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secretgamergirl · 3 years

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A Little Horrifying Primer on Transphobes

Some time ago, I put together a Little Fact Checking Primer on Trans People, as a basic resource for disabusing people of some of the many completely ridiculous yet absurdly widespread beliefs about trans people that simply have no basis whatsoever in reality. And wouldn’t you know it, every single lie exposed in that primer is not only still widely believed, but is presently being used as a basis to sign some absolutely horrific human rights abuses into law. So it’s high time I follow that up, in this case focused more on who keeps actively spreading these lies and why. I’m going to try and keep things as light as I can here, but we’re going to be looking at the most monstrous side of human nature, so apologies in advance if this is a dark read.

First, let me just note that there are two things I don’t plan to do in this piece. I’m not going to waste time debunking the arguments of the people I’m highlighting (much of this is already covered in my earlier primer, others have done the work in cases where I haven’t, and frankly these people’s claims should be self-evidently utter nonsense to begin with). I am also going to be very selective in what I link to, or even share related images of, as I would frankly not like to fill a post on a blog I generally try to keep safe for all audiences with media directly dealing with, for instance, child sexual assault, and much of the relevant information also involves stochastic terrorism against innocent people, and I would prefer not to throw more fuel onto such fires.

Transphobes lie constantly, about everything.

To some degree this is obvious. We’re talking about people who scaremonger about the possibilities of trans women dominating competitive sports and assaulting people in restrooms, despite the status quo already reflecting the conditions they insist would make these inevitibilities for decades and centuries respectively, and their grim visions never once having come to pass, and also constantly insisting that the woman in the photo below is actually a man, going further to say this is evident to anyone giving her the merest glance.

It goes beyond that though. There’s at least a little plausible deniablity in claims like this, or that “science is on their side” if they were simply uninformed about the world they live in, never actually looking into what laws exist, what science actually says, and never actually meeting a trans person or even seeing a picture of one of us. I’m talking really bold lies here. Like wholecloth fabricating a story that a convicted murder was trans, including anecdotes about wigs dresses and a planned name change, in a major newspaper. Or to cite an old favorite of mine, the time a pack of bigots walked up to a crowd of people peacefully picketing a transphobic legal proposal, started roughing them up and taking closeup photos of members of the crowd to stalk online when they got home, got sufficiently riled up for one to straight up assault an innocent person half her size, filmed the whole thing, uploaded it to youtube, and used stills of that assault as acomanying photos when they went home to write articles about the assailant being a “grandmother” attacked by rowdy trans women. And yes, they did monkey’s paw my wish to see that specific image on newspapers. Interesting side note, when it came to real public light that J.K. Rowling endorsed this sort of hatred, it was because she accidentally pasted some profanity laden rambling about how the imagined moral character of the other party in that incident, years after the fact, into a post praising a child’s fan art of her work.

To be a little less niche, transphobes can’t get enough of spreading the lie that the young fellow in this photo is a girl. Specifically a trans girl, providing proof that all their scaremongering about the dastardly threat of trans girls in competitive sports has finally come to pass.

To be fully clear, that’s a man (or a boy if you want to split hairs about him being 17 in that photo). Mack Beggs. A rather insidious choice for this sort of story, considering the actual context for that photo. See, Beggs attended high school in Texas, during a (still ongoing as I write this) period wherein that particular state had caved to this exact sort of propaganda, and in order to head off a wholly imagined wave of trans girls competing on girls’ sports teams, and enacted a law mandating that in all such competitions must compete under whatever gender is stated on their birth certificates. And as it happens, the first, and to my knowledge ONLY time this has come up was with Beggs here, who again, is a man, as no one with a grip on reality could argue against, has “female” on his birth certificate. Which is another way of saying he is a trans man. The guys in the same boat as trans women who we talk about a whole hell of a lot less because their existence is extremely inconvenient to the majority of transphobic propaganda. Case in point. And this is all information it is really impossible to come across if you’re coming across this photo in any sort of respectable source. Take this story, which is as unambiguous about this as you can get. And yet, in the very comments section of that story, there they are. Carrying on like this story about a trans guy, forced by a transphobic law to compete as a girl, which he absolutely did not want, and received horrific threats over, using phrases like “female to male” and bringing up that he was assigned female at birth and is on testosterone-based HRT, is about a trans woman cheating the system. Or to quote word for word, “Now also transgender female want to be male also compete in female sport. biological born“ That’s not “being confused,” that’s standing next to you in a white desert and complaining about being adrift in a black ocean, bald-faced, not even trying to be convincing just make a power play, lying through one’s teeth.

I could spend this whole article on just this point. Lying about who they are, various people’s falsified credentials, whole websites full of “anonymous parents of children who think they’re trans” turning out to be one single woman documenting the abuse of her very much trans son, or of course the people behind the whole “bathroom bill” panic candidly admitting it was all based on utter fiction. I do have other points to cover though.

Transphobes are firmly entrenched in the media.

It is extremely difficult to find oneself in a position of having to explain to people that a particular group of people is effectively in control of press outlets, as that is rather classically a claim conspiracy theorists absolutely love to toss around at various marginalized groups (including trans people hilariously enough, but of course the most common and lingering version of this is the antisemitic variant). I really can’t get around it here though. Specifically in the U.K., you honestly can say that transphobes control the media. I already touched on this with the assault case I mentioned above and the fabricated story about the murderer, but this is a pretty well-documented situation. I mean, even The Guardian calls out The Guardian on this, and that’s the outlet that gets the most attention because it’s the one with the most otherwise respected name, but every paper in the country has been running transphobic propaganda pieces on a weekly if not daily basis for years now, and while they do get reprimanded by watchdog groups and have mass walk-outs over the worst of it, it’s not like there’s some governing body with the authority to step in about it. Meanwhile the BBC is constantly inviting diehard zealots like Graham Linehan to news programs where he compares being trans to being a nazi, and hosting debates where someone just sits down and repeatedly chants the word “penis” at a trans woman.

Things are better in the rest of the world, but we still have right-wing creeps like Jesse Singal both writing horrific propaganda pieces (we’ll get back to that one) and blackballing trans writers out of covering trans issues ourselves (and personally stalking the hell out of those of us who try). We’ve got our Joe Rogans and Tucker Carlsons out there (no way in hell I’m linking videos here, have a real information link and a still).

The line between diehard transphobes and straight-up nazis basically does not exist.

What even is there to say here? You can easily poke around havens for nazi activity for yourself and compare the particular unique vocabulary used there to the primary bastion of anti-trans hate speech on the internet (the “feminism” section of what was originally a site for parenting tips before violent fascists took the forums over) or just peruse the follows of the thousands of people I’ve blocked on social media and see if you can sort out a clear division in the networks of channers with frog avatars and the accounts with names like GoodieXXrealwoman, or you can read up on Gab and Spinster, the two twitter alternatives that are just different portals to the same server, set up by the same guy. Maybe do some research into “the LGB Alliance,” or WoLF but any way you slice it the only real difference to be found is the general purpose nazis take a little time off now and then to watch borderline pedophilic anime and the really dedicated transphobes think to use language that sounds vaguely well-educated and left-leaning. I mean, this came from the “feminist” side of the fence:

And not to belabor the point here, but the ones claiming to be a bunch of “feminist mums” sure do let the mask slip any time they’re confronted with the fact that “women” includes black women, and oh just have a whole thread about all the weird conspiratory theories these people have about how trans people’s whole existence is some sort of Jewish plot for world domination. I swear a few months ago they were all passing around a story about some bank having an above average number of trans employees and they were all just “and we all know who controls the banks, right?” about it.

Transphobes endorse an awful lot of people who are openly pro-pedophila.

This is the part where I am really loath to link the many many specific examples I have on hand. Or to talk about this at all for reasons of good taste. Or, for that matter, to talk about this in a tumblr post when there’s an ongoing problem of people with backgrounds strongly tied to this site making baseless accusations of pedophilia against every queer person they can find, so let me be very clear just what I’m talking about while avoiding anything too graphic.

That’s James Cantor. Transphobes love him for being one of the closest things they have to a scientist on their side. And I am featuring him in a screenshot here showing that he is followed by current queen of the transphobes J.K. Rowling, while speaking to both another big name in transphobic circles, Debra Soh, and based on their names, what I’m guessing is at least one straight-up nazi. And in case you think “the P” he’s talking about adding to LGBT (or “GLBT” as weird anti-queer bigots who also have issues with women often write it) might stand for “poly” or “pan” he’s all too happy to clarify that.

This is the entire thrust of Cantor’s work and life. He is the world’s biggest pedophile rights advocate. He wants it declassified as a mental disorder, all stigma on it removed, and tirelessly pushes forward the idea that the majority of.. people who feel compelled to sexually assault children are good people who present no potential harm to anyone and should in fact be lauded.

I am not generally one to claim that someone with a PhD is spewing out questionable garbage with regard to their field, but the reason I am aware of Cantor at all is that other transphobes keep trying to hold up a particular post on his blog as "a study” (which it is not) that offers “proof” (in the form of a blurry jpeg of basically some random numbers) of some ridiculous quackery about how trans kids will “grow out of it” if exposed to conversion therapy (another way of saying torture), which Cantor himself seems to be pushing, so I am somewhat skeptical of his academic chops. And I am, of course, REALLY suspicious that all these other bigots gravitate to him purely because they’re that desperate to find anyone with a PhD in anything that backs them up against literally every scientist in a relative field, to the point that they merely forgive his particular advocacy they are plainly all aware of, particularly when such a common fig leaf used by transphobes is “keeping children safe from sexual deviants.”

And of course, Cantor is most often invoked when coming to the defense of Kenneth Zucker. This Kenneth Zucker.

Those are separate papers. Zucker isn’t controversial though for organizing panels to discuss how attractive people agree small children are (at least not exclusively). Mostly, he’s known for running a conversion therapy center which subjected gay and trans children to various sorts of torture in an effort to “fix” them, which at least for those trans "patients” I have spoken with involved a fair amount of having them strip completely naked and talking a lot about their genitals.

Zucker is something of a controversial figure with the transphobic scene, as they are extremely on board with his sexual torture of queer children, but he does actual work (for some value of the term) involving trans people and thus is not able to commit as fully as they would prefer to making life horrible for trans people, due to a professional obligation to acknowledge reality now and then. As an aside, the similarly positioned Ray Blanchard, while not to my knowledge particularly interested in the attractiveness of children, lives in a similar purgatory of trying to reconcile his career, bigotry, and sexual hangups, yielding compromises like this:

Of course, that’s just looking at the straws transphobes grasp at when looking for scientific credibility. Real leaders of the movement include Germaine Greer, author of The Beautiful Boy, which is about what you are afraid it might be, and features a very young child in a cover feature he did not consent to posing for. Or Julie Bindel, who among other things is rather infamous for writing whole articles on subjects like whether a teenage girl she came across maybe has a huge penis you can totally see if you really squint at her skirt. Again, I will not share a link to go along with that one.

Transphobes terrorize and attempt to defund charities and other unambiguously good organizations.

Graham Linehan, previously best known for cowriting some sitcoms and possibly spending a year angling to get into my pants so awkwardly I didn’t pick up on it is now best known for trying to pull the plug on a children’s charity, in a story that somehow also involves Donkey Kong. Well, and the interview about nazis. And possibly the other interview about “defending me from nazis” until it got into his head that I might not be as young and hot as he imagined. Rather not link to a far right extremist youtube channel though.

There’s also a current effort to replace Stonewall (an organization named after the location where a pair of trans women kicked off a riot which is generally agreed to be the start of the LGBT+ rights movement) as the UK’s primary LGBT+ rights organization with the “LGB Alliance.” The hate group mentioned above, with the skull face and the rifle. Closest I can find to an article on that effort on short notice that isn’t propaganda.

Transphobes paper areas in truly disgusting propaganda.

I don’t want to directly link to grown adults skulking around children’s playgrounds and bathrooms plastering surfaces with mass printed stickers of crudely drawn penises, but would encourage you to read this very long post, being sure to load all the images, to really understand how deeply strange this behavior gets.

Finally, I cannot stress this enough, this really extreme behavior I’m citing, and the specific people involved in the examples I’m giving, these aren’t random cranks on the fringe of things. The people going on televised panel discussions, writing up news stories, and testifying before lawmakers in efforts to pass horrifically discriminatory if not literally life-endangering laws (there is a major ongoing effort to legally end all medical care for trans people, and I don’t just mean care directly relating to being trans) are literally the same people involved in the sexualization of children, nazi collaborations, and roving gangs assaulting people in the street. At a bare minimum I urge people, when booking guests and handing out writing contracts, to do background checks and see if they’re platforming actual terrorists. If we could actually bring legal consequences to bear against the worst of this, that would be great too. As things stand though, the whole world is just consistently citing a bunch of racist, woman-hating, serial liars with no real credentials, and questionable attitudes towards the sexual abuse of children, as “trusted experts” and refusing to seat actual trans people or people who have legitimately committed lifetimes to academic and practical work with trans people any seats at the table.

#trans #transphobia #educational resources

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wobbly-flamingo · 3 years

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Hello! I’ve started a new blog with more of an MS-focus.

The good, the bad and the ugly

This week I want to talk about inclusion, as it’s National Inclusion Week. Specifically, I’ll be comparing my new, very inclusive employer to my previous, very non-inclusive employer where I experienced discrimination, bullying, exclusion, sexual harassment, verbal abuse from senior colleagues, gas-lighting, unfair treatment, and a generally very toxic work environment.

To start, the good! I’ve been working in my current job for 3 months now and it’s by far the most inclusive and supportive environment I’ve worked in. By really far. I was astonished in my first few days to realise how much of an emphasis there is on wellbeing for employees and how many resources there are for us. There are multiple staff diversity networks - I am a member of the LGBT+ staff network, the disability staff network and the women in work network. There are regular “Let’s talk about...” meetings hosted by the networks and I try to attend one every couple of weeks. There’s a lot of encouragement in our department, to focus on your own wellbeing and keep yourself well. In my experience so far, there’s a very high level of engagement around wellbeing between co-workers, line managers and departmental heads. Whenever I have a catch up with my line manager the first item on the agenda is for her to ask me about my wellbeing. She regularly asks if there is anything they can do to support me, and makes really useful suggestions. For my interview, the interviewers asked me if I wanted any reasonable adjustments! I did. And they were happy to oblige. It’s the most positive and supportive professional environment I’ve worked in. Despite the fact that I am working longer hours in this job than I was previously, I am able to cope better because the resources are there and the support system is there. Plus, I love my job!

Now for the bad and ugly... I experienced so much toxicity at my previous job that I could be here for days talking about it. So I’m just going to give a couple of examples. Before my MS diagnosis, I didn’t hate my job, I thought it was alright. But I noticed very early on that they had an incredibly toxic and unhealthy work environment. I was bullied, I was verbally abused by senior colleagues, I was sexually harassed. After my diagnosis however, things got MUCH WORSE. The bullying really went up a notch, the verbal abuse by senior colleagues did not stop, neither did the sexual harassment; on top of this I started to experience a lot of unfair treatment, exclusion from work events and team activities, discrimination, and gaslighting by a very senior colleague.

I was hospitalised on my 30th birthday and spent most of the day in the MRI scanner. A few days later I was diagnosed. After getting out of hospital I was signed off sick for a couple of weeks. On reflection I wish I had stayed off work for longer. I was honest with my employer from the start, and while I was in hospital my parents had been phoning up to keep them in the loop. My employer decided to share my very personal diagnosis around the office so that everyone knew, which is completely against company policy but whatever. Anyway just a few days after getting back to work, I started getting incredibly unhelpful comments and questions such as “you need to engage your brain more” and “couldn’t you have tried harder today?”. I was criticised constantly for not working fast or hard enough, for struggling with concentration, and for making small errors. I tried countless times to explain that cognitive impairment is a very common MS symptom and that I was struggling with my cognition and fatigue, among other significant symptoms. I was on reduced hours for absolutely ages, at the advice from several medical professionals and occupational therapists.

I had people go behind my back and report to my line manager that they had caught me (after 5pm and therefore after working hours) campaigning for climate justice and that they were “concerned for my health”. Pahahahahahaha. Naturally my line manager didn’t defend me and instead pulled me into a meeting to ask me about it. I pointed out that it’s nobody’s business what I do in my spare time as long as it doesn’t conflict with company policy.

I was told I was over-reacting to situations and making THEIR lives difficult! I mean wow. I’ve just been diagnosed with a life-long, incurable, debilitating disease, and this was apparently making things difficult for them...

Despite having very obvious mobility difficulties and walking with a stick, I was being asked to take senior colleagues’ paperwork up and down stairs for them (not part of my job) and when I said that I was in too much pain to be doing this, I was told to stop being difficult and that I should be seeing this as an opportunity to expand my job role!! It does actually make me laugh now. But at the time I didn’t find it funny; in fact I had no idea how to deal with it.

When I told my line manager one day that I was struggling with stress and feeling overwhelmed with work, to the point that I was heading for a breakdown, I was told that “everyone is under pressure so we just need to get our heads down”. Helpful.

For the majority of the 2.5 years I was there, I was regularly verbally abused by a senior colleague. Apparently he had treated other members of staff the same way and got away with it also. Colleagues of mine had to actually leave the room when he spoke to me in that manner because it made them uncomfortable. During the height of the pandemic when most of us were home working, this abuse was just given over the phone instead. There was one particularly bad incident last Summer, where he was shouting down the phone at me and got real personal. When I mentioned this to my line manager and said I no longer wanted to converse with this person, I was told that it was literally part of my job so I had no choice but to continue our working relationship, despite how intimidated I felt. The one person who should have had my back, did not take it seriously. Worse than that, the regional director was in the same room as the bully so had overheard his side of the conversation, and I naively thought “good news, someone that overheard the conversation can back me up” but nope - instead he said that my version of what had happened was untrue and that I was over-reacting.

Unfortunately it took me about 7/8 months after this incident to find the right job, but boy am I glad to be out of there! Toxic was probably an understatement really. The sad thing is that there was a small handful of people there that I did get on with and would have liked to keep in touch with, but I have sort of cut all ties with the place, and I am much healthier and happier for it!

#inclusion #diversity #wellbeing #mental health #toxic #toxic work environment #toxic culture #supportive #positive #healthy #unhealthy

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love-takes-work · 5 years

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Ace/Aro Amethyst headcanons

Some people headcanon Amethyst as asexual and/or aromantic. I think that's pretty cool.

Unfortunately, some people are really hostile to this idea. Sometimes in a way that's problematic.

No, I'm not going to tell you you have to headcanon Amethyst as asexual and aromantic or else you're an acephobe. That's silly. Here's the problem: I recently came across a post on Reddit where a member of the Steven Universe subreddit demanded to know where the "stupid" headcanon of ace Amethyst came from and opined that it's ridiculous because that orientation does not "fit her personality."

Think about that for a sec, y'all.

Sexualities don't have personalities. This is a problem.

If you follow some of the interviews Rebecca Sugar has done over the years, especially lately, she sometimes talks about her growth toward understanding herself as bisexual and why it took her so long to figure it out. It was partly because media representation of characters follows a certain system, and as a result she'd been led to believe bisexual people were aggressively sexual, greedy, unfaithful, and extremely desirous of attention.

"I didn't know you could be a SHY bisexual," she said, and you can hear the wonder in her voice at that idea.

So let's really consider that, please. Any orientation can have any type of personality. And if you pigeonhole someone into what their orientation is likely to be because of how you interpret their personality and what messages you've internalized about what traits go with the way they are, you are probably contributing to this damaging message.

Moving on: full disclosure. I'm an asexual Steven Universe fan. I'm also aromantic. And anybody who says asexual people wouldn't have a personality like Amethyst has probably never hung out in a room full of asexual people. (Uh, I have.)

There are shy people in the groups. There are conservative people in the groups. There are easily offended and sensitive people in the groups. But you will also find bawdy asexual people cracking gross jokes, asexual people who nevertheless turn everything into a sex joke, asexual people who are sex positive and even occasionally promiscuous or interested in sex. (If you don't understand how that's not a contradiction, I'll just leave you on your own to read some asexual education, because I'm not actually trying to go there with this post.)

Personally, I was raised by a rather crass mom whose sense of humor led her to blurt "IS IT A PENIS? BWAHAHAHA!" at the start of every round of Pictionary. She taught her daughters sex education early because she wanted us to know the facts, and though she joked about sex a lot, she also made it very clear that she expected us to make sex a part of our lives when we were older, and didn’t want us to think it was shameful or should be hidden. She gave us access to birth control in our mid teens and made sure we had the resources to make good choices about sex. It wasn't embarrassing or weird in our house. And even though I turned out ace, my siblings are straight and married. I grew up making ridiculous sex jokes and not being at all shocked by sexual humor or sexual situations. It was all just a good time and an accepting atmosphere. It was also okay that I didn't desire it myself. It didn't mean I couldn't dish out the innuendo with the best of them.

And yet, sometimes when I've come out as ace to someone and then they notice I use swear words, or am not horrified into covering my face during the movie's kissing scene, or have done things they really don't expect asexual people to enjoy, I'm treated to this weird mixture of shock-and-mock:

"Whaaaaat? Aren't you too PURE to use language like that, young lady?" "Plug your virgin ears, girl, we're talking about ADULT THINGS." "Don't worry, I won't mention S-E-X. LOL triggered." "She wouldn't be interested. It's about relationships and she thinks that's ICKY." "GASP! You just used the F word! Wait isn't that ironic?"

No, having a vocabulary that includes vulgarities and being tolerant of other people's desires is not inconsistent with being asexual. Being asexual means I don't feel sexually attracted to other people. It says absolutely zero about my behavior, and nothing I do is "wrong" behavior for an asexual person, because I am doing it.

Back to Amethyst.

Asexuality is a dicey issue for discussing Gems because technically they're all asexual. They are not a sexually reproducing species, so there really shouldn't be any reason for them to desire each other sexually. But they do seem to want intimacy and closeness in some situations, and there's definitely romantic attraction between some of them. It's sometimes hard to tell whether "sex" would be a concept available to them (besides Gems who shapeshift to mimic how humans do it), because it is after all a family show and sometimes you have to wonder if the relative chastity of some of the romantic scenes is due to the intended audience.

Amethyst has been more than once described by Rebecca Sugar as Dionysian. She was set up as an opposite to Pearl's Apollonian nature. If you don't know, Apollo vs. Dionysus is a concept of Greek origin that's often used in literature to set characters at odds with each other. Apollo is everything Pearl is: rational, clean, proper, perfect. Dionysus instead embraces the mess, just like Amethyst: Dionysian characters are sloppy, unruly, chaotic, and (this is important) hedonistic. They do what feels good.

Given this, I understand the root of why some people feel asexuality and Amethyst wouldn't go together well. And all things considered, it's true: Amethyst seems, to me, like the kind of Gem who would try anything, especially if other people seemed to enjoy it and especially if abstaining is portrayed as prudent and restrained. She's a let-it-loose kind of character. It's hard to imagine someone like her, who loves to eat, sleep, hoard, and be lazy, wouldn't have tried a few rolls in the hay, right?

Well, sure. Maybe.

And yet we've seen no specific evidence of it.

She could choose any form but she's never seen trying to change herself to look sexy; she's displayed no particular intimate or romantic interest in anyone beyond casual physicality and warmth; she's the only main-four Crystal Gem who hasn't been pursued romantically by a human; she's a little insecure and seems to crave attention sometimes but never spins it as a need to be fulfilled by romantic attention; she never expresses that she wishes she was someone's partner. Who knows? Maybe she's tried it out, found nothing she liked, said "Eh," and decided it's not her bag.

Hedonism is about embracing what feels good. If those kinds of relationships just didn’t feel good for her, I could see her just deciding they were boring and still fully embracing her other Dionysian qualities. She can indulge in naps and eat all the food in the fridge and hoard all the garbage she wants . . . without that indicating she must also possess and pursue amorous relations.

There’s also the fact that a minority of asexual people are like “eh, screw it, I’ll try it,” and don’t find sex completely objectionable or might even like it. (Not all, not most, not me, but this does exist.) They still may not desire it the way non-asexual people do, or may experience no attraction despite having neutral or positive feelings about the act itself. Who knows? Amethyst could be like that. We’ve seen her eat food that she doesn’t even like, just ‘cause it’s there. Some people take or leave sex like that.

And if you say her "type" necessarily incorporates promiscuity or a large sexual appetite, or you say she couldn't be ace because she's not uptight and strait laced, you're buying right into the damaging stereotypes about asexual people.

It's certainly not acephobic to headcanon Amethyst as bisexual or pansexual or lesbian or whatever you want. And it's fine if you believe the closeness she’s displayed with others that I interpret as friendship or non-romantic intimacy is actually a different flavor. What's NOT fine is saying Amethyst CANNOT be asexual or aromantic because of weird beliefs you have about what ace/aro people would be like.

Further, asexual people unfortunately don't have that much representation, and usually we're reduced to embracing absence as evidence. If a character isn't shown to "like" anyone that way, whoa, they might be ace! It's so very rare that a character does actively say or do something that indicates their lack of attraction. We often have to see ourselves in the "not yet" if we want any representation at all, running the risk of having our headcanons smashed as soon as a writer decides a certain type of attraction in a relationship will make that character interesting. But at least we're in the same boat as every other fan there. What we want to happen isn't necessarily what will happen.

And for those who think Amethyst might be ace and/or aro, she's such a great example of someone who isn't defined by the overly cautious, conservative germophobe who's obsessed with logic and conflates their abstention with purity and righteousness. I get really tired of asexuality being tied in with those traits because non-ace writers can't imagine ace people without sucking fun and flexibility out of their souls. (And on the flip side, isn't it wonderful to have the logical, organized, clean, perfect character be a giant lesbian? This is one box queer women rarely see themselves put in, but I know they're out there. I'm friends with a few.)

As for me, do I headcanon Amethyst as asexual or aromantic? Honestly, I am not very invested in this theory.

I can see it and I could support it in a debate if someone asked me to. But I think Amethyst could turn out to be anything; really, the most likely thing for her to be is fluid. I think she's cute with Pearl sometimes, though Pearl having a mom vibe and being so much older and having other attractions does give me pause. I think the idea of her with Peridot or Vidalia is interesting, though Peridot more than Amethyst reads as possibly ace and there's more built up between her and Lapis now. I could even see her with another tertiary character someday; I wouldn't bat an eye.

But Amethyst as ace and/or aro would also make complete sense to me and might even fit best with her livin' free and unbound attitude, and when you look at the asexual flag, Amethyst is certainly dressed for it.

#steven universe #amethyst #asexual #aromantic #gif #ace characters #aro characters #su analysis #my su analysis #myblog

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hellzyeahwebwielingessays · 4 years

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Super Heroes are a HUMAN power fantasy Part 2

Super Heroes are a HUMAN power fantasy Part 1

Master Post

There were several points a bit more tangentially connected to my arguments in part 1. As a result I decided to leave them until now and hit them up in bullet points.

These are arguments against the superhero genre chiefly perpetuated by the tryhard trinity of Osvaldo Oyola , J. Lamb and Noah Berlatsky.

On the topic of the genre portraying ‘might making right’, the truth is this is part of the ancient inspirational aspect of these figures and can be found in stories like Rama and Sita, Rama of course ultimately never giving up his quest to be reunited with his lover. Which was not a Western influenced story.

Yes the genre involves ‘punching as conflict resolution’. I’m sorry, but that is part and parcel of the genre and the wish fulfilment/fantasy/narrative entertainment value of the stories. If you DON’T like that then frankly it’s like complaining that a romance story involves kissing.

It has been claimed that a black hero wouldn’t punch someone but again, the genre is entirely about people with powers using them to help people by preserving their life. And if they have no other choice but to K.O. a mugger who’s going to stab someone then a black person, or any decent person, would/should do it. But examining the meaning and repercussions of that realistically given the fact that they aren’t white in a white society is something that could benefit the genre.

A common critique of the genre is that crime happens sometimes because of a racist system, therefore fighting crime innately supports racism. Look, obviously we should remove institutionalised racism from the law. At the end of the day though if someone of any race is committing a crime which HURTS people they should be stopped, the reasons which drove them to that should be taken into consideration, but Spider-Man shouldn’t NOT stop a mugger because they’ve been driven to do that through desperation. There is often no time for that and without being able to talk to or trust strangers he or other heroes need to act in the moment.

Superhero fiction on one level is childish, but on a deeper level they’re representative of universal truths and desires which are often boiled down to fairy tales or simple stories. The above shitheads also claims that superhero fiction is written and consumed by children, when the truth is that in the last 20-30 years the opposite has been more true. THAT is partially why sales have been dwindling over the years.

Superman’s values are innate to the heroic and altruistic desires and ideals ALL humanity has expressed throughout its history. They are not inherently ‘white’

Apparently superheroes are white constructs because they reinforce the ‘status quo’. To quote the Atlantic article (see part 1) again:

“What status quo do superheroes reinforce? These heroes fight because everyone is entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The only fascists here are the supervillains who disagree.”

Also Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman were created specifically to change the status quo of the fictional worlds they were created in. At the same time the entire Marvel pantheon were about changing the status quo of the genre by introducing people who were flawed and different and more human than the DC heroes

Superheroes, despite the assertions by the above fuckwits have at times interrogated the justice system. But generally their lack of interrogation is I think for the same reason their science is so wonky. They don’t know better. They just boil it down to the simplest terms. Muggings and villain threats abound. Hero prevents those. They don’t know enough to tackle something much deeper than that. This ties into the fundamentally flawed aspect of most critiques wherein they are looking to superheroes as intellectual pieces of academic and critical study when...that’s not what they are...at all…

One of the above douchebags once said:

An African American Superman, with kinky, close-cropped black hair, thick, half-reddened lips, high cheekbones, and wide nostrils all bathed in dark Lindt chocolate, resists White supremacist logic, negates Black inferiority mythology, and threatens the established order. Superman’s disconcerting physicality, tempered by his omnipresent cheerfulness calmed and invited White comic readers to imagine themselves as gaudy Caucasian perfection, the Anglo-Saxon ideal. Static in panel, without speech bubbles or thought balloons, Superman Black warps the absurdly developed skeletal striated muscle and eternal hopefulness fans rejoice into a clear and present danger to the American experiment, an unholy figure derived from Tea Party paranoia, Barack Obama’s calculation and Terry Crews’ musculature. Public Enemy’s prescience abounds – were Superman Black introduced on the game-changing Action Comics’ cover, White America would have yet another reason to fear a Black planet.

This entirely depends upon who is doing the perceiving. To someone of a different mindset a Black Superman could be just that. The same thing Superman is except he happens to have black skin.

Also, the author needs to take a major chill pill, Jesus Christ.

Here is another quote from one of them:

Only in White male power fantasies can people blessed with skin privilege and bodies carved from living marble wield heat vision or super speed or unbreakable claws against indigent criminals from broken homes who lack high school educations.

This is again grossly incorrect because the idea of individuals having superhuman abilities and using them to fight criminals predates American society, and if one accepts figures like the Hydra to be stand-ins for threats to human life then the superhumans have been fighting what the criminals represent for eons before the advent of American society. The criminals they use their abilities against are rarely stated to lack education or come from broken homes, but yes okay let’s say that they are that.

Having super humans go up against them and defeat them isn’t a white male power fantasy because their abilities are used to subdue and NOT kill. Injure perhaps but in real life sometimes force is sadly necessary and if someone is robbing a bank or holding a gun to someone in an alley it is justified no matter what skin colour anyone involved in is, or what society you find yourself in, for the perpetrator to be stopped in order to safeguard life. Just because the perp resorted to what they did due to social ills beyond their control, that doesn’t justify their actions at that moment. Stealing someone’s money or trying to murder them is never ever going to be acceptable no matter if we live in a white society or not.

Only in White male power fantasies would women display abundant porcelain cleavage or don starry microskirts to fight crime.

Yeah um, preeeeeeetty sure that actually that’s more of a male SEXUAL fantasy and less than a WHITE male POWER fantasy. That was never the topic of conversation.

Shuttle diplomacy or natural resource husbandry rarely bring metal-faced technological sorcerers to heel in superhero comics; superheroes often save planet Earth through fantastic violence judiciously applied.

Yeah, that’s part of the narrative FANTASY element of the genre that is intended to be escapist. Condemning it for being otherwise is asinine.

More than this, guess what, there are people whom Dr. Doom is a metaphorical stand-in for. And an awful lot of them legitimately can’t be negotiated with. I am of the belief that in the REAL world we should negotiate and use force when there is no other choice and even then only use what is necessary. But the Dr. Dooms and Lex Luthors of the comic book world represent grander themes of evil and social ills, whilst at the same time existing to challenge the heroes physically and mentally. They represent the unmovable types of evil that legitimately can only be dealt with via physical means.

This was the type of circular logic I talked about before. It is looking at the villains as stand ins for EVERY type of situation and therefore the super hero’s use of violence as ‘problematic’, when in reality the superheroes’ use of violence isn’t problematic because it is justified by the extreme circumstances they find themselves in.

Because those situations don’t exist in real life...like in World War II...which was literally about people using force in the face of failed negotiation to halt the advance of fascism…

I submit that the superheroic reflex to subdue evil with violence directly descends from Thucydides and Alexander, from Richard the Lionheart and Dwight Eisenhower.

Yeah...except it isn’t. Again...it came from the same place as Hercules and Sun Wukong, and those came from the natural human biological imperatives to survive.

Superheroic morality requires Western Civilization’s literary canon and political history to justify its callous disregard toward collateral damage. To be clear, superheroes routinely consider innocent noncombatants’ lives (if not their property) when they confront cosmic despots or sociopathic steroid abusers, but comics document the never-ending battle in colorful tomes largely sold after Nagasaki and My Lai, after the time when total ignorance of American military supremacy was vogue. When Wally West as the Flash pulls a hysterical single mother out of her overturned silver 2001 Honda Civic and carries her to safety from Apokoliptian cannons at breakneck speed, comic fans favorably regard his heroism; any dialogue from the frazzled thirty-something file clerk will remind readers how grateful she is to escape otherworldly horror with her life. Superhero comics don’t care about the destruction of this woman’s sole transport; when the gas tank explodes behind the Flash’s blurred strobe, this woman loses her credit cards, her driver’s license, her insurance documents, her six-year-old daughter’s vanilla birthday cake with its beloved artificially flavored strawberry icing. The comics don’t recognize the heroism of this brave woman’s seven-month struggle to rebuild her finances and maintain her identity following Darkseid’s incursion; all we know is for that poor woman, the Flash saved the day. He’s a superhero. Isn’t she grateful?”

Collateral damage and the disregard for it IS regarded. Hence the existence of Damage Control. Furthermore, that is AGAIN part of the escapism and fantasy element of it. THAT is the suspension of disbelief element of superheroes and taking it THAT realistically and criticising it for it is frankly just mean spirited and simply looking for an excuse to hate it.

Furthermore the reason the rescued woman isn’t focussed upon is because it’s not HER story. If you write a story about a protagonist THEY are your focus. Everything is for their benefit. That’s true of older non-white folktales as well.

And yeah readers are supposed to regard the Flash as heroic and the woman grateful because her kid’s birthday cake isn’t realistically as important as her life!!!!!!

This is criticising superhero fiction for being unrealistic even when it is being actively so The woman WOULD probably be grateful that she’s not fucking dead!

I wouldn’t mind seeing the survivors of something like this try to rebuild their lives. And superhero fiction has focussed upon that from time to time, but again...that’s not the point of the story. Criticising the genre fro this is like criticising Harry Potter for having the audacity to focus more upon Harry’s trauma in the wake of Cedric Diggory’s death than his parents’. Harry is the star. He gets the focus.

Superman is a White boy. Superheroes are White people. Superhero morality exacts the Melian Dialogue’s ‘might makes right’ overwhelming force realpolitik with every onomatopoetic Biff! Bam! Pow! gut punch and karate chop combo.

See what I’ve said before about how superheroes are not fascists and how force is often necessary

There exists no genetic propensity for group violence in the human genome. None.”

Er....yeah...there kinda is...that’s part of why wars happen.

racially-informed vigilantism.

This phrase in one of the articles itself sums up it’s own contradictions. Racially informed vigilantism is just one type of vigilantism, a type the superhero doesn’t subscribe to. A superhero would sooner join the likes of the Joker than the KKK style vigilantes and would be all too happy to apprehend them.

One of the articles seems to be conflating basically ALL criminals super heroes fight with people who’re labelled criminals due to racial profiling. Yes superheroes operate to an extent like police officers but you can’t truly complete the analogy whatsoever.

Few of them have legal sanction, which is partially why so many refrain from actually killing anyone as officer’s are allowed to do under certain circumstances. More than this when they take down criminals their methods are entirely different from regular cops. Apart from very loud and overt super villains who may or may not be on a rampage, most of the time when they tackle regular criminals it’s due to them either being informed of a crime that is going to happen (like a hijacking or something) or they literally see something happening whilst on patrol. They don’t profile people beyond what their super sensory abilities or logical observations tell them. Which is to say if someone is following someone else a little too closely then maybe, just maybe they are planning something. If their Spider-Sense or super hearing or something alerts them to something they will act.

Taking that, ignoring it, and then supplanting the superhero for a regular cop who would racially profile people and/or supplanting the criminals they tackle for racial minorities because those are the people who (stereotypically in the real world) would be targeted as criminals is very inappropriate. Not least of all since superhero comics obviously don’t present a wholesale realistic depiction of the real world so what they present isn’t entirely interchangeable with that. And what is more, erasure of minorities was so prevalent that overwhelming majority of all the criminals they ever encountered were themselves white, so again exchanging those for racial minorities who’re profiled as criminals is highly questionable.

It’s all just such a MASSIVE reach!

But I think the panels also work to point out that Miles himself “does not belong” in the superhero tradition. He, like most black and brown superhero characters in mainstream comics, is an outlier. In other words, people like Miles or Trayvon are unfortunately more likely to be victim of a “heroic” vigilante than to be one.

This is conflating the superhero vigilante with the majority of real world vigilantes who are overly violent (and frequently hard conservative) individuals who do take overly simplistic views of the law and use those to profile people. And it’s doing so whilst taking superheroes too literally, bringing their own personal interpretations to the mix and then overlaying them onto the superhero concept before finally accepting it as fact.

Police officers use violence against racially profiled people who exhibit unrest due to a societal system stacked against them. Well shit, Batman punches the Joker. It must be the same thing obviously!!!!!

Look. Without our stories, without the true nature and reality of who we are as people of color, nothing about fanboy and fangirl culture makes sense. What I mean by that is, if it wasn’t for race, X-Men doesn’t make sense; if it wasn’t for the history of breeding human beings through chattel slavery, Dune doesn’t make sense; if it wasn’t for the history of colonialism and imperialism, Star Wars doesn’t make sense; if it wasn’t for the extermination of so many indigenous nations, most of what we call “first contact” stories don’t make sense. Without us as the secret sauce, none of this works, and it is about time that we understand that we are the Force that holds the Star Wars universe together. We’re the Prime Directive that makes Star Trek possible. We are… in the Green Lantern Corps? We are the Oath. We are all of those things. Erased, and yet without us? We’re essential. This is an incredibly important project, because it puts front and center, not only a community that has long consumed and given power to these practices and consumer categories, but it’s a community without whose suffering and struggles, none of [these narratives] would make sense.

I agree with a lot of this but there are some problems with it.

a) X-Men makes sense also because they are a stand in for almost ALL marginalised groups. Racial minorities, disabled people, queer people etc.

b) Actually Star Wars makes complete sense with or without colonialism or imperialism, at least the kind which directly relates to the issues of racism. Imperialism, conquest, these are things which are much older than American society, dating back to even before Ancient Rome. It’s about freedom fundamentally and freedom is a desire shared by ALL human beings innately because at the end of the day we are animals who wish to be free and not caged. Being caged metaphorically within a tyranny is thus something we abhor

c) The Star Wars universe doesn’t begin and end with the story of imperialism. It’s about how Democracy can be turned into an dictatorship and how that has to be prevented, or re-addressed once it happens

When white comics readers claim that they did not need white characters to relate to and enjoy comics (as a way to argue against positive race-bending), that point to their love of Luke Cage or Spawn as evidence of their ability to enjoy characters across race, what they are failing to note is how black, Latin@, etc… identities in the superhero genre are framed by a system of white supremacy.

Again I don’t understand this one. I as a white reader can enjoy Luke Cage rescuing someone from a burning building because doing that is part of white supremacy????

It presumes a white power fantasy is inherently different to a black one. But the power fantasy element of the superhero relates to them having powers and using them to help others and defeat villains. A power fantasy by another race would still have that because it is inherent to the human power fantasy. Non-white power fantasies would logically have all that and more!

Much like Noah Berlatsky explains in his book Wonder Woman: Bondage and Feminism in the Marston/Peter Comics, 1941-1948, part of what made Marston’s original Wonder Woman stories so wonderful, was his expectation that girls and boys would identify with the heroine, to value and idealize her compassionate strength and victory through submission, rather than through cyclical and ultimately futile fisticuffs of male dominion.

Many female readers enjoy the action scenes. Action scenes are good because it enables us to have a healthy outlet for aggression without taking it out into the real world. It is also NOT an inherently male dominion thing. Again this is THEIR projection. Fighting and violence is innate to human beings because we are animals biologically programmed towards it for the sake of survival. That goes for males and females. Furthermore far from fisticuffs just being about male ‘dominion’ the Wonder Woman, Batman and Superman comics were a reflection of impending war. A war that sadly required violence to be solved. That’s what the superhero typifies. Wish fulfilment action in situations where violence was (usually) a necessity. Diplomacy is good and should be our first resort. In life though sometimes things do come down to necessary violence.

There are many ways to craft a racial minority superhero, but if we consider racial authenticity as a foremost concern, today’s Hollywood is simply not prepared for that intellectual labor. The real diversity conundrum isn’t how to include the minority metahuman in the existing comic framework; that’s an art project, a casting decision solved by calling Michael B. Jordan’s agent. The real question is how to write that superhero in a way that moves the medium forward, past the Reaganomics antiheroes of Alan Moore and Frank Miller and past the hyper-emotive Silver Age redux of Geoff Johns and Brian Michael Bendis. Respectable, authentic diversity in superhero comics should redefine the nature of the meta-protagonist to his powers and his audience, with exhaustive attention to cultural detail. I’m not convinced that a Black superhero would wear tights. I strongly doubt that a Black superhero would solve conflicts with his fists. The Black superhero knows that his community watches him religiously, and that any false move will have public repercussions he cannot expect or control. If anything, the Black superhero template plays out on our nation’s cable news channels at all hours. President Barack Obama, with all his clipped vocal inflections and measured language and natural equivocation and faulty dealmaking and perfect family and limitless patience is the closest public figure to a Black superhero America has yet experienced, an international celebrity unthinkable before his ascent. Watching President Obama today, one feels expectation crush into his bones like a gravity well. No matter the political stimuli, Republicans oppose him. The concept of the Obama Presidency struck American conservatives like a Bernard Hopkins’ kidney punch, and in return, President Obama absorbs the vitriol of our coarse public debates more than any President to date (and progressives never tired of calling his predecessor a National Socialist). The agony and the ecstasy of Grant Park has given way for many Americans to the sobering fact that American authority, her global military supremacy and international economic primacy, is controlled and represented by a Black man. Disliked, hated, or worse, the Establishment is Black. I need the Black superhero in print and/or on-screen to reflect that paradigm shift. Superheroes in the popular imagination are Establishment figures; if the Black superhero I’m presented can’t interrogate what it means when the Establishment is Black, of what utility is her story?

A minority hero wouldn’t wear tights or punch people...why?

What do tights have to do with anything? As for solving problems with his fists this is conflating the threats superheroes face with ANY threat, when they are almost always situations which legitimately do require necessary physical force to resolve. If the black superhero patrols an area and sees someone about to stab someone else, yeah he should punch the stabber to save the innocent person if there is no time for anything else.

This is basically asking for the core foundation of superheroes (which transcends racial constructs and is innate to human wish fulfilment and mythic tradition) to be scrapped in favour of something else entirely. Barrack Obama isn’t a superhero. He is many, many things but what Mr. Lamb here is asking isn’t so much for a different template but for something just wholesale different. He doesn’t actually WANT a superhero story in the first place!

Super heroes aren’t establishment figures. Superheroes don’t uphold the law regardless. They uphold the law in so far as a greater need to safeguard innocent lives. Conflating them as inherently establishment figures ignores their origins and over literalises what they do.

At the same time the utility of their story is first and foremost as a story: to entertain and inspire.

It is inherently worthwhile for a little black kid to sit down and open up a comic book where someone who looks like them is being a good person, is helping people, is defending the weak. I agree that minority heroes shouldn’t just be white heroes who happen to have different skin colours. I think they need to reflect the realities of what it means to be black or Asian or Pakistani in white society is necessary and a superhero should do that and should have that inform how they interact with their powers. It doesn’t mean the whole genre needs to abandon what it fundamentally is or that those minority heroes should not do the things a superhero fundamentally do.

Ultimately, yeah these characters were created within a white context, but my point is fundamentally the same thing was created in non-white contexts as well throughout history.

Super Heroes are a HUMAN power fantasy Part 1

Master Post

#Osvaldo Oyola #Noah Berlatsky #Marvel #DC #DC Comics #Marvel Comics #Super Heroes #Superheroes #Wonder Woman #Robin Hood

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iireallyhavenoideawhatimdoing · 4 years

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Equal rights?

Equal rights among race and gender is regrettably a flawed topic. We strive for equality but fail to see things stopping us from achieving it. In both cases, we often overlook people, and who they are. We look past the opposite side of the same coin. Double standards live in these topics. In race, we have races that can’t say anything remotely racist otherwise their life is basically ruined. On the flip side of that, you have races that can be openly racist in all aspects and walk away as if it’s a normal thing to do. With gender, people say they want equality, but they practice dominance and superiority instead. Why does society see these issues, and try to fix them, only to make them worse, but in an acceptable way? What if we were all equal? What if we were all just human?

Racism is something the world still struggles with today. It’s an issue I wish we could move on from. Realize we are all the same. Why can’t we evolve to a world that knows no race? Different hair colors aren’t considered different hair races. I may have brown hair, but I’m not ostracized for it. I think we can still be Asian, Hispanic, Caucasian, African American, etc without it being a race thing; it’s still a culture. Such as you can have blonde, brown, red, blue, green, or even purple hair and it all still being hair none the less. Right now, there are a lot of cases of racism against white people, and I don’t bring this up to lessen racism against anyone else, but I bring it up as a double standard. In modern society, it’s okay to be racist towards white people. It shouldn’t be okay to be racist toward anyone. One of my good friends returned from a religious mission in El Salvador. He was the only white person in his mission. The only one from America as well. He was constantly bullied for being white, and for being from America. He was called out on it daily. Even from his fellow companions on the same religious mission. Sadly, no race is exempt from racism. There are still cases of people being extremely racist. There is what seems to be an epidemic of racism in cops. Racism is an issue we humans created. It’s one we should have been able to put to rest a very long time ago. People who are 100% blind and cannot see anything, they don’t understand racism. To them, everyone is the same. People are people. Tommy Edison, a man born blind, talked about racism in a video posted to Youtube on Aug 8, 2016. He says, “I have to be honest. I don’t really think about it.” He goes on to talk about how he doesn’t care about the color of someone’s skin, he cares about who they are, how they think, he cares that they are human.

I’d like to point to a recent Netflix show called Love Is Blind. It’s an experiment to find if love is blind, hence the name of the show. In it, they put 15 men and women in things called “pods”. They can’t see each other, but have to get to know one another, and then get engaged. They don’t see each other until they get engaged. The first couple to get engaged was a white man named Cameron, and an African American woman named Lauren. They didn’t know this about each other until they finally saw each other in person. As the show progresses so does their love, ending in, spoilers, their marriage. They were married in November of 2018, and now in April of 2020, they are still happily married. This really shows that race ultimately doesn’t need to matter, and that who we are is what matters at the end of the day. Modern racism is, unfortunately, a thing, and it has a double standard with it, but take away everyone’s sight for a moment, and what’s the difference between everyone? Now the difference is in who you are.

Equal gender rights have been a rising topic over the last few years. People calling for equal rights. Unfortunately, this subject is riddled with a double standard. People call for equal rights but want superiority. The loudest majority talk about women’s rights, pay, and opportunity, but when you bring up the draft as an example, their facade of equality begins to fade. Now, this is not every feminist. This is not everyone who wants equal rights. This is simply a very vocal part of the community, however small, they have a loud voice. The statistics for inequality among women are readily available and easy to find. The vast majority of articles about gender inequality specifically only mention women’s struggles. Unless you are seeking out information on male inequality, it’s buried to the point where it almost seems to not exist. When looking up “gender inequality” in a Google search, the front page brought up eight articles, not including ads. Each of these articles only talked about female issues and never once brought up any male issues, or even rebutted any of their own claims with anything about the opposing gender. Don’t get me wrong, women’s rights are important and something we need to make more of an effort with, but we also need to bring to light that there are issues with men as well.

In the case of sexual assault, it is hard for a man to be seen as a victim. There is such a strong stigma in society that men should be able to deal with it. That men can’t be raped or sexually assaulted. When looking at court cases, men don’t have much favor. Brian Banks was a promising football player when he was accused of rape in 2002. He was 16 years old at the time. He ended up serving 6 years in prison. In 2011 the accuser, Wanetta Gibson, admitted to fabricating the claim. He lost 6 years of his life and a promising career in football to a false claim. On the opposite side of a coin, when a male accuses a woman of sexual assault, it isn’t as “easy”. Their word isn’t taken as truth, whether it is the truth or not. Where in most cases of women accusing men, their word is taken as gospel. This has lead to many false accusations like Brian’s. According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, up to 10% of claims end up being false. Not only do false claims hurt men and take away parts of their lives it also destroys women who have actually been sexually assaulted and have found the strength to speak up. They now get questioned if they are lying, and now others chose to stay quiet.

A big issue when it comes to gender rights is children and divorce. Men oftentimes are overlooked and given the short end of the stick for simply not being the mother. My Aunt and Uncle got a divorce a few years ago. She claimed he was abusing her and kicked him out of the house. Her claims of abuse were later proven to be false. When the inevitable divorce came, he lost almost everything. She got the house, the land, the kids. He only got the kids every other weekend even though it was obvious he was the more qualified parent. We would later find out that she had been cheating on him with their youngest child's kindergarten teacher. After the divorce, my aunt became a very distant mother. Their father used to drive them to the bus stop in the winter, which they lived a far way from. Without him around, the mother failed to do this, making her three kids walk the way to the bus. The bus driver eventually decided to drive all the way to their farmhouse each day. The majority of the money my Uncle would be making was taken for child support. Unfortunately, their youngest child, my cousin, had a stroke in the middle of the night and passed away in the same bed as her older sister. There was nothing anyone could have done. The older sister started to have severe issues from the trauma of waking to her dead sister. Instead of trying to help her daughter, her mother sent her to live with a relative in Utah, which only worsened things. Out of their three children, only one reminded with them, but with the mom absent so often, he spends most of his time with his dad. Even though she sent one kid to a different state, is barley around for one of them, and the other has passed away, my uncle still pays her child support for all three children, even though she hardly supports them. Men get robbed of their children in situations like this constantly, and it isn’t right. Gender rights aren’t only about women. They’re also about men. It’s about equal rights. Not one or the other.

While racism has changed from a couple centuries ago, it still remains to this day. It’s unfortunate that people can’t just see each other as that; people. Turn off the lights in a room full of different people around the world. How are they different? Accents? Anyone can have an accent. A white man can have an Asain accent. A woman from Ghana can have a British accent. For the sake of the experiment, let’s say they all have the same accent. How do you tell race? Can you? Is it now just about who they are? With gender equality, the issue seems to be why women are lesser than men and how to swap that. Articles are riddled with bias and refuse to show any arguments for men and any inequalities they suffer. Unfortunately, we do live in a world where this is an issue, and to really start solving it, to come to true equality, we need to acknowledge both sides of the same coin. There are plenty of issues such as these, that on paper should be easily solvable. Regrettably, these issues have been around for a long time before you and I and may even be here for a long time after. If everyone could see each other as equals, the world could be such a greater place. Just close your eyes, take away all bias, and focus on who a person is.

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rayofsunas · 5 years

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Incendiary Hearts — Chapter One

A/N: the first chapter of Incendiary Hearts. Tell me how you guys feel in the comments, and hopefully, you enjoy it! I won't have an update schedule, I'm going to update whenever I feel like it and probably more than not when I finish the chapters. I'm going to try to make this long for you guys, but I might fail. Also, got7 members will be mentioned, but none have a specific significance or role in the story. Nothing really happened this chapter, it was just an introduction to Y/n's story/past stuff like that. Minho will appear next chapter! Thank you for reading!

Pairing(s): Lee Minho x Reader, Sarai (OC) x Park Jinyoung (got7)

Warnings: swearing, sarcasm, angst, fluff, implied alcohol and cigarettes, implied violence, not into detail mentions of blood

Genre: boxer au! non-idol au! angst

Chapters: chapter directory | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

Word Count: 3k (I was like three hundred away from 4k)

Synopsis: after being cut off from all of her parents form of cash flow, nineteen-year-old Y/N Y/L/N must find a way to survive on her own without the help of her parents. A job revelation gone wrong and Y/N finds her self working in the last place she saw herself.

For the first time in your life, you were expected to do everything on your own. All thanks to your frank parents who didn't see a problem with signing your name off of your own bank account, that happened to be a joint bank account, but that was beside the point. It was in your name, but the downside was that it was in your parent's name as well.

And they didn't just stop there. They continued on to sign their names off of the apartment contracts they'd bought for you less than seven months ago, and had made sure everything was in your name. The sewer bill, electrical bill, the monthly rent. It was all in your name now. And you were expected to pay it on the fourth of every month.

They didn't stop there either.

Why?

All because you told them that you were no longer interested in taking a certain career path. It was all pretty childish in your opinion, but that's your parents for you.

Maybe you should've been more careful and not trusting your parents would be more than careful. You'd be safe. At nineteen you still relied on your parents, but now that you really couldn't because they cut you off, you didn't know what to do.

Your whole life, everything's been done for you. Your first job at seventeen was like a family business of sorts. You remember telling your mother sometime in November that you wanted a job. Your friends had been pestering and teasing you, all because you didn't have a job. And frankly, it was bothering you. So you told your mother about your worries and she immediately shushed you and told you she'd work things out.

You never expected her to hand you an application for her own job— actually she didn't work there. God no, your mother hadn't been known to work either, she probably hasn't since she married your father. She and you both relied on your father's money. But she did own a business of her own, without a doubt your father helped her get it started; it was some boutique on the upper east side of Seoul. You've only ever stepped inside once or twice with your mother and that was as a child to go in and collect the money earned each month. She had always said you were welcome to work there and had been telling you for years. But you sort of forgot about it, since that never was a solid job your parents would want for you in the future as an adult. They had other things in mind.

But she offered, basically forced you to work there. You'd be helping customers, almost all of them rich women looking for gowns to wear to fancy parties, weddings, functions that sort of thing. In return, your mother would pocket money into your shared bank account, that you always had the idea would be turned over to your name only as soon as you turned eighteen. You were dead wrong though.

On the other hand, though, you had it easy, much easier than other teens who had to work for their own money and their own materialist things.

You hadn't personally known anyone like that; someone who had to work for their own money, because all of your friends were like you. Rich, spoiled, didn't have to necessarily go out, struggle and find a job on their own without the help of their more than happy to help parents; of course with the use of their money and status in society.

But now with barely enough money in your bank account, bills and rent to pay on the fifth of September, you were starting to panic.

They left you out to dry without a clue as to what to do.

Why? All because you blatantly told them you had no interested in attending law school anymore. Now that, was a family tradition. Your mother had gone to law school, your father too. That's where they met. Your uncles on your fraternal side of the family were all lawyers and your grandfather on your mother's side was a judge. It was kind of expected of you since a young age that you'd either be a criminal defense lawyer—someone who defended the accuser in a criminal case, like murder or illegal doings— or a business lawyer, helping out people who got into sticky situations with their businesses.

But after turning both of those options down, your parents began to quickly take everything away from you. Their reasoning was that if you weren't going to do the one thing they asked of you, you didn't deserve to be benefiting from their money. That's a word for word what your dad harshly stated before he and your mother hand and hand left your apartment, seeming pleased with themselves.

"I guess they were being somewhat generous. They let me keep my apartment and even left a few hundred in my bank account," you nervously chuckled, slamming your computer screen shut before turning to face your cousin Sarai. "But now I'm expected to pay bills. And a few hundred dollars can only go so far when you live in an expensive apartment like this."

"It's messed up," The brunette commented. "But you're right, you have a couple hundred, you could at least pay a few bills." The older girl by only a few months shrugged nonchalantly, trying her best to help you out. "The money will disappear soon. Do you know how much this apartment costs monthly? Four thousand dollars."

"Well, you do have an ocean view, and you live on the upper east side. I don't know what you expected the price to be.”

Looking up from the marble table you were sitting at, you sent a fiery glare towards your cousin. "You're not helping!"

Asking Sarai for help was the best help you could possibly get in a situation like this. She wasn't necessarily the best at giving advice, but she worked on her own, earned her own money, had her own job. A job her rich parents didn't help her get. So she really was the best person to help right now, being extremely reliable and resourceful in that sense. All of your friends had jobs their patents got them, like at their fathers companies or mothers side businesses like bakeries or boutiques. They wouldn't know how to help, they were being fed cash flow from their parents, and didn't know the real struggle like Sarai did. Just like you, your friends sadly were the stereotypical rich kids of the block.

Suddenly panicking you hurriedly spit out, "Sometimes I think they did this on purpose. Do you think they'd purposely screwed me over just to watch me suffer?!"

Sarai waved you off as if telling you that you were overreacting. "Of course not! That's nonsense," she voiced her opinion. "They're just angry. They'll come around, eventually."

"I owe money on the fourth next month, that's only rent. And then the added appliance bills and electrical bills, that's just a few thousands right there," Right now was not the time to panic. But you were new to this, literally like four hours new and didn't like being thrown into situations where you felt like walls were coming down; you felt exposed.

"I need food, necessities, I'm lucky if I even survive through this month!" The older girl scoffed as she rolled her brown eyes. "You'll survive. You're just going to have to do it the harder way."

"Sarai, what am I going to do? I have zero working experience. No one will want to hire me." You cried out, wishing you hadn't been so reliable on your parents in the past. It made you sheltered and not know how to comprehend what to do on your own. "Maybe you don't need experience. I heard about a gym or something like that a while back, they pay you decently if you help train people."

"A gym?" You've never been to an actual gym, always too lazy to work out. The closest to a gym you've ever been too was gym class in school... Obviously, those two gyms were completely different from each other.

"Yeah, I think. Though, I could be wrong." She shrugged again, her glossed lips twisting into a frown as she began to think thoughtfully.

"Where did you hear this from?" You were skeptical. Although Sarai was very reliable, sometimes her facts weren't actually facts. For all you knew this gym could be some entirely different workplace or a place that wasn't even hiring if it was real.

She was more reliable in the sense that she'd be there for you if you asked, like emotionally; She'd sympathize with you. After taking a sip of her glass of water, she opened her mouth to say, "Jinyoung, he just left his job, and was looking for a new one. Said something about a gym on 20th street on the Southside." You nodded thoughtfully, hoping she was actually right and that what her boyfriend had told her was factual. But then you thought once more and went even deeper, realizing that the Southside of town wasn't in the best conditions. There are a lot of bar and street fights at night, people could get mugged if in the wrong place at the wrong time.

"Actually, I don't know if I should."

She deadpanned giving you a skeptical glare as if wondering if you were completely sane.

"...Don't you need a job?"

"Yes, but it's dangerous! I'll get mugged.

"Carry pepper spray." She reached into her purse beside her on a bar stool, pulling out a tiny sized purple pepper spray container. "Squeeze this when your target is in range, it'll blind them briefly and you'll be able to getaway. It burns like a bitch, so be careful to not accidentally spray yourself."

A smirk formed on your face at what your cousin had said, tipping you in on what sounded like had happened to her. "How would you know it burns?" You questioned teasingly.

Her dark chocolate eyes swirled with irritation. "I may have accidentally sprayed myself after not realizing it was pointed in the wrong direction."

"Wow. What a dumbass." You cackled annoyingly.

Her pointer finger pointed at your still fork, threateningly "This dumbass just helped you out!"

You couldn't help but scoff at your favorite older cousin, who was more like a best friend to you than anything. "Yeah okay," you continued, "I guess I could always check it out," you let out a sigh, afterward continuing to mutter, "Thanks Sarai."

"Don't thank me, I'd like to think you would help me in a situation like this." She smiled wholeheartedly, happy to of been able to help you a bit, also taking advantage of the moment like always to try and tease you. "Shut up, of course, I would help you!" You jumped up quickly to punch her arm, which immediately retracted to her chest in a form of protection from your abuse and maybe in a way of hoping to reduce the amount of searing pain she was feeling.

"For someone who I know has never been to a gym before, you hit really hard." She hissed, arm threateningly raising to punch your own arm mockingly, but her hand never came down on your arm like she had made it look like.

"You know me so well," you said. "Thank you for helping me. It means the world." All teasing and jokes aside, what Sarai was doing seriously did mean the world to you. Without her help, you're even more lost than you already felt. It was a start. She was helping make the start possible.

"Of course. I'll text you the address later alright? Try and get some sleep, stressing over things won't help. It'll result in a mental breakdown." She approached you, hands no longer balled into fists in an attacking way, instead her arms were outstretched lovingly, wanting to embrace you.

You accepted that embrace. It was one of the warmest embraces you'd ever received from someone in tough times. Something you were longing for. Whenever something went wrong in your life, your parents gave you hugs of course and they tried to show you how much they loved you.

But what they showed you was a wad of cash and their hugs were short-lived, not very comforting and lacked warmth. They could be compared to the chilly, vast arctic tundra; vast in the sense that they always seemed detached, their hugs not making you feel safe, at home or warm at all.

"I know, I know. You remind me all of the time." You groaned childishly, she patted your back harshly. "Shut up, I'm looking out for you. I love you, alright?"

You nodded feeling the warmth disappear altogether before she disappeared off towards the front door.

"Love you too. Drive safely!"

The next morning was eventful, to say the least. You woke up like always, got dressed and began stressing like always. You tried to follow Sarai's instructions, which at the time were not to panic or stress, but you were worried, you were nervous, slightly terrified. So how could you not do those things?

What if you were rejected? What if they weren't looking for anyone right now? What if the place was some abandoned where-house or shack, something like that. What if it was worse? A place where gangs or cults resided... practicing their cult-like situations and worshipped bloodshed upon people like it was God.

You seemed to think of what if's all day, and were stuck in a time loop of them, that is until you eventually pulled up to the address google maps had sent you too, with the help from Sarai who had given you the address beforehand.

You gathered your keys and phone in your hands and with one last stressful sigh, you hopped out of your car with ease and stood on the sidewalk.

But there was a problem. All you were staring at was an abandoned brick building, one that looked like it hadn't been used in years. Around you wasn’t much of a street, at least it wasn't a street like you had expected in your mind last night.

You expected a street jammed packed with shops, maybe a Grocery Store or Quick Mart, then the Gym that Sarai had briefly gone into detail about; seeing as she didn't know much about the place either.

But when you glanced down the dead-ended street labeled 20th street, you realized nothing lined either side of the sidewalks. No buildings, no properties, nothing, zilch. Just dry dust blowing when the wind waved by, and not a single sign of an oxygen source; neither trees or bushes. No wonder by the air seemed to thick and dry, and made you feel less relaxed the more you breathed in its stuffy contents.

Frankly speaking, it looked like an unfinished construction site, maybe an abandoned one at that. A place that was supposed to be home to businesses or something, but thrown away for some reason.

It was all too weird. Something out of a horror movie. It definitely didn't make you feel even better about this possible job.

But what shocked you most was when you eventually turned to stare down the red and brown brick building, you spotted cars, motorcycles, and a single bicycle off to the side in a dirt like area, that seemed to mimic a parking lot or serve as said purpose.

With no other buildings or businesses on this dead-ended street, you came to a realizing maybe this place was in occupancy. I mean, why the hell would thirty or so vehicles with the exception of the black bicycle, be stationed beside the only building on the empty wasteland street?

When you came back to reality, you distinguished a boy standing near a door that lead inside the warehouse. You began approaching him, assuming he at least had to know about this place if he was standing outside, guarding the door. When you eventually came face to face with him you realized he wasn't particularly large in stature, and seemed rather short compared to other males you'd been around. He wore all black and glared you down the minute you stopped in front of him. The bridge of his nose was dotted with freckles, and his hair was a golden blonde, unnatural looking but still gave off the aura that it could be his natural hair color.

If his cute looks weren't threatening in any way, his voice definitely set the mood. "Who are you?" The boy didn't sound older than twenty years old, maybe even close to your age if you guessed right. But his deep voice shocked you completely.

You gulped, eyes averting down nervously. What was this... Was this how job hunting was? Was this how applying to a job was... You're out of nowhere questioned what your name is and scared into answering?

Gulping once more you bravely opened continued, "My name is Y/n—"

The blonde eyed you skeptically. "I've never heard that name around here before." He mumbled thoughtfully, dark brown eyebrows knitting closely together as if he was expecting a roster of familiar names.

You wanted to rudely hiss something along the lines of, 'of course you've never heard my name before. We've never met until now.'. But his voice worried you. Plus he was a stranger stationed outside an odd-looking building, on a street that barely could even count as a street in your eyes. There was no telling what he could do, no matter how small, young, and adorable he appeared.

"Is this the gym?" You took a step back hoping to find a sign somewhere along the brick walls but didn't find anything besides a white spot that without a doubt was seagull poo.

"Gym?" You thought he was pulling your leg, rubbing off as mischievous and acting like he didn't have a clue in the world as to what you were talking about. You just laughed nervously, your hand waving him off.

"Yeah, I heard from someone this place was a gym." After he seemed to be thinking it over, the unnatural blonde nodded and opened his mouth as he let out an 'Ah'.

"You're one of those." He scoffed spitting near your foot, making you shiver at his disgusting behavior.

You asked yourself, "One of those..." but he ignored you completely, stepping aside all together allowing you access inside. "Go down the stairs off to the right, find CB. He's a blonde. Shouldn't be hard to miss."

"Uh, thanks, I guess?" You nodded thanks to him, continuing to briskly step by the young boy who smelt of cheap alcohol and possibly cigarettes. You just hoped he wasn't the one drinking or using them, and prayed that it was someone who he previously had been around before you arrived.

One thing you didn't miss though before fully entering away from his sight was that you could've sworn the freckled boy muttered, 'they're going to chew her up'

You didn't know what that meant at all. But it put you even more on edge and made you extremely nervous. You wanted to back down, but you were set in a state of determination. You needed this job. If you turned back down, you didn't know what else you could do.

Working at a gym seemed easy enough right? Unlike other jobs out there. Plus it wasn't like you'd just willingly go back to your parents' ways. They weren't looping you up, not anymore.

You climbed down the seemingly long metal stairs, finding yourself getting closer to wherever this CB guy was. You knew you had to of been getting close because you heard chanting and yelling from many different voices and people. The stairway was dark, the only source of light coming at the very bottom and straight ahead, which is where you heard the yells coming from.

You kept hearing voices chant 'ringer!ringer!ringer' and 'hyunjin!hyunjin!hyunjin’.

And that just made you feel even more worried. What the hell was going on? Should you turn back?

As much as you wanted to turn back though, your feet kept gliding down the stairs out of curiosity: and when you finally stepped into the light, you were shocked at what you saw. A huge crowd, couldn't be more than two hundred or so men and women, possibly teenagers with how young that blonde looked back upstairs. They were the ones chanting, yelling and cheering, but for what? Or rather so, for who? They all seemed to be circled around something that was positioned in the middle of the sweat smelling room.

You heard a bell before you saw anything different from the sight you were already seeing, and then you watched as in the middle of the circle, a guy with seemingly long hair stood up, his pale chest, coated with little droplets of what looked like red splotches was exposed to you, and his eyes were mischievous as he scanned over the crowd with said brown orbs. A distinctive feature on him in your opinion was a dark mole under his left eye.

His bloody fist was raised in the air by a shorter guy dressed in black who stood beside him proudly, in a way that made up believe he’d just won something. His gorgeous face had a scratch that was bleeding above his right eye

He looked like he'd just gotten into a bloody fight, and he came out victorious...

Like I said earlier, you've never been to a gym before. But you knew for sure that this sort of brawling or whatever it was didn't happen at gyms.

So what the hell is this place?

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ertrunkenerwassergeist · 5 years

Text

Dreams of Our Past - Chapter 27

*flails around* The chapter is done! It’s the second longest so far and the second half was fighting me until the end. But I prevailed! Here’s the Link to AO3.

In which Gladio invites Ignis to dinner and he finds a dearly missed person because of Iris.

Featuring: Ignis' brand of awkwardness, the starscourge, the tempers of Gladio and Hiemi, Noctis being so very close to a mental breakdown and Somnus and Bahamut being dicks through history

Warning: vomiting, mentioned child murder

Gladio IV

8.5.755 ME

Insomnia, Ghetto

Kingdom of Lucis

The days since their meeting at the Black Saffron had been nerve wrecking and uneventful. It grated on him like nothing else. He had thought, after they had all finally decided – more or less, he was aware enough to admit – on a course of action, things would start to move again. They hadn't. And Gladio didn't like it. At all.

He stood near the door to the pitiful office of Camp No. 5 and watched the people mingling about. More specifically was he watching Prompto, who sat grinning like a loon on a camping bed, a laptop in his lap and... did something while a group of people watched over his shoulder. Gladio really hoped the blond didn't play some kind of game. He was supposed to search through the pictures he had taken over the last few days and upload them on a dummy account by the end of the day.

Here was to hoping the whole crazy plan was going to work. It was a shame Pelna wasn't here right now, but he had finally found the time to talk to his contacts, and had gone to get the ball rolling on that whole facial recognition thing.

It wasn't that things weren't being done, really, it was just that they were moving along so slowly.

Gladio felt like he was treading on the spot, not moving forward no matter how much he wished to. It was frustrating beyond belief.

Before he realized what he was doing, he had fished his phone out of he pocket and weighted it in his hand. It couldn't hurt to call Ignis, making sure the man didn't overwork himself like he was prone to do. Maybe he had managed to find something that would help Gladio figure out what he could be doing in this stinking mess. Not that is was very likely, but a man could hope.

The phone rang once, twice, then a click sounded and a cultured voice drifted through the speaker: “Good morning Gladio. Was there something you needed?”

“Barely morning anymore, Ignis”, the older snorted.

A non-committal hum could be heard. The former advisor could be very peculiar about his greetings. A voice sounded in the background on Ignis' side. It was decidedly feminine, even if Gladio couldn't make out any words.

“Oh no, it's perfectly alright, Miss Aster. I am talking to a friend. Thank you for your wonderful help”, Ignis said.

Gladio couldn't help the grin blooming on his face. “Should I call you later, lover boy?”

Ignis gave an undignified snort. “I am at work, Gladio”, he said, stressing the word work like that was the important part. “Miss Aster is a secretary within the Ministry for Civic Affairs and Immigration. I met her yesterday, when I was looking into how far along they are with evaluating the houses in the Immigration District for damages. Apparently there seems to be a filing issue of some sort. Miss Aster has been looking into it since it came to her attention. She says it goes against her pride to have messy paperwork.”

“Tampering?” Gladio couldn't help but ask.

“Very likely.”

“Damn.”

“Whoever did it was very careful. The papers are listed as filed, they obviously went over all the right desks, but they aren't where they should be. I have never seen this amount of misfiling in my entire life.” Ignis' obvious indignation would be funny, if the situation wasn't so serious. “Mrs. Custodela cannot help us with this. She has her hands already full trying to keep abreast with the camps she is looking over. After this, would you please call Camp 7 for me? Mrs. Custodela has found a plumber who is free and can take a look at their showers.”

Something in the pipes in the showers of Camp 7 had broken and now the water there had turned a muddy brown. It couldn't be very healthy.

“That's good. I'll do that. Anything else?”

“Make sure to note down who is using the vehicles you got provided with, and where they drove and how long it took to get there. Certain people have been making noise about rationing petrol. Records of the use of the vans you have at your disposal would go a long way to work against this”, said Ignis after a few moments of consideration.

Gladio jerked in disbelief. “Rationing petrol? That's bullshit! The oil production in Leide is still under Insomnian control.”

“I know, Gladio. Believe me, I know.”

“Fuck, this whole situation is a stinking mess”, he complained and carded a hand through his hair.

I need a shower, he thought with a grimace. Ignis didn't answer. He didn't need to. Somewhere in the hall a baby started to cry, followed shortly by a second. Gladio sighed and massaged the bridge of his nose. He needed to get out of here. At least for an evening. Breath some air that didn't smell of exhaust fumes or like too many sweaty people cramped into a place too small.

“How... how is Iris doing?” Ignis sounded like he wasn't sure at all, if he should even ask.

“She's not doing worse for now”, he choked out, his stomach plummeting like it was suddenly filled with lead.

“Gladio. I am- I'm so sorry.”

That sentence sounded heavy. Full of hidden meanings and implications and Gladio didn't want to hear any of it.

“Don't you dare talk like she's dead already! Because she's still very much alive”, he snapped.

A tightly controlled intake of breath sounded over the speaker. Gladio couldn't muster the will to feel bad about it. Iris wasn't dead and she wouldn't die. He was her older brother and he would protect her, damn it!She was barely fourteen, for Bahamut's sake.

“You are right, Gladio. I apologize”, Ignis said after a maybe too long pause.

“It's alright”, he sighed and deflated.

No, it wasn't alright, not at all. But Ignis was a friend – or had been a friend once – and he didn't deserve this. Pitioss, Iris didn't deserve this most of all. Why ever were the Gods punishing her like that? It had to stop.

He cleared his throat and asked awkwardly: “I'm going back home for the night to spend some time with her. Do you want to come over for dinner? Iris would love to see you again.”

“If you are sure.”

Ignis sounded so high-strung that Gladio just knew he was feeling as awkward as he himself was.

“Don't worry. I wouldn't ask, if I wasn't.”

“Then I will gladly come. Which time would be most convenient?”

“We normally eat around six since Iris gets tired early”, Gladio shrugged.

Ignis hummed in thought. “Five thirty then.”

“Fine by me”, he answered after mentally running through his to-do list again. “Just... be gentle with her, alright?”

“Of course, Gladio”, agreed Ignis. “I need to go back to work.”

“Ah, yes. Yes, of course. I'll see you later.”

“Until later.”

The call disconnected. Gladio listened to the silence of his phone for a few seconds before he sighed and lowered it from his ear to stare at it. Social graces and impulse control. He needed to work on his temper more. But for now he had a few calls to make. First Camp 7 about that plumber and then Jared to tell him that he and Ignis would be there for dinner. He had been trying to come every evening since the earthquake happened, but he hadn't always managed it.

On his first call he managed to reach Libertus who sounded just as grouchy as he had expected the man to be. Gladio had to bite the inside of his cheek as to not snap back. Instead he managed to make his way through the conversation with all the grace of a garula in a china store. Luckily Libertus didn't seem to notice. Something about two feuding Clans in one room, he had heard Crowe and Pelna say.

His second call went a bit better. He could practically hear the retainer smile as he announced his and Ignis' presence for dinner.

Now he could go outside and see how far along Tredd and Crowe were with checking over the newest delivery. Then there would be another round of phone calls between Centres 4 through 8 to see who was lacking what and to pool their resources. After lunch he would write out new timetables for those who had volunteered for various duties around here. And he would need to find someone who had experience with the whole giving birth thing, since one of the women here looked just about ready to pop.

Dinner could have been definitely worse. It had been decidedly awkward, but between Ignis practically doting on Iris within the first few minutes of his arrival and Jared's efforts to keep the conversation flowing, it had been a very pleasant meal. Everything had been fine, Iris had been laughing and moving around more than she had in weeks and Ignis had been sharing recipes with Jared.

He should have known that this wasn't going to last. Nothing good had for a long time now.

The screaming woke Gladio in the middle of the night. It took his sleep addled brain long precious seconds to realize that they were coming from his sister's room. He practically leapt out of bed and ran into her room that thankfully was right next to his. Light spilled into the dark room and for a moment his sister's shadow seemed to froth and seethe, but Gladio ignored it in search of any attackers that he could painfully eviscerate.

No one was there. No one but Iris and him.

Her screaming stopped once she saw him.

“Gladdy”, she whimpered and reached out towards him.

The sleeves of her pyjama slid back and exposed dark splotched on her skin that hadn't been there during dinner. A thin line of blood trickled down from the corner of her mouth. It was black.

“Iris!” he cried and lunged towards her, cradling her small form carefully against his muscled chest.

“Gladdy, it hurts. It hurts so much.”

She grasped weakly at his arms, sobbing. Then she went limp, her breath coming in nothing but weak bursts that ghosted over the naked skin above his collar bone.

“No”, he breathed. Desperation roared in his chest like a wild beast and stole his breath. “No, no, no, no, no.”

What should he do? No doctor or hospital they had visited since she had first gotten sick, had been able to help. There was no one here that could help her.

Oh, by the Gods, she was going to die.

The realization hit him like a slap in the face. His little sister would die before morning came, because there was no one in this damned city that...

Gladio's breath stuttered in his chest when he remembered what the innkeeper of the Black Saffron had said about his son and the woman that had come by during the meeting, when he remembered what that prostitute had told him last week.

Without stopping to consider what a colossally stupid idea this was – he could not afford to think about it, not now when his little sister was dying – he wrapped her blanket tightly around her frail body and lifted her up in his arms. She was so light he barely noticed her weight.

Why was it getting so much worse? Why now, of all times? She had been fine! Or at last not worse than the last time he had taken her to a doctor.

He didn't even stop to get dressed in something other than his sleeping trousers or to put on some shoes, and instead ran right out of the door, into the dark streets of Insomnia. In the privacy of her bed, the prostitute had described to him how he could get to this Healer, if he ever needed to.

Sweat ran down his face and back the further he ran, his breath burned in his lungs, but he didn't dare to stop. He didn't dare to do so as he ran past buildings the earthquake had destroyed, deeper and deeper into the city, through neighbourhoods that were getting more and more run down.

Iris began to shiver, despite the warm summer night. Gladio only tightened his grip and hastened his steps.

Despite the growing lack of functioning street lamps, he could see the great, broken pillar. It rose out of the shadows like a great, stony needle as he hurried past it and then turned left into a narrow alleyway. It didn't take long to reach the other side. It was nearly pitch black now. Only a few weakly glowing lanterns showed him the way, forcing him to slow down, lest he stumble and fall. He found the staircase Viti had talked about through sheer luck. There weren't any handrails, so he had to be extra careful. He did not dare hurry since some of the metal stairs creaked ominously.

Follow the lights, Viti had said, and so he started to run again towards the nearest light he could see. It was a single lantern glowing like a lonely star at the first house on the right. It hung from the ceiling in a room that was entirely open on one side and illuminated a group of chairs, metal drawers and a long table. In a corner there was a part of the wall that looked like it could possibly be a door. He just about kicked it in.

“Hello! I need help!” he bellowed into the darkness of the house, honestly not caring who he might wake.

Not a second later hasty footsteps sounded to his left. It was a teenager, his skin paler than he had ever seen a human being be, with big blue eyes so light they looked white near the pupil. In his hand he carried a lantern, its light cast a cheerful glow on everything it touched.

The teenagers eyes grew even larger when he saw the bundle in Gladio's arms, then his eyes dropped to his feet and back up again.

“My sister needs help”, Gladio repeated, pleading.

That seemed to do the trick, as the teenager gestured towards a staircase with a hasty “Follow me!” and practically leapt up the stairs.

“Healer! Healer wake up! There's an emergency. Quick!”

Gladio followed the teen down the hallway to his right until they came to the last door. Behind it was a small room with a rickety bed, a bedside table, a stool and a chest of drawers. Another lantern, it had been hanging from a hook next to the door, was lit and the teenager motioned for Gladio to lay his sister on the bed before he vanished down the hallway again, calling for Healer.

Now here, where he could finally focus on something other than running, running, running, he noticed he was trembling like a leaf in the wind. His heart beat like a fast paced drum and his breath shuddered with each intake of air.

His gaze settled on Iris. Her skin was a pasty, unhealthy white and the dark splotches had spread up her neck and onto her cheeks. Each laboured breath sounded wet and rattled within her chest. Carefully, as to not hurt her any further, he settled her down on the lumpy mattress of the bed. The frame gave a high pitched sound as her weight was added.

From outside the room he could hear doors opening and closing, sleepy voices were asking questions and hasty steps were making their way towards them. A young man appeared in the doorway. He had clearly just woken up, his startling violet eyes squinting against the light of the lantern and his long black hair a mess that hung in his face.

When the man – he couldn't be older than 20 – saw him he froze. His eyes grew large in surprise and fear, his mouth opened and closed like he was a fish on land. Gladio glowered. If he had only come to stare, he was going to beat him within an inch of his life.

“Help her!” he bellowed.

The man jerked. His gaze fell on Iris and all expression vanished from his face. One moment he stood by the door and the next he was next to the bed, leaning over his sister and looking intently at her gaunt face.

“Casto, get me a bucket and take the bedsheets for winter out of the closet. Go to Hiemi and tell her I need some of her purging tea, and bring me a bowl of hot water and a washrag”, he said with an air that made it clear he was used to be listened to and obeyed.

Not bothering to turn around and see if the teenager was listening – which he did; he ran out of the room like the Infernian himself was after him – the young man started to gently unwrap the blanket. She had grown even paler and the black splotches covered large parts of her visible skin.

Gladio would love to ask who this guy even was and what he was doing as he released a hissing breath and started cussing quite creatively, but his voice refused to work. Each new gulp of air took more effort than the last and slowly he began to realize that everything hurt. From his muscles to his feet. Especially his feet. They felt like two big, raw lumps of meat that did nothing but hurt. He ignored it as best as he could for now.

A thin hand with long, elegant fingers was lain on Iris' forehead, golden-violet sparks danced across the digits and over her skin.

Wait, this was the famous Healer?

“For how long has she been sick?”

Gladio's tired mind barely registered the question. “What?” he managed to utter after his second attempt at articulating.

“How long, Gladio”, Healer barked.

How...? That wasn't important right now.

“Nearly two months”, he managed to say around the lump in his throat.

“Shit. Shit, shit, shit. By all the sulphurous fires of Ifrit's den. By all rights, she should be dead by now.”

That made Gladio's tired brain pay attention again. “Excuse me?”

Healer shook his head and reached for the bucket a huffing and puffing Casto held out towards him, bedsheets under his other arm.

“No time for that.”

He gently sat her upright, her weight lying awkwardly in his arms, and sent a wave of softly glowing magic through her. The golden and violet light washed over her like water. Without warning her upper body jerked forward and she vomited her dinner mixed with black blood into the bucket. It stank sickeningly.

Iris took big, heaving breaths, occasionally dispelling mouthfuls of junky black sludge. After nothing new came up, Healer set the bucket down beside the bed. He didn't seem to care for the splatters that had hit the naked skin of his arms and torso. They slowly turned into wispy smoke and then vanished entirely. Her eyes fluttered feverishly without seeming to notice her surroundings.

“Yeah, that's it. Everything's alright now. In and out, in and out. Yah're doing great, Iris. Everything's gonna be alright.”

While Healer was gently coaxing his barely lucid sister into regaining her breath and Casto put a garish monstrosity of a pillow beneath her head, Gladio leaned against the wall to ease the pain in his feet and to regain some kind of equilibrium. Because this Healer knew his sister's name. Gladio knew he hadn't told him and he had known his name, too, without needing an introduction. Just who was he?

“Tata?”

All eyes turned towards the door. There stood a girl. She looked to be around seven with wild, sleep mussed red hair and honey coloured eyes that gleamed golden. She looked drowsily at them and yawned.

“Solaris? What're yah doing out of bed?” asked Healer without taking his glowing hand from Iris' forehead even once.

“It's loud”, the girl complained.

Gladio's gaze wandered from one to the other and he wondered.

Healer nodded. “Ah know, little sun, but Iris needs mah help for now. If yah can't sleep anymore, could yah go down and ask yahr mati for a big glass of water? Casto, could yah look after Astra, please? Ah don't wanna've him running 'round alone and in the dark.”

Both nodded and left the room, the girl taking the teenager's hand. Gladio stared after them. He had heard this accent before, he knew he had. If he could just place where. He felt like he was missing some very crucial things right about now. Sleep. What he needed now was sleep and for Iris to not die.

His gaze settled back on her. A flittering net of golden-violet magic covered her from head to toe. It looked more like mist than a tangible thread. How was such a thing possible? Only the royal family should be the one harbouring powerful magic in this city, even the whole continent. And now here was this Healer, whose magic prickled against his skin like a Lucis Caelum's did. It would probably be more upsetting, if he was fully awake.

“What does she have?” he asked instead of all the other questions burning on his tongue.

Healer blinked at him, as if he had forgotten that Gladio was also in the room. He made a passable impression of a bowstring drawn tight. In an obvious nervous tick, Healer tugged at his hair and wet his lips.

“She's scourge sick”, he said at last, his voice barely more than a quiet whisper.

“Scourge sick”, Gladio repeated tonelessly. “You mean the black plague, curse of the Gods, the starscourge? That kind of scourge sick?”

“Yes”, came the careful confirmation.

Gladio felt his fingers flex like they wanted to hit something, if he had just a bit more energy left. “That's a load of chocobo shit”, he rasped. “The starscourge does not reach within the Wall. Everybody knows that.”

Near glowing, violet eyes shot him a deadpan stare that felt achingly familiar. He suppressed a shudder creeping up his spine. Damn, those eyes were eerie.

“Two months ago yah said? Has she been anywhere near the old crypts at tha' time?”

The broken shield opened his mouth to instinctively deny the question, but he hesitated. “I... I don't know”, he admitted at last. He tried to remember, but his head started to feel like it was packed in wool.

“Doesn't matter anymore. It's good that yah came now, but yah were cuttin' it very close. She wouldn't 'a' made it through the night. Ah can barely believe tha' she made it this long.”

With a shuddering breath Gladio leaned more of his weight against the wall. The rough plaster dug uncomfortably into his shoulders.

Steps sounded from the hallway and shortly thereafter the girl was back, two cups in her hands. One was steaming and emanated a strong smell that made him wrinkle his nose. She gave the one with the foul smelling liquid Healer, the other one she cradled between her hands.

“Thank yah, little sun”, the young man smiled. “Now, yah remember what ah taught yah? Reach for the power resting in yahr bones. No more than a spark. Take it and guide it, it knows what it's got tah do.”

The girl's face scrunched up in concentration, in a way Gladio had seen a hundred times before, in the way Noctis had looked when he had wanted something to go exactly right. What Gladio hadn't seen before was the reddish glow of her hands.

“Not so much, little sun”, corrected Healer gently.

Solaris' brow furrowed even more and after a few seconds the glow dimmed until there was only the barest sheen of it left. It seeped into the cup and the liquid it contained, until it glowed, too.

“Very good”, praised the young man and Solaris beamed. “Would yah be a dear and give it tah Gladio over there?”

“Yes, tata”s she said dutifully and held the cup out to him, standing as far away as she could manage while doing so. She was clearly skittish around strangers.

“No, thank you”, he said while looking at the glowing cup in healthy scepticism. As long as he had no idea what it was he wouldn't drink it. He swallowed, and that made his parched throat just more noticeable.

Healer clucked his tongue in disapproval. “It's jus' water with a bit of healin' magic. Sit down and drink tha'. Yah look like yahr abou' tah keel over. 'Specially with yahr feet.”

Gladio made a face, but in the end he took the cup from the girl. The liquid in it looked like plain water hit by sunlight during noon. It was kind of fascinating, he had to admit. The little girl scampered off towards the bucket and glanced into it, curiosity clear on her face. She clamped her hands over her nose and mouth with a disgusted sound. Gladio frowned. A child as young as her shouldn't see these kind of things. Healer seemed to be of a similar mindset.

“Solaris, would yah please go and get Ardyn? And after tha' ah need yah tah do somethin' very important. Can yah do tha' for me?” Healer looked at her with serious eyes. The girl nodded, face solemn. “Yah need tah go tah the other patients and tell them tha' everything's alrigh'. They don't need tah worry.”

“Ah will, tata”, she said and carefully stepped closer to give Healer a kiss on the cheek before she left the room.

“What happens now?” asked Gladio and took a tiny sip of the mystery water, as he had dubbed it in his mind.

At once he could feel some of his exhaustion leave and the soreness of his muscles easing off just a bit. He blinked in surprise. This was a bit like the potions he knew, just far more gentle in the way the soothed things. Potions and ethers made by Lucis Caelum magic were always accompanied by an unpleasant burn.

Healer answered while he carefully, drop by drop, made Iris drink that foul smelling tea. “Now ah'll start tah heal her. The scourge has been burrowed in her body for too long for me tah heal it all at once, but ah can do it. Yah needn't worry.”

“You can really heal her? How long will it take? There is supposed to be only one person who is able to heal the starscourge, and I kind of doubt that you are the Oracle in disguise.”

The deeply buried seeds of hope started to grow into a warm feeling pooling in his stomach. Or maybe that was just the mystery water.

“Yeah, but like ah said, it'll take me some time. A week at least. Ah don't just need tah rid her of the scourge, but also repair the damage it caused and tha's the truly tricky part.”

Gladio became light headed in relief. If he hadn't been sitting on the floor already, he would certainly do so now. But he couldn't help but wonder how it was even possible. The Fleurets had been blessed by the Astrals with the power to cleanse the scourge from its victims. There were no others.

“My, my, nephew. You have all of the clinic in a right tizzy.”

A man stood in the doorway with wild reddish hair that had an odd violet sheen and golden eyes. He leaned on a cane the same way King Regis did, and Gladio didn't know why, but he found that quite disturbing. Despite the stuffy and hot air he wore a long pair of trousers and a high collared tunic with sleeves that fell down over his wrists.

“She is scourge sick”, the man stated. His eyes bore a strange glint that Gladio didn't like.

Healer nodded. “Yes”, he affirmed and motioned towards the bucket sitting at the end of the bed. “Could yah get rid of tha'? Ah made her drink some of Hiemi's purging tea, so she'll need tha' bucket 'gain soon.”

“Of course, dear nephew. But if you don't mind, I would like to see how you handle this one. It's the first time I see you treat someone afflicted with starscourge, after all. Not to worry, I'll keep myself well out of the way.”

Healer's answering shrug clearly said suit yourself.

Gladio watched as the man – who was most likely this Ardyn the little girl had gone to fetch – gathered the bucket, keeping a straight face at the sickening smell, and retreated back towards the door.

“I'm ready”, the man announced with a grin.

Healer huffed, but he turned his full attention back to Iris who now looked like she had gone back to sleep. He gently rested his free hand on her stomach, right over her navel, the other still being on her forehead, and closed his eyes, his brows furrowed in obvious concentration. For a moment there was absolute silence. Then the glittering net over his sister's body retreated, leaving the room strangely dim. Not a moment later however, Healer's whole body started to glow in a golden light. It looked like a sun was trapped under his skin.

The black lines on his skin, that Gladio had thought were tattoos, started to crack open and released a burning violet light. It looked utterly otherworldly. Suddenly Gladio could believe every story Viti had told him about Healer. That he was a fallen star or an Astral, forgotten by humanity and time. There was so much power. It made his skin prickle and the fine hairs on his arms stand on end. And it seemed like Healer himself could barely contain it, he looked like his human shell was going to shatter at any moment.

Magic pulsed in time of an invisible heart, lapping over Iris and through the air like it was water breaking on a shore. The light seeped into Iris' skin, concentrating where the black splotches marred her, and with each new wave that washed over her they grew a tiny bit smaller. A fine black mist rose and dissipated within seconds.

Gladio couldn't do anything other than stare at the spectacle in front of him, even as it made his eyes burn to look directly into the pulsing light. He didn't even look away when he heard a violent hiss from where the red haired man was watching.

An especially large wave made the air shudder, caressed his skin like the softest silk and eased the pain in his bloody feet. There were quite a few cuts and a broken toe nail. He hadn't even felt it as he had been running to get his sister the help she needed. He couldn't help the sigh of relief that escaped him. The magic teased over him like a long lost friend. It made something in him that had been sleeping for a long time, suddenly sit up and pay attention. He knew the feeling of this magic, had felt it quite often when Noctis had been made to practice his elemancy, even if he had never been connected to it like a proper Shield should be...

He jerked upwards. By now the magic had turned into a bright supernova with the young man and his sister at its centre. It couldn't be.

“Noctis”, he breathed, stunned.

He stood there, frozen and having no idea what he should do. This couldn't be possible. He had searched for his prince high and low and the Crownsguard and the Kingsglaive both had searched outside of Insomnia. If Noctis was still in the city and not dead they should have heard something by now. Shouldn't they?

On the other hand there clearly were people down here. Gladio hadn't even known that this place existed, and it was part of his job to know about the city's layout. It would also explain how Healer had magic. But why hadn't he recognized him then? He knew what the prince looked like! Then again, Healer had long hair and what he had thought were tattoos covering a large part of his body, including his face. And even if it turned out that Healer wasn't Noctis – which became more and more likely the longer he thought about it – this was a place he could potentially be, because no one had ever thought to look.

Had Noctis hidden here this whole time?

Why?

As if he had been heard, Healer opened his eyes. Even in the bright light of the magic they glowed like a pair of newborn stars. Gladio had to look away. White spots danced in front of his eyes. A high pitched whine sounded from where the door was located.

Slowly, oh so slowly, the pulsing light became weaker, the pressure of powerful magic in the air grew lighter. With each new wave it retreated further and further, like the changing of the tides until it was mostly gone.

The black splotches on Iris' skin had turned into mere shadows beneath skin still pale from sickness. There was a bit of colour in her cheeks now.

Healer's hands retreated and the last of the glow died, leaving the room in a strange half light until Gladio's eyes had adjusted again. Only the black lines on Healer's skin still gave off a dim iridescence, and Gladio swore there was a new one slashing across his cheek close to the nose. It made the impression that the man's humanity was nothing but a thin veil that could be ripped away to show what really lay beneath at any time. And wasn't that disconcerting?

Reluctantly, like he needed to remind himself how to move his limbs, he stood up and carelessly let the blanket Gladio had carried Iris in, fall to the floor, before taking up the one the teenager had brought in and spread it over Iris' still sleeping form. His breath came in quick bursts and he was covered in sweat like he had just completed a taxing workout. With a quiet groan he stood up straight. Finally the shimmer beneath his skin was completely gone.

“Fuck. Ah think ah overdid it”, he mumbled barely loud enough for Gladio to hear.

“You can say that again, my dear nephew. Please warn an old man the next time you want to set off the magical equivalent to a Nifasi firebomb. It would be much appreciated. You can never be sure of the consequences otherwise”, stated the red haired man before Gladio could even think to open his mouth.

There was a caution in Healer's gaze as he nodded, that set Gladio's teeth on edge and made him want to punch something. Or someone. Preferably the guy who used a cane exactly the same way his King did but moved like a was an actor playing out a drama.

“Now, go downstairs to your wife, eat something and drink some of her truly amazing tea. You look like someone who dearly needs a break and some extra energy. I dare say, it's too early already to go back to sleep again. I will look after the girl for the time being. Do not worry, I have some experience in looking after the scourge sick and know what I'm doing”, he continued as if he hadn't seen Gladio's glower.

Which he clearly had.

Healer – who was quite possibly Noctis and Gladio wasn't really sure if he wanted him to be or not – just rolled his eyes, but he took a step towards the door before he stopped and turned towards him, a guarded look on his face.

“Come”, he mumbled. “We need tah talk, and best do it now.”

Gladio didn't say anything as he followed Healer through the still mostly dark house. To be honest, he had no idea what to say. For all the questions tumbling through his mind in a never ending whirlwind since he had first seen the young man.

He wanted to scream.

He wanted to rage.

He wanted to shake the answers out of the man leading him down dark stairs.

But he didn't. If this whole mess had taught him one thing, it was that raging at it all didn't help a thing. So he swallowed the anger hissing in his mind down and sat in the chair in the warmly lit kitchen he had been indicated to.

The kitchen was a large room that was clearly well lived in and cared for with a loving hand, if cluttered to a point where there was nearly no free space left. Despite the warm summer night there was a new fire burning in the hearth that was old enough to belong in a museum. It made the air near uncomfortable hot.

Most of the kitchen appliances looked like they belonged into the 5th century ME at least. Well, there was an electric tea kettle and a few other bibs and bobs that clearly belonged into the modern age of electricity. How could anybody live like that?

As he examined the kitchen he noticed the woman standing at the counter. She wasn't very tall with a thin face and very pale skin that contrasted heavily with her long black hair. Her big eyes were of a green that reminded him of shadowy forests outside Insomnia. The long and thin tunic she wore was of a russet colour and looked more like a nightgown to his eyes.

He knew her. It was the woman that he had met at the Black Saffron the day before yesterday. Well, three days ago by now, he supposed. What was her name again? Hiemi? Wait, so the little girl had been...

She came over towards the table with a tray in her hands upon which were three cups and a large pot that wouldn't be out of place in one of the historical romances he liked to read sometimes. Now that she stood next to Healer, who had been awkwardly hovering next to an empty chair, Gladio could see that she was a few centimetres taller than him. The woman gave Healer a chiding glance that lost its bite with the fondly exasperated tilt of her smile.

“Yah overdid it”, she stated.

“Ah know”, he murmured and gave her a chaste kiss on the mouth. “Ah'm sorry.”

“No, yah're not. Now sit down and introduce me so tha' we can have this talk b'fore we've gotta go t' work.”

And Healer did just that.

He gave her hip a gentle squeeze and sat down on the chair across from Gladio while the woman served the tea and then sat down herself. There were a few beats of awkward silence before Healer cleared his throat and introduced the woman next to him.

“Gladio, may ah introduce to yah Hiemi, Dame of this household and mah wife. Hiemi, this's Gladio.” He hesitated, as if he wasn't quite sure how to continue.

Before he could make up his mind about it, Gladio interrupted him: “What in the name of Pitioss' cursed depths were you thinking, Noctis?!”

The young man flinched, his fingers dug into the wooed tabletop until his knuckles turned white and his mouth fell open with no sound escaping him.

In the warm light of the kitchen it had become very clear to Gladio that this Healer was in fact Noctis, despite all the changes. The facial structure practically screamed Lucis Caelum. There was also the magic – magic he had never seen or heard of before – and the fact that he knew his and Iris' name.

“Where the fuck have you been? Do you know how worried your father was? Still is, to this day? Do you know how the nobles are hounding him to produce another heir? He keeps refusing out of love for you and the late Queen and you sit here, healthy and alive, and play house! The King still hopes that you're alive and well, that you're coming home one day. Do you know what your actions did to Ignis? To Iris? To me? Do you-”

By the end he had been nearly screaming, ready to lunge across the table and beat some sense into his prince. If he even deserved that title anymore. But suddenly he was frozen in place. The words tumbling out of his mouth, halted on his tongue and his muscles refused to move. It was like time around him had been halted but everywhere else it moved forward like it always did. He couldn't even blink as he looked at the two people across from him.

Noctis had grown even paler than he already was, hunching his shoulders and shrinking into himself. Hiemi, the woman he had introduced as his wife – and wasn't that a whole other can of worms – was another story. Her eyes were blazing in fury as she rose from her chair, one arm held out in his direction. Around her wrist and along her forearm danced smoky grey chains. Sparks of green and yellow jumped between the individual links.

“Don't yah dare.” She hissed, her face contorted into a sneer. “Don't yah think he knows tha'? Mah husband knows the consequences of his actions quite well, knave Gladiolus. Yah bet there's a damn good reason for it, do yah understand me?”

“Hiemi”, Noctis said in a tone that was barely more than a whisper. At once her attention was on him. “Let him go, please. It's fine.”

“It damn well isn't, and yah know it! Shield or not, friend or not, he can't jus' walk in here and treat yah like this. Healer. Noctis. It's not yahr fault. Yah couldn't 've done anything different. Not with Him watching.”

Gladio listened with growing concern. What was she talking about? Who was this Him? The way he said it he couldn't be a nice guy. Noctis made a keening noise so full of old hurt and fear and guilt that Galdio would have recoiled, if he were able. The prince pressed his face into her abdomen, his hands grasped at the cloth of her tunic and his shoulders shook as if he was crying. She didn't say anything but carded her hands through his long, tangled hair with a tender expression on her face. Gladio dearly wanted to look away, shaken to his core at the scene before him.

“Ssshhhh”, made Hiemi and continued to pet Noctis' hair until he pulled away.

The prince's eyes were thankfully dry and he didn't look quite as much as an anak caught in the headlights anymore. His wife pressed his cup of tea into his hands and he took a sip. And then another, the action calming him down further.

“Now”, she said, her tone brooking no argument, “we're all going tah sit down and talk like the adults we all are. Am ah clear?”

Here she looked sternly at Gladio who still couldn't move. He wished he could point that out to her.

“Mah life, yah need tah take off the spell first”, Noctis reminded her with an amused twitch at the corner of his mouth.

Due to her pale skin, the redness in her cheeks was very noticeable as she cancelled whatever she had done with one last warning look towards him. The chains around her forearm vanished. He carefully flexed his fingers and shifted his weight, to see if everything was back in working order, but he wisely kept his mouth shut and waited for either of the two to speak first. Their short exchange had made it clear that there was more going on than he had thought – than anyone had thought – and he wanted to know what it was.

It was Noctis who started the conversation again.

“Tha' night in tha' alleyway ah was scared shitless, Gladio, and it wasn't because of tha' old drunk with the broken bottle.”

“What in the name of Bahamut's blades happened to you?” asked Gladio and watched uncomprehending, as both of them flinched slightly.

“Please, don't say His name. Down here, He can't see me”, Noctis pleaded.

“What do you mean, down here He can't see you? Wait, the He you were referring to is-?”

Gladio swallowed down the name Bahamut, but the other two knew exactly who he meant. They nodded in unison.

“But why?”

He didn't understand this at all.

“The Bladed One's still one of the Six, one of the Astrals, but His standing, from what ah understand of what Healer told me, is more tha' of the Infernian up there”, answered Hiemi and motioned towards the ceiling.

Ignis would love this.

The sudden thought made Gladio realize that he needed to get the advisor in on this. Gladio himself was in over his head. But that was for later. Now...

“So Ba- the Bladed One is some kind of traitor, a malevolent deity? What does that have to do with why you're hiding in this dump?”

Both of them bristled at his words and Hiemi opened her mouth, clearly prepared to argue, but Noctis' hand on her shoulder held her back. She leaned backwards, still glaring at Gladio like he had insulted her personally.

“It's got everything tah do with it”, said Noctis. “Do yah know the stories of the Lucis Caelums tha' had a magic different from wha' was expected of them?”

Gladio hesitated. He tried to think of the old stories Noctis had liked to read in the archives, when he had been allowed down there, but none came to mind. It was strange, since this was the main reason he had started to like reading historical romance. Try as he might, he couldn't remember a single of those stories the young prince had liked to ramble about on occasion.

“I... cannot say I do, no”, he admitted, feeling strangely ashamed of it.

Noctis just sighed. “Tha's alrigh'. They've always ended violently, with the death of the Lucis Caelum in question, and more often than not with innocent bystanders dead. There're records of Kings killing their own children tah minimize the inevitable damage they'd cause if left tah live. Dad told me the last one left to live died when he collapsed a house on top of him, also killing the people within the building and most of the bystanders. Ah managed tah find records from the Founder's time, where King Somnus decreed in the Bladed One's name tha' every child not of black magic was Bad Faith.”

Gladio gave a quiet curse. He remembered now, the sordid stories Noctis had told and had given him a sour taste in his mouth every single time. The prince seemed to have noticed his discomfort at his retellings and had stopped them after some time. It hadn't stopped him from going into the archives, however.

All of a sudden he had a very bad feeling about this.

“Please tell me you aren't one of those cases, Noctis”, he all but begged, already knowing the answer to this.

Ruefully, the prince in hiding shook his head. “If he finds me it's only a question of time before something happens. Do yah understand? Ah can't go Up because for some reason we can't figure out, He can't find me here. As long as ah'm here nothing'll happen.”

“And what of the rest of Lucis? Should it fall into chaos, conquered by Nifelheim, because you were too much of a coward?”

Noctis pressed his lips into a thin line in displeasure. “And what would you have me do, Gladio? Wait for the dragon to kill me? I've wanted to just march up to the Citadel so many times, I've lost count. You have no idea how much it hurt to stay away from all of you.”

In his ire he was starting to lose that damn accent that had been starting to grate on Gladio.

“Stop!” thundered Hiemi before the argument could escalate any further, her presence backed up by the feeling of powerful magic. “We've been talking abou' contacting His Royal Majesty for some time now. 'Specially in the last few days. The children've been excited ever since they heard we've been considering it. Healer, ah think it's abou' time we finally did it.”

“I... yes”, he relented after a few moments of silence. “It's abou' time.”

#ffxv #dreams of our past #gladiolus amicitia #hiemi is an overprotective fury #two hard headed people meeting each other #well #this could have gone better #cat's out of the bag now #gladio finally finds noctis #he could have handled that better #but also so much worse #iris has the staarscourge #and because of *plot* she's getting treatment #ardyn is having a hard time believing what just happened #he needs to sit down for a minute #my fics #the spirit writes

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septembersung · 6 years

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They say abortion is a women’s choice, however it seems to me many women choose abortion because they feel they don’t have any other choice. They are pressured by angry parents, unsupportive partners, persistent doctors, and well-meaning friends to terminate a pregnancy that will supposedly make life hard, or unbearable, for themselves and their unborn child. When presented with only horrific ‘what ifs’, a woman can feel that choosing to give birth to her child is worse than ending his or her life.

If you are faced with an unplanned or high-risk pregnancy, or your unborn child has been diagnosed with a disability, and you feel abortion is your only option, I encourage you to talk to women who’ve walked in your shoes and can give you a better perspective than the doctors, family members and friends who, while claiming to care about your best interests, have never actually raised a child alone on government assistance, held a child who died shortly after birth, cared for a child with cerebral palsy, lived life with a physical disability, or ended a high risk pregnancy via induction or C-section.

Don’t rely on people who can only present you with grim statistics and possible outcomes. Don’t allow the angry or inconvenienced to tell you what’s in your best interests. Find out for yourself. Don’t be afraid of doing this hard thing. You don’t have to walk this road alone; so many of us have been there before. You may upset the doctor, your boyfriend, your parents, your boss, but it’s your body, your choice and you have the right to keep your baby and piss off as many people as you want in the process. Call upon those of us who’ve gone before you- who’ve been pressured to abort a child, who’ve been shamed, and abandoned. We will support your choice because everyday we see how choosing life has improved our lives and that of our child. None of us thought we could do it; we had doubts, fears, wondering about those horrible what ifs, but now we’re all here on the other side and we can tell you we’d do it again in a heartbeat.

During one of my first interviews on The Jen Fulwiler radio show, Jen asked for my opinion on a piece she’d heard about a women who terminated her pregnancy because she learned her unborn son would have Spina Bifida. The woman’s husband was concerned the child would have an unsatisfying or nonexistent sex life, and so she had an abortion. Angry and astonished, I quickly blurt out, “Did this couple ever consider talking to anyone with Spina Bifida?!” All I could think of was my friend, a woman with Spina Bifida who uses a wheelchair, who is happily married with a son. To think, this couple denied themselves a child based on their preconceived views on what life with Spina Bifida would be like, rather than actually learning about it from someone with the disease. Don’t deny yourself the gift of a child just because the package or circumstances don’t look exactly the way you expected.

Let me personally introduce you to women who’ve been single moms, teen moms, and to children and adults living happy lives with the diagnosis your unborn child has (like Down Syndrome, Spina Bifida, Cerebral Palsy and more). I know parents who’ve said goodbye to their children after only a few hours or days and have no regrets (and they’re not alone). I know women who, due to their own medical complications, gave birth much sooner than expected, and those who know the NICU inside and out. I can introduce you to the families who’ve adopted the children of unplanned pregnancies and the open relationships they have with the birth mothers.

Let me connect you to resources like Good Counsel Homes, and help you fill out the paperwork required to get WIC, food stamps, welfare or other public assistance. Let me provide you with love and support, and if you wish, tell you how to put your child up for adoption and introduce you to agencies so you can learn how it works. Or I will help you find childcare, arrange transportation, and help you fight your employer if they discriminate against you.

Prolifers, this is our job; not to simply say “Don’t have an abortion! Abortion is bad!” but to actively provide the alternative solutions- whether it be through sharing our stories and experiences and connecting struggling moms with resources to learn more; or by giving assistance to those who want to choose life for their babies but are alone in their decision to do so.

This post is not me simply waxing poetic. I will personally help you. Email me and I will connect you with a woman you can talk to about your specific pregnancy issue. It is almost impossible that the situation you find yourself in has not been experienced by someone else. I personally know women who’ve come through all the situations listed above, and I will connect them to you. I will help you find the resources in your area if you need a doctor or government assistance. If you need an adoptive family, I volunteer mine! but I can also point you to agencies that can help you set up a plan to place your child. If you’re a reader who is willing to do the same for other women, get the word out. Share that you’re a person a women in crisis can come to for help so no one needs to feel alone if they want to choose life for their baby.

Only when no one feels the need to choose abortion, will we have succeeded as a prolife movement.

#pro life #abortion #crisis pregnancy #feminism #catholic feminism #anti abortion

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simplysnipes · 6 years

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Considerations for Black Men

Improve Your Self-Image

How Many of Us Do Not Achieve More, Because We Believe We Deserve Less? How Many of Us Do Not Ask For That Raise or Managerial Position We Deserve Because We Are Worried That We Will Fail. How Many of Us Do Not Get Out of That Bad Relationship Because We Do Not Think We Can’t Attract The Women We Want. How Many of Us Do Not Stand Up For Ourselves When We Are Aware of Situations & People That Use Our Talents But Do Not Reciprocate Equally.

All of Us.

Let’s Start To Reprogram The Ideas That We Have of Ourselves. The Limits We Subconsciously Place On Ourselves. Destroy The Thoughts of People In The Past That Discouraged You or That Girl Who Called You Ugly In Middle School [FCUK YOU MEGAN!!]. Or The Society That Tells You Because You Are A “Black Male,” You Are Prone To Criminality, High Blood Pressure, Laziness & Toxic Masculinity.

Let’s Destroy It All. Because “The Enemy” Wins If We Destroy Ourselves For Them.

Say Less

“You Have Two Ears & One Mouth. Use Them Proportionately”

You Will Be Amazed At What You Learn When You Sit Back & Observe When You Are Interacting With People. Next Time You Are In A Conversation, Don’t Wait For Your Turn To Speak. Ingest What The Other Person Is Actually Saying. Refrain From Dominating The Talking Space. Allow Others To Voice Their Opinions First & Then Retort.

Find Your Purpose

Are You Dissatisfied? Do You Have A Feeling of Stagnation In Your Life? Do You Constantly Feel Stressed, Lost, Confused & Depressed? Would You Like A Different Job? More Money? A Better Physique or A Lover That You Feel Complements You? Finding Your Life‘s Purpose Will Solve All of That And More.

Since We Live In A Capitalist System That Requires You To Slave.. I Mean Work To Live. Your Purpose Should Consist of What You Love. It Can Also Be A Thing That You Would Like To Monetize. The Reason Why You Should Create An Industry Based On What You Love Instead of What You Would Tolerate As A Career Is Because The Average Person Spends About 2,000 Hours Per Year At A Job They Hate. But If You Love What You Do. Most Days It Will Be Pleasure To Work Than A Pain. And Where Love Resides. Money, Creativity, Wonderful Experiences & Amazing People Will Be Waiting.

Simplify Your Life

A Lot of Us Have Too Many Things That Require Our Attention. The More Things That Your Mind Is Attached Too. The Less You Will Be Able To Think Clearly & Be At Peace. The Key Is To Prioritize Things By Importance: [1] What Is Adding Value To My Life/ Happiness. [2] What Detracts Value From My Life/ Happiness.

Live With Purpose

No More Meandering Around Aimlessly Throughout Life, Allowing Things To Happen To You, Instead of For You. In Order To Create An Existence Full of Substance. It Is Great Idea To Move, Act And Think In An Organized Fashion. The Change Does Not Have To Be Radical. It Can Be As Simple As Writing A Short List of Things You Would Like To Achieve. Then Writing Small Daily Goals That Are Needed For Its Attainment.

Acquiring A Harmonious Masculine Spirit

A Man With A Harmonious Masculine Spirit Believes In Justice. This Is A Man Who Is In Harmony With Himself, His Environment, His Woman & Other Men In His Tribe. A Man With A Harmonious Spirit Will Not Start Unnecessary Turmoil With People But Will Have The Courage To Stand Up For His Ideals And Come To Blows If Necessary. A Man With A Harmonious Spirits Uses Logic To Solve His Issues & Is Not Easily Influenced By The Opinions of Others.

A Man With A Harmonious Spirit Does Not Make Excuses, But Does Whatever He Can To Provide & Protect His Family At All Costs. A Man With A Harmonious Spirit Will Seek Council With His Feminine Counterpart. Though He May Not Take Her Advice. He Will Let Her Know That Her Thoughts And Contributions Are Valuable To Him. A Man Was A Harmonious Spirit Will Not Bring Shame To Himself His Family Name And Especially His Woman.

Stop Making Excuses

“Action Cures Insecurity”

There Is Nothing More Unattractive Than A Man Who Constantly Creates Excuses For Why His Life Is A Certain Way. With The Availability of Resources, Information And Relatively Inexpensive Labor. A Man Can Achieve Anything He So Desires If He Is Brave Enough To Risk It All To Achieve It.

The God Force Does Not Bless Those Who Will Not Help Themselves. Making Excuses & Complaining About Where You Are Disrupts Your Internal Light & Sends Negative Signals To Your Subconscious Mind That You Are In Fact A Loser And Not A Warrior. That Mentality Sabotages Good Things From Coming To You And Also Good People From Wanting To Collaborate With You.

Save Time, Money & Resources

“Man Makes The Money. Money Does Not Make The Man”

Money Is Not Real. Money Does Not Define You. Money Cannot Make You Happy. Money Is Essentially A Tool For Survival. And With That Knowledge You Can Assess Your Attachment To It And Choose To Either Chase It In A Hectic Fashion. Or Earn It Wisely And Let It Chase You.

“A Man Who Dares To Waste One Hour of Time Has Not Discovered The Value of Life.” - Charles Darwin

Time Is Significant Because It Only Goes In One Direction. Forward. Time In Relation To Man Is Important Because We Will Not Live Forever. So We Must Make Great Use of The Time That We Have. We May Feel As Though There Is Not Enough Hours In A Day To Get What We Need Accomplished. But Guess What!! Everyone Has The Same 24 Hours To Operate In. So It Is Imperative That We Use Our Time Wisely. If You Track Your Daily Habits Hour To Hour. Within A Week I Guarantee You Can Find At Least 20 Hours of Dead Space Where You Are Not Occupying It With Any Meaningful Acts.

“There Is Nothing You Need That You Do Not Already Have” - James Baldwin

A Debilitating Mentality That A Lot of Us Men Have Adopted Is Waiting For Someone or Something Outside of Our Own Ability To Aid Us Before We Take Any Action Toward A Goal. Let’s Take Fitness For Example. I Know You Have Probably Heard (Or Said) “I Wish I Had A Car, Or Lived Close To A Gym. Because Then I Would Be In Shape.” Fitness First Starts In The Mind. A Lack of Resources Is Rarely The Problem. A Strong Creative Mind Could Create Opportunities To Figure Out Ways To Get What You Desire. “The Ultimate Resource Is Resourcefulness.”

Work With What You Already Have

When A Man Is In A Righteous State of Mind. He Is Hellbent On Self-Improvement & The Improvement of His Surroundings. But As We Are Improving. We Tend To Look At The Achievements of “Better Men” And We Make Unfair Comparisons of Where We Are In Life.

This Act Is Unfair And Counterproductive Is Because Not Every Man Gets The Same Breaks. The Lord Blesses Each One of Us With A Specific Skill, Attribute, And Set of Circumstances That Is Unique To Our Spirit. With The Intent of It Growing Us In Ways That Will Help Our Family And Our Environment At Large.

So Instead of Looking Externally At What Others Are Great In & Where You “Think” You Are Lacking. Pay Attention To What You Are Blessed With And Improve Upon Those Strengths.

Refrain From Dealing With Toxic Women

“No Man Hath It In Gis Power To Over-Rule The Deceitfulness of A Women” -Marguerite of Navarre

We All Have Personally Experienced or Know The Story of A Brother Well On His Way To Success But Was Derailed Because He Selected The Wrong Companion In His Life. And The Key Is He! Selected The Wrong Companion. On The Road To Enlightenment, Self-Preservation & Self-Healing Adding A Woman Who Is A Liability And Not An Asset Can Cause Irreparable Damage To Your Life, Your Finance, Business & Your Reputation.

When A Righteous Man Selects A Woman. He Is A Essentially Bringing Her Into His World. Into His Lifestyle. As Men, We Are Natural Fixers. We Function As Problem Solvers And We Live To Protect Our Women From Harm. If A Woman Has A Lot of Reoccurring Negative Issues That She Brings Into The Courtship. It’s Going To Be YOUR Issue. And Your Life’s Purpose Will Be Derailed Because The Time You Should Be Spending On Your Purpose. You Will Divert It To The Problems of The Said Woman.

Righteous Masculine Energy Is Hot. Fiery. It Leads. It Directs. It Protects. It Has A Will To Improve The Wellbeing of Itself & Environment Though Its Own Will. Righteous Feminine Energy Is Cool. It Is Passive. It’s Loving. It’s Nurturing. It Has A Creative Faculty. It Enhances The Masculine Imperative. Both Energy’s Have Their Strengths. But Were Essentially Made To Complement Each Other.

In Today’s Time Due To Social Engineering, Western Liberal Media, Soy Based Diets, The Absence of Righteous Masculine & Feminine Parents. Modern Men Will Encounter Women Who Have A Higher Than Normal Amount of Masculine Energy, As Well As An Addiction To Recreational Drugs. Lack of Financial Resources & Moderate To Extreme Mental Issues. This Energy Will Inhibit A Man’s Ability Need To Lead, Act As A Companion To The Woman Common or Feel As If He Has A Place In The Woman’s Life.

(Ways Of Identifying A Damaged Woman Coming Soon)

Learn Something New Weekly

As Quickly As Technology & Techniques To Live A Better Life Are Being Created. The Ability To Consume Information & Use It Toward A Meaningful Goal Is Power. If You Are Not Constantly Learning. Your Skills Are Declining And Like The Dinosaurs You Will Inevitably Become Extinct.

Fasting

The Most Common Definition For Fasting Is: “The Willing Abstinence or Reduction From Some or All Food, Drink, or Both, For A Period of Time.” Though Rapid Consumption of Food Is An Issue For Some. There Are Other Other Habits That We Practice That Can Have Destructive Effects When Done In Excess: Binge T.V. Watching, Daily Consumption of Alcohol, Casual Sex With Multiple Partners, Daily Use of Recreational Drugs, Excessive Use of Social Media, Impulse Spending & Pornography.

Excessive Exposure To These Low Vibratory Vices Are Dangerous To The Body, Spirit & Subconscious Mind. Place A Cap On Your Daily Intake. Or Go For Long Stretches Without The Use of Them To Ensure That These Things Are Not Influencing You In a Negative Way.

Lastly

Stop Thirsting After Women!!!!!!!

Fellas In 2019 We Really Need To Stop With The Thirst. There’s Nothing More Unattractive To Women (And Men) Than A Thirsty A$$ Dude. When People See A Man Who Can Not Control His Libido. That Shows A Lack of Self Control & Maturity. I See Too Many of Us Out In The World Being Controlled By The Organ That Is Between Our Legs. We Have Bastardized Sex Into Something As Insignificant As A Physical Act, When Sexual Energy Exchange Was Created For So Much More.

The Essence of Sex Is One of, If Not The Most Powerful Tool That We Have At Our Disposal. Expressing That Sex In Immature & Toxic Ways Can Only Lead To Your Destruction. The Transmutation of Sexual Energy Toward A Purposeful Goal Can Create Civilizations.

Signs Of Thirst

-Stalking

-Sliding In Dm Unwarranted

-Sending Unsolicited D!Ck Pics

-Aggressively Engaging Females That Don’t Want To Be Approached On The Street

-Lewd & Obscene Comments On A Woman’s Social Media Profile

-ETC

Validation/ Worship of The Female Body In Those Ways Creates The Monsters That We Do Not Like To Deal With: Conceded Women, Emotionally Guarded Women, IG Models Selling Flat Belly Tea & Gold-Diggers.

In Order To Attain The Women That You Want. It Does Not Require A Lot of Money, or Material Items. You Don’t Even Have To Look Like Idris Elba. All You Have To Have Is Confidence, Social Capital And A Mouthpiece Good Enough To Hold A Basic Conversation. And Both Are Not Hard To Attain.

If You Haven Yet Noticed F$ck Boys Are Messing It Up For All of Us. There’s A Correct Way And An It Incorrect Way To Get A Woman’s Attention. There’s Too Many of Us Not Playing The Game Correctly & Not Policing Our Brothers Who Are Going About It The Wrong Way

It’s Time To Level Up Fellas.

Peace And Be Well

Your Bruv Nes

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jmlongworth78 · 6 years

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A Fast for Justice

With Ash Wednesday around the corner, and many Christians preparing to welcome a season of preparation for the life changing stories of Holy Week and the Feast of Resurrection (The Eighth Day!), we will hear a lot about the classic disciplines of Lent.

Prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are included in the invitation to Lent proclaimed on Ash Wednesday.

As disciples of Jesus, we are called to a discipline that contends against evil and resists whatever leads us away from love of God and neighbor. I invite you, therefore, to the discipline of Lent—self-examination and repentance, prayer and fasting, sacrificial giving and works of love—strengthened by the gifts of word and sacrament. Let us continue our journey through these forty days to the great Three Days of Jesus’ death and resurrection. - from the Invitation to Lent in Evangelical Lutheran Worship

While it is possible for these disciplines to focus independently or in parallel, I want to propose a Lenten practice for this year that actually links all three. This exercise will require some really honest self-evaluation, so I hope that you have both the spiritual support and accountability partners to begin this examination and to pursue it.

The first difficult step is to find a dimension of privilege or power that applies to you. I’m not saying that you can only participate in this exercise if you have a smooth running, problem free life. I am asking you to do some honest reflection on what it means to be white in a society that prefers whiteness, a man in a society that prefers maleness, high-income or a large personal net value in a society that prefers wealth, neurotypical in a society that prefers certain forms of thinking and experession, abled bodied in a society that prefers bodies that function perfectly, or heterosexual in a society that prefers straightness. This will be important, because part of this exercise will be to give to a person or community that is from a marginalized (not preferred) group of which you’re not a member.

With that discernment complete, I invite you into the prayer dimension of this exercise. If it helps, you can use a simple rubric for prayer that I teach to confirmation students: ACTS (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication) For the purpose of practicing Lent, I invite you to:

Adore God as the maker and loving parent of people who are different from you. Let your awe and wonder in God move from awe and wonder in the neighbors God has made and then back to God at the center of all things.

Confess the negative thoughts, feelings and associations you have with people who are different from you. It will probably help in this season to focus on one dimension of difference. Confess the times you ignored the needs of others because the issue didn’t affect you. Confess the times you used your privilege to get something you wanted at the expense of your neighbor. Confess your unquestioning support of systems that frustrate, defeat and shorten the lives of your marginalized neighbors, even when you wished them no personal ill.

Give thanks for your community, for an opportunity to take just action, and for the resources (financial, social, power, etc) that you have that can be placed in God’s hands for loving purposes.

Ask for God’s help in all of these things, pray specifically for harms and injustices that are causing pain in the lives of your marginalized neighbors, ask for guidance on how to put your resources (financial, social, power, etc) in loving service to your neighbors.

This prayer practice, which should be continued throughout the season is intended to help you identify a fast or personal sacrifice that will free up some resources. Maybe it’s a traditional fast and you will turn your lunch money or extra grocery money into alms. Maybe it’s a fast from entertainment that keeps you comfortable and frees your mind from thinking about your neighbor’s situation. Those tickets, downloads, and other purchases could be given up to provide the necessary resources. Whatever you choose, discern carefully if it is something that you will genuinely miss, and how entwined in your life this item or practice is.

When your reflection has helped you identify a marginalized community, your prayer has opened your heart to their belovedness in God, and your fast has freed up some resources that you are going to give away as alms, I inivite you to give these alms as reparations. Recognize that your ability to find this extra wealth, (even if it’s the $1.75 from your daily coffee), is rooted in the preferential system that you live in. This extra is what the structures in which we all live gave to you instead of you neighbor.

To give this in faithful penitence to your neighbor is both to aid their survival and to push back at these powers and structures. There are lots of ways to do this. There may be someone in your circle of friends who needs this help. At the same time your circle may be so homogeneous that you need to look harder. There are reparations circles on social media. Search through sites like GoFundMe for individuals and families who need your help to survive. All I ask is that you not give to agencies and institutions with these particular alms. Far too often, requests of this sort end up being met by marginalized people desperately shuffling resources they need to others with the hope that some kindness may come their way when the bills come due.

My friend Jess Davis, a Christian Counselor and Teacher, has taught me that a great place to start is supporting indigenous/women of color who are doulas, midwives, or farmers. This sort of giving can literally help them bring other community members to life. One advantage to giving to an unfamiliar person or family is that it helps us to remember Jesus’ guidance that we give quietly, without strings, such that “our left hand does not know what our right hand is doing.” The goal is to submit privilege and give it away, not to gain a new upper hand as a do-gooder. These gifts are given in the spirit of penitence that they were taken away in generations past and are being returned in humility.

An exercise like this is probably best undertaken with two or three accountability partners, so you can share your process and your adherence to the plan. It’s extremely important not to lean on marginalized people for this work. For example, if you’re a white person giving alms to black families, lean on other white people as your conversation partners. I plan to lean on my cohort partner in the pilot group of the Emmaus Collective for this support. I wish you a blessed Lent and pray that you find a discipline that helps you to transform your relationship to privilege, your possessions, and especially your neighbors.

#Lent #prayer #fasting #alms #reparations #dismantling privilege #spiritual exercises

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page-of-tales · 6 years

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Story: Life Donors

To the person who said they thought Exchangeable Parts would be about organ donation. Here comes something that will disappoint them. Feedback and comments are always appreciated

Word Count: 3575

---

(Distances, times, and proper nouns translated to their approximate human equivalents)

8 rotations (months) ago the homeworld of the Hilox had quietly entered into crisis mode. A lethal plague was sweeping through the population of it’s colony worlds. It was an old and familiar disease, dating to a pre space travel age, that had mutated into a deadlier form. Traditional treatments were failing to adequately treat the disease and only a heavily strained medical infrastructure kept the death toll from exploding exponentially. The media had labeled the new disease the Jinkor after a shapeshifting monster from old myths. Public disorder had been quelled, sometimes with force, and it was clear to those in power that the situation was teetering on the brink.

It is in this context that a report from a low ranking Xeno-Bio Department Tech was brought to the upper echelons of Hilox leadership and a coded request sent to the human embassy. What could amount to the saving grace for the Hilox constituted a forbidden curse.

---

Dr. Alexa Khatri sat reading an email on her Screen, finger scrolling through a long list of numbers. The results from the last assay had come in and the lab techs were running analysis on the data. It was a little frustrating to have been called away but the official looking people who had knocked at her domicile had stressed the importance of her presence. As it was she was currently seated in the human Embassy’s waiting room orbiting around the homeworld of the alien species, the Hilox.

The artificial gravity was a close match to that of the planet below, approximately a 0.9 standard G. Which was good for Alexa who had lived all her life on low gravity planets. It was part of the reason she had accepted the job offer to work on the planet below with its lighter gravity, that and the opportunity to work with aliens. Now several rotations later she still enjoyed her work and had a number of friends with her Hilox neighbors and coworkers, in addition to the fellow human coworkers at the research institute.

Why the Embassy requested her was still somewhat unclear. Given her expertise in Hilox biology, the obvious answer was they wanted a local scientist familiar with Hilox anatomy. Specifically a medical expert. She wondered how she ended up on that list. Maybe everyone else had said no.

The doors of the waiting room slid open and a well dressed woman of vaguely Asian descent walked through. Alexa turned off her Screen and stood as the stranger extended a hand.

“Doctor Khatri I presume. I am Ambassador Suwong.” Said the woman, a charming smile on her face.

“Yes. Pleasure to make your acquaintance.” The two women shook hands. The Ambassador gestured for Khatri to follow her into the hallway. Khatri tucked her Screen away and hurried to catch up.

“I hope your trip was pleasant.”

“Ah yes, the shuttle ride was very short.”

“Mm, sorry to call you on such short notice but the Hilox called for this meeting just yesterday.”

“So what is my role here?”

Suwong stopped suddenly and Khatri nearly ran into her

“You mean you don’t know? I thought someone would have briefed you already.”

Khatri shook her head. Once she had arrived on the station she had been shunted into the waiting room and left to her own devices with everyone rushing off to other duties. Occasionally someone had popped into the room and asked for someone and when Khatri shrugged they had ran off before she could ask them a question. And somewhat afraid to wander in a government building she had stayed put.

“Well I don’t know quite what exactly either.” Suwong replied bluntly. She continued before Khatri could respond.

“All I know is that the Hilox said they want to discuss a recent plague some of their colonies are suffering some, some sort of request of aid. That’s why I called on you. You are the closest expert on Hilox physiology we could reach. I”m going to be relying on you to give me some context and translation for the science aspects.”

Khatri nodded her head.

“That was what I was told, I just thought there was more to it.”

Suwong shrugged. Khatri was a little alarmed at how cavalier she was being.

“I’m nearly in the dark as you are.”

Suwong pulled up a memo on her wrist screen.

“It’s what they call the Jinkor, they quarantined Joulkoub it’s gotten so bad.”

The two entered into a meeting room. A meeting room in name only as there were only a few chairs and no table with a young man pushing in another chair through a doorway.

“Doctor Khatri this is my aide, Terrance.”

Khatri shook Terrance’s hand. And they exchanged polite greetings.

“We’re expecting a party of 3 soon. Hurry up before they arrive.”

Terrance nodded and dashed out of the room.

“Where is everyone else?” Khatri asked, earlier it had appeared the embassy was a bustling hive but they had not met anyone in the corridors.

“A mercy fleet is on it’s way to help the Hilox and coordinating with the logistics and legal aspects of that alone has been distracting. Plus we have a variety of civilian organizations also looking to contribute. Everyone is working overtime to handle those requests. But don’t worry, we’ll have a team outside to back us up here by the time the Hilox arrive.”

The meeting wasn’t for another 2 hours. In that brief window of time Khatri read all the recent news bulletins and articles on the Jinkor. Historically the illness had been a viral infection which in late stages of illness would cause paralysis of respiratory organs resulting in death. Treatments and vaccines for the disease had been around for centuries limiting its effect to impoverished regions. But this resurgence appeared to be the result of a mutated strain that was resistant to treatments and rapidly advanced to the late lethal stages in a quarter the normal time. Khatri tapped a finger against her temple in thought.

Immunology was not Khatri’s specific field of expertise, but she knew enough of Hilox physiology to know the basic mechanism of the Hilox immunological systems and some of the more general treatments they applied. The Jinkor virus in her mind drew a parallel to the human disease polio, an ancient disease long since eradicated. There was no question that the disease was worrisome, but Khatri figured it was only a matter of time before the Hilox found a working treatment. The Hilox were an advanced race, with significant resources and the means to create a viable treatment. Why the Hilox would call request an emergency meeting with humans was beyond her.

The same question was running unspoken through Suwong’s mind as well. In between answering Khatri’s questions and summarizing the procedure of intergalactic negotiations she was also looking over previous briefings. Trying to gauge what the Hilox attitudes or requests would be. Her report on the Hilox request had been processed by Central and they were in the dark as much as her. They didn’t say that in such terms but the phrased reply, “proceed cautiously and give continual updates”, certainly gave that impression.

The Hilox and Federation could be described as distant in relations. The Hilox existed in a region of space that had a number of other sentients and the Federation became just another in a long list for them to ignore. In the grand scheme of things there were certainly worse ways to be regarded. There existed peace, but it was a dull peace. Besides the usual trade, travel, and border negotiations there was little other official activity between the two interstellar civilizations. Private enterprises like that of Suwong’s company only retained a small fairly nominal presence in Hilox space. The arrival of the mercy fleet would mark one of the largest interactions to date. Central’s summarized position on the Hilox had remained the same since first contact, good neighbors. Suwong hoped that wouldn’t change today.

As the time of the meeting approached Suwong passed Khatri a screen from a briefcase Terrance had brought in when he had returned from another trip.

“I should have done this earlier, but it slipped my mind. This is a locked screen, protocol dictates we use them for any official business. Go ahead and transfer any data you have right now. It has a secure connection to the Internet so you can still look up things. As I’m sure you are aware the Hilox communicate with us via text and you should find the texting app on there already.”

Khatri took the screen. It was slightly heavier than hers and its lock screen emblem was that of the Embassy’s. Connecting the two she transferred the files she had saved and set her own screen away. Suwong set her screen on the table and turned to the two.

“As we discussed earlier. I’ll be taking lead for the discussions. I’ll ask Professor Khatri if I need clarification. Terrance, keep in connection with the others and follow normal protocol.”

Despite herself Khatri felt a slight tingling of excitement. Akin to when she was close to a breakthrough. There was an air of political intrigue beginning to permeate the air. She checked her reflection in the darkened screen and suddenly wished she had asked for a glass of water.

---

Acolyte of Xeno Biology J’Xun sat nervously in the atrium just outside the doorway to the meeting room. Besides him towered the much larger Praetor K’Gholun, who was eyeing the Marine guard at the door with curiosity. J’Xun understood the interest. Humans remained a rare sight in Hilox space and for the Praetor who had an extensive military background, seeing a human soldier in person was bound to be something of interest. The Praetor’s aide, J’Ryn was closer to his own age and was busily compiling some file for the upcoming meeting.J’Xun could feel his body heat rising with the pressure. Lives were at stake and he sincerely wished someone else was in his place. But it was his team that had made the discovery which ostentatiously meant he had earned the honor. The bigger question would be if the humans would be willing to hear them out.

The guard at the door must have received a signal because he held up a display with the words, “They are ready.” written in Hilox in front. The doors slid open and the three entered.

There were three humans sitting at a long table. 2 dressed in similar uniforms, the other dressed in a different manner of uniform. J’Xun hadn’t studied humans enough to determine any more than that. Though he could presume the center human was the equivalent to the Praetor. There were 3 long chairs set up for Hilox physiology. And J’Xun eased into the one facing the mismatched human. The human eyed him levelly, somewhat unnerving the reclusive scientist.

Praetor K’Gholun “spoke” first. The words appearing in between the two species on a glass pane in the middle of the table in language readable to both sides.

“Thank you for agreeing to meet with us on such short notice. I am Praetor K’Gholun representing the Hilox government.”

The middle human entered something into a device and words now in a different color began to scroll across the glass.

“It is not problem, I understand it is a matter of great urgency. I am Ambassador Suwong.”

The other four introduced themselves the different colored text displaying their identity and names.

And so the meeting began. With the Praetor giving context.

“As I’m sure you are aware there is a significant health crisis on several of our worlds. The Jinkor as the media has labeled it. It is ravaging our populations and putting severe strains on our medical institutions. The situation is worse than we have let the public know. If things don’t turn around the collapse of the Hilox civilization will be inevitable. We believe the humans can assist us.”

Ambassador Suwong took a moment to remind the Hilox of their active efforts.

“I assume you are talking about more than physical aid. The mercy fleet we have volunteered is on it’s way, and some civilian organizations are already on the ground.”

“The charity given by humanity is greatly appreciated. But our request today is something more... controversial.”

The fact that the Praetor had typed out what the computer had translated into ellipses was not lost on the Federation Ambassador, her earpiece having gone silent as the other room listened in closely.

“I will let Acolyte J’Xun explain.”

J’Xun almost choked. The Praetor who had faced the Viscek hive legions and the Dark Spheres was balming in the face of the request. But then again, it was no small request, it was akin to asking the humans to sacrifice their lives. J’Xun gathered his thoughts, realizing that he would have to start at the beginning.

“Let me start at the beginning.”

---

Khatri perked up at the word acolyte. It was the Hilox equivalent to scientist. Suwong looked at her and gave a slight nod. It was likely her turn to step up.

The acolyte began to go on. Paragraphs of text began to scroll along the glass. Suwong gave up on trying to decipher the technical jargon and instead turned to Khatri. Khatri felt like a translator, converting the Hilox terms to human ones and then converting those into a simpler versions for the other two to understand.

The acolyte and his team had been running tests with the Jinkor virus with various alien cell cultures. The purpose of this common test to confirm that there was no compatibility that would lead to cross species infection. Since diseases evolved to target specific organisms cross species infections were exceedingly rare, but the mere existence of that chance demanded such tests. In every case mixing infected Hilox cells with alien cells resulted in no sign of cross infection occurring in the alien cells. However there was an unusual outlier with the human sample. In every other test the infected Hilox cells had been destroyed as time progressed, usually as the infection progressed to end stage within the cells. But in the human samples, portions of Hilox cells had survived.

Further examination had led the team to discover that the human cells had forced the virus into a stage of latency, or remission. Leaving the Hilox cells untouched of signs of infection. This was a breakthrough. The mutations of the virus had resulted in difficulties in creating a vaccine. A quick clinical trial confirmed the initial results, human blood injected into a host ceased the progression of infection. A possible treatment in lieu of a vaccine.The team had gone further by attempting to isolate the elements that led to the Jinkor virus remission. Initially they thought it was the human immune system, but though the human immune cells were capable of destroying the virus they did not spare the Hilox cells either.

However after some more trials they isolated hemoglobin as the target molecule. Hemoglobin better known as red blood cells.

At this point Khatri interrupted. Her text providing a sharp break to the long string of the acolyte’s text.

“Wait, wait, wait. How do red blood cells cause a virus to go into remission?”

“Red blood cells?” The acolyte’s text queried back.

“Sorry, hemoglobin. What’s the mechanism behind forcing the virus into remission.”

“We are still trying to figure that out. But so far our tests have shown that an injection of purified hemoglobin sends the virus into remission.”

“But you must have a theory? The iron core or maybe its oxygen affinity?”

“We haven’t yet been able to determine that.”

“Fascinating.” Khatri said aloud. Seeing that Khatri was becoming lost in thought Suwong leaned forward to type out question.

“So what you are asking for is blood.”

At this the alien acolyte froze, looking at it’s compatriots who looked uncomfortable. After a great length the Praetor typed out.

“Yes.”

Suwong leaned back.

“So they want blood.” She muttered under her breath. That would be a fun report to write later. Terrance looked like he was about to have an aneurism. Her own earpiece had gotten unusually silent as well.

The ambassador looked at Khatri speaking directly to her.

“If we gave them permission to produce human blood what would that entail? If I recall my high school biology correctly blood cells are extremely simple.”

“Blood cells come from stem cells. Giving them access would be incredibly controversial, regardless of intent.” Khatri said shutting that option down.

Terrance spoke up as well.

“We also don’t have any industries that produce blood in the quantities required. It’s never been needed. But there are other options. The mercy fleet is still stockpiling supplies. We could ask them to pick up human blood, even filter out the white blood cells.”

Suwong nodded eyeing the aliens sitting across the table who were visibly becoming distressed with the ongoing discussion. She tapped a message into the Screen.

“We would be willing to assist.”

Terrance immediately began tapping on his Screen, undoubtedly communicating with the others in the other room to get to work.

The aliens seemed to visibly relax, the aide appearing to quaver with emotion. The Praetor carefully typed a message.

“Your sacrifices will never be forgotten.”

*Uh, what?* Suwong frowned. Even for a Hilox that phrasing was odd.

“It will not be a big sacrifice, humans give blood all the time.”

This seemed to startle the scientist alien who interjected.

“Is blood not vital for you to live? How can extracting blood not be lethal?”

Suwong realized that the Hilox had a poorer understanding of human biology than her.

“Blood is replaced continuously, and humans give blood all the time.”

After a second she added, “We don’t give all the blood, just about a half liter at a time. It’s a careful procedure which ensures safety of the donor.”

This seemed to shock the aliens, and Khatri suddenly recalled that they had no such medical practice. Humans were surprisingly lacking in diversity compared to other species, at a broad scale anyway. Even dogs had at least 13 major blood groups compared to human’s 4. Even just looking at the three Hilox in front of her she could see a drastic size difference and unique head shape between each of them. If she recalled correctly the acidity of Hilox blood could vary from 6 to 10 which would make the notion of standardizing blood transfusions quite absurd.

The aliens still seemed stunned. “Why would you take blood?” This time it was the aide who was asking.

“In case someone needs it.” Suwong said, somehow inserting a shrug into her line of text.

“Loss of blood as you said previously can be fatal to humans. Which is why having a storage of blood on hand is beneficial to us.”

Khatri interrupted, ignoring the aliens who silently grappled with the implications of what Suwong had just described.

“I was doing some research on that, the nearest sizable blood bank is over 2 months away. Blood can only be kept in cold storage for maybe 50 to 60. There are smaller ones that are closer, but I’m talking really small. We should look into a fresher source.”

“Getting rather vampiric aren’t we.” Suwong joked.

Khatri ignored her, and continued on.

“I would suggest we look into the Trident Warp Hub. Lots of humans funnel through there to get to this region. An impromptu bank could be opened there.”

“Yeah. That’s a good idea.” Suwong affirmed.

*We could also pull some blood out of whatever troops we have stationed in the sector.* She thought to herself.

The meeting closed with the cementing of details. Despite the Hilox’s somewhat awkward efforts, Suwong declined the their offer of compensation. The task of gathering the blood would be left for the humans to manage. Leaving the Hilox to prepare for the arrival of the mercy fleet. The Hilox delegate left feeling quite relieved, having evaded offending the humans, and buying their people more time.

And thus the crisis was averted. When the call went out people responded. Analysts estimated that combat efficiency in some units dropped 10% with soldiers competing to give more blood against doctor orders. The mercy fleet rapidly distributing the aid across the affected zones. In some cases the humanitarian workers gave blood on the field. Directly infusing with the sickened Hilox when they encountered shortages. The blood shortages didn’t last long. Khatri’s proposition was inspired brilliance. Nearly half a million humans went through the Trident Warp Hub daily. Every human who arrived received a message from the diplomatic office, requesting their aid. Alien travelers were greeted with the unusual sight of hundreds upon thousands of humans giving blood. Laid back on couches and benches with devices pumping them for blood. Like a macabre harvest. Appearances aside the result was fantastic. The tidal wave of deaths was stemmed by human blood. Regular donations of blood continued until the Hilox were able to create a permanent cure. It was an act of charity that the Hilox would long remember, paving a path for the induction of the Hilox into the Federation.

#hfy #story #blood donor #sci fi #writing

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