leg didn’t. But I’m still alive and other people have it worse. So I don’t let it define me.”

David nodded in understanding. “But you still call yourself Crutchie.”

“I didn’t start that shit,” he responded with a laugh.

Jack covered his face with his hand and mumbled, “Kick me again.” Crutchie did so, but not as hard. “I thought it’d be a cute nickname. Better than ‘Crutch Boy’ or ‘He-Who-Must-Have-The-Crutch.’”

“You could’ve called me by my actual name. But of course, Crutchie stuck. I wear it as a badge of honor. And it makes people wonder if it’s my real name.”

The three laughed and then David asked, “What is your real name?”

Crutchie smirked and shook his head, “That’s something you’ll have to figure out on your own, Davey..”

David nodded and then remembered he was supposed to be thinking of ideas for the club. He continued eating his calzone.

“What about you, Davey? What’s your story?” Jack asked.

David shrugged with a nervous smile. “I don’t know...I’m just Davey.”

“But what makes you special?” This came from Crutchie.

“Oh uh…” Whenever he was asked this question, he always went to his go-to list of interesting David facts. “I can play the piano...I’m a Ravenclaw...but House Lannister...I’m a twin, but not identical-”

“You’re a twin?” the other two boys asked in unison, curious to learn more.

“Yeah, figures that’s the most interesting thing about me,” David replied with a snort.

“That’s not true,” Jack said, as if he knew something about David that he didn’t. “You’re in our LGBTQ+ Club which is interesting on its own.” David nodded in agreement. “Which uh...letter do you belong to?”

David raised an eyebrow in confusion while Crutchie rolled his eyes. “He means, are you gay, bi, trans, queer...plus?”

“Oh,” David responded and then thought for a few seconds. “I guess queer. I know I’m not straight, that’s all I know.”

“Cool,” Jack said with a smile. “I’m a proud bisexual.”

“And I’m straight...up guh-guh-gayyyyy.”

The three laughed again and continued talking until the end of lunch, when David remembered, “Oh, shoot, I forgot we were supposed to be thinking of trust activities for the club.”

“We can brainstorm some more in art class, but…” Jack took out his notebook, wrote something, and ripped the page out, handing it to David. It was a phone number. “You can also text me with ideas.”

“Oh okay, cool,” David replied. The three got up and headed out of the Little Theatre. Before Crutchie could walk off to his class, David called out to him. “Hey, do you wanna...maybe...give me your number too? Wouldn’t wanna keep you out of the loop.”

Crutchie grinned widely and nodded. He wrote his number down on the piece of paper and then they went their separate ways. David smiled. Now he had two friends.

Spot wasn’t bad at math. In fact, he’d been the first kid in his third grade class to learn all his timetables. But he wasn’t in third grade anymore, and he wasn’t learning his timetables. Statistics and probability was much harder than he thought it was going to be. He thought it was all about percentages and fractions, but what he got was so much more confusing than that.

He was in class, scratching at his chin, trying to figure out the problem the class had been given. It didn’t seem hard but as he looked around the class, everyone seemed to have a different answer. But he couldn’t ask for help. He was Spot Conlon. He was never helpless. He looked over the problem again but still didn’t understand how some people were arriving at a different solution than the obvious one.

“You need help there, Spot?” came the friendly voice of Jojo. Jojo was pretty special to Spot because he was another one of the few people that wasn’t afraid of him. Not that Spot had ever threatened to hurt Jojo. The kid was too sweet to ever want to harm. He was funny too, which didn’t hurt. And he was a great teammate to have, cheering people on at not just every match, but every practice as well.

So when Jojo asked him if he needed help, he knew he was in good hands. He trusted Jojo. “Yeah, man. I don’t get it. I mean, the answer’s one-half, right?”

“Actually, it’s two-thirds.” Jojo took a second to double check his paper. “Yeah, two-thirds.”

“But how?” Now that he’d gotten confirmation that his answer was wrong, Spot needed to know how. He wasn’t satisfied with just the answer.

“Uh...I forgot. Hold up.” Jojo turned around to the desk behind him to ask his friend. Spot had seen him before, running around the school track like he was Usain Bolt. He’d been impressed, but didn’t think more about him. Now, he had to because the guy had turned his head to stare at Spot. Jojo turned back to Spot as well, and said, “Race here is gonna show you how you get the right answer.”

Spot waited while Race hesitated. He’d obviously heard about Spot’s reputation. But after a few seconds, he began to talk, trying to explain to Spot why the answer was two-thirds using mathematical terms. Suffice it to say that Spot still wasn’t understanding.

“Okay, so you have three boxes, right?” Race spoke. “And each box has two drawers, right? And each drawer has a coin.”

Maybe it was the way Race was talking to him, or maybe it was the fact that he was fed up with the problem, but Spot was not having it. “Yeah, I’m not stupid. You don’t have to talk down to me like I don’t know what the scenario is. I know what the scenario is.” He ran his fingers through his hair, getting a good grip.

Race went silent and looked down at his piece of paper. He hadn’t meant to offend Spot. In fact, he was aiming for the opposite. Sure, in class he was safe, but who knew what Spot could do to him after school. His only hope was running fast enough, but he didn’t know how fast Spot could run.

Jojo looked back and forth between Race and Spot and then giggled. “Go on, Race. Don’t mind Spot. He’s like this all the time.”

The other two boys made eye contact and Spot nodded. Race straightened up and continued. “Alright, so you pick a box and open up a drawer at random. It has a gold coin inside.”

Spot knew each box was different. One had two gold coins, another had two silver coins, and the last one had one gold and one silver. The question was, what was the probability of the second drawer also having a gold coin?

Race went on. “So you’d think, it could only be one of two options, right? The box you picked can’t be the one with two silver coins, so it must be one of the other two. Which means that the second drawer will either have a gold coin or a silver coin, making the probability of the second coin being gold one-half. Well that’s wrong.”

Spot took a deep breath, making a conscious decision not to bang his fist on his desk. This kid was telling him what he already knew.

“Okay, okay. So let’s start with the first coin instead of going directly to the second one. Out of the six coins, how many are gold?”

Spot glanced at Jojo, who looked like he was enjoying himself. “Three,” Jojo replied, and Spot rolled his eyes.

“Right. So the first coin you pick will be any of those three coins. Which means for the second coin there will be three possibilities.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Spot interrupted. “How?”

Race paused for a second as he thought. He took a pencil and placed it into his mouth, holding it as if it were a cigar. After a few seconds, he took a piece of paper and drew three boxes. In each box he drew two circles and then labeled each of them with either G for gold or S for silver. He then crossed out the box with the two S circles.

“So,” Race started again, pointing to the box with one gold coin and one silver. “If you picked this gold coin, then the second coin would be silver. That’s one possibility.” He then pointed at the first G in the other box. “If you pick this gold coin first, then the second one would be gold. That’s your second possibility.” He moved his finger to the second G in the box. “But let’s say you picked this gold coin first instead. Then your second coin would still be gold, but you’d have a third possibility.”

Spot’s eyebrows raised in understanding.

“Therefore, the probability of your second coin being gold would be two out of three possibilities.”

“Two-thirds,” Spot stated as his lip curled into a smile. He didn’t notice Race perk up at this, but Jojo did.

“That’s right!” Jojo pat Race on the back. “Now I remember. See, Spot, I told you it was two-thirds.”

Spot was too distracted writing down the explanation to say anything. Race gave Jojo a quick smile before going back to his own work.

“Isn’t Race a genius?”

“I wouldn’t call me a genius. You can google the answer and get a better explanation.”

“Yeah, but we didn’t need to ‘cause we have you.”

Spot finally finished and looked up. His smile was gone, but he gave Race a nod of gratitude. Race would’ve been satisfied with that, but then Spot followed through verbally. “Thanks, man.”

Race relaxed a little, realizing Spot wasn’t the bully he’d been led to believe he was. He’d been afraid to talk to him all year long because of the stories he’d heard about him. But now maybe Spot Conlon could be his friend. Or at least someone who wouldn’t beat him up. “Mhm,” he replied, giving Spot a nod right back, and then one to Jojo.

Jojo was all smiles. He lived not only for making friends, but for making his friends become friends with his other friends. He was like a friendship wingman. So it shouldn’t have been a surprise when he said, “We should start a study group.”

Immediately, Spot and Race looked at Jojo and then at each other. It was really up to Spot to decide. “Yeah, maybe,” he decided. It might as well have been a no. He already had a lot to worry about with wrestling, and he didn’t want to add a whole study group to his list of responsibilities.

The other two nodded and went back to their work. It wasn’t until near the end of class, when their teacher was passing back their latest test results, that they spoke again. Race had gotten an A, as he always did. Jojo got a B, which he was proud of. And Spot got a D, the last grade he wanted. He might as well have gotten an F.

“Alright,” he said, turning to face Jojo and Race. “Let’s start a study group.” Jojo did a little victory fist pump while Race looked up in surprise.

“We can meet at my place,” Jojo said. “I can have snacks ready and all that.”

“Sounds good,” Spot replied. “Text me your address.”

The three made arrangements to meet that weekend, and thus the Stats and Probs Study Group was born.

Sarah had collected as much as she could the night before. Old essays, class assignments, and even some diary entries that she felt were really good pieces of writing. She put them all in a folder, thinking Katherine would take it home and read each piece in her free time.

She was so nervous about what Katherine would think, that she was barely paying attention in her last class. Her usual thoughts about Jack were nowhere to be seen, though he didn’t seem to mind. He seemed giddily distracted.

When Sarah got to the computer lab after school and handed her folder to Katherine, she surprisingly began reading then and there. Skimming, more like. She’d move on to the next piece after a few seconds, giving a few nods of approval and even some quick chuckles at the diary entries. About halfway through the stack, she handed it back.

“You didn’t read everything.”

“I don’t need to. You’re qualified. Some of that stuff was actually pretty good.” Katherine went back to her computer where she was editing an article. “Also, I have more important things to do.”

"What can I do to help?" The day before she'd been shown around and explained most of what they do. Everyone wrote at least one article with at least one picture, though from one of the sample newspapers Sarah had seen, it was clear Katherine wrote most articles. She was also in charge of editing every article. Darcy and Bill helped print out the papers and distribute them every Friday morning, which happened to be the next day. And Mr. Denton looked over everything to make sure it was PG and PC. So far, Sarah didn't have any job in the club, so she was just there to help in any way she could.

"Nothing right now," Katherine responded, brushing her off. "Go see if Darcy and Bill need anything."

Sarah was a little disappointed but she knew the girl didn't need any distractions. Darcy and Bill were sitting together talking with Mr. Denton. As she approached, the teacher saw the folder in her hand and gave her an amused smile. "You know, you didn't actually need to bring in any writing samples. You're in the club no matter what Katherine has to say about it."

"She's just so in charge," Sarah said, putting the folder in her backpack. "She's inspiring. I wanted to impress her."

"And was she impressed?" Denton asked. Darcy and Bill looked at her in anticipation.

"She said some of my stuff was pretty good." The boys nodded as if they'd expected that.

Mr. Denton just smiled. "That's a good sign. Katherine likes to go on rants when she reads bad writing."

"I wonder what she'd say about great writing. If I was pretty good, my brother would probably be amazing."

"You should have him join then," Denton said. "We're always looking for writers."

"I'll ask him, but he's not really the joining type."

Denton soon went back to his desk to do some of his own work and Sarah stayed with the two boys. "So what are we up to right now?"

"Waiting for Katherine to finish editing, basically," answered one of the boys. Sarah didn't think she'd be able to remember which was which, but as she saw that each was wearing similar clothes to what they'd been wearing the day before, she deduced that the one who had just spoken was Darcy. He had on a dress shirt tucked into his khaki pants and his hair was neatly combed. The other boy had on a superhero shirt.

"When she's done," Bill said, "we arrange everything on the template, print out a bunch of copies, and tomorrow morning we release it."

"She lets you arrange the paper?" She would've figured Katherine would be in charge of everything.

Darcy replied, "Mr. Denton felt she had too many responsibilities and we not enough, so we do it now."

"But we still ask Katherine for help with it," Bill whispered. "When Denton's not around."

"Of course," Sarah said, nodding. "So you guys hang out with her outside of the club?"

Darcy shook his head, but Bill nodded. They looked at each other and then Darcy explained. "We have English class with her, but we only ever talk about the paper. If it's not about that, she's not really interested."

"We've never hung out with her outside of school," Bill added.

"Well, except that one time she asked me to walk her home because the Delancey brothers were being creeps. But that was only one time."

"Does she have any friends outside of the paper?" Sarah couldn't imagine anyone being so obsessed with one thing.

Bill responded, "Not sure. At school she spends her free time either writing or interviewing people for articles. I know she wants to be a journalist someday."

Katherine seemed almost as antisocial as David, but Darcy and Bill didn't seem to know anything about her outside of school. And just like that, Sarah's curiosity grew. She was gonna make it her own personal assignment to find out as much as she could about the girl. And if she couldn't find information from other people, she'd go directly to the source. After all, Denton had told her yesterday that she would grow on Katherine.

It didn't take long for Katherine to finish editing. She sent the articles and photos for each to Darcy and Bill and they started copying and pasting all over the news template they used. Sarah was bored out of her mind watching the two boys try to figure out where everything should go. She could see Katherine out of the corner of her eye, just fidgeting, probably wishing she could do it all herself. Mr. Denton seemed to notice it too because he sent her home soon after. Sarah was slightly disappointed with that, but then Mr. Denton came to the three of them and requested for her to take the reigns.

"What?" She knew she was new and didn't want to risk ruining all the hard work that was already put into the paper. She would hate for Katherine to come in the next day and absolutely abhor anything she did.

"Don't worry," Denton replied. "We’ll help you out. I just want to see what you can do. Besides, how else are you going to learn if not by doing?"

She supposed he was right, but she was still nervous about it. Luckily, she had no reason to be.