#i think my paper will b at the intersection of of a lot of my ideas but i have So Many

[emberfrostlovesloki]

Love is a Maze [Hotch x Reader]

Prompt: The character gets lost in a corn maze… meant for children. They begrudgingly ask a total stranger for help; aka the reader gets stuck in a corn maze and has to ask a total stranger (Aaron) to help her get out. 

Category: Fluff/Comfort 

Word Count: 3.7K

Content Warning: Mentions of drinking and alcohol. If you are not 21 this is a reminder that I do not condone underage drinking (in the U.S. I am 26 fyi). Please use sound judgment when drinking and never drink and drive. Nothing is worth you or someone else getting hurt. Language (fuck and damn). These are minor things that some might find triggering as well: Mentioning the legal system and online childhood safety. 

A/N: This is another @imagining-in-the-margins prompt for her Meet Cute September/October writing Challenge! I have been loving these prompts. I have three more fics planned. Thank you for all the engagement, it means a lot to me. I think this fic is great to have with a cup of tea or a glass of cider. I had to change my paragraph formatting because Tumblr was being weird. Sorry if there seems to be some odd paragraph spacing in this one. I hope you enjoy it, and if you do, likes and reblogs are appreciated. 

P.S. The reader uses she/her pronouns. 

List with all stories 

y/n = your name 

_l/g/s_ = local grocery store 

_p/g = parent or guardian 

_y/a_= your age 

_y/l/n_ = your last name 

_t/o/l_ type of law 

_y/b/f_ = your best friend 

_f/s/f/d_ = favorite spiked fall drink 

_e/c_ = eye color (i.e. green eyes, brown eyes, hazel eyes etc.) 

y/n looked at the three-way intersection. There was a thirty-three point three percent chance that one of the dusty paths would lead her to the exit in the corn maze, but at this point, she had tried all three of them at least twice and she was starting to give up. She knew about dyslexia and dysgraphia, and she was wondering if dys-mapia was a thing? She put her head in her hands for a moment. All of her life she had been told that she was ‘directionally challenged,’ and those people had been proved right again, and again, and again.

Her first memory in fact was one of her getting lost. It had happened when she was in _l/g/s_ with her _p/g_. She had been five and her _p/g_ had told her multiple times that if she ever got lost to ask an employee for help. As many times as she had been told this, when it happened in real life she had frozen. She really believed that she would never find her mom again. A kind stranger had found her in the produce aisle crying her eyes out. The elderly woman took her to the front of the store and her very concerned _p/g_ rushed forward and gave her a big hug. _y/n_’s _p/g_ had bought her an ice cream cone after they had finished shopping. Unfortunately for _y/n_, this had only been the first of many times she would get lost. Only last month one of her friends at law school had joked at the intern networking social that “y/n would get lost on a one-way street in a small town.” Everyone had laughed, and it would be funny if it wasn’t true. And this was why her being stuck, trying to make her way out of a corn maze was so fucking frustrating. She knew she had been at this intersection before because it was only one of two three-way intersections she had come across so far, and the clue at the start of the estuary was the one she had read six times now. She looked at the map in her hands and tried to parse the right path out of the maze but became frustrated almost immediately, crumpling the paper tightly in her hands. The at the entrance of the maze had said that it should take about half an hour to complete, and she had now spent double that in the dusty maze. More insulting than this was the fact that the age disclaimer at the start of the maze read: This maze is appropriate for all ages, however children under 12 should be accompanied by a parent or guardian. Essentially this meant that the maze could be completed by someone over 13, by themselves, and here she was _y/a_, unable to escape. 

y/n realized now that playing Truth or Drink, essentially Truth or Dare, except every dare meant drowning a shot was a mistake before trying to do a corn maze had been a mistake on her part given how bad she was with direction. She thought about her poor choices while waiting to find someone nice to ask to follow out of the maze. There was no avoiding it at this point. She needed help, and she knew it. As it turned out she did still value her dignity, so she had to wait awhile to find someone that seemed nice and normal. The first group that she didn’t ask was a group of three teenage boys. There was simply no way that she was going to ask them. They were laughing and looking at their phones and she let them pass undisturbed. The next people who didn’t pass her dignity test were two moms with strollers holding sleeping toddlers inside. y/n could only imagine the passive judgment of the middle-aged women in Lulu Lemon yoga pants and Gucci handbags would pass on to her. Her rather haggard appearance and evidence of imbibing before five o’clock were sure the elicit a few “tut-tut’s” from the moms and whispered words of disapproval just loud enough for her to hear. The last group she let go was a couple. She found it bad enough third wheeling with all her friends in relationships, doing that with total strangers didn’t bear thinking about.

y/n was wondering if an employee might come around every now and then to see if people or children more likely had gotten lost. Her thought process was interrupted when she heard someone coming close to where she was standing. It sounded. It was the voice of a man. As she listened she realized that his voice was actually quite nice sounding. There was a second voice, clearly from a child. From what y/n was hearing, this sounded like the best option she’s got, and she crossed her fingers hoping that the man that rounded the corner looked and seemed safe and normal. She had spent way too many mediocre Tinder and Bumble dates with guys her age asking her overly personal questions, and oddly why she hadn’t watched the live-action One Piece yet. This always stumped her. She had seen Attack on Titan back in the day -- didn’t that count for anything anymore? It’s not like she asked them if they had seen the 2005 Kiera Knightly Pride and Prejudice or the 1996 Collin Firth adaptation. Again she was pulled from her thoughts when the man rounded the corner with a little boy trailing closely behind him. She attempted to look at him without gawking. This was harder to do than she had expected because not only did the man have a nice voice, he was attractive as well. He was tall and wore blue jeans and a navy Patagonia jacket. His brown hair was cut short and neat with just a tinge of grey at his temples. y/n turned away from him and gently tapped her head, thinking, ‘You idiot. You’re not here to flirt, you’re here to get out of this damn corn maze. She turned back again to be able to see the man. He had picked up the boy she assumed was his son and they were both looking at the clue near the three-way path. The man was reading the clue aloud saying, “All right buddy, here’s what it says: Paths for three but only one for me. One of these paths leads to a dead end, one takes you to the center again, the last is the hardest as you will see, it had a tree of a sort, and when you see that you are nearly free.” The man looked down at the boy and asked, “What do you think Jack? Which of the paths would you like to try first?” y/n wanted to say, “Well the path on the right is the dead end,” but she held her tongue, knowing that if she said anything it would ruin the fun for the boy. After a second the little boy pointed to the middle path and the man let him down saying, “Alright middle it is.” 

It was clear the pair was about to venture forward into the maze and y/n finally gave up her pride and said, “Hey. um, sorry, could you wait a minute please?” The little boy was moving forward, but with a deft move he was able to get the boy’s hand in his and said, “Wait just a minute, son.” The boy stopped and the man turned to look at whoever had mentioned him. Now that the man was actually looking at her, she felt the flush of embarrassment course through her. y/n cleared her throat once and said, “Sorry, this is so embarrassing, but I’ve been stuck in this maze for about an hour and I’ve tried to get out. I’m just not cut out for this. Could I possibly follow you out? I’m y/n _y/l/n_, by the way?” y/n thought she might burst into flames for a few moments of silence as the man glanced at her. There was a ghost of a smile at the corners of his mouth as he said, “Yes, of course you can.” He extended his hand adding, “Aaron, Hotchner.” y/n took his hand and shook it, saying, “Thank you so much. Sorry, I’m just… just bad at these things.”  His grip was firm, but not uncomfortable. As they dropped the handshake, Aaron turned back to his son and said, “Alright Jack, let’s go. We’re going to help someone out of here, so we have to think really hard about what paths we choose!” Jack beamed and turned to look at y/n. She gave him a small wave and a smile. 

The trio moved forward along the center path, and much to y/n’s relief even Aaron, Jack, and she had to double back once to find the right path. The weather was nice and now that _y/n_ wasn’t as stressed out about being lost, it felt nice to be having a break from her busy life. There was a comfortable silence for a few minutes, but as they continued moving the silence became a bit awkward and Aaron turned his gaze toward the woman next to him, asking, “So, are you local?” y/n nodded no, replying, “No, I’m visiting some friends for the weekend. I’m living in New York.” Hotch nodded trying to keep the conversation going by saying, “What’s in New York, work, family…?” The team had been in New York last month for a string of brutal murders. He wondered if she was aware of them. y/n’s eyes flicked to him and she replied, “Columbia Law. This is the first chance I’ve had to take a break all semester, so I thought I should take it.” Hotch looked at her more closely once she brought up Law School. Having gone through it himself many years ago, he knew it wasn’t for the faint of heart. y/n then asked, “And you? Do you live around here?” Aaron replied to her question saying, “I’m local. My son looks forward to this every year. It’s kind of a tradition I suppose.” This was the first year without Hailey coming along. The divorce had changed a lot of things, and this was one of them. Hotch looked forward to Jack, who was a few feet in front of him and _y/n_. After a moment, Aaron added, “I went to Law School a long time ago. What year are you in? Have you decided on a specialty yet?” y/n’s lit up at the questions. She was excited to have something in common with Aaron. She wasn’t great at starting conversations, but now that they had a touchpoint she could easily be an equal speaking partner.

She replied, “I’m in 2L trying to decide between _t/o/l_ and _t/o/l_. Where did you study and are you still in practice?” The conversation stopped for a moment and _y/n_ stepped back and Aaron and Jack looked over the next clue together. Once Jack had made his choice they continued onward. She and Aaron fell into step again and he said, “I went to George Washington University. I was a criminal prosecutor, but I don’t practice anymore.” y/n nodded and asked, “What made you stop practicing?” Aaron let out a sigh at the question and crossed his arms as he considered how to phrase his response. For a moment y/n she had hit a sensitive subject and said, “I’m sorry, you don’t have to answer that.” Aaron chuckled but said, “No, it’s a valid question. Listen, please don’t take this as a bad omen for your career, it’s just in criminal prosecution I saw so many bad cases. People committed heinous acts against humanity and half of the time it would be a hung jury, or the system allowed bad people to walk free and innocent people to be put away for crimes that they didn’t commit. Eventually, I had to step away for my own health.” That wasn’t exactly what y/n had been imagining his answer would be, but she could see the weight of such a flawed and crushing system deteriorating the morale and faith in the people who work in it. That feeling hadn’t hit her yet, but she wondered now if it would.

She pushed her personal feelings aside for a second and took a better look at the man. Yes, he had a few years on her, but there was something in her that wanted to know more about him. Was he happy? Did he have other profound things to say about the legal system, on life? Instead of asking those questions she simply inquired, “Are you working somewhere else, or are you retired?” He looked young to be retired, y/n thought, but it was still an option. That small smile returned to Hotch’s face as he said, “I work for the F.B.I now as a profiler.” y/n nodded taking in the information before asking, “Is the stuff you see in the F.B.I. better than what you saw in prosecution?” Hotch looked to the ground and said, “Often it’s worse.” He looked over to y/n taking in her optimistic face before saying, “But that’s life you know. We have to do the best we can with where we’re at. That can be the courtroom, the interrogation room, or maybe helping a stranger out in a corn maze.” Hotch gave her a wink and y/n almost fell flat on her face. Thankfully she saved herself and it wasn’t too obvious that his wink had nearly left her sprawling in the dirt. She was sure she was flushed now as the heat came back to her face. She was about to say something, but shockingly they had made it to the end of the maze and Aaron moved forward to walk out with Jack. y/n stood back for a second. Could she possibly find the courage to ask this man who had somehow magically slipped into her life for half an hour out? She hadn’t looked for a ring. He had a kid. Her thoughts were swirling around her head. She decided she would regroup with her friends, and get another drink, and if Aaron was still around by that point, she would approach him again. 

As she stepped outside back into the bright autumn light Aaron was slightly to the left of the exit retying Jack’s shoe. As she stepped out she raised her hand in the light and didn’t notice her friends snapping a photo of her. However, there was loud laughing and comments of, “What took you so long y/n? Did you get lost?” y/n lowered her hand and in joking exasperation replied, “Oh come on guys, it only took me twice as long as the sign at the front said it would. That’s gotta be a record for me!” She smiled slightly embarrassed and looked over to Aaron to see if he was still there and if he had heard any of that conversation. Her eyes met his and he looked a little upset. She tilted her head in confusion and his eyes moved over the her friend who had taken the picture of her, to Jack, and then back to her. It took a second but everything clicked and she mouthed, “Oh,” silently. y/n smiled at Aaron and said, “I got you. Sorry, and thanks again for your help.” Aaron’s face went back to its happier look. He and Jack moved toward the pumpkin patch set up near the food stands and y/n moved closer to her friends. Her _y/b/f_ asked, “Why were you talking to that guy? He was pretty cute by the way.”  y/n swatted at her friend and said, “Oh my gosh are we back in high school again? No, um, as per usual, I got really lost in the stupid maze and I asked him to help me out. He was surprisingly chill about it. And he’s a lawyer.” y/n stopped talking, realizing she was rambling, and her friend said, “Well it sounds like I’m not the only one who’s taken an interest in him. What’s his name?” y/n let out a long breath, realizing that her friend was right, and replied, “Aaron Hotchner.”

After a moment she remembered her unspoken promise to Aaron and asked her friend, “Hey can you delete that photo of me coming out of the maze?” _y/b/f_ laughed, saying, “Why, it’s funny. Are you too embarrassed for me to post it or something?” y/n rolled her eyes and replied, “No you silly. It’s just that Aaron’s kid might be in it? You know internet safely and all.” y/n’s friend replied jokingly, “When did you become such a worry wart?” y/n’s demeanor shifted to a more serious nature and she said, “Come on _y/b/f_ if the kid’s in it, delete the picture. You know there are bad people online just as much as I do. If you need a reminder of that the guy that helped me get out of that damn maze and whose son you potentially photographed is in the F.B.I. I’m sure he could tell you a few stories if you like.” At this, _y/b/f_ sobered and said, “You’re right. I’ll delete the pic.” After a moment, _y/b/f_ held out their phone with the camera roll pulled up, displaying that only photos from before the corn maze remained.” y/n smiled and said, “Thanks,” y/n sincerely replied. Now that the mood was lightened, _y/b/f_ said, “Damn, that guy’s in the F.B.I. he keeps adding points to his score.” y/n laughed again saying, “You’re hopeless. You have a boyfriend already.” _y/b/f_ nodded and said, “I do, but you don’t. You should go talk to him or give him your number or something. I mean you at least have to think he’s cute, right?” y/n looked away for a moment before saying, “He is very attractive. I actually told myself that I’d grab a drink after we got out and if I still saw him around after that, that I’d go talk to him.” At hearing this, _y/b/f_ said, well what are we waiting for? Let’s get that drink!” They both headed toward the food stands. y/n ordered a _f/s/f/d_. They sat at a table and started sipping the warm drinks appreciating the atmosphere and charm of the cool afternoon while catching up on gossip they had missed in their time apart. 

y/n finished her drink and _y/b/f_ said, “Right, time to find Mr. Hotchner and ask him on out.” y/n sighed and got up. She grabbed another drink to give her time to think about what she would say if she did see Aaron still around. A tiny part of her hoped he had gone, so she wouldn’t have to ask him out and most likely get rejected. However, Aaron was still at the corn maze. Jack had played in the pumpkin patch and seen the baby goats and pigs in the petting zoo. Now they were going to get Jack a hot chocolate for the car ride home. Jack had gotten sleepy and Aaron carried him on his hip, with one arm firmly holding him in place. As they waited in line he saw y/n apparently scanning the crowd for someone. She hadn’t seen him yet, but he was planning to go over and ask her something because she seemed like a nice person and he wanted to make sure she made smart choices. He wasn’t a narc, but he had noticed her drinking before and she had another in her hand now. Aaron didn’t want her behind the wheel anytime soon. He had seen far too many promising young people lose their chance at a future because they had made that choice. Aaron realized he was sounding like Reid as the statistics popped up in his head.

He pushed the mental numbers aside as he got to the front of the line and ordered. He stepped next to _y/n_ softly calling her name, not wanting to wake Jack. y/n turned around and immediately her skin flushed pink. Now that he was in better light he could see her _e/c_’s were beginning to dilate. He was flattered by her silent tells. He took a second to look her over once quickly. He spent such little time out in normal society that it was strange for him to be with strangers who might or might not fancy him. Finally, he said, “Hey again. I’m heading out and thought I’d just check in on you. Um… not to be weird, but you’re not planning on driving soon are you?” y/n smiled and said, “Thanks for saying hi, and no. Our friend is picking us up in half an hour - I’ve got a designated driver Agent.” She said the last word in a joking tone and he laughed softly. Aaron responded saying, “Good to know. Good luck in school, and I hope you have a nice rest of your break.” Aaron wanted to say more but couldn't figure out how. Thankfully for him, he didn’t have to because as he started to turn, y/n called after him. Once he was facing her again, she said, “Aaron, would you like to get a drink together tomorrow? I catch a red eye at one AM, but I’d like to see you again before I go. If you’d be interested that is.” Now it was Aaron’s turn to flush slightly and he replied, “That sounds nice.” They quietly exchanged numbers and set up a preliminary time and place. As Aaron walked toward the car with Jack, y/n turned to face her friend who had gotten close to try and overhear the conversation, but due to the subdued volume and others talking around them, they hadn’t been able to listen in. When y/n turned, the beaming smile on her face told _y/b/f_ everything they needed to know. They squealed in excitement and rushed forward, ready to get all the details. 

As y/n shared the information and plans for tomorrow, she realized that maybe corn mazes weren’t the worst place in the world to get lost after all.

[transmutationisms]

i have a q which might be controversial and also im not entirely sure how to word, so forgive me. i dont consider “transandrophobia” to be a useful term since androphobia is obviously not a thing that exists; additionally, i know that transmisogyny is the term used for the specific oppression faced by trans women and is the intersection of transphobia and misogyny. my question is - do transmasc ppl also experience oppression that is an intersection of transphobia and misogyny? i have to assume they do, at least in some ways, and so what would that be called? is that also transmisogyny? how do we define that?

ok, i get why people on here sometimes define transmisogyny just as "the intersection of transphobia and misogyny" (not just you—i have seen this phrasing a lot) but i think it's a bit oversimplified and misleading and kind of based on very distant third- and fourth-hand readings of crenshaw. one thing the term 'transmisogyny' is useful for pointing out is that transfeminine people are culturally marked specifically b/c of the directionality of their gender, ie, specifically for 'becoming' women or 'choosing' womanhood. it's this that disrupts the idea that women are a) immutably distinct from men and b) specifically distinct in that they are inferior. the cultural read of transfemininity isn't just that it transgresses the border between men and women, but that it specifically does so to claim womanhood. that's construed as inherently a threat to a logic of male supremacy.

i don't think it's that helpful to haggle over 'who experiences misogyny' and as many people have said before me, to some extent it's really a pointless question because misogyny is the root of the entire patriarchal gender system we all exist in. like yeah of course transmascs also live and operate in this context. and ofc we can be and often are misgendered and perceived as women who 'want' to be men or whatever. but what the term transmisogyny points to is the specific position of being marginalised for transfemininity: for being women & claiming womanhood. obviously this is not a guiding principle in the cultural construction of the figure of the transmasc because well, that's not the directionality of our gender transgression.

i am frankly so sceptical of the idea that transmascs 'need' a special term that somehow combines transphobia + misogyny in some different way because i think this idea belies a misunderstanding of what transmisogyny conveys and how it functions (for example, transmisogyny is very useful for picking apart the ways transfems are seen as both sexual objects and sexual deviants, & how this depends on misogyny that specifically is punishing, again, the idea of gender transgression that goes in the direction of identification & expression of womanhood—transmascs can ofc be sexualised or w/e but again this is a different cultural and discursive construction because we are not being punished for gender transgression in the direction of womanhood, but rather in the direction of 'abandoning' it for manhood, which is then still assumed superior and desirable). again i think a lot of this comes from kind of a superficial understanding of intersectionality and what that framework can achieve. transmisogyny is not just stacking transphobia + misogyny on top of one another like two different sheets of paper; transmisogyny functions in specific and describable ways and arises, again, not just from hatred of gender transgression but from the specific cultural construction & directionality of transfemininity.

[qqueenofhades]

One of the most surprising things I learned recently is that Bernie doesn’t do well with Black voters, and I was wondering if you knew why that is? I feel like his platform is fairly popular so I just wonder why he fails to win their votes?

It's because Black Democrats a) like actual Democrats, and b) also don't have time to waste with empty moral posturing when they are intimately aware of how public policy and progressive (or reactive/reactionary) politics affect their everyday life, in a way that a lot of privileged white Bernie Bros were utterly unequipped to consider (and indeed, attacked the Black Democrats for "not knowing what's best for them," which is not paternalistic or racist at all!) Black Democrats also know how important voting is, because of the obvious fact that they were disenfranchised, had their political accomplishments totally dismantled at the end of Reconstruction, had to literally fight through dogs, gas, guns, and screaming white supremacists to exercise their vote and win their civil rights in the 1960s, and are consistently targeted today by white Republicans attempting to gerrymander, restrict, penalize, or otherwise eradicate their rights. Black Democrats don't vote for empty performative politics, they vote for results. Bernie is great at one, and very bad at the other. Three guesses which.

Elderly Black Democrats in South Carolina allegedly "saved" Biden's 2020 campaign (after Bernie had done well in the EXTREMELY white Iowa and New Hampshire primaries; the ordering of the primaries and the excessive prognostications attached to Uber White Midwestern/New England Results is dumb, but anyway). And that was because Black Democrats have good reason to like Biden. He spent eight years willingly supporting and never upstaging the first Black president, he picked the first Black/Asian woman as his vice president, he put the first Black woman on SCOTUS, he has spent years championing their concerns at an actual tangible and legislative level, and they know that they can trust him. By contrast, Bernie is one of those leftists who dismisses all other kinds of oppression as secondary to the class struggle and thinks that racism, sexism, misogyny, etc. are all inferior injustices to economic injustice. And yes! Economic injustice is very much a thing! But if you go around telling marginalized communities to their faces that their many, many years of lived experience with racial oppression isn't as "real" as economic injustice, and/or that racism will magically be solved by economic redress and you don't need to do anything else about it, don't be surprised when that is not a winning message.

Besides, and as noted: Bernie has spent fifty years in politics and achieved nothing really meaningful (unlike Biden, who has also been in politics for fifty years and has real and significant legislative accomplishments as senator, vice president, and president). His policies are on-paper progressive, but Black Democrats and Black people in general aren't a monolithically progressive voting bloc, and have other concerns and issues that intersect with their support (or lack thereof) for him. There are very few Black people who can afford to take their vote for granted, or to vote for somebody who hasn't demonstrated any interest in going through the legislative process to achieve real results, and instead spends most of his time talking loudly to left-leaning white progressives and cultivating a "Only I, Great Bernie, Can Solve Your Problems" political mentality, which then spills into sore loserdom and was an issue in both 2008 and (most visibly and unforgivably) in 2016.

Basically, in my view, Bernie mostly exists to be the totem for a certain subset of privileged white leftists to club the Democratic Party over the head and set impossible standards of what they "should" be doing, which in turn actively undermines support for the Democrats and helps nakedly fascist Republicans win more elections. And despite nominally running as a Democrat, he in fact is not a Democrat (he sits as an independent) and makes no effort to court central Democratic constituencies. Of which, and obviously, African-Americans are one of the greatest parts, due to consistently voting to get this country out of the mess that fascist white people keep trying to plunge it into. Any candidate who does not understand that, and does not make serious efforts to do so, likewise should not be taken seriously. Therefore, no matter how mad it makes his frothing internet stans (who likewise are not serious people with actual political opinions), the Democratic party apparatus has no real need to humor him and his self-aggrandizing constant talking about things that he never, ever actually does shit about.

[samimarkart]

hi! im hoping to pick your brain, and, depending on your comfort/capacity, maybe develop a conversational relationship about your work.

i am doing my MA in visual critical studies at CCA, and your work echoes some critical topics i want to research.

a. i myself am a fiber artist and hope to study visuals in fiber craft

b. my visual obsessions are ancient motifs! this includes petroglyphs, fossils, and like bronze age utilitarian designs on sarcophagi/vases etc. as seen in your work!

you see why i am eager to engage with you, then.

c. my third focus is less research and more a practical lens that i hope to always embody: ensuring the exposure and payment of Black and Brown artists, myself being Mixed. this might appear less in research and more as i start to curate shows.

my question for you is what you would recommend to someone who is interested in these things? i want to learn more about the history and legacy of making art designed and inspired by our natural world, a practice as ancient as art itself, but I don’t even know what keywords to search for.

i can find resources on the history of craft, and the history of archeology/science/paleontology etc, but are there any artists/historians etc that discuss this intersection?

thank you 😊

great questions and so neat that we have such an overlap in interests! my first exposure to this intersection of art and nature/science was in some of my first art history classes in my undergraduate program. I learned a lot about “land artists”, one of my favorites being Andy Goldsworthy, but a lot of other artists worked with this idea at the same time.

I think in my own work I am more interested in the medium being fibers but the content and imagery being nature, and the land artists most typically swap this mindset and make art about their ideas using the natural world as a medium. So I think research on land artists might help you get some more keywords that you’re interested in if you haven’t already looked into them.

Another way you can look at this especially if you have this interest in fibers is history of eras or cultures where the production of fiber work such as quilts, weavings like rugs and other tapestries, clothing, etc was/is fundamental to their way of life and connection to their natural resources. Natural fibers like cotton, wool, flax and hemp all have very strong histories and are the basic building blocks for making these art and functional pieces! I sadly don’t have a specific article to link you to right now but have read papers and articles that highlight the process of spinning fibers into line, thread and yarn which might come in very usual for you if you do some digging! I also think that this angle in particular has ties to your last point about black and brown artists, and the ways in which these deep practices of building connection with the land are often dismissively labeled as craft, when they hold so much value especially in our world today where it’s cheaper for textile companies to value plastic materials that are more wasteful and harmful to the land.

just a fun little link I can share is this teapot. people have been making art about nature and the motifs within for a long time!

if you have any more questions feel free to dm me or send more asks :)

[333333333433333]

email me   [okdarcie(at)pm(dot)me]

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buy here and probably available elsewhere as well

Tyrant Books, Spring 2017

Darcie Wilder’s literally show me a healthy person is a careful confession soaking in saltwater, a size B control top jet black pantyhose dragged over a skinned knee and slipped into unlaced Doc Martens. Blurring the lines of the written word, literally show me a healthy person is a portrait of a young girl, or woman, or something; grappling with the immediate and seemingly endless urge to document and describe herself and the world around her. Dealing with the aftermath of her mother’s death, her father’s neglect, and the chaotic unspoken expectations around her, this novel is a beating heart at the intersection of literature, poetry, and the internet. Darcie Wilder elevates and applies direct pressure, but the wound never stops bleeding.

Blurbs here. Publication date: April 3, 2017

Flagged and Removed

October 2014  

Flagged and Removed is a collection of poetry, short stories, and flash fiction masquerading as online classified ads. Darcie Wilder wrote the collection in New York between 2013 and 2014, including 11 Reptiles.

Print Only

Alt Citizen, Logue Magazine, Selfish

[slime-quest]

"How about uhhh, blue?"

"Mmmhm, pr'aps a lovely cyan to compliment thine red garments? Thou can always purchase a different case later if thou tires of the colour. "

"Ooh, sure!"

She jots down some notes, taking several pauses to look you over, like she's measuring you with her eyes. "Um, so, is void magic.. bad?"

She laughs. "Forgive my comments. I shan't pretend to be terribly fond of the void or it's strange magics. I find them... mm... clinical? Straightforward. Dull, even. However, even I can admit it hath a strange allure, and after all, magic is magic no matter which way thou slices it. Candyfloss herself wouldst chide me most royally for dismissing it outright."

"I only just woke up like, two days ago, so I don't really know much of anything about any of this."

She writes some more notes and then looks at you. "I wouldst be thrilled to educate thee in brief on whichever school thou wishes to pursue," she slides the paper over to you, "Have a look at this and let me know if thou hast any questions. We want to make sure thou picks the perfect tool to aid thine magical journey."

The paper has a few neat doodles and lines of text. There are three options to pick from, a "Crystal Core", a "Thread Core", and a "Snail Core".

A. Crystal Core - a fun-loving bright and resonant core (slime runes use less honey, and honey regenerates more quickly. Connects with crystal network)

B. Thread Core - a no-nonsense analytical and intelligent core (void runes use less thread, and thread regenerates more quickly. Connects with void network)

C. Snail Core - a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none kind of core (mixed runes are more efficient, but does not enhance regeneration. Connects with both networks slowly)

"I like the sound of the snail core, I think I'd like to get that," you say as you hand the paper back to her.

"Excellent choice! A snail core may be slow, but tis certainly reliable." She pulls a small kit from under the counter filled with intricate slabs and gadgets you don't recognize and begins to work on building your new phone.

"I'm new to all this, so pardon my ignorance, but what's the difference between void and slime magic?"

"Slime magic cometh from the fount of oneself," she says as she lays two crystal slates on the counter and begins to screw them together, "That is to say, thine crystal core taketh a portion of its energy and channels it through thine flesh, or 'Honey', to produce an effect. This tires the core and sacrifices the honey, but time heals all wounds, and one can grow stronger from practice," she eyes your big tail, "Thou hast an ample supply of honey already, it seems."

"Void magic," she continues, "is complicated in its simplicity. It cometh from delicate patterns which guide the formless void to produce a shape or effect. The voidkin hath special fabrics which they use to form these patterns. Anyone can use it, which maketh it a popular choice for aspiring mages, since thou need only memorize a rune and draw it cleanly enough with that sacred thread to harness its effect. The thread is sacrificed, and the void is given its orders, producing magic."

"So what about mixing runes? I did something like that a bit ago."

She peers into a small crystal snail shell before slotting it into the device. "They intersect somewhat, yes. Thou can do it, but the effect wouldst be unpredictable, and scholars art studying the limits of such fusion. Think of it like this: void magic hath precision to a fault, and slime magic hath heart. Say thou cast a fire. A slime fire could be shaped, thou could change the temperature, or snuff it out, all while maintaining a connection to it. But a void fire will burn until it hath finished, precisely as instructed. Thou hast no control over a void spell once cast."

"You mentioned someone called Candyfloss, who is that?"

"I'm surprised at thee, why almost everyone hath heard of the Great Mage Candyfloss!"

"I woke up like two days ago, there's a lot I don't know about still.."

"Candyfloss was the greatest magician who ever lived. She knew everything there possibly was to know about magic, and shared her knowledge freely with everyone. She would perch atop this very tower and gaze at the cosmos, studying their construction, and communing with the goddess. They say her tail was the largest of any slime who lived. Oh how I so wish I couldst have known her when she was alive.."

"What happened to her?"

"The void king slaughtered her, and every other grand slime in the land. At least, I suppose that's what happened, I wasn't there." She holds out the device, "Squeeze a drop of thine honey in there, and I shalt have this ready in just a moment."

[caswlw]

there’s little i enjoy more than dissecting books and making commentary on religious shit and being able to recognize the allusions in it like. “The Fall was a fall from innocence to knowledge.” leading me to writing “…she sees her womanhood as a place that was beckoned to finding forgiveness and failed- therefore laying her womanhood at the altar of man.” like yeah we are going HARD for messages of faith 😤 spn is good for a lot of things but getting wow! on my paper is one of the best

[comicaurora]

Okay so 1: Absolutely spectacular visuals this page. Like desperate threads reaching to weave back into one another, those lightning strands. But also this page made me notice 2: I can't pluck from my memory a time when a page in Aurora Felt Like a transition. Like as in the narrative momentum throughout the comic is regularly at a rhythm and tempo and new story and character elements are slotted into place in such a way that makes each page feel like a piece of a tightly woven braid where we occasionally linger over the overlapping bends. Which left me kinda boggled when I realized this page felt much less like an intersection and very distinctly like a joint. Like 'Oh that is supposed to be there, it is serving a purpuse, but it's Full Transition and I'm not used to that happening'.

So to get to the question(s?) this prelude was meant to contextualize: What's your general north star for the flow you build up in the story? How big a role does that little 'better writer in the back of your brain' play in the zoomed out view of the comic vs moment to moment? Does it get particularly unwieldy, and do knots to the momentum sneak up on you?

Pacing is absolutely the hardest part of comic-making for me, and I tend to take a more diagnostic approach to it - it's more about fixing problems than laying rails. So when I'm laying out pages and rereading, I tend to consider these:

Is this scene feeling aimless? The problem is probably that I started on it before I found the next anchor event - the next key thing that I know is going to happen. I never start a scene before I know what point it's going to serve and what event it's going to establish. Every scene has at least one point to make, and sometimes the problem is the anchor point I'm aiming for is actually too far away - I need something to happen sooner.

Am I stuck, even though I know what happens next? Then I'm probably stalling on ending the scene and moving on to the next one. Scenes don't need to keep going past their logical breakpoints. Sometimes I just need to draw the next panel, even if I'm not positive what'll go in it, and then feel it out from there.

Am I dreading laying out the buildup to an event or reveal but feel I need the buildup to pace the impact? Then I don't have enough things happening in that buildup. Dread is the result of tedium, and if the buildup is just mandatory spacefiller it will result in tedium. Either the buildup needs to be shorter or more stuff needs to happen in it. This is when I have a lot of luck in letting the characters surprise me, since juicy character drama can fill a lot of holes that the plot leaves bare.

Am I spending all this time on the reread wondering "what happened to the other thing that's happening?" This is the danger with running arcs in parallel; if I leave one storyline unattended at a cliffhanger moment, I might be too hung up on wondering what's going on there to pay any attention to what's going on currently. As a result, I try to end scenes when the audience is given enough information to infer what those characters will continue doing offscreen. Running from point A to point B, invoking a spell, evenly matched in combat, etc etc. This usually means I need to adjust how the scene ended when it transitioned into the new scene - tie up at least one loose end before moving on.

When it comes to pacing, I think the moment-to-moment flow matters a lot more than the top-down roadmap of the plot. Something can look extremely simple point-A-to-point-B on paper, but translate to something a lot more involved when it's actually put on the page - in the same way that the script notes for an entire fight scene can just be "they fight and X wins."

The thing I struggle with most is balancing the Cool Moments with how much buildup is required to make those moments Suitably Cool. If I start dropping in random awesome moments with no buildup, they won't hit how I want. I've watched enough out-of-context "top 10 anime fight scenes" to know they only hit as hard as they should when you have the full context for why they mean so much. Without that it's just a bunch of noise and one-liners. I want to jump right to the good stuff, but if I do, it won't be as good. But pacing isn't just packing in filler between the Awesome Moments - that space is where you can fit all kinds of character moments that are impactful in other ways.

I wish I had a more eloquent explanation for what I think the rules of pacing are, but I really do just feel it out and go by the vibes. I'm glad it seems to be working so far!

[kyidyl]

Kyidyl Does Archaeology - Part 1

About me, and about the site.

I’m gonna have to do this in parts because I tend to be, uh...wordy.  Actually...ok, so I believe very strongly that knowledge does no one any good behind a paywall, but I also have a hard time parsing it down for social media because, well, people are complex but also ADHD.  So if you guys have any feedback for me that’d be awesome.  I’ll probably do these as a series so they don’t get overwhelming to read.  Tag for ‘em will be kyidylCL

A caveat to all of these posts: archaeologists walk a fine line between “I’d love to tell you about this and here look at this cool thing” and “I don’t want to share a colleague’s forthcoming paper on social media before they publish it and also fuck looters”. We classify anyone who *isn’t* an archaeologist as a looter.  Because even when you find artefacts just lying around, as soon as you pick them up they’re removed from context and become near-useless for scientific research and data.  When we remove them we capture all that information via a prescribed methodology.  When other people remove them they tend not to.  And you can tell how legit someone is by how much they care about the context.  Context is key, that’s why we’re so meticulous.  Anyway so I can’t tell you where the site is specifically because I’m not allowed.  I also, though, have been heavily involved in this project so I’m mostly going to be telling you about my own research so it’s ok to publish it on social media.  Anyway, that’s why if you show an archaeologist something you just like found they’ll be like “gee...thanks...well...I don’t want to squelch your curiosity, buuuuuut...” 

A little bit of background on my involvement with this site: I’m a newly minted archaeologist.  I’ve had my MS a little over a year, and I’ve been doing things in that time to keep up my skills and get the field hours I need to be a registered state archaeologist (it’s basically just like a professional license for archs.) bc I didn’t get enough in school and my dissertation is on genetics and cannibalism (and if you want to know about *that* I’ll tell you, but in another post.), so yeah.  Anyway.  I’ve been volunteering with the local archaeology society, and they’re great.  They found this site because two of the members grew up in the area and just knew of its existence.  So I volunteer with them and am one of like 3 people they know who have a degree so I get to be really involved - probably more than I would be otherwise just cause people with my credentials are in short supply for them.  I’m basically the only member with a degree, and the rest are consultants they bring in for stuff like this (including the RSA who works the site - the site director.).  

Before a site can be dug there’s a lot of prep work involved.  It varies based on what kind of money you’ve got and access.  We have lots of access - it’s on private land owned by someone who is childhood friends with a member of the arch society - but almost zero money.  Before I showed up, in summer 2018, they did a series of what are called shovel tests.  Basically there’s a grid laid over the site and where the grid lines intersect they dug a round pit down to what archaeologists call “the sterile layer”, IE, where there’s no evidence of human activity.  Basically, you dig small holes to see if it’s worth digging big holes and in this case it was worth it.  

When I started working with them, I took all of the material from the test pits and sorted and catalogued it.  We’ll come back to this in the next post, so remember this.  Pause.  

I forgot to tell you where the site was.  Like not specifically, I can’t do that, but I CAN tell you that it’s in the Shenandoah valley.  Wanna see pics? Yeah, you wanna see pics (I took all of the images I’m gonna be posting so I give myself permission to post them. :P): 

The site is too big to get in one pic, but this is the far end looking towards the mountain.  The field continues off to the left of the shot.  

Here’s a nicer pic of the mountain: 

And another one cause it’s super pretty: 

And here’s my view when we’re eating lunch:

And here’s an artsy shot of the cows I pass on my way in, because who doesn’t love cows? ;) 

The site has been occupied for a long time (how long? Well, that’ll happen in the pottery post soooorry. ;), and I think you guys can see why.  It’s also on a slight ridge overlooking a river so it’s near fresh water, easily defensible, and is fertile.  Speaking of which... 

It’s also what archaeologists call “highly disturbed”. See, after the colonizers drove the natives out of the Blue Ridge mountains, they started farming the fertile land in the valley.  This site was farmed for several decades, and not only that but during the civil war they dug a big ‘ole defensive trench through the middle of it.  So whilst farming disturbs the finds, it tends to a, only be a max of 15 inches deep and b, keep the finds in the same relative area they’re pulled out of.  And we can tell where that layer ends (I’ll show you that in the post about our pits bc I don’t think Tumblr will let me add more pics.), so even though it destroys features and damages things it’s a lot less destructive than, say....building a giant war trench and shooting at each other.  

The site is an entire settlement.  It’s...several acres in size.  There are burial cairns in the woods around it, and some rumors that human remains have been found there in the past - although we have not, as of yet, found any (much to my personal dismay because, well...bioarchaeologist.). 

So who lived here? Well, when the colonizers drove out the natives they didn’t exactly keep good records about who lived where, but generally speaking the site is on both Massawomeck and Manahoac land. We don’t know which group lived there, and there were other groups coming and going in the general area so it could have also been Piscataway or Potomac or even one of the later nations that formed the Iroquois.  Based on the age though I think the best candidates are the Massawomeck or Manahoac.  

Next up, the prep work I did for the site and dig! 

(aaaahhhhhh hopefully I didn’t forget anything. x.x)

[sarunohadaki]

18 or 28 w jasper and whoever you think would be funniest

18. A and B make questionable decisions together.

Jasper/Veronica get lost.

Words: 701

“Take the next left.”

Jasper sighed, his hands tightening ever so slightly on the steering wheel. “I’m not falling for that.”

“What?” Veronica asked. “It’s a shortcut! Trust me on this one.”

Veronica unfurled a paper map, Jasper catching the action in his peripheral vision.

He’d been driving them around for the past three hours, attempting to wrap up a car ride and hit the next hotel on their way to the coast. He had calculated it would take about three days given they were efficient with their time. The GPS on Jasper’s phone had been doing a fine job of pointing them in the right direction, but he sensed that both himself and Veronica were getting sick and tired of each other’s company. Which is wont to happen when you’ve been trapped in the same car with the love of your life for about one-hundred-and-eighty minutes.

“And what if it isn’t a shortcut and we get hopelessly lost?” Jasper asked.

Veronica scoffed. “I can see town from here! Don’t worry about it.”

Jasper lived in a natural state of constant stress, so being told not to worry was like telling a shark not to swim. He rolled his eyes and scanned the road ahead for the next intersection.

A thin road emerged in the distance. Jasper turned left down it.

The scenery shifted from a paved two-lane road surrounded on both sides by knee-length indian grass to a dirt road with nary a streetlight but the same swaying grass.

Jasper frowned. And then he smiled.

It was more of a shit-eating grin, actually.

Veronica was totally wrong about this road leading anywhere, but instead of point that out, he’d entertain the thought for a few minutes. The sun was still in the sky, after all. No use putting to end such a wonderful romp through the abandoned countryside just yet!

“And what do you look so smug about?” Veronica sneered.

“Oh, nothing,” Jasper said.

“Tch,” Veronica grunted, folding up the map and slapping it down on the dashboard.

“Don’t you need that to be open to use it properly?” Jasper asked.

“I’m not going to get lost,” Veronica said. “I know where we’re going. Just keep driving straight for a few miles and we’ll hit a fork in the road.”

“And then what?” Jasper asked.

“Jeez! What, you don’t want a little mystery in your life? I’ll tell you once we get there,” Veronica said.

…

Getting “there” took a lot longer than Jasper expected. But they eventually reached the fork in the road that Veronica had mentioned.

When she hadn’t mentioned was its position in the middle of a neighborhood.

“Where next?” Jasper asked. “The house with the cute swing in the front yard, or the one with the metal shingling?”

“Oh, shut up now,” Veronica said. She pulled the map out again. “Let’s see… hmmm… hmm...”

“Don’t tell me you’re having trouble reading the map!” Jasper said. “I say we—“

He reached for the phone mounted next to the radio. Veronica grabbed his wrist and tutted.

“Not so fast! This says to go— to go right!”

“Okay,” Jasper said, and spun the wheel that direction.

“Wait, you believe me?”

“Why shouldn’t I?” Jasper asked. “Unless you’re not sure where we are anymore.”

“No, it’s definitely right,” Veronica sneered.

“Okay.”

…

This might have been the most… rustic cul-de-sac Jasper had ever seen.

There was still the obligatory basketball hoop and circle of houses, though a few of them looked abandoned. The space in between houses was dug into narrow ditches, and the road had fine carve marks made from tire tracks.

Jasper turned to Veronica. Veronica rolled her eyes.

“Don’t look at me like that. I don’t know where we are, okay?”

“Nice to hear you finally admit it,” Jasper said. “Now. Let’s get back on track.”

He turned to his phone to turn it back on but the screen remained black. He looked up at Veronica, who rubbed the back of her head.

“Don’t worry, we’ll use my phone,” she said, pulling it from her pocket. Unlike Jasper’s, it actually lit up when prompted.

“Nice of you to right your wrongs,” Jasper said, smiling, as he accepted her phone.

(From this ask game!)

[burningcowboyhoagietaco]

A Way to Learn a Lesson

written by:

@burningcowboyhoagietaco

illustrated and edited by the amazing, the one and only:

@lenle-g

Before I publish the story id like to thank @lenle-g from the bottom of my heart for being patient with me, being nice to me the whole time, and for making my story even better and more exciting. Without her I would have stayed in my normal, not that good English story. so thank you for everything!!! <3<3

And here's my part at @tagminibang submission:)

☆☆☆☆☆

Scott, no!!! No way! I am not going to give any lectures to anyone." John's voice comes out tight. "Especially not in front of a crowd. No way."

"Why not?" Scott raises a brow, his voice honeyed with ‘big brother wants something’. "It's not like you're gonna get executed by some children just for talking space at them, right? You love talking about space. It's all I've heard since you were, like, seven."

"No, that's not it." There's a sharp shake of the ginger’s head, "Scott, come on!" John knows for a fact that his oldest brother knows he's the most socially awkward person to have ever lived on Tracy Island (and maybe the entire planet). "You’ve lived with me long enough to know how much I hate social.... anything." John complains. "Why would you ever think I'd want to do this?""

"Well, yes, I know that," Scott shrugs, "I've seen that look you get on your face when there's a lot of people around." He’s well aware that his brother is an introvert who hates socializing with anyone, so he quickly changes the subject to try and make his younger brother feel a little more at ease. "But hey... everyone knows how much you like it when anyone talks about space or anything about astronomy. You'd be amazing at it."

"That's a different thing." John says flatly. Flattery, it seems, wont get Scott very far. "It's like, whenever you guys ask me anything about space, I like to answer them for you, but from random people…? And in huge crowds? I just simply can't." Surely he doesn’t have to explain himself much more than that?

"Oh trust me, everything is going to be fine." Scott was a flippant hand around, talking without really thinking, because all he wants is for his brother to get out of Thunderbird 5, to visit Earth for a little bit, to mingle with people a little. It can't be that bad. "If anything happens, Gordon and Alan'll be in Thunderbird Five doing Space Monitor duty, me and Virgil are gonna keep an eye on everything, and you’re in safe hands with Lady Penelope and Parker. It's all set up, so please go have some fun for once and teach the children something cool."

"My answer is still no." John says persistently, without hesitation. He's pretty sure it'd be worse than being in the middle of a hurricane, or testing one of his Grandma's new cooking experiments. It’s lucky Scott misses his involuntary shudder.

Scott, though, is so done with him at this point, that he's pretty sure there's no choice but to use plan b and hope that that works instead on his unwilling, stubborn, red haired brother. They've got to get him down from orbit and to that lecture somehow. Scott's just not going to stand for anything else.

"Are you sure that's your last answer?" Scott asks, with a heavy sigh, already planning the best way to call in the big guns.

"Yes," John scowls, arms folded. "Yes, it is."

They'll see about that.

...

"Is everything ready?" John adjusts his sleeves, smoothing down his vest and putting the last touches on his collar. Neat, simple, formal. Can't go wrong. "My presentation papers, laptop, and my mini simple dimple?”

"Yes, all in the bag." Scott calls back, rapidly checking everything, "But do you really need that little fidget thing of yours?" He picks his younger brother's old toy up between forefinger and thumb to examine it, remembering the day John made their Mom buy it for when he gets stressed.

"What fidge- oh, yes I need it." The look on John's face leaves no doubt about that. "I've used it ever since Mom bought it for me."

"Hey… Mom would've been proud of you, you know?” Scott tells him, in a quick flash of brotherly pride. “For, you know, going out of your safe zone for a little while and teaching the children and all that."

"Yeah, I know…" John finds him a nervous smile, "But I'm not doing this voluntarily, you've forced me with that plan b of yours."

The second John says that Scott's cheeks dimple, the corners of his eyes crinkle, and he grins victoriously, his teeth a bright white in the earliest rays of morning sun.

“All I had to do was make a call." He shrugs, "Lady Penelope did all the talking and somehow convinced you to go." Scott got a little more excited. He took a couple of steps forward, slightly standing on his toes reaching John's level asking"How did she convince you?" Clearly waiting teasingly for an answer to come out of John's lips

"Huhhhh." John exhales loudly, a little despairing. "She promised me we'd go to the Pagasa Astronomical Observatory after I finish the lecture with the children." He shrugs, keeping his eyes down, embarrassed.

"The what now?" Scott stares at him, thoroughly confused.

"The Pagasa Astronomical Observatory in the Philippines.” John says, like that was obvious, “It's equipped with a 45-cm computer-based telescope. It's so powerful that astronomers and astronomy enthusiasts can now conduct effective observations of stellar bodies and other distant space objects! Scott, it’s been my dream to go since I was, like, 17."

Scott always knew how much of an astrophile his younger brother is; he never cared about his physical appearance, nor his poor eating habits and he always used to make excuses to read his books alone, yet no one has ever interfered in his personal life.

"Okay okay space lover boy,” Scott grins at him. He'd expected Penny to be persuasive, but resigning herself to hours stuck with John in full excited-about-space mode would hardly be in his top ten. Either he's gonna owe her one, or Penny's more resilient than him. “You can go, no one is holding you back."

The short silence between them was broken by a ringing sound from a nearby table, which John answers.

“...Mhm, yes? Oh, the lecture." It must be Penelope calling, "Yeah, I'm ready, I'll head out now." John grabs his bag, wandering toward where the FAB1 must already be idling on the Tracy runway. "Time to go."

"Mhm,” Scott makes an agreeable noise, watching him go. “Please stay safe and please don't make an idiot of yourself." He's teasing… mostly.

"Yeah yeah," John waves at him over his shoulder, not even looking back. "I won't."

…

"Are we there yet?" Despite the consistently amazing views out of FAB1’s windows during the flight, John’s found himself mostly looking down, fidgeting with his fingers. He’s worrying, just a little, about what awaits him in the Philippines - a whole different tropical island to his own, though still in the South of the Pacific Ocean.

"Just give Parker ten more minutes, darling,” Her Ladyship smiles at him, “We'll arrive in no time."

There’s a moment of silence before, unexpectedly, it’s broken by a call flashing up from, of all places, Thunderbird Five. There’s a prickly sense of discomfort as John realises that, of course, it’s not him calling. Gordon must be trying to reach them.

"Heeeeey Lady Penelope,” The kid greets, as Penny flicks it on, seemingly a lot less bothered by the change than he is. “Oh, and Mr. Tracy.” There’s a huge smirk on his face. “How's our newest teacher holding up?"

"Firstly, my name is John.” John points out, flatly, “Second, I'm not your teacher so please don’t call me Mr. Tracy ever again. Thirdly…” He concedes, quirking an eyebrow, “Yeah, I'm good for now, but fourth… How are you holding up, up there in my Thunderbird? She’s not much like Four, is she?"

"Ooooooooo that's a good question,” Gordon looks half like he’s considering it, half like he’s really missing his own ‘bird. “I'm holding up pretty well thanks to Alan. He’s taken all the Monitor duty stuff, so all I gotta do is keep an eye on you guys." He sounds a bit… sarcastic about that. “It’s pretty boring, honestly. How do you survive up here without a pool?”

"Young Master Gordon, are you quite done talking?" Parker glances, unimpressed, at the little floating hologram of John’s brother in his rearview mirror, "Because we're about to arrive at our destination."

"Huh… oh yeah,” Gordon doesn’t seem too bothered about that, but he waves merrily at them all the same, “Okay bye and John, please have fun, you too Lady Penelope, okay bye guys."

It’s only a few moments later that Parker opens his mouth to tell them that they’ve arrived at Chino Roque Theater, pulling up out front to let them both climb out.

John's eyes widen: it’s nothing like what he saw on the internet. It was more enormous, more luminous, more spectacular than anything he’d seen or read online. All he remembers reading is that it's a sphere shaped building located in the Philippines, in Anilao Hill, but the pictures on the webpage didn’t do it justice like being there in person does.

The building was smooth and round; the auditorium shaped like a massive egg nestled in amongst the other buildings. They were early enough that the sun was just cresting the horizon, colouring the sky with reds and oranges, visible through the geometric front of the building - where giant triangles of glass intersect together to give the people inside an amazing view of the sky at night.

"M'lady, you and John can go ahead. I'll park FAB 1." Parker said, before going to the parking lot - unaware just how tiring and long his journey to find a place to park is going to be.

They both head inside the building, admiring the sweeping glass fractals of the roof high above them. It’s incredibly beautiful, really a feat of engineering. So much so, that John almost forgets why he’s even there, until he spots a couple of buses arriving on the other side of the building, and the panic sets in. He was expecting to be a little bit anxious, but this feels like his heart is going to beat right out of his chest. He presses a hand hard against it, trying to calm his racing pulse and stop the sudden shake of his fingers, and Penny must notice, because a little hand settles, ever so lightly, on his shoulder, drawing his attention to her.

"Hey John," Lady Penelope looks him steadily in the eye, projecting warmth and reassurance. "They're just a small, mixed group of children and teens. They can’t possibly hurt you, now can they? They just came to have a small lecture because all of them like space and astronomy just like you. Imagine yourself at their age, meeting a real life astronaut.” John tries very hard not to remind her who, exactly, his Father was, as she goes on - trying to visualise being a kid that didn’t get ‘take your son to work days’ at NASA’. It’s a pretty horrifying concept. “Most importantly,” Penny adds, “it's only for an hour or so, so you don't need to worry so much." She had to smile just to reassure him. “You’ll have filled their heads with space facts and be out before you know it.”

"O-okay,” John takes a deep, steadying breath, “I don't know if I'm supposed to trust you on this, or whatever, but I really don't have any other choice." He also wants to add that they forced him to go, but at the last second he remembers that they never forced him - he agreed to go because Lady Penelope promised him a trip to the observatory.

It seems like a pretty weak reason, now that he’s outside the stage door, knees shaking.

"Mhm, I think it's time to go inside.” She nudges him callously in the right direction, and John’s palms meeting the solid metal of the double doors is the only thing that keeps him from following gravity’s call and landing on his face. “Again, if anything happens, I'll be at the back of the room and I have a plan b if things get too much." John, pretty shocked by just how many plan b's the Lady Penelope might have prepared for the day, can only shake his head, bemused. “So stop worrying and get out there!”

She vanishes off into the atrium, and John can’t help the loud exhale that escapes his mouth before he musters up all the courage he can, and enters the room.

Bright lights startle him for a moment, and he’s pretty sure he does an awful, awkward impression of a blind baby giraffe as he stumbles out onto the stage and freezes as he notices the first smatterings of audience are already taking their seats.

The moment he placed his foot on the smooth wooden floor, his heart had started to beat faster, his hands began to sweat, the more steps he took forward the more he felt anxious. It was, he’ll think later, one of the toughest moments of his life, and he’s been to space. Multiple times.

Come on John. He tries to straighten up, shake off his anxiety, This can’t go worse than your first EVA.

Taking another deep breath, John waits patiently for all the attendees to take a seat inside the room. Waiting doesn’t help his anxiety levels at all, and he can feel them increasing by the second, but, determined, John doesn’t let it stop him from starting his lecture.

"H-Hello everybody,” He starts, incredibly conscious of the hushed silence that falls across his audience. “I'm John Tracy, M.Sci, PgDip, B.Lang Hons,” he rattles off his credentials, his nerves almost blurring them together, “I worked with NASA as an astronaut for three years before going… uh… solo in my astronomical studies, and I'll be your guest lecturer for the day.” He swallows around the lump in his throat, as a ripple of hushed oohhhs and ahhhs goes through the crowd. John’s pretty sure his face has gone bright red. “Thank you for having me at the Chino Roque Theater,” He goes on, before his embarrassment can bet the better of him, “I hope everyone’s had an amazing day so far. We'll be spending the next hour or so talking about astronomy and space physics, so shall we get started?" John thought it was a good opening, and yet his back was really wet from all the people's eyes on him. Glancing offstage, Penelope throws him a thumbs up, and he feels a little better.

"Um,” He blinks. “So does anyone here know how old the universe is?" John ventures, only to be surprised as almost everyone answers at once;

"Almost 13.8 billion years!"

"Yes,” The edge of a smile works its way onto John’s face. Clearly this was going to be a shout out the answer kind of lecture. He can work with that. “That's correct, now does anyone know how the universe started?"

"The Big Bang!" Most of them answer, and John feels a surge of relief. These guys really are into space.

"Okay, okay, not bad at all." He nods affirmatively at them, and the screen behind him lights up with an artist’s rendition of the Big Bang happening. "Now if I were to go and search ‘how old is the universe’ in, say, Google, the answer would be 13,772 billion years. It’d be the same thing if we looked at NASA, or even Wikipedia - so how did people get to know the age of the universe? How do you even start calculating something that old? Well I'm going to explain it for you in two ways: the good, nice way, and the kinda not that good and not that scientific way." There’s a bit of an awkward pause as John wonders whether or not he’s explained that well. When only silence greets him, he very quickly realises he needs to press on.

"So, uh, the good way.” He folds his fingers together behind his back, trying to resist the urge to fidget. “Well, in the middle of the previous century, as telescopes developed, we noticed something strange. We found that stars in very distant galaxies tend to look red… Umm, which is something that’s not supposed to happen.” A chuckle escapes John and, to his relief, the audience laughs with him. Scott never gets his space jokes. “So why’s that?” He asks, “See, if a chemical element gains or loses energy it’ll emit light in certain frequencies, thereby creating certain colors.” A small movement of his hand signals the slide to change, and a picture of the visible section of the electromagnetic spectrum appears, colouring the room with rainbow light. “For example,” John goes on, bathed in blue and violet, “Consider something like… a desk lamp, as like an element. If you give a lamp electrical energy, it’ll release that energy in the form of heat and light, yeah?" There’s a murmur of uncertain understanding in the room. “Electricity goes in, the bulb gets hot, and it gives off light. Well, we know stars do pretty much the same thing - only powered by nuclear fusion rather than a nine volt plug.”

"From studies of the sun and stars that are near Earth, we know that they’re made of helium and hydrogen, yes?” There’s another murmur of agreement in John’s crowd, “Well, hydrogen and helium can create red light, but they don't have the ability to create these shades of red that we see in deep space." The slide behind John clicks to a comparison of the two shades, on two different stars - making the difference clear.

"So, if stars are made of helium and hydrogen then why do distant stars have different colours? Are their compositions different?uh, well It’s possible, but not likely. The strongest explanation is that the color difference is due to the movement of the stars." The room gives a soft gasp at this news, and John knows he’s onto something good.

"So there's something called the redshift and blueshift phenomenon that says that if an object radiates light and approaches you, the color of the light begins to turn blue, and if the object is moving away from you, the color will turn red. This happens because the wavelength of light contracts and expands with movement meaning that something stretching equals red and contraction equals blue."

"And the strange thing is,” John adds, his audience listening raptly, “That most, if not all, stars show the same behavior, so, if we think about it, if all stars are moving away from us, that means that they were close to us at some point, and if we follow their path, we find that everything in space meets at a point named ‘singularity’."

"It was believed, in the past, that everything in the universe, or at least in the visible part that we have observed, that is to say,” John flicks to a graphic on his next slide. “All the galaxies, planets and stars, were all gathered at one point - the singularity. The theory is that this point exploded in what we call the ‘Big Bang’, and from that time onward, the universe has been in constant expansion.”

"So it’s with data from this knowledge that we can calculate the age of the universe:” With a wave of his hand, John puts a series of bullet points up on the screen behind him, then reads them aloud.

“One, the universe began as a very small, single point.” He reaffirms, “Two, the universe is constantly expanding outward from that point, and three, from these we have the ability to calculate the expansion rate of the universe, by calculating the speed of the stars that are moving away from us. If we take the furthest accelerations and enter them into this equation,” John’s board merrily does it’s thing behind him, “Then, we get the age of the universe."

"And, so we don't forget, all this talking was about the good way. There is another way to calculate the age of the universe, the, uh, not as good way, or, more specifically, the less scientific way.” A ripple of laughter goes through John’s audience - and he relaxes a little more. Maybe Scott was right. Maybe these are his kind of people. Scott’s never laughed at a space joke for sure. “There's no problem with it,” He quietens them again with a gentle gesture, “and it does support our theory and calculations, so I guess we should talk about it."

"Since ancient times, humans have been looking at the sky, watching the stars, and giving them names like Cygnus, Canis Major, Orion.” All names any young astronomer in the Southern Hemisphere would recognise, and be able to enthusiastically point out in the night sky. “In those days, there wasn't the internet so they were looking up at the stars instead.” Much like John himself, when he’d been a boy.

“As a way of calculating the age of the universe, astronomers set out to search for the oldest celestial bodies in space.” He goes on to explain, “The idea was that if we find a star whose age equals X, then the age of the universe must be greater than the number X. So we pointed our telescopes up there and started trying to find out their ages from birth, to youth, to their old age until their end."

"Can anyone guess the age of the oldest star we've found?" A lot of answers were guessed, some of them were pretty close, but some, amusingly, were way too far. "Ok, ok…” John puts his hands up to pacify his excited crowd, “Umm I see there are a lot of answers, but the oldest star people discovered was actually estimated to be 13.5 billion years old. The HD-140283, or as you might know it, the Methuselah Star. That number is very close, you’ll notice, to our estimation of the age of the universe."

"But if we found a star that is 13.5 billion years old today, then we could find an even older star next week and that would ruin all of that,” He chuckles, mostly to himself, “We also should note that this method alone isn't suitable for determining the universe’s age, but as long as we have two methods with corroborative results, we can be reassured that the estimate is correct.” He pauses for a second, “So, does anyone have questions?" A couple of hands raised, and John found himself suddenly answering a lot of questions - but he managed all of them despite his fear of the huge crowd.

He’s starting to feel more than a little overwhelmed.

"Umm… W-well that was a lot of questions,” John tries to pull it back in, his allotted lecture time ticking away on the big clock at the back of the hall. He feels a little panicky from the bombardment, and his palms have gone sweaty. “We’d better move on.” To distract himself from the people, as much as anything, “Our next topic is the theory of relativity, so l-let's get started on that."

Lady Penelope, from her fold-out seat at the back of the room, frowns. It’s clear John’s terrified and she wants to use plan b, but as long as he’s still standing on his feet, and giving the lecture, he's probably fine for now. If anything, it’d cause more of a disruption to drag him away now.

"Umm,” John takes a breath, trying to centre himself in the science of it all. “Let's start with a supposition, a hypothesis if you like, and consider it together. Okay, you’ll have to bear with me on this one, but let us suppose that we were all asleep, and the universe suddenly inflated by a thousand times.” There’s a murmur in the crowd at how odd everything abruptly getting that much bigger sounds, “Your bed, your pillow, your desk,” John extrapolates, “even the meter we measure stuff with. If humans became a thousand times bigger, when we woke up would we feel something strange? Would we even notice anything had changed? You’d think so, but no.” John’s settling back into his rhythm now, “So why is that? Because the bed and everything became a thousand times more inflated and our bodies also inflated a thousand times, with everything scaling in parallel relation to each other so that this percentage, this scale, was preserved throughout the room. You’d never know the difference."

"Henri Poincaré, the well known mathematician and theoretical physicist, says that we will never be able to discover that something like this has happened, even if we use all the mathematics and calculations ever invented.” John drives the point home with another illustrated slide, “This hypothesis is called the Poincaré hypothesis, and simply, because the meter with which we measure things will have also expanded a thousand times, there’s never going to be any equation or calculation or any analysis possible that could lead us to the truth, because the ratio is preserved in all parts."

"Now, this is important, because the same thing also happens with time. If everything suddenly got a thousand times faster, we’d still never feel anything different. Why’s that?” He asks, rhetorically, “Because time is also a thousand times faster, your heartbeat is also a thousand times faster, your body would function a thousand times faster to keep up with it all. As long as everything is increased by the same amount, the ratio is preserved, and none of us will be able to detect any change."

"So Poincaré asked the scientific community; is there no way to know that time increased or that things inflated?" John tells the room, "Well, it was Albert Einstein who answered him, deciding that the one and only way to tell, would be to have someone observing what happened to the world from another galaxy, from another world, lightyears away. For someone to point a telescope in our direction, and look through it at us, and say what happened to the Earth? Why are humans walking a thousand times faster than in the past? But this person who realized the situation,” The astronaut waves a flippant hand, starting to feel much more confident again, “would have to be a person standing on a fixed external platform in a different world, so that what happened to us was not also happening to him."

"But, as Einstein commented, this hypothesis is impossible for a simple reason and it's that there is no fixed platform in the universe - the entirety of it is in constant, turbulent motion. For example, the Earth rotates at a speed of 460 meters per second, revolving around the sun at 30 kilometers per second, and at the same time, the sun and it’s planets and dwarf planets and moons and asteroids, all revolve around our galaxy, The Milky Way, at a speed of 300 kilometres per second, and so the whole universe revolves. That's,” John takes a deep breath, finding himself out of air after so much explaining, “why it's impossible for us humans to completely accurately judge the motion of any astral body."

"Because there is no fixed berth, we can only offer relativity. This is the first part of the theory that Einstein came up with, in summary; it cannot be said that the monotony of a body is absolute motion."

"Another thing he said was that, because of the vastness of the universe, it’s impossible to synchronize, what does that mean? Well, I will give you an example.” He flicks his slide, “Say I’m a person in the Philippines, and I'm talking to someone from the United States. We synchronize, and hear each other in real time, because we have a method of fast communication. I can hold my device and say; hello, how are you?” John holds up the slim, sliver slice of his phone to show the audience, “How’s the weather there? And they’d answer me with something like; I’m fine thank you, it's night here so it’s a bit hard to tell what the weather’s doing! What’s the weather like there? And I’d answer them; it's daytime, and maybe ask them something like, what are you eating? They’d answer me; a burger, and then I’d tell them that I'm eating kaldereta, and it’s much better than a burger."

In the audience Penny quietly hopes that Gordon, who's probably listening in with the rest of his brother’s, missed the fact John was making jokes on stage. The poor little bugger’ll never live it down otherwise.

"These two events, each person talking to the other, are compatible.”  John goes on, absolutely oblivious, “It’s possible because the two wireless devices, be they mobile phones or more sophisticated comms systems, are on the same globe, creating a fast means of communication.”

"But,” John postulates, “If I was talking to someone from another galaxy and I used the same means of communication to make a call, do you know how long it would take to get to them? It would be about five to six thousand years until my signal reaches the phone of our friend, and they’ll have married, had children and died, and their children would have married and had children and died, and so on, for thousands of years before then."

"And that's why it's impossible to synchronize between the ends of the universe,” John balances his palms like he’s weighing two invisible ends, “It rather puts a damper on our chances of finding and communicating with extraterrestrial life, for sure, but at least it’s possible to synchronize within one system, like the system of the Earth. "

"This is a thing that also applies to light, for example: any star you could look up and see now, the light emanating from it may be coming from thousands of years ago. This means that it’s possible that the star you see shining could have exploded and disappeared, and hasn't existed for a long time. Why? Because it takes a couple of thousand years for the light from that explosion to reach us."

"There isn’t any proof for the hypothesis that the universe is linked by time, but the thing that happens that we’re sure of is that the universe is made up of, sort of, separate islands of different times that have no connection between them. The connection between movement and time in space is something we all know about, for example, a day on Earth equals twenty-four hours, yes?” There’s a chorus of agreement from the audience, “But on Saturn, a day is ten hours because it rotates faster. Astonishingly, a day on Mercury is the same as fifty-eight whole Earth days, which, infact, is also a Mercurian year, because the planet revolves around the sun for the exact same period as it revolves around itself."

"Okay, so, to what extent is movement related to time?” John asks, well and truly into this whole teaching thing now, “Well, Einstein was the first person to discover the connection between them and suggested that; suppose you’re on board a very fast rocket, 100,000 miles per hour for example. The mechanical watch on your wrist would be delayed over the flight, but you wouldn’t feel like time is being delayed. Why’s that? It’s because the rhythm of your heart would slow down - all of the vital processes in your body that are inside the rocket will slow down."

"As you move more, something called the dilation of time will happen.” He steps to the side, as if to illustrate the point, only to find himself stumbling a little, like if the ground beneath his feet had moved. “T-Time slows down,” John tries to recover it smoothly, but everything’s starting to feel, weirdly, like it’s shaking, and he doesn’t think it’s the anxiety anymore, “and that's-"

John doesn’t get to finish his sentence because there’s an abrupt shift and a loud cracking from under him, and getting off the stage suddenly seems like a good idea. Someone screams outside, and the volume in the room skyrockets as the children start panicking. John’s one hundred percent sure this wasn't anything planned.

He knew he shouldn't have come.

Earthquake? He wonders first, then; Tsunami? Ground slip? Hurricane? Whichever it is, John has to prioritise calming the people and evacuating them out of the building. The giant glass panels above them are trembling with the force of the shaking, and, as a professional at this sort of thing, Thunderbird Five’s Space Monitor doesn’t like the look of it one bit.

"Everyone calm down,” He has to shout to make himself heard over the roar of people, even with the microphones pointed his way, “This is a normal thing. All we have to do is evacuate immediately, as calmly. as. possible. I don't want anyone crowding the exits, do you all understand what I just said?" The front rows, white faced with fear, nod encouragingly at him, and he watches as they begin to lead the way toward the glowing green signs that signal the emergency exits. Immediately after making sure the crowd is moving, John pulls up his comm to contact Gordon.

"Gordon, are you on the line?” John’s a little breathless and he climbs down from the precarious stage, into the throng of terrified bodies, “We have a situation in here."

"Let me guess, you caused it?" Gordon seems so excited to hear something other than his brother's boring lecture that humour has outweighed his professionalism.

"Gordon,” John grits his teeth, “I'm being serious right now, there was a huge movement in the ground beneath the Chino Roque Theater, and it's still ongoing. Tell Alan to do a check on what's happening beneath us using the Ground Penetrating Radar." He orders.

"F.A.B." Comes the far more serious response, before Gordon clicks off the line to do just that. Squashing down any fear he’d about the now swelling, shuffling crowd, John opens his arms wide and walks toward them, the motion sort of like he’s trying to herd sheep, as he tries to evacuate the people safely out of the building.

He’s not exactly an expert at being on the scene during rescues.

"John, there's a landslide going on right now,” Alan’s worried little voice comes ringing out of his comm speakers, “Right next to the theatre. You’d better get out of there. I’m monitoring the situation, but it’s looking like you’re going to need International Rescue to get you and the people out of there. The debris field is spreading fast." John would do almost anything to be up there instead, at his own screens. “I've contacted Virgil and Scott, I’m patching them through now.” Alan clicks Scott and Virgil, both clearly just finishing their suit up sequences, into the conversation. It seems important to keep them up to date with John's developing situation.

"Hey Mr. Tracy, how are you holding up?" Scott jokes over the roar of his launching Thunderbird, the sound filling the background of the call with white-noise, "Oh, and how was your lecture?" John thinks he sounds far too casual in contrast to the impending danger all around him.

"Oh my God, Scott, is now really the time?” John groans, and a kid with mousey blond hair not dissimilar to Alan’s looks up at him, very confused, before the astronaut waves him on, “You are an adult person,” He reminds his big brother, “Please don't be like Gordon right now. He’s practically still a child."

"Hey!” Gordon had clearly overheard the conversation between his brothers, and springs up to defend himself. “I'm only two or three years younger than you!" He complains, not about to do the math.

"Gordon, we don't have time for arguing about that now,” John frowns, “and Scott, I'm holding up alright at the moment. Please don't ask me anything about the lecture until I get back home." If his voice cracks a little on that last bit, he’ll never admit it.

"Okay, okay I won't ask anything about that,” Scott reassures him, his amused, big brother grin very much in place, “Keep on evacuating the people safely until we arrive John, you’re doing great. It won’t take us that long. ETA at 15,000 mph is sixteen minutes.” He reassures, “We’ll be there before you know it."

"F.A.B. Scott." He reluctantly signs off. Now that he’s finished talking with Scott, John’s pleased to see that a lot of people have already made their way out of the atrium’s three sets of double doors, evacuating the building to get as far away from the landslide as possible. His fingers itch to pull up the schematics from Thunderbird Five on his comm, no matter what the people around him might think. He quickly caves, and it feels worth it to be able to see the incoming tide of slipping land.

They don’t have much time.

“Let’s go!” He shouts, chivvying. He’s a little breathless with the tension, so he keeps things short. “Come on! Let’s move guys!”

From his vantage near the crumbling stage, John can make out Lady Penelope and Parker by the main doors, ushering people through, and the sight of them fills him instantly with immense relief.

“Okay, that's a good amount of people out.” John has to jog to catch up with them, skirting around a little old lady with a zimmer frame and taking a second to correct her course, “Lady Penelope, Parker, I think you should go and check on the people who’re out. They could have minor injuries from the stampede, and International Rescue are still ten minutes out. I'll make sure the last few stragglers exit safely."

Penelope just nods, pale and worried. Her blond brows are all pinched in together, nervous and Parker looks practically haggard as he claps a reassuring hand on John’s shoulder, her faithful old companion following her pink shape dutifully out the doors. Hopefully they’ll go make sure that no one was badly injured in any way.

Turning back to the slow cascade of cracking rubble behind him, John finds the stage area has been all but obliterated, and his heart aches for the patrons of the Chino Roque Theater who’ll have to rebuild from scratch when this is over. He imagines the Tracy fund can contribute a significant amount toward that though. They often do for worthy causes.

John pushes the damp curl of his slightly sweaty bangs out of his eyes and climbs over what looks like a twisted piece of ceiling girder toward the sound of people, possibly trapped stragglers, who are calling for help.

"I miss Thunderbird 5 so much,” John mutters, keeping it under his breath so that no one hears him, as his palms are scraped raw against the concrete he’s trying to clamber around. There’s a rippp of fabric on a jagged piece of metal and the knee of his previous pristine brown jeans meets much the same fate as his poor, scuffed hands. “Oh, come on!” He’s having no luck today, “I'd so rather be assisting the situation from space. I can’t believe I’m stuck here." John grumbles, to no one in particular. He’s just not built for this kind of thing. Heavy labour and getting sweaty pulling people out of scrap heaps is what his other brothers do. At least rescues in space don’t have all this… gravity to contend with.

"John?” The crackle of a comm cut’s across his complaints, “What’re you still doing in there?” Gordon’s voice breaks him from his thoughts, little brother’s tone heavy with concern. “The building could fall any moment! You're so lucky the landslide isn't moving very fast, but it’s not gonna stay that way forever." Gordon was really worried about the fact that his older brother was still inside. “It could engulf the building! You need to hurry it up, bro.”

"I'm evacuating the people as fast as I can,” John gets both hands under the armpits of a boy who couldn’t be older than seven, and swings him above a pile of rubble toward safety, “I'll be out in no ti- Ah!"

John’s voice gets cut off with a startled cry, and it takes Gordon a second or two, time John might not have, to remember how to breathe so that he can yell in any way coherently into his comm. His eyes are wide, his anxiety levels through the roof as he tries, and fails, to rouse his brother on the other end.

"SCOTT! You need to get there now.” Gordon’s aware that he’s totally losing his cool, panic creeping in over his weak layer of professionalism, “I just lost contact with John.” He gasps, “He was evacuating people and I heard him yell and now he’s not responding! And- and it's not just him. There were other people he was trying to get out."

"Hey Gordon,” Scott tries to keep his voice steady to inject some kind of stability into the conversation, “Don't lose your cool yet. I'm sure nothing that bad happened to John. Just stay your positive self, okay? I’m arriving right now and Virgil isn’t far behind me."

Thunderbird One is panning over the city, low enough to ruffle the hair of people looking up, but it’s not a problem until the usually so sure and steady pilot finds his hands nearly slipping off her controls as Scott catches his first, horrific glimpse of the building that he knows his younger brother is inside.

“What the…?”

The Chino Roque Theater is almost flat.

"Virgil,” Scott swallows hard to try and remove any of the tremor from his voice, “A-Are you seeing what I'm seeing right now?" He almost succeeds.

"Scott this isn't a joke, it looks like half of the building has come down with the landslide! John’s in there!" Virgil sounds more terrified than Scott thinks he’s ever heard him. What scares him the most is that the exit was on the side that has fallen in, which means that a lot of people are trapped under it, their John included. "Scott, we need to help them right now.

"Okay, here's the plan,” Scott’s hands tighten white-knuckled on the steering yoke, “You wear your exo-suit and go clear the debris out of the way so that we can save them, and I'll get rid of that roof with Thunderbird One and check for life signs. Remember that saving lives is our top priority, got it? No matter what’s happened to John."

"F.A.B." Virgil sounds incredibly tense. He lands Thunderbird Two as fast as he can in the crowded, limited space. Local people are beginning to make their way out of their houses to see what all the commotion is about, and the cramped city streets aren’t ideal for International Rescue’s four hundred and six ton workhorse.

Two’s pilot struggles into his exo-suit, rushing to get the Jaws of Life prepared despite Scott’s insistence that he focus and take things slow and sensible. It’s not long until he finds himself digging among the debris looking for buried people and, in the white rush of it all, Virgil’s not even sure how he got there.

"Scott,” he presses on his comm, “Please tell me you’ve got something?"

"Fortunately and thankfully yes,” It’s hard to find the hopefulness in big brother’s clipped Mobile Control voice, but it’s there to Virgil’s expert ear, drizzled in nervous relief. “I've got a whole cluster of life signs,” Scott reports, “BPM signalling in the green. "I think they’re just trapped under the debris." Alan’s echolocation report came back suggesting that there’s a big space under what could be folded sheet metal from the ceiling, that they’ve huddled in. I'm really sure there's nothing that bad, but still we have to continue otherwise it will take a bad turn for us and the people in there."

“I can use the grappling cables in Thunderbird One to take the strain off the roof,” Scott adds, “But I need you in there to get those people out.”

“Already on my way,” Virgil ducks under some rebar, skirting around the rubble and pulling away loose debris as he goes. His heart is loud in his own ears, and Virgil hopes the creak and groan of metal and concrete above him is Scott lifting the weight off the roof, keeping it from collapsing any further onto the people below, and not anything more sinister. Virgil gets peppered by a slide of small stones, but the roof holds steady.

He presses on until he catches sight of the cluster of around forty people, all huddled together around a tall, central figure with a shocking amount of rubble dust smeared over his face, and powdered through his ginger hair.

“John!” Two’s pilot makes a beeline for his brother, despite the fact three of the people are stuck under rubble. Clearly John’s in control of the situation here, and he’s never wanted a mission update from their Space Monitor so much in his life. He can’t help but hone in on the fact John's left arm is crudely wrapped in a piece of cloth from his sleeve, which he must’ve ripped off in order to tie it.

"You have to tell me exactly what happened,” Virgil drops the controls for the Jaws of Life, and grasps his brother’s biceps in both hands instead, resisting the very strong temptation to pull the spaceman in for a hug. “And what happened to your arm?!?" There’s a river of blood seeping from beneath the make-shift bandage, but John, it seems, isn’t bothered by it in the slightest.

"Not now Virgil.” His concerns get thoroughly dismissed, “We’ve got to get these people out of here, and then I'll tell you everything." Virgil didn't like the idea that something happened to his brother and he's silent about it, but after all John was right about saving the people first since his arm is under control for now.

John crouches by the nearest injured person; a pale, skinny teen with a sizable piece of rebar keeping him pinned.

“You’re gonna be out of there in just a second, Lito.” Virgil watches him reassuring the young man for a long moment, “Uh, Virgil?” John prompts. “Any time?”

“What?” He blinks, “Oh, yeah!” His brother is clearly waiting expectantly for him to use the Jaws of Life to get the poor kid out. "I’m on it, but you better tell me everything after we're done saving them." Virgil demands. “But, uh, Scott’s kind of holding the roof up right now, so you’re probably right.”

"Okay,” John literally rolls his eyes, busy stealing a pair of blue rubber gloves from the Med Kit Virgil brought with him, and snapping them on to protect his hands and the fine cuts he’d gotten from climbing over rubble. “I promise I'll tell you everything, but can we start actually rescuing them now?" Rolling his eyes right back, the bigger man uses his exosuit to heft the rubble off Lito, before John swoops in to apply pressure to his injuries.

“Give me the fold out stretcher from your sash.” He orders, hands bloodied “Then go get the next person out. Efifania, Sergio?” John beckons a pair of nearby dad’s in closer, clearly having singled them out as capable stretcher bearers. “Think you can manage Lito here for me?”

As Virgil starts removing the rubble from above the other two trapped people, a middle aged man and a younger woman, it becomes immediately obvious that both of them have more severe wounds than young Lito. They both need medical treatment immediately.

“I’ll carry one of them.” Without the three extra sets of hands he’d need, Virgil has to leave a couple of crowd members applying pressure to their wounds, as he moves back to where John is helping Lito unsteadily to his feet. “Think you can walk, young man? We’re gonna need that stretcher for the big guy.”

“I won’t let you fall.” John promises, and Virgil feels a real swell of pride at how well his brother is handling the situation whilst being outside of both his space station and his comfort zone. It looks like having a rescue and a job to do really gives him no time for anxiety. "I agree that that's our best plan.” He adds, nodding, short and sharp, to confirm it, then John turns, an arm around Lito’s waist and the kid’s arm slung over his shoulder, to address the crowd.

“Anyone not so severely hurt needs to help get the injured out of here.” John instructs, the small crowd listening raptly. The look on the faces of these scared people is one Virgil is all too familiar with, but he knows John has far less experience of in person. They’re really looking to him as their saviour. “Virgil here is going to lead us through the path he just made.” Which is news to Virgil, but does seem like the best plan. “International Rescue will then be able to take us all to the hospital to get checked out, and then I’m sure you’ll be released to go home to your families before you know it. Got it everyone?"

In that moment Virgil finds himself struck with amazement at how John seems to have become almost as fearless as Scott, as they started carrying the two injured people out to safety. It was really a new side to him that Virgil doesn’t think he’s ever seen before.

"Virgil… I need you to check on Lady Penelope and Parker.” John’s keeping pace at his side, helping the boy they’d dug out along as he goes, “I told them to check to see if anyone was hurt."

"Hmm, yeah you're right.” Virgil frowns. If Penny and Parker have any more injured party members, even minor ones that just need a check up, Thunderbird Two will need to evacuate them to the hospital as well. “Have you got any idea where they might be?"

"Well, I told them to get somewhere away from the landslide,” John frowns, as their limping, shocky party stumbles out into the bright light of day, to be greeted by the roar of Thunderbird One’s engines high above them. “They should be near here.” He yells over the sound of it.

As usual, it turns out that John is completely right. Penny and Parker are waiting for them, but neither John nor Virgil find the look on Lady Penelope's face all that reassuring.

"JOHN!” She rushes toward the battered, bloodied spaceman, her arms outstretched. Virgil very quickly and carefully finagles poor Lito out of the way as his brother gets ambushed. “Are you okay?!?” Penelope demands, frantic, “What happened to your arm?” She reaches for the bloodied bandage, and John winces, “I'm so sorry,” All of John’s carefully constructed rules around personal space are shattered as she cups his cheek, inspecting his face for injury. It’s lucky that John is by far the most patient of the Tracy boys. “I shouldn't have left you there.

"She’d been so terrified, perhaps more than anyone else here. The horrific view she’d seen with her own eyes is going to haunt her for a long time yet. One second she was getting out of the building to reassure and check up on the people, and the next she was watching half the structure collapse completely, with John under the side that fell. She still feels a little sick.

"I'm so, so, so sorry John,” She repeats, before he can get a word in edgeways to reassure her, “Please, you must tell me if there's any way I can make it up to you. Ask me anything and I'll do it."

"Okay guys,” Virgil chuckles, “while you talk things out I'll go to get the injured people aboard Thunderbird 2. Make it quick though, we’ve still got people who need immediate medical treatment, got it?"

"F.A.B. Virgil.” John nods, “We'll be quick. Penny, I..."

“I’m so sorry.” She repeats again, and pulls his good arm over her shoulder as if to steady him as they make their way at the back of the crowd toward the big green Thunderbird.

"No no no, Penny, please stop apologising.” John’s fingers tighten for a quick moment on her shoulder, in brief reassurance, “I'm not going to ask you for anything because it was never your fault.” He insists, “It was just some bad luck, that's all. Fortunately I, and most people, got out safe with no severe wounds. These things happen.”

“Your arm.” She points out softly, hoping that all that blood looks worse than it is, “John I can’t believe you stayed behind like that, it’s so...”

“Tracy?” He grins, amused but very weary.

“Scott Tracy.” She corrects, scowling a little as she holds on just that little bit tighter around his waist as his adrenaline from the rescue starts to flag. “I thought you had more common sense.”

“Hate to disappoint.” She feels the warmth of him chuckling, “I’m lucky it was nothing worse than his cut from some shattered glass that fell on my arm while I was helping one of the guys who got stuck. I don’t think any arteries or anything have been damaged, but it is... kinda deep." And he might be getting a little lightheaded from the blood loss. Still, he really wants to reassure her, just like she had reassured him before he’d gone in to give the lecture.

"Hate to interrupt your moment, but are you guys done?" Scott pops up from who-knows-where amongst the crowd to yell at them. He’s clearly joined the relief effort. "Virgil’s just finished getting everyone aboard Thunderbird 2, and he's ready to launch." He adds, squinting at the pale, wobbly mess of his brother. "And you really do need to check your arm. That looks nasty.”

"Yeah Scott,” John wipes a tired hand over his dirty face, dislodging dust, “We're done. Don’t let Thunderbird Two wait for me, I'll hitch a ride with Lady Penelope, uh,” He turns to her, bashful, to check, “If that’s okay?"

“Of course,” Her Ladyship concedes, “Scott?” She is mildly concerned that big brother might want to have the injured member of his flock under his wing so he can smother him.

"Yeah sure, ride whatever you want.” Scott flip flops a dismissive hand at them, “You can ride a pod, I won't care as long as your destination is the hospital."

"How about you, Gordon?” John knows his little brother is still on the line, probably sulking. “Is it okay if I take the ride with Lady P?"

"W-what do you mean by that?” Gordon sounds confused and maybe a little embarrassed, like he’s been caught out. “Scott already said you should go, why’re you asking me?"

"Well, she's your girlfriend.” John grins, teasing, as Penny helps him into the back of FAB1. “Of course I have to get permission from her boyfriend.

"Penny swats at him for that, amused, but careful not to hit his injured arm. She doesn’t need anyone’s permission to do anything, but it is fun to see Gordon squirm - especially as Scott and Virgil both crack up, and even Alan in space starts teasing him.

"What?!?” Gordon’s face, bless that darling young man, has gone bright red. “J-Just go already." He ducks off the comm screen to try and hide his embarrassment, but it’s far too late for that.

He’s lucky that Penelope finds it incredibly endearing.

"John,” She nudges him, as the Tracy’s all click off the line to go do their actual jobs. She’s a little concerned that he’s looking a bit spaced out, if you’ll excuse the pun, and it’s probably a good idea to keep him talking. “You know we're still going to The Pagasa Observatory, just like I promised you, right?"

"Wait really?” John’s head tilts, a little floppy, towards her from where it had been sinking into FAB1’s luxurious headrests. He’s looking a little grey, but it’s good to see his eyes open. “After all that happened?” A ginger eyebrow quirks, “Are you sure there's time for that?"

"Well, we’re on our way to the hospital now, but there’ll be plenty of time this afternoon.” As long as the medics give him a clean bill of health. “You can change your clothes after we're done checking your arm then there should be time for you to go see that big telescope you've been dreaming of visiting. After all, I did promise you we’d go there after we're done."

"Well, that sounds good to me!” John smiles like there’s a supanova fuling him, “Penny you’re the best."

They reach the hospital a little after International Rescue has dropped off the fourty or so injured people, and so there’s quite a wait for a Doctor to be free so that they can have a look at John’s poor, sliced arm. Penny seems to be doing a worried hover at his side, while he waits, shaky from blood loss, and though he’s not used to having so much company, John has to admit it’s nice to have a chance to catch up with his old friend with no rescue alarms blaring.

Alan reports in that the two worst injured in the landslide have been hospitalized as fast as possible, that they were stable - the doctors have said their prognosis looked good. He also tells him that Lito’s family had been asking after the redheaded lecturer who’d helped him out of the rubble, and that John Tracy, M.Sci, PgDip, B.Lang Hons, should probably expect a gift basket in the mail quite soon.

John gets quite flustered about that. He’d just been doing his job.

The spaceman's arm was eventually treated, and Scott calls in to ask what actually happened to his arm. It still hurts, a properly bandaged throb just under his elbow, but not like before. The painkilling injection and little bit of morphine they’d given him when they stitched it up had probably helped with that.

Alan’s reports dug up that the landslide had been caused by a water main leaking under the building, and destabilizing the soil. Over time, water can do a lot of damage, washing away vital infrastructure if it’s not been properly reinforced during construction.

As the Chino Roque Theater was a new build, there must have been a mistake in the installation of the pipes during construction.

Someone was getting a big lawsuit heading their way, and Tracy Enterprises will be more than happy to fund the lawyers for the theatre.

As Lady Penelope promised him, they found John a change of clothes and went to the Pagasa Observatory. Penny’s quite sure she’s never seen anything as wholesome as the moment John sees the telescope - his eyes went all shiny, and the smile on his face was massive.

"Lady Penelope, Parker come take a look at the stars!!!” He calls, over his shoulder, with the enthusiasm of a boy half his age, “They’re really beautiful from here!" With such a high-powered lens pointed up at the cosmos, it rivals even his view from Thunderbird Five.

"Indeed, they are." Lady Penelope and Parker both step up to take turns, but John was the one to look through the telescope the most. With all the stealth her years as a secret agent offered her, Lady Penelope took a picture of him.

"Parker, come take a look." She whispers, beckoning her old companion gleefully over. "He looks so happy and innocent in this picture. Wouldn’t it be lovely to see his face like this always?"

"We still have some time before they close,” Parker points out, a sly grin creeping onto his nosey old face. “How h’bout we leave him like this for a little longer?"

"That, Parker.” she smiles, “Is an excellent idea.”

The End

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Privacy is not property

When all you have is market orthodoxy, everything looks like a market failure. Take privacy: giant, rapacious corporations have instrumented the digital and physical worlds to spy on us all the time, so some people think they should pay us for our data.

There's a pretty rich theoretical history explaining why this "data dividend" is a stupid idea. First of all, private information isn't very property-like. And not  just because it shares all the problems of digital works (infinitely, instantaneously copyable at zero cost).

Private information makes for bad "property" because it is "owned" by multiple, overlapping parties who generally disagree about when and who to share it with. When you and I have a conversation, we both own the fact that the conversation took place.

What happens if I won't sell, but you will? Tech companies are *really* good at finding the cheapest seller of an information good, after all. For example, whenever you visit a "quality newspaper's" site, there's a real-time auction to bid on the right to show you ads.

Say there are 13 bidders for that right. One gets to show you an ad, but the other 12 get something too: your unique identifier and the fact that you read, say, the New York Times.

That fact is then sold on to garbage chumbox sites like Tabouleh, whose pitch to advertisers is "I can show your ads to NYT readers at 15% of the price that the Times charges." If the same fact is "owned" by lots of people, it's a commodity.

Buyers will find the lowest, least-discerning seller. What's more, you can't solve this by requiring consensus of all "owners" of a fact before it is disclosed - who owns the fact that your boss sexually harassed you: you or him? Does he get a veto over your disclosures?

Even if we could get property rights to work in privacy (which, for the record, we cannot), all we'd manage to do is transform privacy into a luxury good wherein poor people are coerced into selling their data for pennies, as Malavika Jayaram reminds us:

https://twitter.com/MalJayaram/status/1231373834458025984

Data dividends also require someone to set prices on data, and chances are that price will be set by a privacy-invading tech company or a regulator in thrall to them:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/10/why-getting-paid-your-data-bad-deal

And whatever the price, it won't capture the true cost, as Hayley Tsukayama reminds us: "Low-income Americans and often communities of color should not be incentivized to pour more data into a system that already exploits them and uses data to discriminate against them."

"Privacy is a human right, not a commodity."

It's not too late to end "pay for privacy," because, as Dipayan Ghosh says, behavioral data is "temporally sensitive" - companies need more of it all the time, meaning we can still push back.

https://slate.com/technology/2020/07/data-privacy-surveillance-law-marketers.html

To get this right, we have to stop pretending that data makes good property and that therefore markets will solve data problems. And just because data isn't property, it doesn't follow that it isn't valuable.

Far from it: the most valuable things we know of (human beings) are not property precisely *because* treating them as property would cheapen them. We humans are so valuable that we have a complex set of rules just for us.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/feb/21/intellectual.property

My daughter isn't my property, but I have an interest in her. So does my wife, and her grandparents, and her teachers and school district, and Child Protective Services...and so does she. This "interest"-based system acknowledged the complex web of overlapping claims.

We have a whole discipline - one that doesn't intersect with markets at all - that describes these relations, with specialized concepts like "nurturance rights" and "self-determination rights" (thanks to Rory Pickens for introducing me to these concepts).

All of these points and more are made in "Why data ownership is the wrong approach to protecting privacy," a 2019 Brookings Institute paper by Cameron F Kerry and John B Morris, who relate them to pending legislation and relevant case-law.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/techtank/2019/06/26/why-data-ownership-is-the-wrong-approach-to-protecting-privacy/

"By licensing the use of their information in exchange for monetary consideration, we may be worse off than under the current notice-and-choice regime...A property-based system also disregards interests besides property that individuals have in personal information."

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

Hello! I just found your yt channel (it's amazing) and watched your video on writing diversely. What an awesome video, I learnt and took away a lot from you and your thoughts, especially as a white writer. I am still however a little conflicted on one thing. Not just writing the characters as another race or gender or identity of any kind from the writer, but the actual main character. Would it automatically be offensive and destined for failure for a white author to write a black main protag?

Hi there! I’m happy you found the video helpful, thank you for watching! This is a link to the video if anyone reading this has not watched it.

To be honest, I think I explained this as concisely and accurately as I could in the video as it’s truly the thesis of the video itself. I don’t want to fully reiterate what I said in the video because I feel like I won’t be as accurate/coherent, so I urge you to rewatch the video and take care to look at the timestamps as that may clarify your particular question, first and foremost! Taking a look at some of the comments too might also be helpful.

Stay in your lane as a detrimental, albeit well-intentioned, mantra

As I say in the video, it’s not as easy as saying “white people can’t write XYZ main character” or “we can write whatever we want”, nor is it as easy as and saying “stay in your line” , which may inadvertently enforce the majority as publishing is majorly white (stats are in the video). I believe I did address main characters too in that video, but whatever I said about characters in general 100% applies to POV/main characters as I was rebutting the well-intentioned, but perhaps detrimental idea that it’s only appropriate for a marginalized POV character to be written by someone marginalized in the same way (IMO, long-term, this will cause an influx of white POV stories which is the opposite of the intention [people say “stay in your lane” will allow marginalized folks to represent themselves rather than have white people represent us] as the publishing industry a) is mostly white and b) only seems to care to actively publish white people. “Stay in your lane” may also inadvertently define the role a marginalized person should play in the writing industry [responsible for writing stories about their marginalization]).

Writing POC main characters = automatically offensive/destined to fail?

If you’re viewing or questioning if writing a POC MC is “automatically offensive” or “destined for failure” I really urge you to rewatch the video because this is covered quite extensively but particularly take a look at the “trade fear for empathy” section as this question in itself is laden in a black and white binary of right versus wrong. If you’re asking this question, it might be that you are lacking the empathy to understand what I’m saying in the video (which is okay! there are many others who I’ve further discussed with in the comments). Writing POC isn’t something that’s destined to fail just because you’re a white author IF you do your research, be respectful, write empathetically and craft well-rounded, complex people. If you’re thinking you might automatically fail in this department because you are a white person, I did mention in the video that you may not be ready to write diverse characters in the respectful, robust ways necessary because you may be viewing POC as a “pass or fail” system which is obviously not what we are. If you want to write a diverse POV character and you do your research, write empathetically, speak to those people from that community (with their consent) and be willing to adjust your representation with that feedback without getting defensive, I don’t see how this would be automatically offensive or destined for failure, just like anything else that requires research.

Disproportionate amounts of white versus POC writers being published

In terms of publication failure, white people are actually the ones being majorly represented to write marginalized stories (when they don’t share that marginalization), so you probably wouldn’t have a problem getting a POC-lead story published (not saying I think this is right) because publishers treat diversity as a quota/marketing tactic and IMO, don’t seem to actually care about representation on a structural level, but rather on a topical, superficial level (which is why my main point in that video is that publishers, not individual writers, need to be held accountable).

White writers accidentally “dehumanize” POC in a misguided attempt at being empathetic

I think some white people, (and I don’t exactly want to use this word because it is quite severe but illustrates what I mean) may accidentally “dehumanize” people of colour in worrying that whatever move they’re going to make is automatically going to offend us, when in reality, if you take the time, and put in the effort to research and get to know people of colour (from my comments, these worries often stem from white people who don’t know many people of colour IRL), you will see that yes, we are different from you and difference is good, but no, this difference does not make us an untouchable, unknowable species. I don’t mean to make this seem like an “I don’t see colour” or “the only race is the human race” argument, which would be harmful, but rather a reminder that people of colour are also human beings and as you would write a white character with empathy, integrity, and vigour, you should also do the same when writing characters of colour (I address this in more detail in the video).

Doing personal research in times of confusion

I understand that as a white person, thinking about and understanding these issues may not be particularly easy, and even after a nearly hour long video of me expressing these thoughts, I genuinely do understand why someone who is not affected by these issues daily may still struggle with grasping these concepts. That’s because anti-racism is not something you can accomplish by watching one video, or reading a few articles--it’s a lifelong commitment, and so that’s when you would take your privilege as a white person to do more digging before you ask questions to those who have to expel emotional labour to answer them for you (not saying I have any problem answering your question at all, but putting this out there because there are many well meaning white people who I’ve encountered in my comments that do ask me or other BIPOC questions before turning to other resources that wouldn’t require free labour). Take some time to ruminate with this info, and then do some digging of your own. If you haven’t checked out these, these are my favourite anti-racism resources, all of which are free to access (noted otherwise):

Jane Coaston - The Intersectionality wars

A pretty comprehensive place to start with Kimberle Crenshaw’s theory of Intersectionality

Peggy McIntosh - White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack

Wonderful place to start in understanding white privilege for those who don’t understand the differences/nuances between race VS class VS gender privilege etc

Article that explores white privilege beyond McIntosh’s ideas

It’s really important that white people also learn the systemic ways in which they benefit from white privilege and not just the “bandaids are made in my skintone” examples (though those examples are often used first because they’re the easiest to understand for a white person who is affected by other intersections, i.e. class, sexuality, gender, who does not feel they are privileged in other ways i.e. race).

Documentary on white privilege (Jane Elliott’s Brown Eyes VS Blue Eyes experiment)

Angela Davis - How Does Change Happen?

bell hooks - Ending Domination: The Struggle Continues

Abena Busia - In Search of Chains Without Iron: On Sisterhood, History, and the Politics of Location

I was able to access this reading through my university but IMO it is a must-read, especially for non-POC who may not fully understand the privilege of whiteness.

Claire Heuchan - Your Silence Will Not Protect You: Racism in the Feminist Movement 

**Absolute must-read: “The theory did not emerge in order to aid white women in their search for cookies – it was developed predominantly by Black feminists with a view to giving women of colour voice (Heuchan).”

Tamela J. Gordon - Why I’m giving up on intersectional feminism 

Powerful perspective on Intersectionality and how it’s been used in white feminism

Jennifer L. Pozner - How to Talk About Racism, Sexism and Bigotry With Your Friends and Family

Really good place to start if you have loved ones in need of education.

Maria Lugones - Playfulness, “World”-Travelling, and Loving Perception

This is the absolute crux of my points in writing empathetically.

"The paper describes the experience of 'outsiders' to the mainstream of, for example, White/Anglo organization of life in the U.S. and stresses a particular feature of the outsider's existence: the outsider has necessarily acquired flexibility in shifting from the mainstream construction of life where she is constructed as an outsider to other constructions of life where she is more or less 'at home.' This flexibility is necessary for the outsider but it can also be willfully exercised by the outsider or by those who are at ease in the mainstream. I recommend this willful exercise which I call "world"-travelling and I also recommend that the willful exercise be animated by an attitude that I describe as playful" (Lugones 3). 

^^^ For writers struggling with the prospect of diversity and trying to find a place to start in what I call in my video "letting go of fear and voraciously welcoming empathy" I highly recommend this article as it is a powerful account of travelling across each other's "worlds". Read it for free with a free JStor account or through your institution, like your public library.

How to BLACK: An Analysis of Black Cartoon Characters

A FANTASTIC video that is an absolute must-watch (covers writing empathetically, writing with care)

If you have not already, read through the sources I used to formulate and argue my thesis in my video (much more detailed than I could do in an hour!):

Corinne Duyvis (ownvoices creator) on # ownvoices

CCBC - "Publishing Statistics on Children's/YA Books about People of Color and First/Native Nations and by People of Color and First/Native Nations Authors and Illustrators"

Hannah Heath - "5 Problems Within the Own Voices Campaign (And How to Fix Them)"

Saadia Faruqi - "The Struggle Between Diversity and Own Voices"

Kat Rosenfield (Refinery29) - "What is # ownvoices doing to our books?"

Lee and Low - "Diversity Baseline Survey 2019 Results"

Vulture - "Who Gave You the Right To Tell That Story"

School Library Journal - "An Updated Look at Diversity in Children's Books"

TL;DR: if you’re more overcome with the fear of offending people (often grounded in white fragility) instead of making the active, albeit sometimes uncomfortable, decision to do the hard work necessary to empathetically represent someone outside of your marginalization in fiction, I don’t think you’re ready to write POC in the nuanced, complex, empathetic ways necessary for good representation, and I would encourage you do more independent anti-racist work. (Note that “you” is not individualistically aimed at the asker!!)

Questions like this don’t necessarily have a clear-cut answer, and that is essentially the point of my video (I know, not super helpful, but I hope that makes sense!).

Hope this helps!

--Rachel

[ahundredtimesover]

Mimi, my queen! If you've read the entirety of this ask and don't feel like answering, it's okay! I might get a tad personal? Maybe?

This for the know the blogger thing and maybe ask for advice. I'm nearing college now, and I just want to ask how you decided on PolSci. And if there were other stuff that you wanted too?? I'm nearing college now (dw im 18) and while I'm certain my passions lie with film (or creative writing), I think my parents would prefer it better if I pursue PolSci or Sociology... I wanted to pursue those courses back then but I changed my mind now, and felt a deeper yearning for film. But there are risks? So much to consider. Honestly, if I never get the chance to pursue film, it feels like a big part of me died. But also, my parents. Yeah.

I just wanted to ask you since you seem insightful and wise through your works, however, if you don't feel like giving advice it's totally okay! Have a great day! Wag kang magpadala sa init!

Hi, anon! Don't worry about it. Here's a bit of what I learned pursuing a course that I didn't really want :) (sorry it's long!)

I initially wanted to take up Psychology or Developmental Studies but my parents pushed for PolSci and I just agreed. I wanted to shift early on but I knew they wouldn't let me. Nothing against PolSci but it never interested me; I didn't want to pursue the usual tracks of law, diplomatic work, or government. What it did, though, was make me realize what I was passionate about, what made me angry. I got exposed to global issues, particularly to gender issues, and so every research paper I ever wrote was about that. It was the only compromise I could think of to satisfy my parents and to pursue something I felt strongly about.

I don't remember political theories, but the analytical & communication skills I learned in those 5 years are what I use in my job now, which is handling projects that address child abuse in an NGO. College course content only matters up to a certain point; you'll have opportunities to learn other things of more value to you (e.g., research topics, electives, orgs). I know what I wanted & what my parents wanted were similar but there's still a world of difference b/w them. You can always find an intersection somehow.

Much as I want to say to not follow your parents, you know in our culture it's not easy, especially when they're the ones sending you to school. So if they really won't budge, you can considering going with what they want while honing your knowledge & skills on what you want. It's when you start working and earning that you can take more of a stand; it's what I did. They weren't happy, said they invested so much only for me to work in an NGO (ig bc it's not high-paying?) and that got me quite depressed. But I learned to shut them out. They still don't get what I do and that's fine; I love my job and I can't imagine doing anything else. They see I'm happy & I let them know that I am; somehow that's enough, so at times if you feel like you're stuck or trapped in college, you may feel a bit more freedom after.

Pursuing film/CW requires a completely different set of skills, but your subject, what you want to film/write about and the stories you want to highlight, they're what matter, right? Please don't feel like your course in college will solely determine what you'll end up pursuing in life, bc that's not true. It helps, but college is only 4 years; you have more years after to learn and hone your skills and change career paths.

What I learned is to never lose sight of who you are and what you stand for - your college course won't determine that, you will. So please, don't ever let your passion for film or CW die. Don't also be afraid for that passion to take on different forms, and remember that dreams and our passions in life can change and that's okay, too. :)

I said a lot, but I hope these help. Whatever you do, just always know that you deserve what you worked hard for, and always give yourself a pat on the back :) Lumalamig na din! Wag magpasakit hehe :)

[bluejayblueskies]

ludus

n. playful or uncommitted love; love that is focused on flirtation, infatuation, and laughter 

Words: 2.0k

Fandom: The Magnus Archives

Relationships: Jonathan Sims & Gerry Keay, Jonathan Sims & Martin Blackwood & Sasha James & Tim Stoker

Characters: Jonathan Sims, Gerry Keay, Martin Blackwood, Tim Stoker, Sasha James

Additional Tags: AU - University, AU - Everyone Lives/No One Dies, Fluff and Humor, Drinking, Alcohol, Queerplatonic Partnership, Aromantic Character, Asexual Character

Summary:

Gerry generally doesn’t frequent pubs like this one, where the wooden table in front of him is sticky enough that his glass pulls slightly against his grip as he lifts it before it unsticks with a wet ripping noise. The pub is a small, dirty thing, aptly named The Rusty Bucket, and apparently, it’s the venue for trivia night every Thursday, of which Jon and his friends are regulars.

Gerry’s never met Jon’s friends. But he supposes there’s a first time for everything.

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cw: - implied drug use - teasing - assumption that an aro character is allo (corrected and apologized for)

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Gerry’s never really been one for drinking. For one, he thinks beer is gross (and that a much better use for wheat and yeast is bread, which he very much enjoys and happens to be quite skilled at making), and for two, he’s never quite been able to shake that ingrained notion that drinking is always a precursor to something else.

 Sometimes, that something else is simply being drunk. Sometimes, it’s to loosen up, to make time with friends that much lighter and freer. But sometimes it’s not. Sometimes, it’s buying a stranger a drink and punching your number into their phone with fingers made unsteady by liquor. Sometimes, it’s wine on a date, with lips stained a deep red and cheeks flushed only in part due to the alcohol.

 Sometimes, it’s more. And Gerry doesn’t like taking risks that he doesn’t have to. So he generally doesn’t frequent pubs like this one, where the wooden table in front of him is sticky enough that his glass pulls slightly against his grip as he lifts it before it unsticks with a wet ripping noise.

 Gross.

 “You don’t have to come,” Jon had said for what had to have been the fifteenth time, even as they’d caught sight of the pub that sat just a few blocks from campus. It was a small, dirty thing, aptly named The Rusty Bucket, and apparently, it was the venue for trivia night every Thursday, of which Jon and his friends were regulars.

 Right. Jon’s friends. It wasn’t necessarily anyone’s fault that Gerry had yet to meet everyone else who’d left a mark on Jon’s life (though if asked, Gerry would insist that it was his, probably; he wasn’t known for being overly social). It was just different walks of life, different cobblestone paths that happened to intersect in a five-foot-four skinny Pakistani man with wire-rimmed glasses and a perpetual line between his eyes that fell just as easily into a smile as it did a scowl. But now that he had the chance, he found that he wanted to meet them. Maybe it was because Jon had seemed so excited, in his own way, to introduce them to Gerry. Or maybe it was just because Gerry wanted to get to know every part of Jon, to peel back every layer of the man who had wriggled underneath his skin and refused to budge no matter how hard Gerry tried.

 Jon’s friends were one such layer, painted in lovely sunset hues that cast fondness and exasperation across Jon’s face in equal measure whenever he spoke of them. So Gerry wanted to meet them.

 Hell, maybe he’d like them. Jon liked them. And that was one hell of a stamp of approval.

 “I know,” Gerry said. “But I’m here, aren’t I?”

 And the look Jon gave him at that—something profoundly grateful and even more profoundly enamored—shot through Gerry like liquid cocaine. Though if Gertrude ever asks, Gerry certainly has no such metric to know what that would feel like.

 Jon’s presence next to him in the booth is a grounding one, even as Gerry feels himself getting lost in the conversation ebbing and swelling around him like white-crested waves on a sandy shore, like he’s a seashell that’s only kept from washing away by a deft hand that snatches it from the sand and holds it close. Most of the ebb and swell seems to be coming from Tim and Sasha, who bicker like they’ve been married for years but who, according to Jon, have already passed through their will-they-won’t-they stage and have settled quite firmly on won’t-they.

 “Sasha’s aro too,” Jon had said, almost too-casually, as he put away a plate he’d been drying. “And Tim’s ace. A- a bit different than me, though, with regards to…”

 Jon made a vague motion with his hand that Gerry recognized as his sex hand wave, and the giggle that slipped from him unbidden earned him a sharp glare.

 “Sorry, sorry,” Gerry said, his eyes still twinkling with mirth. Then, because he couldn’t quite help himself: “Are you just- just collecting aspec friends? Or is it some sort of magnetic pull? Because I’d like to know if I’m a trophy friend or a hapless victim of your non-sexual magnetism.”

 The wet sponge Jon threw at him was certainly warranted. It did nothing to wipe the smile from Gerry’s face.

 So there’s Tim and Sasha, carrying ninety-five percent of the conversational weight. Martin sits tucked away in a corner, his hands closed around a glass of cola and his mouth curled into a small smile as he watches Tim and Sasha bicker.

 (“I don’t drink,” Martin had explained quickly when Gerry’s eyes had found his glass the first time, throwing the words between them like some sort of barricade. Like it was any of Gerry’s business what Martin did or didn’t drink.

 It certainly made Gerry’s virgin piña colada a lot less humiliating, though it did nothing to diminish the curling embarrassment he’d felt upon ordering it. So Gerry tipped his head toward his own drink and said, “Me either. Virgin in more ways than one.”

 Which was probably not the right thing to say. Oh well.

 Martin’s face had gone cherry red, and the laugh that escaped his lips seemed to take him entirely by surprise. “Oh,” he said, sounding slightly strangled. “I- congratulations?”

 It certainly wasn’t the most awkward exchange Gerry had ever had. But it was up there.

 Gerry took a small sip of his drink and decided that he quite liked Martin Blackwood.)

 Gerry sets his drink back down with a grimace and says, quiet enough that only Jon will hear him, “When is the trivia bit meant to start? I’m dying to put my near-encyclopedic knowledge of 20th-century prose to use.”

 “Need I remind you,” Jon says without taking his eyes away from Tim and Sasha, “that we are both English majors?”

 Gerry knocks his knee against Jon’s under the table. “Guess we’ll just have to see who remembers Dr. Nimeiri’s class better then.”

 Jon groans. “I thought we agreed to never speak about that again.”

 Gerry gives Jon his best shit-eating grin. “And forget the place where we met and our lives were forever changed? Oh, I would never.”

 “One,” Jon says, holding up a finger and finally turning to face Gerry. “One B, Gerry. And it was that fucking class.”

 “Jon, nobody got an A in that class. Nobody. I barely passed.”

 “Yes, well—”

 Gerry raises an eyebrow. Jon’s mouth snaps shut and dips into what Gerry could only describe as a pout. After a moment, where Jon clearly recalls every other version of this conversation they’ve had and the myriad of insensitive things that Jon has said in quick succession, Jon finally sighs and says, “Fine. Trivia’s in thirty minutes, I believe.”

 “Thank you.”

 “Oh, there’s no need to look so smug.”

 It’s about halfway between then and trivia when the conversation finally, inevitably, and quite unfortunately lands squarely on Gerry’s leather-clad shoulders.  

 “So,” Tim says, leaning his elbows on the liquor-sticky table and flashing Gerry a conspiratorial grin. “I think it’s high past time we hear all the sordid details of how Jon managed to convince you to give him the time of day.”

 “Hey,” Jon snaps, giving Tim an impressive glare that bounces harmlessly off Tim’s million-dollar smile.

 “Not much to tell,” Gerry says with a shrug. “Switched majors, took a shitty class, and got a very critical peer review on my first draft paper. Had quite an illuminating conversation with said peer reviewer after class that day, actually. Can’t imagine how that evolved into getting coffee.”

 “You asked me,” Jon says in a sullen voice, looking very much like he’d like to melt into the woodgrains of the seatback behind him.

 “That I did,” Gerry concedes. “What can I say, I’ve got a thing for angry red pen and put-upon posh accents.”

 “For the last time, it is not put upon!”

 Tim’s laughter makes Jon’s lips fold into a pout, and Gerry presses his knee firmly against Jon’s underneath the table. He feels Jon melt against him, just a bit, like a bristling cat brought back to itself by a gentle hand between its ears.

 “So, then,” Sasha asks, pushing into Tim’s space as she leans closer to them with an inquisitive glint to her eyes. “Are you two dating?”

 “Sasha!” Martin squeaks, his eyes wide as saucers as he looks at her like she’d just suggested they all strip down to their socks or something. If Gerry weren’t so used to the question—albeit not directed at him and Jon before—he might have had a similar expression on his face.

 “What?” Sasha says defensively, leaning back slightly and crossing her arms over her chest. “It’s just a question! And a perfectly innocent one at that!”

 “Nothing with you is ever perfectly innocent,” Tim mutters under his breath, which earns him an elbow in the ribs.

 Gerry sighs in something close to resignation. He’d been expecting the question, really; Gerry hated the idea of his identity being spread behind his back like some sort of rumor, so he’d asked Jon to keep it private until he got the chance to disclose it himself. It had gotten a bit more complicated when they’d become queerplatonic partners but only because apparently Jon had a chronic inability to do anything halfway, and that included his relationships. Needless to say, Jon had admitted several hours before they’d arrived at the pub that his friends were all convinced that they were dating and that Jon couldn’t figure out how to correct them without explaining their situation in full.

 So, then. Gerry’s never been the biggest fan of speaking openly about his romantic preferences—or lack thereof, he supposes—but then Jon’s hand is brushing against his arm, the touch feather-light yet grounding all the same, and Gerry finds that the weight on his chest is all but gone.

 “No,” Gerry says. The word doesn’t burn on the way out like he feared it would. “Er. Not romantically, at least.”

 It’s less awkward than he thought it might be—putting the threads that run from Jon’s hands to his into words, skirting around textbook definitions for a bit before finally just biting the bullet and rattling them off rapid-fire, even though he hates how impersonal it all sounds and would much rather focus on how he feels when he sees Jon across the quad or how Jon’s fingers feel against his scalp when he brushes his hair or how Jon snores ever so slightly when he sleeps.

 In the end, Tim just makes some joke about friendship premium subscription, Sasha sheepishly apologizes for having made assumptions, and the conversation is blissfully cut short by the announcement that trivia will be starting in two minutes.

 Gerry’s hand finds Jon’s under the table and squeezes it tightly, just once. A silent thank you. The best I love you that Gerry can think to give right now. Jon’s shoulder knocks against Gerry’s in response, and Gerry thinks, just for a moment, about how fucking lucky he is.

 They end up losing trivia night—1967 is the correct date, Jon kept insisting, even when Tim finally pulled the book up on his phone and informed Jon that he was, in fact, off by a year and was therefore wrong—to Jon’s utter dismay and distress. But the sentiment still stands.

 And when Tim grins at Gerry and says, See you soon!, and Sasha follows up with, Next Thursday for trivia?, and Martin pitches in with a quiet, It was very nice to meet you, Gerry, Gerry doesn’t hate the warm, fuzzy feeling that spreads through him at the knowledge that Jon’s friends like him.

 Two cobblestone paths merge into one, the rocks threading together as easily as Jon’s fingers with Gerry’s, and the road ahead looks like nothing but wide-open sky and glittering stars.

[faerune]

💘 + leon and cassie 🔫 now

also asked by @ottobooty!

where they first met and how hot local racoon city survivors in YOUR area want to fuck! no for real, cassie had holed up in a diner with a group of other survivors and prior to leon getting to the police station he helps cassie fix/find parts to load up an old delivery truck in the back alley to get them all to safety. when leon leaves cassie promises to come back and make sure he + claire have a ride out of town and she does appear in that last shot in her shitty little happy dairy truck like hey you guys look like you need a ride.

how long their ‘flirting’ phase was before feelings got involved cassie has always been kinda of a flirt just offhandedly and i feel like leon is kinda of the same way just he’s cheesy and awkward about it when he’s a little younger. they flirt during the couple months they’re all trying to get their bearings after racoon city and then don’t really stay in touch much until the gov drags them both in separately. 

after that more flirting, some undercover missions and zombies and leon finally asks her to dinner. cassie teases ‘don’t expect me to put out on the first date just because you saved my ass today’ pft.

who fell for who first cassie will never ever admit it but it was her. like hard. she fell for leon like she was carrying a drink carrier full of hot coffee across a busy intersection in new york, tripped off the curb in front of hundreds of people and slammed her knee into the pavement.

where their first date was and what it was like dinner and a movie! cassie loves film but also is not a snob and adores laughably bad movies so they went and saw a goofy ass B action movie and then went to a late dinner at a diner that they always eat at after work.

who asks who out and how ( with a sign? spelled out on a cake? just a simple ‘will you go out with me’? ) leon just pretty simply says let me take you to dinner and cassie teases ‘oh are you asking me on a date kennedy?’ and he just shrugs and goes ‘yeah. i am’ cassie admittedly gets like flustered for half a second and she’s like. okay cool fine.

who proposes first cassie. she’s been so weird and avoidant about getting married so leon has always let her bring it up. when they get back together a few months later they’re laying in bed together and cassie is like can you propose to me now? and leon is like well do you wanna be surprised or do you want the ring now? and cassie just smiles and plops her head on his chest and is like ‘surprise is okay’.

if they keep / kept their relationship secret or let everyone know right away due to their jobs and them being afraid of having each other just be another thing people hold over their heads to keep them working there, they keep it really quiet at the beginning. everyone on their team kinda knows but they aren’t announcing it everywhere.

where the proposal happens and how ( kiss cam at a baseball game? on a hillside surrounded by ducks? at a disney park? ) leon takes her out to dinner and then they take a walk in the park! they sit on a little bench all lit up by the winter christmas lights and he gets down on one knee :’)

if they adopt any pets together absolutely! i just have not figured out what kind yet! probably a cat because cassie has cat person energy.

who’s more dominant it kinda flip flops. cassie is more dominant in terms of talking to people, making decisions but in terms of progressing the relationship that’s definitely leon. in terms of some more ahem other times cassie’s a brat and leon just wants to give her whatever she wants.

where their first kiss was and what it was like they’ve kissed on undercover missions before but i’m not sure if it really “counts”. their first kiss as just leon and cassie was when leon dropped her off at her place after their date and cassie pulled him down for a kiss. after they finished leon was smiling all dopey and still kind of leaning down to her and she just smirked at him and wished him a good night.

if they have any matching couples stuff ( mugs? sweaters? pillowcases? ) sdgjksdg i can see them at the most having like a set of cute matching mugs but that’s about it. cassie would die before wearing matching sweaters with him no matter how much she loves him.

how into pda they are they hand hold/give each other pecks/leon throws his arm around her shoulders while they walk but they’re not too obnoxious about it! cassie likes it but if he tries to do anything else she gets flustered. admittedly, leon kinda loves when she does so he’s always whispering sweet stuff in her ears while she tries to elbow him in the stomach sdklgsdg.

who holds the umbrella when it rains leon!! he’s taller so it just makes sense.

where their usual ‘date spot’ is the diner where they just always got dinner cause it was near the facility where they worked together for so long! they both have never been to DC so they just went to the nearest place after their first day and they were like so this is OUR diner.

who’s more protective leon. cassie is very annoyed by it pft. especially when she pops up during the civil war. ya know. in the middle of an actual warzone with possible biological weapons. cassie: :) im here to cause problems on purpose. leon: why in the FUCK is my ex here armed with a thousand dollar camera and a tiny pistol.

how long it is before they sleep together they almost sleep together the day before their second date, making out on leon’s desk but they get interrupted and they’re like okay we gotta chill. leon arrives to pick her up for their date and cassie yanks him into her bedroom. needless to say they miss their movie.

if they argue about anything they bicker playfully but also cassie accuses leon of not treating her like an adult who can make her own decisions because he’s so fucking overprotective. leon accuses cassie of being careless with her life. they have i guess..not arguments but debates over morals?

who leaves more marks ( lipstick, hickeys, scratchmarks etc. ) leon leaves hickeys like he’s a teenager but he’s usually good about keeping them in places that can’t be seen. cassie wears red lipstick a lot so leon has to pay extra attention if they sneak away at work to make sure he doesn’t have it smeared all over his lips. she likes to kiss his cheek and leave a big mark too.

who steals whose clothes and how often cassie: not your hoodies babe, our hoodies.

how they cuddle ( spooning? facing each other? ) they are spooners through and through. cassie needs to be held and leon is happy to do it. 

what their favourite nonsexual activity is watching movies together! leon is happy that cassie wants to share all her favorites with him and they have movie nights.

how long they stay mad at each other leon normally just needs a second to cool down normally but cassie holds a grudge for a day or maybe two then she’s ready to talk. but uh...in terms of big betrayals leon gives off the im not angry im disappointed and betrayed and you hurt me energy loud and clear and takes a long time to forgive and settle. it’s the worst cassie has ever felt.

what their usual coffee / tea orders are cassie gets a tall black coffee (iced or hot depending on the season) and leon likes lattes with whipped cream and carmel.

if they ever have any children together yes absolutely! i haven’t decided on names or anything yet but they definitely have two little boys just because that tweet that’s about that dad and two lil boys getting out of the car and the dad goes “who can go hug mom the fastest?!” is THEM.

if they have any special pet names for each other pretty normal ones! baby, babe are the most common. cassie likes to say honey and dear sarcastically because she thinks those make her sound like she’s a 50s housewife but secretly kinda likes calling him honey.

if they ever split up and / or get back together hah UH yeah. cassie leaks information about completed STRATCOM ops and leon eventually finds out and they have a huge fight. leon leaves the next morning and they end their relationship. he doesn’t turn her in because he still loves her and knows she did it with goodness in her heart but he’s just so conflicted. he just basically says turn in your resignation and leaves. they do eventually get back together! they break up early 2004, see each other in 2006 when cassie reaches out to him for his contacts to help her father who gets sick and then in 2011 they’re present in the civil war in the east and they get together after reconnecting through that.

what their first christmas / hanukkah / etc as a couple was like they meet each other’s parents for the first time! they invite them over for dinner along with cassie’s sisters and nieces and nephews. it’s VERY chaotic but it goes really well. leon’s mom loves cassie. uhh cassie’s dad scares the shit out of leon just because he’s a Jokester and lives for freaking leon out because he’s so obviously very nervous lmao.

what their names are in each other’s phones leon’s phone has cassie as “cassidy 🖤”. cassie has him in her phone just as “baby”. bonus she has his name in her phone the few days after they decide to have a kid as “sperm donor”. leon goes “cassie” in his disappointed voice and she rolls her eyes and finally changes it.

if they have any ‘couple traditions’ ( buying a new mug for their collection every year? baking every friday evening? ) at the moment just their friday movie nights and whenever they go out of country on a mission they buy a magnet for their fridge!

who falls asleep first and who wakes up first leon usually falls asleep first and wakes up first. cassie usually stays up late on her laptop researching and writing.

who’s the big spoon / little spoon leon is big spoon 80% of the time but he likes to be jetpacked too!

who hogs the bathroom leon after he gets back from a really gross ass mission takes hours but cassie usually hogs it day to day.

who kills the spiders / takes them outside cassie flips out and leon gets a cup and a piece of paper, puts the little guy outside. there have been multiple occasions where it sounded like cassie was in legit danger and leon came skidding into the bathroom only to find cassie standing on the toilet.