#i’m so tired of seeing the narrative that americans brought this on themselves

[faramirsonofgondor]

Just saw someone (non-American) laughing about how Donald trump pulled us out of the WHO. I get a lot of people think that people in the U.S. “brought this on themselves” or whatever tf. But y’all need to realize that there is a LOT of us who did not want him in office and are terrified right now. I think a lot of y’all just also don’t understand how the voting system works in the U.S. There are U.S. citizens who are over 18 that cannot vote because they’re homeless, there are people in the U.S. who cannot vote because they unable to get off work to do so. When I went to cast my ballot on election day, the woman in front of me had to leave because she was going to be late for her shift. You have to have to vote in a certain place as well - you can’t just vote wherever there’s a poll. There are many other reasons why people in the U.S. are unable to vote. This isn’t by accident either. There’s a reason why our elections are held on Tuesdays, and it’s not to make our lives easier. There are a bunch of fucking roadblocks when it comes to voting - not to mention the fact that certain mail-in votes were discounted for various reasons or “lost”, and voters weren’t alerted in time to recast their ballot. Not to mention voter suppression for Native Americans.

My point is that the election was a close race, and just because he won doesn’t mean that the majority of Americans wanted him to win. Trump had about 1.5% more Americans vote for him than for Harris. Not even 50% of Americans voted for him. Less than half of people in our country who voted, voted for him. It was close, but it still wasn’t 50%. So yes, a lot of Americans are terrified and upset right now, and a majority of those people didn’t bring on themselves because they weren’t the ones who voted for him. So instead of laughing about how millions of Americans are and will be suffering, maybe be a little compassionate.

[seungmvnnie]

Flipped

pairing; Chenle x reader

genre; enemies to lovers au, ‘American high school’ au, angst, fluff

word count; 10.8k

summary; ‘The moment you laid eyes on Zhong Chenle, you had flipped.’ You had known that you were in love with Chenle, your next door neighbor, since you were 7 years old. Chenle wanted nothing to do with you. Until of course, ten years later he starts to realize that perhaps there’s more to you that meets the eye, unluckily just as you began to realize, perhaps Chenle was less than you had chalked him up to be.

warnings; insensitive language regarding illness, death, female reader, heavily inspired by the movie flipped, some scenes are near word for word from the movie, so credits to the movie for those parts, although parts of the main narrative differ, as well as scenes. A large majority of the characters are not similar to their real life counterpart. 

tag list; @sunflowerhae​ @byunbaekby​​ @mikasrecs​(if you asked to be on the tag list and i didn’t tag you, i’m very sorry, i was terrible at tracking who was on it cause im an idiot)

a/n; Started making it. Had a breakdown. Bon Appetit.

It all began in the Summer before second grade. In Zhong Chenle’s eyes, it was the beginning of a decade of strategic avoidance, awkward encounters, and a lifetime worth of what he deemed to be, discomfort.

For you, it was true love.

The moment you laid eyes on Zhong Chenle, you had flipped. It was something in those eyes, those dazzling brown eyes which bore into you. Or maybe it was something about his smile. There was something about him which made you realize that at 7 years old, you had met your soul mate. His family had just moved into your neighborhood, a long cul-de-sac of identical, modern two-story houses, the majority of which had the same identical clean cut lawns and typical nuclear well off family who owned the house and prided themselves on how their petunias were better than the house across the streets. That was except for yours, of course. Deemed the ‘embarrassment of the neighborhood,’ the yellow paint on your house was flaking off, the grass dry and grey and the fence encasing the yard, which had at one point been white was now a dull grey, not to mention falling apart in some places. This was attributed to the fact that your father simply did not have the time. As a painter, he had to work extra hard to provide for his family, especially considering your mother’s situation.

It was a hot summer’s day, the day Chenle moved in. You could remember the feeling of the sun on your face as you basked in its warmth, the pavement on which you sat almost boiling as the moving van pulled up to the house opposite yours. You had recalled that your father had told you to always be kind and helpful, which is why you had thought it appropriate to skip across the road to the nice looking family and offer a helping hand.

Little did you know, your help was unwanted. Chenle remembered watching the girl skip – skip? As if anyone had done that since kindergarten – from the odd-looking house across the way and when she confidently stated,

“Hi, I’m (Y/N) (Y/L/N). Need any help?” He looked to his father for confirmation that this girl was strange. He noticed the judgmental look which was written on his father’s face as he surveyed the girl with the messy hair and grubby clothes, no doubt from playing in the unpleasant yard which she came from that juxtaposed with their clean, green yard. He recognized the exact moment that his father deemed them better than her, a switch in his face where he knew where she stood on the social ladder. Acting according, he too looked at the girl with disdain.

“There’s some valuable things in those boxes. Don’t touch them.” His father had scolded as you reached for one of the boxes that were stacked on their lawn.

“What about this one?” You suggested, reaching for another one. This was the moment that Chenle had realized that this girl could not take a hint. His father had pushed the box away with his foot before you could even touch it.

“Maybe you should run home? Your moms probably worried about you.” He sneered, staring down his nose on you. Resilient, you stared back.

“My dad knows I’m here.” You had replied simply, before turning to Chenle.

“Want to push one together?” You asked, pointing at one of the heavier ones. Chenle scrunched his face up at you, looking to his father for answers.

“I think your mom wants your help in the house, Chenle.” His dad had replied, not so subtly winking at him, as if to say, ‘escape from the crazy girl while you can.’

 He seized the opportunity, turning on his heel and running towards the house, where his mother stood in the doorway, when the most ridiculous thing happened. Not only did (Y/N) (Y/L/N) follow him, but you grabbed his hand.

“Oh, hello! I see you’ve met my son.” His mother had called out, a small smile growing on her face as she observed the sight of the two 7-year olds connected by their hands.

Chenle, having no clue how to escape the situation, did the most mature thing a 7-year-old boy could do. He hid behind his mother.

Who did you think you were? He had been here for less than 10 minutes and he had some crazy girl trying to hold his hand.

Of course, for you, you really had thought you were being kind. The boxes on the lawn did look intimidatingly heavy but you were sure with the help of the cute boy stood next to them, you could help get them into the house. You hadn’t picked up on the fact that it had taken Mr. Zhong all of 10 seconds to determine that you weren’t worthy of their time and when he had sent his son inside to help unpack, you thought maybe it would be a good idea to chase after him, see if he wanted to play for a bit before he was stuck unpacking boring boxes. You had grabbed his arm to stop him from running into his house, when he turned around and moved his arm out of your clasp, grabbing your hand instead.

You could remember vividly, the way your stomach had flipped as he stared at you with those deep brown eyes, and you had been so sure he was going to kiss you. He had held your hand! At 7, you had basically considered that a marriage proposal. If his mother had not have called out to you, you were sure you were going to have had your first kiss at 7 years old. The way he blushed and hid behind his mother was adorable, he was so shy.

That night you lay awake, thinking of the boy who was walking around with your first kiss.

If only he wasn’t so shy, maybe he would have. That was the moment you decided, you were going to do everything in your power to ensure that Chenle would not have to ever feel shy around you. He needed to know; he had a friend in you.

While sweet in theory, the reality of the situation was, Chenle believed he did not need the help of, what his father had referred to the evening after you, your two older brothers and your father brought over homemade pies, ‘trash like them.’ He especially did not need the help of the girl who embarrassed him on the first day of school. Yes, you had thought it appropriate, upon seeing Chenle enter the classroom of Mr. Lee on the very first day of school, to run up to him and give him a huge hug, which he of course, had struggled against. That’s what had earned him the reputation of being (Y/N) (Y/L/N)’s boyfriend, a reputation he did not manage to shrug off until freshman year of high school, and he only got rid of through dating Lee Chaeryong for an incredibly brief period of time, who was perfectly sweet, but he didn’t find her particularly interesting.

For a while, he found dealing with Chaeryong’s insistence yammering about nothing he cared about a lot easier to endure than the lovesick eyes you gave him. The plan was, he would walk her to class a few times, sit with her at lunch and eventually, you would lose interest, he could break up with her.  It was all going smoothly, until his best friend, Park Jisung, suddenly decided to get a moral backbone for once and tell Chaeryong what Chenle was doing. Chenle reckoned it was just because of Jisung’s own crush on her, but either way, it had resulted in a very public breakup. A week later, you were back to obsessing over him, and once again he became, (Y/N)’s boyfriend.

 3 years later, their senior year, brought a lot of changes, the main change of which being Chenle’s grandfather had permanently moved in with their family. Chenle did not know much of his grandfather. An old surly man, he spent his days sat in the armchair beside their front window, staring blankly out into the empty street. Chenle’s mom said he did that because he missed grandma, although Chenle would not know as much he had very little conversations with him. The second change in Chenle’s life was more superficial as everyone was talking about how much (Y/N) had grown between the summer of junior and senior year – your face had thinned out, and you had a much more of a mature air about you and for a brief moment of, what Chenle had deemed insanity, he may have mistaken you as pretty. Of course, the second you had sent him the same goofy smile which graced your face every time you looked at him, and murmured the same,

“Hi, Chenle,” the pit in his stomach from the tired repetition of ten years returned.

“Hi, (Y/N).” He had replied, a tight-lipped smile sent your way.

 It is imperative to the justification of your side of the story that you understand that Chenle had never once openly rejected you, or even treated you rudely. You would talk to him when you could, and he would reply perfectly politely, which would only reinforce the idea that it’s not that he did not like you, he was just shy. On top of that, it was not as if you actively pursued him. You spoke to him like one would a friend as, how you saw it, everyone knew you liked Chenle, no doubt, including him. If he wanted to, he would ask you out. Other than that, you were content talking to him when you could.

 Other than your looks, a lot more had changed in your life. For almost as long as you could remember, your mother had been sick. There had been a time, a very long time ago, where you could recall how the same scalic motif would echo from the piano which now lay dormant, the thick layer of dust that had blanketed it over the years rendering it inoperable. Your life had been filled with hospital visits to a woman you had never really gotten the opportunity to know and who no longer knew you. You often grazed your hand over the ivory piano keys, and tried to flick through the penciled sheet music which hadn’t been touched since the last time your mom had last scribbled on them but to you it was a foreign language you could only hope to understand.

About a week into September, you had been ignoring your English teacher’s in-depth analysis of some Shakespeare scene and letting your thoughts and eyes wander to where Chenle sat two seats in front of you. His black hair had seemed even darker that day, contrasting with the white t-shirt and denim jacket he was wearing. You were so focused on the way his head would duck down to take notes, that you barely noticed the teacher who had slid into the classroom and leaned to whisper something in your teacher’s ear. It wasn’t until your teacher had called your name and Chenle had spun to stare at you alongside the rest of the class, his brown eyes meeting yours, that you had snapped back into reality, the heat of your embarrassment at getting caught by Chenle warming your face. Funnily enough, you had forgotten about your embarrassment when your teacher had called you out into the hallway, where your tearful father stood. He didn’t have to say anything. You knew.

The next week all blurred together into a flurry of emotions which you purposefully tried your best to forget. The funeral was huge, groups of people from your school coming to show solidarity, as well as the entire neighborhood, including Chenle and his family. You could not bring yourself to glance at him, not with your father crying quietly next to you. You did not know whether to cry for the woman you had never met before. 

  Your school allowed you the next few months off school, but you had returned after only one month and that month was the quietest your house had ever been. Your father locked himself in his room for the first two weeks, and your brothers oversaw making dinner for the family, which essentially meant the whole family was living off frozen pizza for two weeks. Your dad eventually emerged from his bedroom, but when he did, he was like a man crazed. He insisted that you did a spring clean (it was September) of the house and get rid of the clutter which had gathered from the many years of neglect. You were in charge of sorting through all of the things your dad wanted to give to charity, and you had invited your friend Shin Ryujin over to help. More like she insisted. Ryujin had been new to town in freshmen year and had befriended you before she had known of your reputation as ‘Chenle’s stalker,’ and she had been a fierce friend ever since. You had both been folding a pile of old clothes when your eyes fell on your mom’s old music stand accompanied with that oh so familiar stack of written sheet music under a pile of old toys. 

You didn’t want your mom’s handwritten sheet music to end up in a charity shop but your dad had insisted that no one was using it, and, unless you could think of someone else to give it to, it was going to charity. That was when, luckily, you remembered Chenle. He was a skilled piano player and singer, so much so, the whole school anticipated his performance in the Christmas Talent Show, which he had won for the past 3 years. Upon gaining your father’s permission, but against the wishes of Ryujin who had spent the past three years explaining how Chenle was terrible for you and you needed to, in her words, ‘Hoe it up,’ you made the journey across the road and knocked on Chenle’s door, clutching the music stand and sheet music to your chest. Luckily, he had been the one to open the door instead of his father whom you didn’t personally mind, but felt as though he may have disliked you. 

It had been early before school one morning, when you had knocked on his door. He was barely awake, the sweatpants and loose t-shirt he had worn for his pajamas still clung to his body. He hadn’t expected to be opening the door to someone from school, let alone you, awake and bright eyed. On a normal day, your chirpiness would have bothered him to no end, but today was different. He hadn’t seen you since your mom’s funeral, and he found that he had wounded up missing your ever-present annoyance. He didn’t know how reassuring that lovesick, “Hi, Chenle,” could be. He couldn’t understand how, in your absence, he found his eyes straying to your empty seat, or when he sat at his desk which lay in front of his window, his eyes would wander to where he knew your bedroom window sat. He had realized, in the few weeks that you were off, that your presence was more comforting that your absence.

His dad hadn’t wanted to go the funeral. Apparently, he didn’t see the point. It was his mother who had pushed them to go, saying how bad they would have looked if they didn’t show their faces. His dad had argued that he didn’t care how he looked to a poor dreamer and the ‘crazies he calls family.’ The only reason they ended up going was because his mom had said she was going with or without him and apparently that would look bad to everyone else in the neighborhood. Chenle didn’t see the harm; sure he didn’t like you, but you were always nice to him and it was only respectful.

“Uh- Hi, (Y/N).” He said, eyes wandering down your body to where you clutched the sheet music and back up to your face. Your heart had flipped, a sensation you were now old friends with and usually attributed to Chenle’s warm brown eyes which traversed your face, his morning voice only making him more attractive. Little did you know, Chenle’s biggest concern at this moment was less checking you out and more checking if you were okay, and judging by the tired bags under your eyes despite your outwardly cheery appearance, you didn’t look okay.

“Hi, Chenle.” For once, those two words didn’t make him want to rip his own hair out.

“Uh, these are my mom’s. My dad wanted to give them to charity but, I don’t know, I thought they’d be better with someone I know... and well, you’re kind of the only musician I know.” His eyes flickered down to the sheet music you clutched in your arms.

“Oh- Thanks?” The music stand looked to Chenle to be at least 30 years old and the yellowing sheet music did not look too enticing, but he reached out his arms for them anyways.

“She wrote the music herself. You don’t have to play it but, I don’t know, I just really didn’t want to see it end up in the back of some charity shop. At least I know, with your talent, it’s in good hands.”

“Oh, well thanks.” You sent him an awkward closed mouth smile before turning on your heel but before you could make the short walk across the road, he called out to you.

“Wait-”

You spun around again.

“Yeah?”

He had stood up from where he had previously been leaning against the door frame, his brow now furrowed.

“Are you- are you coming back to school anytime soon?” He almost cringed as he uttered the words. He always felt bad being nice to you, it felt as if he was giving you false hope. However, for the first time, it came naturally to him as opposed to the fake smile he would give you.

“I’m allowed off until January but I’m coming back next week. It’s just so... quiet at my house. I’m kind of sick of it at this point.” His eyes scanned your face again, in the way that felt as though he could stare into your very soul if he looked hard enough.

“Well, I hope you’re okay.” The sincerity in his voice echoed the sympathetic look on his face.

“Thanks. I’ll see you next week, I guess.”

“See you at school.” He closed the door and looked at the music stand he had left leaning against the wall, which, unfortunately, became the topic of discussion that night at the dinner table.

“I think it was very nice of her to give you that stuff, Chenle.” His Mom had said, the clinking sounds of cutlery against plates underlying the conversation.

“I’m not using them,” He replied simply, as he moved the vegetables his mom had forcibly placed on his plate around with his fork. 

“Oh, don’t be a dick, Chenle.” His sister nudged him, ignoring their parent shouts of, ‘language!’

“I’m not being a dick, they’re about 30 years old and I’m a piano player, I don’t use a music stand anyways.” He placed his fork down.

“Well, they’re not lying here and collecting dust. I’m honestly annoyed. Just because their house is all cluttered doesn’t mean our house has to be. You can go back and tell her you don’t want them.” His dad interjected, in that authoritarian manner he so loved.

“Dad, I can’t do that.”

“Eat your vegetables, Chenle.” His mom said, taking a sip from her way-too-expensive crystal wine glass. He rolled his eyes and picked up his fork again, purposely taking a bite out of the broccoli which adorned his plate.

“Why not? Are you scared of her?” His dad challenged, and Chenle couldn’t help but notice the broccoli which remained on his plate. Why did Chenle have to eat it but his dad didn’t?

“I’m not scared of her, it’s just- Her mom just died. I don’t want to be mean.” His fork stopped moving as his Father scoffed.

“Man up. You aren’t being rude, you’re being honest.”

“Chenle, vegetables.” 

He groaned, shoveling as much of the vegetables into his mouth as he possibly could in one go before sinking down in his chair. He didn’t have a clue what to do. On one hand, the music equipment was of no use to him, so realistically, it would make the most sense to give them back. But on the other hand, if he gave them back they would just end up with charity and while Chenle didn’t necessarily like the girl, he didn’t think he could be that insensitive. Which was why he had deemed it an amazing idea to ask the paragon of good advice, his best friend, Park Jisung, at school the next day.

“Dude, just give it away yourself.” Jisung had answered assertively, from where he had perched himself atop his desk during their break, opening the cupcake that Chenle had given him. It had originally been a gift from Chaeryong who had long since forgiven him since the Freshmen incident, and every now and then when she got bored, would return to her phase of crushing on him.

“What do you mean?” Chenle asked, ignoring the way he could most definitely see Chaeryong staring at him from behind Jisung’s head, taking a sip of the strawberry milk he had bought from the school vending machine. Jisung rolled his eyes.

“I mean, if you give it away to some thrift shop first, she’ll never know, and you can tell your family that you told her. Boom, both people are happy.” Chenle chewed at the straw of his milk carton. He wasn’t necessarily wrong; in giving the stuff away himself, no one got hurt and he wouldn’t get called a coward by his family.

“Jisung, you’re a genius. Come with me after school? We’ll drop by my house and I’ll drive us into town.” Jisung nodded, cringing as he picked the love heart candy off the cupcake.

Unfortunately for Chenle, he hadn’t seemed to realize that, sat with her back to him was Ryujin, who had overheard the whole conversation, mostly because Chaeryong had insisted they eavesdropped on them to see if they talked about her. Ryujin had let Chenle away with a lot over the years; he had ignored you, laughed at you with his friends, talked about you behind his back and while she would discuss how much of a prick she thought he was with you, you never believed her, or blamed yourself, or make excuses for him. Which was why she deemed it a necessary evil to send you a text saying, ‘Want to go thrift shopping after school? I’ll buy you coffee?’

She knew you would never turn down free coffee. And it actually had turned out you had multiple boxes to donate anyways, although shopping with Ryujin was always an experience. You liked clothes shopping as much as anyone, but Ryujin was crazy. She could take 3 hours to go through one tiny shop.

“Ryujin? Are you done yet?” You had whined, the cardboard coffee cup in your hand had been emptied at least half an hour ago, and you had finished looking for clothes an hour ago. She was especially taking her time today, deliberating every item of clothing she saw and the dark lighting was starting to hurt your eyes, the musky smell of cedar wood and laundry detergent was inviting at first, but now made you feel woozy.

“My feet hurt.” You complained again, only pouting at the joke glare she shot your way. The bell which jingled every time someone entered the shop that you had learned to zone out the past two hours rang again, but this time, Ryujin’s eyes flickered up and rested on the person standing at the door. You furrowed your brow and spun to see who she was staring at, and there stood Chenle and Jisung, both looking positively ill.

“Oh- Hi, Chenle!” You waved, a small smile gracing your face. You cocked your head slightly to look at the two boys who had lost all color to their faces. Chenle still looked as good as ever, and the smell of his citrusy shampoo paired with his expensive smelling cologne cut through the woody scent of the shop, his chestnut brown eyes which lay beneath his messy mop of dark hair bringing butterflies to your stomach the way they always did.

“What’s wrong? You look as if you’ve seen a-,” you didn’t get to finish your sentence as your eyes had fallen down to where he clutched the oh so familiar sheet music and music stand. Your smile dropped, the butterflies in your stomach mutating into lead.

“What are you doing with those?” You asked, quietly, ignoring the way Jisung almost ran back out of the shop.

“I- uh- well...” He looked down, staring guiltily at his hands and the rusty music stand he clutched.

“If you didn’t want them you could have said, you know. You didn’t have to go behind my back to give them away.” You snapped, and for the first time in your whole life, looking at Chenle made your heart sink instead of flip. 

“It wasn’t me! My dad said that he didn’t-” He stopped, as if he had caught himself.

“Didn’t what?” You asked, raising an eyebrow. He sighed, and glance to the side, almost as though he was refusing to meet your eyes.

“He said he didn’t understand why our house had to be cluttered just because you only started cleaning up your house and yard now.” He mumbled, and your eyes widened, and you put out an arm to stop Ryujin, who you could sense was about to jump on the boy.

“I didn’t think a bunch of sheet music was going to destroy your house that much.” You replied, letting out a huff and gulping away the lump in your throat, refusing to cry in front of him.

“I just didn’t want to hurt your feelings.” He mumbled, staring at his hands in shame. He had never wished that the ground would swallow him whole more in his entire life.

“You should have told me. Give them to the shop, honestly. I don’t care anymore.” You pushed past him, resisting the urge to throw the empty cardboard coffee cup at him.

“(Y/N)!” He called after you and you turned again, blinking back the tears which were gathering in your eyes, the constant chanting of, ‘don’t cry,’ becoming a sustained pedal in your head and realistically being the only thing stopping the tears from spilling.

“What?”

“I- I’m sorry.” His chestnut eyes you loved so much stared at you in that sincere way that felt as though he could stare into your soul if he tried hard enough, but for once, you could see a corruption in the honesty, a sort of rotten core to what you had previously thought was a pure center.

“No, you’re not.” You mumbled, before spinning back round and dragging Ryujin out by the wrist who had to drop the clothes she had clutched previously in a pile next to the door, having been given no opportunity to replace them tidily.

At first you had thought you were upset, the burning sensation in your chest was mistaken for sadness, but when you brought your hand up to your eyes to wipe away the tears which now fell, the downtrodden feeling switched into anger very quickly. Not only did Chenle lie and act as if he had cared about you and your family, but he had the audacity to talk about you all as if you were a group of hoarders who couldn’t keep your yard presentable.

You slammed your car door shut - while you had previously loved your run-down little jeep, you supposed perhaps the Zhong family liked to comment on that too - ignoring the comforting words Ryujin was uttering as she climbed into the passenger seat.

“Are you busy on Saturday?” You asked as you gripped the steering wheel so tightly your knuckles turned white, turning the key in the ignition.

“Uh- I don’t think so. Why?” Ryujin replied, eyeing you warily.

“How do you feel about gardening?”

It didn’t take long for Chenle to realize he had traded in his old problems with (Y/N) (Y/L/N) for a whole set of new ones. You had returned to school the next week, and the way you constantly avoided him was simply a reminder of how much of a jerk he had been. Not to mention when he woke up on Saturday morning to discover you and Ryujin in your garden pulling up weeds, the guilt panging in his chest as he watched you toil away.

Then one day a week later or so, he was walking back from playing basketball from Jisung when things got weird.

His grandfather stood in your front yard, a pair of sheers in hand as he clipped at the hedges which had grown over your windows, conversing quietly with you as you worked.

He had only ever seen his grandfather in slippers - where the hell had those work boots come from? He didn’t even know his grandfather knew how to use sheers let alone would willingly help a random girl from across the street. The more he watched from his bedroom window, the madder he got. His grandfather had said more to you in the last hour than he had the whole time he had lived with them. Chenle wasn’t even sure if he had ever seen his grandfather laugh before, but there he was, laughing at something you said.

You had been struggling with hacking away the hedge when his grandfather had approached you. Ryujin had abandoned helping you a while ago, but you still appreciated the help she had given you originally. You knew gardening wasn’t necessarily her thing. You wanted to think that the reason you had decided to fix up your yard was not because of what Zhong Chenle thought of you, but to make your house better in this new pre-mom times, as your brothers had begun calling them. After what he had done with your mom’s sheet music, why were you meant to care about anything he thought? But sadly, you knew deep down you did.

“Are you pruning that Hedge or hacking it to death?” You heard someone call out, and you swung around to see a man whom you couldn’t help but recognize as being related to Chenle. They had the same smile.

You laughed awkwardly, clutching the sheers a little tighter. 

“I’m Chenle’s grandfather. Sorry it’s taken me so long to come over and introduce myself.” He smiled again and outstretched a hand which you then shook.

“Nice to meet you.” 

“Are you planning on cutting these all to the same height?” He gestured towards the hedges. You breathed in, looking at the hedges which you had previously been ruining.

“That was the plan, but I might have to take them out. I’m not very good at this, if you can’t tell.” You joked.

“Oh, these are Hicksii shrubs. They should prune up nicely.” He replied, pulling out a pair of gloves he had appeared to have brought with him, and reached out for the sheers you had been holding.

You eyed him wearily, as he cut at the hedge. “Listen, Mr. Zhong, if you’re here because of what Chenle said, I don’t need your help.”

He leaned back and looked at you sincerely.

“I don’t know what my little shit of a grandson said to you, but I’m just here because of the crime you were committing on these shrubs.”

The previous reluctance you had felt was immediately relieved as you let out a sincere laugh, not expecting his crude language.

You both worked together on the yard for weeks, and the whole time you worked, you talked. Mr. Zhong was incredibly kind, and it was honestly nice to know that there was someone in that house who wasn’t watching and waiting for your families next screw up. He told you how you had the same spirit as his wife who died a while ago; apparently you both had the same strong will. Although the conversation that stuck with you the most was a few days into working together and he had tentatively asked you about what was happened with you and Chenle. You had explained the situation while you painted the wood you had bought together to make a fence.

“Well, do you like Chenle?” He had asked, and your face warmed, your hand which held the paint brush stilling.

“I don’t know... It’s something about his eyes, I guess.” You looked down, embarrassed. It felt really weird discussing this with his grandfather.

“But what about him?” Mr. Zhong had asked, his hand still as well.

“What do you mean?” You asked, eyebrows furrowing as you turned your head.

“Well - I mean think of it like this. Your father’s a painter, isn’t he? Well, a painting is more than the sum of its parts. You have to look at the whole landscape. A cow by itself is just a cow, a tree is just a tree, a beam of light is just sunshine, but when you put it all together - it can be something magical. Do you think Chenle’s more than the sum of his parts?” If he had asked you a month ago you would have said absolutely. Chenle was entirely more than the sum of his parts, in every conceivable way. But now you weren’t so sure.

“I- I don’t know.”

Meanwhile, Chenle was still struggling to apologize to you. He had spent all week trying to approach you at school, but when it came to holding a grudge, you were truly impressive. You always found a way to duck him, either turning in the hallway to walk the other way or having Ryujin exit through doors first when he tried to block them to confront you. And every time you were out in your yard, his grandpa was always there. It wasn’t until one day, on a cold Saturday morning towards the end of October, when his grandpa had gone into town to buy cream for his hands because all the yard work was starting to get to him, that he found his opening.

“It looks really good.” He commented, grabbing your attention from where you were watering the grass with a hose. You looked up at the boy whom you had dedicated your life to, who stood awkwardly behind the fence you had put up with his grandfather. You wished you could say he looked bad, but in a flannel shirt, black t-shirt and jeans he had never looked better.

“Thanks.” You said quietly, turning your back to him to continue your work.

“I- I’m sorry for what I did.” He piped up and you sighed before switching off the hose and turning towards him again.

“I don’t get it, Chenle. You could have just told me you didn’t need them. You didn’t have to give them away behind my back.” You looked at him, and for once, you were the one looking into his soul, not the other way around. You looked into those eyes, those dazzling brown eyes which bore into you that belonged to the boy walking around with your first kiss and you thought that perhaps his Grandpa was right. Maybe Chenle wasn’t more than the sum of his parts.

“I don’t know - It was dumb. I just didn’t want to hurt your feelings. I shouldn’t have said anything about your yard either. It wasn’t right.” You let your eyes rest on his face again. You were sure - Chenle was definitely less than the sum of his parts. You shrugged.

“Maybe it was for the best.” You turned back towards the grass, turning the hose on again as if to signal, this was the end of the conversation.

“I- I guess I’ll see you around.” He said, hesitantly. You didn’t even turn to look at him this time.

“I guess.”

He spun to make the short trek back to his house, but not without turning back to look at you one last time before opening the bright red door of his house. Your acceptance of his apology was not all he had hoped for, but at least now he could watch TV with his family with a guilt free conscious. although the atmosphere between his grandpa and dad was nearly palpable, especially when his grandfather reached for the cream on the table beside them to rub into his hands.

“That girl working you too hard?” His dad slyly commented, ignoring the foul look his grandfather sent him in response as he rubbed cream into his hands.

“’That girl’s’ name is (Y/N). And no, she isn’t working me too hard.” 

Chenle’s dad widened his eyes slightly, staring down into the brandy which he swirled in the glass he held.

“Do you not think it’s a bit, I don’t know, weird, that you have the time and energy to spend time with the girl next door but not with your own grandson?” He replied snippily, ignoring the way his mom interjected.

“-It’s okay, Dad-” Chenle began, but couldn’t finish as his father cut him off with a sharp, “No, it’s not.”

“Do you know why the (Y/L/N)’s hadn’t fixed up their yard until now?” His grandfather asked, more rhetorically than anything.

“Yeah. Because he’s too busy with his paint-by-numbers kit.” His dad answered, chortling to himself at his own joke, taking another sip of the brandy he was drinking.

“The illness Mrs. (Y/L/N) had was incredibly hard to treat, not to mention emotionally draining. Every penny they had went into hospital bills treating her, and even then, she had been in a coma for 8 years, and then unresponsive for another 5.” Chenle stared down at his hands, trying his best to zone out the argument, especially considering he had been the asshole who tried to give away this poor woman’s music.

“I don’t see what their vegetative mother has to do with their pride in ownership. Realistically, if she had looked after herself more, maybe they wouldn’t have been in this mess.” His dad had answered, once again laughing at his own joke.

“They don’t own that house, they rent it. It’s supposed to be the responsibility of the landlord, and it was nothing to do with how healthy that poor woman was, (Y/N)’s Mom had a blood condition that made her susceptible to strokes, and that’s what made her so ill.” Chenle’s mom sighed from where she sat next to him on the blue couch, before his father had the opportunity to reply and dig himself into a deeper hole.

“That poor family. We should have them over for dinner.” She announced, standing up, grabbing the still full glass from her husband’s hand as she moved into the kitchen.

“We are not having them over for dinner!” His father shouted from the living room.

“We should have them over for a sit down fancy dinner.” She replied, almost deliberately ignoring him.

“We are not - Hey!” He called out as he heard the buttons on the landline beep with each number his mother punched in.

“I’m sorry, I can’t here you over me inviting them over for- Oh hello, (Y/N), dear.” At the sound of your name, Chenle sank farther into the plush couch seats. He just wanted to watch television in peace.

“Shoot me now.” His dad mumbled.

“Careful what you wish for.” His Grandfather replied, not tearing his eyes from the tv and this time he was the one to ignore the evil look which was shot his way.

And so, dinner with the (Y/L/N)’s was in his imminent future, which only made things more uncomfortable at school. Much like when you had taken that month off in school, he found himself focused on the idea of you more than he had previously. He couldn’t get you out of his head, you and your poor mom. He thought he would apologize for the music thing, you would begrudgingly accept his apology, and you could live the rest of the senior year blissfully ignoring each other’s existents. While you had apparently stayed true to the plan, he couldn’t help the way his eyes drifted to find you in class. He had spent 10 years in the same class as you but he had never noticed how you automatically pulled your bottom lip into your mouth when you were focused on something or the way you smiled to stop yourself laughing when Ryujin mumbled some sort of snarky comment. In the same bout of insanity he had experienced at the beginning of the year, he may have mistaken your smile as being pretty. Except this time the insanity did not melt away into resentment, but instead grew into a roaring monster of butterflies anytime he saw you.

He was starting to think he was sick or something. It was like his whole life had been flipped upside down; in what universe was he the one with the clammy hands and racing heart around (Y/N) (/L/N), and she was the one ignoring him? He needed to talk to someone - and who better than the lord of advice himself, Park Jisung.

Luckily for him, him and Jisung were the first people in their home room class the day of the dinner; usually you were in early, but today you conveniently hadn’t been. “Dude, I need your help.” Chenle emphatically exclaimed, sitting down in his seat next to Jisung before explaining the situation.

“(Y/N) (Y/L/N)? You hate her. You’ve hated her for 10 years.” Jisung blankly stated, and Chenle shook his head. 

“That’s the thing, I don’t think I do. I can’t stop thinking about her.” Jisung rolled his eyes.

“You definitely hate her. Think about it, you just feel bad because of the mom thing. And you insulted her house, but I mean come on, it was a mess anyways.”

“It’s not her fault. Their family is in crazy amounts of debt because her mom had some sort of untreatable illness and she was sick for so long. Do you know apparently, she had been sick for like 13 years? It must have been torture on their family.” Chenle defended, the stubborn side of him which was declaring, it’s been a decade, why stop hating you now, losing out to this new need to defend you.

“Oh, God, really? Well then, there’s your answer.” Jisung replied, leaning back in his chair with confidence, as though he had just solved the world’s problems. Chenle’s eyebrows knotted together, cocking his head.

“What do you mean?” 

Jisung scoffed, as if it was the most obvious thing since the last advice he had kindly bestowed on Chenle.

“You don’t want to be with someone with that in their family. Dude what if she infects you with it?”

Chenle wanted to hit him. He was certain, he had never before in his life been closer to punching someone and God did Jisung deserve it. How dare he say that? He wanted to tell him that it was much more complex than Jisung’s derogatory simplification of your mother’s illness, and just because Jisung was failing biology did not mean he had the right to be going around and saying things like that about you. He wanted to tell Jisung to keep his stupid opinion to himself, but despite this intense fury he felt searing up his chest, all he could manage was a stiff laugh.

“Oh. Yeah.” He mumbled, not looking at him in case the smug smile which had graced Jisung’s face flipped the switch which would erupt the burning anger in his chest.

You had been running late that day. You liked getting up earlier and beating the traffic to school, now more than ever, with the sullen mood your house had fallen into, although with the dinner with the Zhong family in your near future, the three boys of your house appeared cheerier. Your father was good friends with Mrs. Zhong and she had always been a good neighbor, and your two brothers were old friends with Chenle’s older sister. You were only one against the idea, but realistically, what harm could one dinner do? You had woken up and been ready on time, but when you climbed into your sturdy little jeep and turned the ignition keys, the engine made an unfortunate spluttering sound, that rather sounded like it was simply giving up.

You had taken a stab at fixing it, popping the hood and pretending as though you had a single clue about what to look for, but upon realizing there was no hope you started glancing worriedly back at your house. Surely one of the three people who all knew all to drive would know something about what was wrong with the engine. Biggest problem was, they were all asleep, and if you woke them up, you might have lost a hand. You were heavily considering risking the hand when, by some sort of divine intervention, a familiar voice called out to you.

“Need help?”

You started, spinning to see Mr. Zhong, the familiar and kind old face smiling at you. You hated how similar his smile was to Chenle’s; he was simply a reminder of who you thought Chenle used to be. Nonetheless, you smiled and nodded, gesturing to the hood and taking a step back.

“Please. It’s all yours.”

He worked in silence for a moment, pulling at the machinery inside the bonnet.

“How old is this car?” He asked, and his muffled voice could not disguise the astonishment in his voice.

“Uh, I think the last person to drive it was my Mom, so, that should tell you.” You half joked, awkwardly watching him work until he indicated to you to try again.

You climbed into the car and turned the ignition, and it spluttered again, but this time the spluttering graduated into the unhealthy purring sound you were used to.

You rolled your window down, and called a gracious, ‘thank you!’ out the window, but before you could proceed the short drive to school, the man stopped you, leaning against the side of your car.

“Wait a minute, I want to talk to you about something.” You uncomfortably clutched the steering wheel tighter, raising an eyebrow at him, as if to say, ‘go on.’

“You and Chenle? How’s that going?” He asked, an eyebrow raised in a similar fashion, although his was more teasing where yours was questioning. Your heart leapt as your face warmed.

“Oh - uh. I haven’t really spoken to him since.”

“Oh.” He sounded surprised.

“Why?” You asked, trying to discreetly gulp away your nervousness.

“Oh, he’s just been speaking about you a lot more, is all. Have fun at school.” 

Your five-minute drive to school was the most anxiety ridden drive you had ever experienced. What did he mean speaking about you more? He was asking about your relationship so would that suggest Chenle was saying nice things? Did Chenle maybe like you? Of course, the idea of Chenle having any sort of romantic feelings towards you felt nearly laughable at this point, but this glimmer of hope that had remained from the past ten years that maybe, just maybe, you had finally grabbed the attention of those sweet brown eyes simmered in your chest before you could push it away. He had treated you badly, you reminded yourself. You didn’t need him.

You stormed into school that morning, affirming that you did not need Zhong Chenle in your life, and if he did finally notice you, that was not your problem. But the little girl in you who had walked up to the door of your classroom to overhear Chenle say your name insisted on eavesdropping. And who were you to say no to her?

“... That’s the thing, I don’t think I do. I can’t stop thinking about her.” You couldn’t stop instinctual fluttering of your heart. Chenle couldn’t stop thinking about you. Chenle couldn’t stop thinking about you. Your previous conclusion that he was not more than the sum of his parts was thrown out of the window and replaced with schoolgirl butterflies.

“You definitely hate her. Think about it, you just feel bad because of the mom thing. And you insulted her house, but I mean come on, it was a mess anyways.” You rolled your eyes. Park Jisung was a self-righteous dick.

“It’s not her fault. Their family is in crazy amounts of debt because her mom had some sort of untreatable illness and she was sick for so long. Do you know apparently she had been sick for like 13 years? It must have been torture on their family.” You had never heard him defend you before, and you couldn’t help the small smile which grew on your face.

“Oh, God, really? Well then, there’s your answer.”

“What do you mean?”

“You don’t want to be with someone with that in their family. Dude what if she infects you with it?” Your previously elated heart dropped to your stomach as your face fell. Chenle wasn’t going to let him away with that, was he?

“Oh. Yeah.” He was. Zhong Chenle had the perfect knack of getting your hopes up, and just when your heart had warmed to him again, crushing it, and you were sick of it. You spun on your heel, making your way back out to your car without even thinking about it. You didn’t want to have to look at him.

You thought about the situation as you got ready for dinner that night.  You were sick of this stupid game of cat and mouse, where you inevitably always ended up hurt. And thinking back on the past ten years, Chenle had never been a good friend to you. Ever. He gave away your sheet music, he insulted you and now he was talking about you with his friends as if you were some sort of plague just waiting to infect him. You were sick of it and you were sick of him. Zhong Chenle meant nothing to you anymore.

You had half an idea to march out into the hallway where your father was calling you and tell him that you did not want to go, and he couldn’t make you. You drew together pieces of this declaration in your head before firmly making your way into the hall, entirely ready to tell him where the Zhong family could go, but then you saw his face. He had shaved for the first time in a month, the clothes he wore was ironed and smart, and you could have sworn he smelled better than he had in a while. Your previously parted lips closed again and instead of communicating your desire to be anywhere but the Zhong house, the corners turned slightly, mustering up the most sincere smile you could. You could suck up having to sit opposite Chenle for your family - They had gone through so much recently, you thought maybe you could deal with him for another night. 

Your plans to snub him was momentarily interrupted when you realized, as he stomped down the stairs into the entry way of the house, where your family awkwardly hovered, exchanging greetings with the Zhong family, he had worn your favorite jean jacket, white t-shirt and black jeans combo that used to make you melt at the knees. Like always, it made his dark hair seem darker, but you pushed back the bubbling butterflies. What he had done was unforgiveable.

“Why don’t I show you guys my room?” His sister had emphatically exclaimed to your brothers who glanced to your dad. He gave a disinterested shrug, and the three stomped up past where Chenle came from. “Chenle, sweetie, why don’t you bring (Y/N) up to your room? The adults can talk down here.” His mom suggested.

“No, Mrs. Zhong, it’s okay-” You began, but you didn’t get to finish.

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous, I know you won’t want to be stuck with the adults. Just no funny business!” You ignored the sly comment which Chenle’s dad mumbled under his breath about, ‘that being unlikely,’ and hesitantly made your way up the stairs, following in Chenle’s footsteps. His house was the exact same as yours - sure his stairs didn’t creak from years of you and your brothers abuse , and it was much sleeker - the black and white modern décor juxtaposed greatly with the warm, yellow tones of your own house, plus the fact they obvious could afford to have their carpet replaced with hardwood floors, but other than that, there was nothing spectacularly upper class about their house that would suggest they had any right to look down on yours. 

His room matched his personality to a tee. With grey-white walls plastered with posters of his favorite musicians and athletes whom you didn’t recognize, the room was small but clean and smelt like him. That familiar citrusy scent you associated with him filled the air, and past you would have been intoxicated by him, but current you knew better.

He sat down on top of the checked black and white duvet cover, (little did you know, he was secretly celebrating the fact he had happened to change the Stephen Curry bed sheets the day before) and gestured for you to sit down beside him. You remained standing.

“Uh- Hi.” He greeted, a softness to his voice you didn’t recognize but nearly succeeded in melting the barricade you had placed around your heart. Nearly. You didn’t respond, staring down at your shoes as if, suddenly your vans were the most interesting thing in the world.

“You look really pretty.” There he was again, trying to get your hopes up only to smash them again. You wouldn’t let him. Not this time.

“I know what you and Jisung were saying about my mom. And I’m done with you, okay? You can stop this act now.” You blurted out before you could even stop yourself.

Chenle’s face fell, and his head jerked to the side, almost as if you had genuinely slapped him in the face. He looked like a wounded puppy. Why was it so hard to stay angry at him?

“I- Look, (Y/N), it was wrong what Jisung said, I know. I wanted to hit him.” You raised an eyebrow, which sharpened your features and nearly made Chenle melt, both from the radiating heat of your anger and the sheer attractiveness of the action.

“You didn’t say anything to him. You just agreed and laughed. Like a coward.” You replied, simply.

“Yeah - I know. It was wrong of me. I’m sorry, but look, I’ve had a recent... self-discovery and I like you, (Y/N). If you could just give me a second chance.” He pleaded, standing up to look at you sincerely. His honest, chestnut eyes did not hold the same rotten core you had seen in them a month ago in the charity shop, but you held your ground nonetheless. “Third chance, you mean. Realistically, you don’t know me, and I don’t know you. We’ve lived next to each other for 10 years and we’ve had, what, two civil conversations?” Chenle was the one to look down at his feet now, focusing on the hardwood floors. You weren’t wrong - you didn’t really know each other. You relished in the silence as Chenle thought for a moment, before he mumbled,

“That doesn’t change how I feel about you, though.” 

“Well it should.” 

He opened his mouth to respond but was cut off by his mother’s screaming for them to come to dinner. You had turned and left before he even had the opportunity to draw breath and he was left alone in his empty room, which grey walls that had previously been illuminated with the presence of you had dulled in the absence of your vivacity. 

Dinner was a success for the most part, except for the torture of sitting across from you. He bore holes into the side of your head, but you were so skilled in acting as if he wasn’t there, he was starting to question his actual presence at the dinner table; if it were just you and him sitting there, he would have been convinced he was some sort of ghostly apparition.

“So, you paint, right?” His grandfather had directed toward your dad who nodded politely.

“Yeah, I always loved art and - well I couldn’t afford to go to college so I thought why not kill two birds with one stone and do something I love that I don’t need a college education for.” He replied, the bright look on his face when talking about something he loved was so similar to how you used to look at him that Chenle almost felt sick with guilt.

“And you make much money off of that?” His dad had commented, his knife and fork obnoxiously clinking against the plate. Chenle almost sunk down in his chair.

“I make enough.” Your dad replied, stiffly. He spoke how you spoke to him a mere 15 minutes ago.

“Didn’t you used to like art?” His grandfather had asked, turning to his Dad who shrugged, sipping from his expensive wine glass.

“I painted a little.” Chenle had never seen his dad so uncomfortable.

“No, I remember, you wanted to go to art school, right? But my daughter here talked you out of it.” His dad squirmed in his seat as his mother awkwardly laughed, avoiding the topic entirely and asking your dad another question about his job.

The more your dad discussed his ventures into the world of art, the quieter his dad got. He tried to plaster on a smile every now and then, but underneath, Chenle could tell he was sad. He thought about how his dad had always looked down on your family, and the countless times he had referred to your dad as being ridiculous, a low-life who needed to get a ‘proper job.’ He watched the man who had dwindled his life away and wondered, if he was simply angry at himself, as opposed to the kind family across the street. His father was a coward who didn’t chase what he wanted because he was too scared. Chenle swore to himself there and then, that he would not be a coward, like his father. He refused to become the bitter, jealous old man across the street. And so, late that night, after you had all left, he rifled through the papers on his desk and hatched a plan.

Patience and timing were key elements to Chenle’s plan - A month, to be precise. The day of the Christmas talent show. Everyone was excited to watch Chenle perform, especially now that it had been spread that he was dedicating his performance to someone in the audience. Pretty much everyone in the school who was attracted to boys were praying it was them. All except for you, who still hadn’t spoken to him since that fateful night in his bedroom and had resumed your strategic avoidance of him.

He nervously peaked from the side of the stage of the school theatre which had been transformed from it’s boring wood and red velvet into an explosion of tinsel and fairy lights, the excessive Christmas décor almost hurt his eyes. He stared into the audience past Chaeryong’s skillful dancing on stage, despite her optimistic glances towards him, as he clutched sheet music in his hands. He had enlisted Ryujin’s help to ensure that you were sitting in the very middle of the front row, despite her unwillingness. He had to promise her that if he broke your heart again, she had a free pass at kicking him in a very private place. His attention was only broken from the way you hid a laugh as Ryujin whispered into your ear, by Jisung frantically running up to him, whispering as to not to disturb Chaeryong’s performance.

“Dude! There’s a rumor going around that this mystery chick you’re playing for is (Y/N)?” Chenle simply blinked at him.

“And?”

“Is it true?” 

“Yep.” Jisung threw his arms in the air incredulously, whispering as loud as their setting allowed him,

“What the hell is the matter with you! You have every single girl on campus wanting you and you want (Y/N) (Y/L/N).” Chenle spun to stare out into the audience again, turning his back to Jisung. “Leave me alone, Jisung. You wouldn’t understand.” He whispered back, watching and clapping as Chaeryong took her bow, exiting at the other side of the stage.

“You’re right! I completely don’t understand! Have you flipped or something?” Chenle ignored him, breathing out slowly, trying to calm his nerves. 

“This is it.” He mumbled, more to himself than Jisung, ignoring his friend who made a last minute attempt to grab him before he walked on stage.

The entire audience sat with bated breath, you included as he sat down at the piano, almost excruciatingly slowly. You stared at your hands, trying not to look up at the stage because you knew that he was probably about to sing some love song to Chaeryong, since his feelings for you had obviously dissipated since that night, and then they would kiss on stage and everyone would be happy for them. You included. Probably. If you were feeling in a particularly positive mood.

“Um, so I’m sure you all know, that I’m dedicating this performance to someone. Which I am, but I’m not going to say who. Yet. They’ll know who they are.” His smooth voice echoed throughout the entire auditorium, officially piquing your interest as you lifted your head up to look at him. He had already moved to face the piano, his fingers - which were unusually shaking - hovered over the keys as he examined the sheet music in front of him, pressing down the first chord.

Your stomach dropped, the familiarity of the scalic motif he played with his right hand causing you to audibly gasp. You hadn’t heard this piece since you were four. You raised a shaking hand to your mouth, ignoring the way Ryujin was almost definitely staring at you with concern. He had kept the sheet music. You had thought all the time, it was in the back of some shop, never to be played again. But here he was, playing your mother’s music in front of the entire school with pride, his skilful fingers dancing from note to note as if it were as simple as breathing, the music enveloping you in a blanket of comfort.

His playing ended too quickly, finishing with a short section you didn’t recognize and ending on a perfect and harmonious cadence. The audience tentatively applauded, the majority - as in everyone but you and Ryujin - more confused than anything, until he walked to the end of the stage, directly in front of you.

“My favorite color is red.” He stated, looking down at you in your chair.

“Wha - What?”

 “I am the worst loser ever. Seriously, if you play a game with me and you win, I will find ways to blame you for making me lose.”

“Chenle, wha-” “You said you didn’t know me, right? I’m terrified of spiders. I love basketball more than football but I’m better at football. You couldn’t pay me to take science the second it isn’t mandatory anymore. I talk in my sleep. I’m crazy ticklish. I would literally die for Stephen Curry. I’ve been an idiotic dick, for lack of a better word, for the last ten years, and if you let me, I would love the chance to get to know you.”

You couldn’t help the smile that formed on your face as you stared into those eyes - those once again dazzling eyes which bore into you, no evidence of corruption, the oh-so-familiar sensation of your heart warming to his words blooming in you once again, as if it had never left.

Your smile resonated within him and he questioned what the hell had he been doing the last ten years. How could anyone, ever want to run away from you?

“If you break my heart, Zhong Chenle, you have Ryujin to answer too.”

He chuckled, the sound of his laugh more musical than anything he could’ve produced on stage, and as you watched him, you came to the conclusion that Chenle was more than the sum of his parts, astronomically. You knew that Zhong Chenle was still walking around with your first kiss. But he wouldn’t be for long.

[study-coffee-chicago]

Stars on your Sleeve (Part 2) [A Jay Halstead Imagine]

A/N: The name of the girl is Y/N (I mostly write my imagines in second person POV...except for the one you guys might see in a few weeks) and cariña is just a nickname/term of endearment in Spanish that means sweetheart. Sorry if anyone got confused about that in part one!

"Dad," you started as you walked into Jay's office after school that day.

It was a Thursday and you had taken the bus from school to the district. It wasn't often that you did this, but you had gotten texts from both your mom and dad telling you that the current case was going to drag on and on tonight, so they wanted you at the district so that you wouldn't be home alone until two or three o'clock in the morning.

"Hi, cariña. How was your day? Learn anything interesting in school?"

"Dad," you groaned. "It's high school, half the stuff they teach me I won't ever use again."

"Well, excuse me for wanting to know about my daughter's day."

"Just can't wait for this week to be over to sleep in."

"You and me both, kid."

"Half the time you work weekends though, Dad," you pointed out.

"Comes with the sergeant title."

"And your sleeping in is like 7:00."

"Point taken. Now, did Mom pack you a few extra snacks or do you need some money for the vending machines?"

"She didn't--"

"Don't even finish that sentence, young lady," Hailey said as she burst into Jay's office. "I packed you a few extra things and you know it. You just want--"

"--Oreos," Jay and Hailey said at the same time.

"Hey, don't blame me! They taste good," you protested. "Anyway, Dad, can I use your laptop to do my homework?"

"Don't you have that school-issued one?"

"That one blocks Netflix."

Jay crossed his arms across his chest. "Homework, huh?"

"I'm just writing a paper. It's not like I'm doing math or reading something."

"What type of paper?" Hailey asked. "Because, I'm pretty sure that if it's a research paper, you need to focus."

"It's a narrative, so I don't need to be constantly focused, Mom."

"Makayla does the same thing," Adam said as he entered the office as well. "Let the kid have the laptop, Jay."

"Thanks, Adam."

"Uh," Jay groaned, "I guess."

"We also have a lead, so you wanna roll out after I give you the info?" Adam asked.

"Yeah. Sorry, Y/N, you need to go into the breakroom now."

"But why can't I stay in here?" you whined. "I want your spinny chair."

"Y/N, this is a case," your mom told you. "You know the rules: no being around the case talk. It's for your own good, we don't want to scar or scare you."

Mom, you know what I've seen, you wanted to tell her, but you knew it would be no use as your parents would never budge on this rule.

"I know, Mom."

Jay pulled his laptop from his desk along with the charger. "Rules?" he probed, holding onto the laptop and charger.

"Dad, I know the rules. Mom, c'mon, tell him."

"It's your dad's laptop, Y/N. I'm not arguing with you or him on this one."

Jay cocked his head to the side. "I'll give you the laptop after you tell me the rules...even though I know you know them."

You sighed. You went through this every time you used his laptop when he was going to be gone. "Only use my account, don't try to login to your account, and do not delete my search history."

"Here you go." He handed you his laptop and charger. "Good luck on your paper. Don't work too hard."

You went into the breakroom and opened the laptop. First, you pulled up Netflix, and then you pulled up your paper. It was your paper for your senior portfolio, which most people were putting off, seeing as you were only a freshman, you didn't need to work on it yet. But, you knew it had to be long, so starting it now would probably be helpful.

The paper was basically a narrative telling a story about each year of school. The stories had to be from two to five pages long, which meant that the paper in its entirety would be between 26 and 65 pages long. But, you didn't mind. It's not like you had to write a boring research paper. You also had to write about your career goals and one wish for your future as well, which would make the paper even longer still.

Seeing as your schooling didn't exactly match up with the American school system until you were around nine and in third grade, you had gotten permission from your teacher to just write about the sections of kindergarten, first, and second grade, as just memories from when you were six, seven, and eight years old.

You'd save the memories of six and seven for later, since you'd have to dig into the part of your brain where you were in the orphanage with your older sister, Illiana.

For now, you just scribbled down a few lines for ideas of when you were eight years old...which was pretty simple since a lot happened in your life that year.

***

"Y/N, we brought you some food if you--"

"Shut up!" Mouse hissed as the rest of the unit clambered up the stairs and into the bullpen. "She's sleeping."

Yes, when Mouse came home he returned to his job as the tech analyst of the Intelligence Unit. And, when Jay became sergeant, he pulled a few strings and got him a huge salary increase.

"I'll pull the car around front," Hailey offered.

"No," Jay whined. "That means I gotta be the bad guy and wake her up."

"Sorry, babe. I call dibs."

"Ew, guys, please keep the lovey-dovey nicknames to home. I don't need to see that," Adam joked.

"Shut up, Ruz."

Hailey swiped the keys from Jay's office and Jay went to wake you up. But, before he did, he saw the laptop, still open to both Netflix and your paper.

There wasn't much in the paper yet, as Jay had expected, only a few bullet points. His name caught his eye below the age 8 section...whatever that meant. He didn't mean to pry (well, really he did), but he closed the laptop without logging you out so that he and Hailey could take a look at it later.

"Y/N, Y/N, wake up."

You were woken up by someone gently shaking your shoulder.

"Quiero dormir, vaya," you whined. That was one thing you always did: reverted back to Spanish when you were tired. At least both Jay and Hailey understood it now because they had learned Spanish...which helped them with parenting because when they were mad at you, they'd talk in Spanish and that's how you know you were in deep shit.

"I know you want to sleep, and I'm not leaving," Jay answered. "But, we're going home so you can sleep in your bed instead of here."

"Mmmm, okay," you mumbled. You rubbed your eyes, but then decided it was too much work to get up, so you just sat up and closed your eyes once again.

"C'mon, cariña. Mom's got the car out front and then all you gotta do is stay awake until we get home, okay?"

"Mmmm," you mumbled and then stood up. He already had your backpack slung over his shoulder and was holding his laptop in the other hand. "Can I skip school tomorrow? I'm tired."

"Not a chance," Jay chuckled. "But, I can drive you to school and we can get you a frappucino on the way there."

"Mom won't be mad?"

"We don't have to tell Mom everything now do we?"

"No, we don't."

***

"What are you doing?" Hailey asked Jay as she slid into bed next to him that night. "Are you seriously checking our daughter's search history this late at night? C'mon Jay, she's a good kid. You won't find anything."

"That's not what I'm looking at. But, now that you mention it, I should probably check that, too."

"Then, what are you reading? Because I know for a fact that your case notes are definitely not as organized as that."

"Wow, Hails, you're so sweet," Jay said sarcastically. "It's Y/N's paper. The rubric was pasted at the top and it looks like she has to write about a memory from each year of her life and her career goals and a wish for the future."

"And you were snooping because...?"

"Because I saw my name. I wanna see what she says about us, Hailey."

"Jay, she loves us, baby. We're her parents. We both know that. You don't need to read her schoolwork to know that."

"Either way, I'm still reading it. Join me if you want, or go to sleep."

"Uh, fine. But if she asks, this was your idea and I will not hesitate to throw you under the bus."

Age 8, they both read to themselves, leaving/running away from orphanage

"God, no matter how many years it's been since she told us what happened, it never fails to break my heart," Hailey said.

Jay wrapped one arm around his wife. "I know, babe. I feel the exact same way."

"Hey, Y/N," the therapist started and you looked up at her. "Do you want to in that room over there and watch some tv while I talk to jay and Hailey? I can even turn on the Spanish movies for you."

"Okay!"

After getting you all set up, she left you in the room with a Spanish children's movie playing while she went to get Jay and Hailey.

"Jay and Hailey?" she asked as she entered the waiting room.

"Dr. Smith," Jay greeted.

"I have something to tell both of you, and Y/N told me it was okay that I tell you. When I asked if she wanted to be the one to tell you this, she said no because she didn't want to make you sad."

They entered the room where you had previously been and Dr. Smith sat in a chair and Jay and Hailey sat on the couch.

"What's this about?" Hailey asked.

"Well, she told me why she ran away from the orphanage."

Jay and Hailey were shocked. You'd been with them for three months and hadn't once mentioned why you ran away and what happened before Jay found you. It wasn't for lack of trying on Hailey and Jay's part, though. They tried. After all, they knew how to talk to child victims. But, they didn't want to push you too hard, and eventually, they just dropped the topic all together because they knew you'd talk about it when you were ready. Apparently, today was the day that you were ready to tell that story.

"And?" Jay pushed. "Why'd she run away?"

"She said that they came for her, the people who you were fighting," Dr. Smith said.

"Los Rebeldes," Jay said, more to Hailey than to anyone else.

"They came for her specifically?" Hailey asked.

"No, they just came to the orphanage. She said that she heard voices--male voices--telling them to get down on the ground and then some shots rang out. Her sister, Illiana, told her to hide and slipped the necklace around her neck. So, she did. She said she closed her eyes really tight and she just laid there, hiding and barely breathing. She said she heard a gunshot and then she heard Illiana scream and she heard squishing noises."

"Oh my God," Hailey gasped.

"You're saying they shot and killed her?" Jay asked, his voice cracking.

"That's what it sounded like, yes."

"How did she get out?"

"She said that she snuck out through a small door in the back of the room. She said it wasn't a real door, but it was a small door that led to the outside, by her description, it sounded about three feet tall and two feet wide."

"The waste doors," Jay muttered.

"The what?" Hailey asked.

"The waste doors...well, that's what we called them on Base anyway. They were these little doors where you could place stuff outside. Sometimes we'd put the packaging of our MRE's there or other crap we didn't need anymore. Not good for the planet, but yeah, that's what we did."

"So, Jay, you're telling me that Y/N essentially snuck out of the orphanage through a trash chute?"

"Well, we used them for waste, which is why we called them waste doors. But, I heard rumors of them being used at orphanages for parents to put their baby in a crib. They'd just open the door and place the baby in the little crib on the other side of the door."

"She moved the crib and snuck out through there?"

"If there was a crib, then she moved it and got out. If not, she just crawled out through there."

"Did she tell you anything about when she left?" Hailey asked Dr. Smith.

"She said that she didn't have much with her, just her teddy bear and that locket. But, she said that she walked for the rest of the day. And, according to her timeline, the soldiers came right after breakfast. She said she was really scared that they were going to find her and so she just kept walking. But then, she found a bit of a forest it sounded like and since it was starting to get dark and cold, she laid down."

"I found her in the middle of the night and she must've been there since sunset. No wonder she was hypothermic."

"We got her her first banana split after that therapy session," Hailey said. "I honestly don't know whether the food was to get her to try something new or to comfort us."

"Yeah, that was a rough night. I didn't even want her to leave my arms," Jay said. "Jay found me and I went home to Chicago," he read aloud. "Man, that night was rough, too. Probably worse than the night where we found out why she left."

"Now, it's crowded here, cariña so stay cerca to us or go mano a mano with me or Hailey, okay?" Jay asked you as the three of you found a parking spot at Navy Pier.

Adam, Kim, Kevin, and Will were all there as well. They had planned to go out and party and go to a bar when Jay returned home, but that changed now that he and Hailey had a kid to take care of, so they had decided to take a trip to Navy Pier.

In the airport, Jay had gotten a huge coffee from Starbucks, seeing as he had barely slept on the way home. Before coming to Navy Pier, you had gone to a place called iHOP where you had gotten some really yummy pancakes, and Adam, Kevin, and Will had made you laugh a lot and Kim spoke Spanish with you.

"What does that word mean?" you asked.

"What word?" Jay asked, looking down at you as he took your hand.

"Cr-crowded," you sounded out slowly.

"Uh, it means there's lots and lots of people."

"Oh, okay. I stay by you."

"So Y/N, what do you like to do?" Will asked you.

"I like reading and play fútbol," you told him.

"Really? Jay loves playing soccer!"

"We played back at the big house in España," you told Will excitedly. "We won and I got lots and lots of goals."

"Looks like you have a pro soccer player on your hands, little brother," Will said to Jay.

"Don't I know it."

"We go on the big thingy you showed me in the little book in the plane?" you asked Jay.

"The Ferris wheel?" You nodded excitedly. "We can do that, but let's walk around first. We might be able to play some games and win you a friend for Osito."

"Really? Osito have a friend?"

"Really," Jay promised.

As you walked down Navy Pier, you were excitedly pointing out every little thing you saw from the ducks and the seagulls to the big yachts floating down the Chicago River.

"Let's go into Garrett's, babe," Hailey suggested when they were inside the big atrium. "Give her a taste of Chicago's world-famous popcorn."

"I think that's a great idea," Jay agreed. "What do you think, cariña? Want to try some popcorn and then we'll get your favorite?"

You tilted your head to the side. "Popcorn? What is that?"

"Palomitas," Kim clarified for you in Spanish. "Hay muchos tipos diferentes de palomitas allí para probar y comprar."

"Oh, okay. Yes, please."

"What did you say to her?" Hailey whispered to Kim.

"Just gave her the Spanish translation of popcorn and then told her that there's a bunch of different types of popcorn that she can try and buy in there. But, you and Jay most definitely have your work cut out for you when it comes to learning Spanish. You're lucky that she's pretty good with English already and that I'm here to help you learn Spanish."

***

"Sleepy, cariña?" Jay asked as he heard you yawn from the backseat.

Hailey was driving and he was holding a big bag of caramel and cheddar popcorn...which Hailey was telling him not to eat all of it because she knew he would. You were in the backseat with your big stuffed bear, whom you had named Osita since she was a girl bear because she had really soft white fur and a pink ribbon tied around her. Jay had won that for you when he played a shooting game. You also had a stuffed duck that Will had won for you when he played a guess the weight game. You named him Pato...which meant duck in Spanish. You had gone on the Ferris wheel and had pointed out all the pretty things in the sky when you were up there. Hailey had never seen Jay so happy as when he was smiling wide at every little thing you pointed out and he tried to explain to you what they were.

"No," you answered as you laid your head against Osita. It was currently 3 pm Chicago time, which made it about 9 pm Spain time.

"Tell you what," Hailey started, "When we get home, we can show you your room, and then we can watch a movie and eat this popcorn. Because, if we don't start eating it soon, Jay will eat it all."

"Jay eat it all if we no eat it too?"

"Jay eats a lot," Hailey joked.

You reached your hand in front of you and towards Jay. "Palomitas please." Jay chuckled and Hailey smiled as he put some popcorn into your little outstretched hand. "Gracias."

"De nada," Jay told you.

"When we watch movie, how I get it?" you asked.

"We get it on the tv," Jay told you.

"No, how I know what they saying?"

Hailey hadn't thought that far ahead when she had suggested watching a movie. "Um," Hailey faltered. "We can make it so it's in Spanish."

"But then you no know what they say," you pointed out.

"We can put words on the bottom of the screen in English for us," Jay suggested. "Then all three of us will know what they're saying. Is that okay?"

"Okay!"

"Hailey," Jay whispered. "What are we gonna watch?"

"She's too old for princesses probably and way too young for action movies...how about Disney Channel movies? We could try High School Musical? That one's pretty good."

"You're kidding Hails. You watched that? Didn't it come out when we were like 20 or 25?"

Hailey held back a laugh. "Yes, it did. But, I babysat a lot of kids in my neighborhood who were around Y/N's age, and we'd always end up watching those Disney Channel originals."

"Okay, whatever you say, babe."

***

"I think I'm gonna bring her to bed," Jay said.

You had fallen asleep halfway through the movie. Before starting it, you had seen your room. It was purple! And, in black letters behind your bed, it said Salon de Y/N, which meant Y/N's room. Jay assumed that Kim had helped Hailey with the spelling and the boys had helped move the furniture into your room. There was also a little basket with a few things they thought you would like, such as a few different colored soccer balls and a bookshelf.

On the bookshelf, Hailey had picked out some books in Spanish that she had found at Barnes and Noble and some short chapter books in English that she used to read as a kid, such as the Nancy Drew series and Little House on the Prairie. She knew that you might need help reading them and might not be able to completely understand them all by yourself yet, but she knew that she and Jay would be there to help you.

"It's 6:00," Hailey protested. "Shouldn't we wake her up and have her stay awake for a few more hours so that her body can adjust?"

"If you're asking an adult like me that, yes, I'd stay awake. But, she's a kid. She needs her sleep. And, I'll probably be up before you anyway, so I can deal with her if she wakes us up at five in the morning."

"Okay super dad," Hailey joked. "Bring her to bed. I'll make us a quick dinner and cover this popcorn so it doesn't get stale. Can't wait for us to go to bed tonight." She winked.

"Hails, as much as I would love to take you up on that, I don't think it's a good idea when it's Y/N's first night. But, I will give you all the cuddles in the world tonight, don't you worry about that."

"As long as you didn't pick up the habit of snoring overseas then I'm all for that, babe."

***

Jay woke up to the sound of soft whimpering. It sounded like it was coming from the hallway but he couldn't be sure. He reached over Hailey and was about to grab her gun from her drawer where he knew that she kept it, but stopped when he remembered that it was probably just you. It wasn't just Jay and Hailey in the house anymore; you were there as well and that's probably where the noise was coming from. And, he didn't want to scare you by holding a gun.

He glanced over at the clock. 3 am. Yeah, sounds about right that you'd be waking up right about now since you'd slept for about nine hours and it was 9 am in Spain right now.

Jay slowly tiptoed out into the hallway, cursing himself that he hadn't left a light on or kept his and Hailey's bedroom door open so you could find them easily.

Jay reached out for the hall light switch and flicked on the lights, causing you to jump. "Hey, hey, it's just me. It's just Jay," he said calmly once he laid eyes on you. You were holding Osito and there were fresh tears running down your cheeks.

Jay never knew the force of an eight-year-old running into him could be so strong as to almost knock him over. You dropped Osito and wrapped your arms around him as if your life depended on it.

"It's okay, it's okay," Jay soothed. "What's wrong, cariña? Can you tell me what's wrong?"

"I-I no know where I was," you mumbled into his shirt. "Was dark. Think you and Hailey left, so I came to find you."

"Oh, sweetie," Jay started. "I'm sorry. I forgot to turn the light on for you in your room so that you'd know where you are. And, me and Hailey would never leave you."

"You promise?"

"I promise." Your stomach grumbled. "Hungry?" you nodded. "Alright, let's get you a sandwich and then get you back to bed."

"You eat too?" you asked.

"You know, I could go for a sandwich."

***

The next morning, Hailey rolled over to see that Jay wasn't in bed next to her and his side of the bed was cold. Then, she remembered you and walked over to your room and slowly opened the door. You looked up from the Spanish book you were reading and put a finger to your lips.

"Jay sleeping," you told Hailey.

Jay was sitting upright in your bed against the headboard, his thumb holding a place in what looked to be a Nancy Drew book.

"Did Jay read to you last night, huh?" Hailey asked as she walked closer to you and Jay.

"Yeah, he told me that Nancy does what you and Jay do with policia. Then, I sleep again and then I wake up and he sleep again, so I started reading in Spanish."

"I think we should let him sleep a little more while we go finish High School Musical and eat palomitas before Jay eats it all. Does that sound good?"

You nodded eagerly and closed your book. Then, you got out of bed and followed Hailey out of your room. And, after hearing that Jay had read to you and seeing him sleeping upright in your bed so that you'd be able to sleep, she had one more reason why she was truly head over heels for the man she married and got to call her husband.

"Look, Jay. She wrote her birthday in here for age 9," Hailey said as she pointed to the laptop screen.

"God, I don't think I'll forget that day for the rest of my life. It was such a good day."

"You are such a sap when it comes to Y/N."

"Hey! let me be sappy about our daughter, Hailey Anne. She's in high school now, high school. That means she'll be going off to college soon."

"Don't get too far ahead of yourself, sergeant," she joked. "Just keep reading this. It was your idea to snoop through her stuff after all."

"Jay, you got the stuff?" Hailey asked as she was sitting cross-legged on their bedroom floor with wrapping paper, tape, and scissors in front of her.

"Jesus, Hails," Jay laughed, "You make it sound like we're doing a drug deal."

"Well sorry if I want her birthday to go really well. Now, did you get them or not?"

"They're in here." He set a plastic bag down on the bed. He took out three framed pictures and laid them out on the bed. Of course, he made sure that the frames were different shades of purple. "Good?"

Hailey stood up and looked at the pictures. "I never know the CPD's sketch software could work miracles like this, so yeah, I'd say we did good."

Over the past month, everyone in Intelligence had told you that they were testing out a new sketch software to use to try to track down criminals. They let you play with it because they said they wanted to see what it would do...even though they knew what it did, how good it was, and it wasn't new. It was just a ploy to make sure they got your birthday gift right. They had told you to try and input someone's face from memory, someone like your older sister, Illiana.

So, when you had to go to the district for the day with Jay and Hailey, you'd ask to play with that software to work on your sketch. Little did you know, they were printing it out on fancy photo paper and putting it in a frame for your birthday. Jay had also swiped your necklace one day when you had taken it off to go swimming and had taken pictures of what your mom and dad looked like. Then, he and Hailey each took one parent and worked on making their faces through the CPD's sketch software.

"Now what the hell is this?" Jay asked as he held up a big board that Hailey had laying out in front of her as well.

"That, Jay, is so we can stick the back of the frames to it so that we don't have to give the three of them to her separately. Then, she can just take them off from it and place them wherever she wants in her room."

"You're smart. Maybe you should've gone to law school."

"Haha, very funny, Halstead. But then I wouldn't have met you."

"Eh, I beg to differ. You'd probably end up being some prosecution or defense attorney and then I'd have to testify, and after getting yelled at by you on the stand, I'd end up making an ass of myself and ask you out for a drink."

"Is that so?"

"That is very much so."

He walked up to her and grabbed her by the waist and she gave him a peck on the lips. "Hails," Jay whined. "Why'd you phone it in?"

"Because we have presents to wrap. Now, sit your ass down on the carpet and help me."

"Yes ma'am. But, damn, you're really going to be the death of me."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

***

"Before we do cake everyone, me and Hailey have one more gift for Y/N," Jay announced by tapping a fork gently against his champagne glass. Yes, the adults were drinking champagne because they were celebrating your first birthday with them as their kid. No, they wouldn't even give you one sip...but you didn't care and you didn't ask.

You had gotten spoiled all day. Will had taken you out for breakfast where you had gotten chocolate chip pancakes with all the toppings. Then, he took you to the sporting goods store where you bought an FC Madrid jersey and to Barnes Noble where you bought a few new books.

Then, when you got home, you were surprised to find everyone from Intelligence there along with some people from Med, and firehouse 51. Emilia, Mouse, and Makayla were there, and your friend, Rosa, whom Emilia had introduced you to earlier in the year at her welcome home party since Rosa was one of Emilia's little cousins.

You had gone outside and played a huge soccer game. And, when you got sick of playing soccer, Emilia busted out a makeup kit she had bought for you. And you, Makayla, Emilia, and Rosa did each other's makeup. While the four of you were doing makeup, a soccer tournament had broken out where Intelligence played Med, and then the winner of that game played Firehouse 51. Intelligence won against Med...mostly due to Jay. But, then they played 51 and they got creamed.

"Here you go, nena," Hailey said as she passed you the gift. Hailey had started calling you nena since Jay had a nickname for you, cariña, which you learned now meant sweetheart in English. So, she decided to call you nena, which meant honey. And, you and Hailey had thought it only fair if you came up with a nickname for Jay. So, the one you decided on was quite fitting in your mind: pecas...which translated to freckles. And, Will, well Will calls you Osa because your favorite animal is a bear. It's probably one of only three words he knows in Spanish next to hola and adios.

The gift was long and hard...like a piece of wood. You slowly opened the gift, wondering what else you could have possibly gotten.

You bit your lip as you finished tearing the paper off and flipped it over. "Mamí, Papí, Illiana," you whispered as you held back tears. "¿Cómo lo hicisteis?" you asked. Seeing as Jay and Hailey had been working very hard on their Spanish for the past nine months, they could understand you and could sometimes explain an English word to you in Spanish if needed.

"We didn't really need to test out the drawing thing," Jay answered. "We just needed a picture of Illiana. And, I got the pictures of your parents from the locket."

At this, you started to cry harder, remembering that day when Jay had to cut your necklace off of you in the back of the Med truck in Spain.

You stood up and hugged both Jay and Hailey at the same time. Now, you had both of your families watching over you: your biological family from in heaven and your parents in the here and now. And, your biological family now had no doubt in their mind up there that you would never, ever forget them.

"You remember what she called us that night?" Hailey asked.

"How could I forget? It was the first night she called us mom and dad. I still remember her exact words when I told her we weren't trying to replace her biological family: Son mi familia en el cielo y en mi corazon, pero vosotros sois mi familia aquí."

"They're my family in heaven and in my heart, but you are my family here."

"Exactly."

"Oh my God!" Hailey laughed. "She wrote sixth-grade: I cheated on a literature test and Mom had to come to pick me up and I got in trouble. And then, Dad went full-on dad-mode."

"No fucking way," Jay laughed as he brought the laptop closer to him and looked for the sixth-grade section. "I can't believe this is what she's going to write about!"

"Well, in her defense, it was the first time we had to ground her and the first time you went full-on, overprotective, my daughter can do no wrong dad-mode."

"Pretty sure the next time I'll do that is when she gets asked to the homecoming dance later this year."

"Jay! You will not! You will not scare the boys away from our daughter!"

"Well, they should be scared!" Jay argued. "We're both cops, babe. We can make their death look like an accident."

"Jay, what you're talking about is murder and I shouldn't have to remind you that that is illegal. If so, I am going to the Ivory Tower tomorrow to get you stripped of your sergeant title."

"Fine, fine. The next time I'll do that is when she gets her driver's license."

"Hey, on the bright side, we wouldn't have to pick her up from the principal's office then," Hailey pointed out. "She could just drive herself home."

"We wouldn't have to figure out which of us should go pick her up like last time?"

"Exactly. And I'm pretty sure she was thankful that it was you and not me who picked her up in sixth grade."

"Miss Halstead," your literature teacher said as she stalked over to you from the other side of the classroom. "Care to tell me what you have under your sleeve?"

"My arm?"

"I don't like being disrespected in my classroom. We both know you have your phone in there. And, lying to me will just make this worse."

"I-I needed it," you stammered, not wanting to have the whole class hear how stupid you were.

"For a test? You know the rules: no cheating. Principal's office, now. Grab your stuff. And, I'll be calling your parents as you walk down there."

You grabbed your backpack and started your walk to the principal's office. It's not like you had a choice...well, you did have a choice. You could've just not used your phone on the test. But, after that last grade you got on that essay and how weirdly worded the questions were, you basically had no choice but to use your phone. It's not like you were using it to look up the answers per se, but you were using it to try and understand the questions because there was no way you were going to ask that teacher.

"Mrs. Halstead, right this way," you heard the office secretary say as they led Hailey to the principal's office. Your phone was sitting on the principal's desk, the tab you had been using to cheat open and you were fiddling with the strings of your hoodie. You had thought about deleting your search history, but knew it wouldn't be of any use because Jay and Hailey would just be able to look it up with whatever police software crap that Intelligence had access to. You knew you'd be in more trouble if you deleted it and they found out that you were lying, so you decided you wouldn't delete it...even though you were regretting that decision as your phone screen stared back at you.

"May I ask why my daughter is in the principal's office when I thought she should be taking a test?" Jay and Hailey knew all about your literature test that day as you had read the book twice to be ready for it.

"That's exactly why she's in here, Mrs. Halstead," the principal told Hailey. "She was trying to cheat on her literature test."

"She wouldn't do that!" Hailey defended you. "She studied so hard!" She looked between both you and the principal, but your gaze stayed trained on the floor.

"Just take a look."

He passed Hailey your phone and she looked at the search history and the timestamps of said history. "Y/N, is this true?"

You nodded. Hailey sighed. "I'm assuming she's suspended?"

"Since this is her first academic infraction, I'm not going to suspend her. She does need to go home for the rest of the school day, though."

"Thank you. C'mon Y/N, let's go."

You hung your head as you left the middle school, Hailey holding your phone and still trying to figure out why you did this. But she knew that one thing was for sure: the minute Jay got home, he would not be happy.

***

"You're kidding me, right?" you heard Jay ask Hailey in the kitchen.

You were currently in your room, but the kitchen was right down the hall, so if you were quiet and focused enough, you could hear their conversation.

"I wish I was, Jay," Hailey said. "Just...here, take a look."

You assumed that Hailey was handing Jay the phone and he was looking at your search history.

Jay took a deep breath and restrained himself from shoving the chair into the kitchen table.

You heard his heavy footsteps coming down the hall and quickly locked your door and then sat back down on your bed.

You heard the doorknob jiggle as Jay tried to open your door.

"Y/N! ¡Abras la puerta inmediatamente!" (Open the door immediately!)

You were in deep shit if he was yelling at you in Spanish.

You didn't move from your bed.

"¡Ábrelo ahora!" (Open it now!)

"¡Estoy viniendo! ¡Calmáse!" (I'm coming! Calm yourself!) You got up from the bed and opened the door.

"Do not ever, ever tell me to calm down ever again! Do you understand me?" Jay asked angrily as he flung open your door after he had unlocked it. You nodded. "Now, I understand that you were caught cheating on a test. Care to explain that to me?"

"Not really," you sighed as you sat on your bed.

"I'm giving you one more chance to explain to me why you chose to cheat. And I suggest you tell me the truth, kid."

You looked up to be met with Hailey standing in the doorway. She nodded to you as if to say you better listen to your dad.

"Well?" he asked as he crossed his arms across his chest.

"I needed to cheat!"

"Nobody needs to cheat!"

"Well, I did!" You dug through your backpack and found the paper you had to write for the class that your teacher failed you on. "Because of this!" You threw the paper on your bed. "And because my teacher is a puta!"

"You do not call your teacher a bitch, young lady!" Jay yelled.

"Jay!" Hailey yelled. "Take the paper, go to our room and read it and calm down!"

"So Mom can tell you to calm down but I can't?"

Jay turned back to you, but Hailey grabbed his arm. "Bedroom Jay. Now." He left the room and Hailey turned to you. "As for you. You're grounded from your phone for the foreseeable future. Sorry, nena. Now, we'll be back to talk to you after we've read whatever it is you threw on your bed."

***

"We read the paper," Jay said as he and Hailey entered your room again fifteen minutes later. "And, I'm sorry for yelling. I know me and your mom are both detectives, but it'd look better if you told us why you cheated instead of leaving us to put the pieces together."

"I'm sorry, I really am. It's just, I failed that paper. And, I worked really hard on it. And, she said it wasn't a real tradition."

The paper topic was to write about a family tradition and you wrote about the Spanish tradition of eating grapes on New Year's Eve. With twelve seconds left of the year, you'd put a grape in your mouth for every second that passed. You'd try to get all twelve grapes in your mouth, but that was really hard. You wrote about the last time you did it with your family and your papí almost got all of them in your mouth while you only got three in your mouth since you were only three years old at the time.

One of the grading criteria for the paper was that it had to be a real tradition.

"She said that it wasn't a real tradition, Dad. She said that because she had never heard of it and that it sounded weird to her, that it wasn't real. So, she failed me. I also put some Spanish words in there, but I put the translations next to it. I thought it would make it more...what's the word? It's kind of like real? Like it'd make it more real to read? You know that word for it?"

"Authentic?" Hailey asked.

"Yeah, that. I thought it'd make it more authentic to read. And, I knew the material of the book. But, the questions were so confusing and I didn't want to ask her to clarify because she's mean."

"So you googled the questions to try to figure out what they were asking?" Hailey asked.

"Yes. I'm sorry. I really am. I just didn't want you to be disappointed in me and think that I've been here for four years and not know English."

"Oh, cariña." Jay crouched in front of you. "We'd never think that. I promise. And I know Mom would never think that either, right?"

"That's right," Hailey agreed.

"Now, I have to go make a phone call."

"You went off on that teacher, Jay! I don't think I've ever heard you that angry when you weren't in interrogation!" Hailey laughed.

"Well yeah! That teacher's logic and grading criteria were seriously flawed. And, you read that paper. It was really good. As Y/N put it that day, she really was a puta."

Hailey rolled her eyes.

"Wish for the future," Jay read aloud. "I wish that I could figure out why Los Rebeldes came to the orphanage and killed Illiana."

"I think that's enough snooping through her stuff for the day, babe," Hailey said, beginning to feel uncomfortable reading this. "Let's just go to bed."

"Yeah, I'm just gonna take a quick shower and I'll be back, okay? I love you." He gave Hailey a quick peck on the lips and made his way to the bathroom to take a shower.

"I love you, too."

But, Jay barely heard her. He was so lost in thought about how to get answers for you, for his daughter. Hell, he wanted those answers just as bad as you. What kind of sick bastard would come into an orphanage heavily armed and just kill innocent civilians and innocent children?

***

"Mouse," Jay said as he entered the bullpen the next morning, "I need your help with something."

"Jeez, Jay, you're late," Ruzek commented. "Where's Hailey?"

"It's her RDO. And, I promised Y/N a frappuccino because she had to wake up early for school and had to go to bed late last night because we were working a case."

"Does Hailey--"

"No, Adam. Hailey does not know that I gave our fourteen-year-old daughter sugar-laced coffee this morning. And, if you so much as say the words frappuccino, Jay, and Y/N in the same sentence, I will bump you back down to patrol so fast you won't know what hit you."

Jay started to walk towards the tech area where he assumed Mouse would be. His voice carried, so he hoped he'd heard him when he'd said he needed his help.

"Whose idea was it to give Jay all this power?" Adam asked rhetorically. "I think it's going to his head."

"I heard that Ruz!"

"You needed something, Jay?" Mouse asked as he turned around from his laptop and took a sip of his coffee.

"Yeah, can you do something off the books for me?"

"You don't even have to ask anymore, man."

"Just need to make sure you don't assign a case number to it."

"I can do that. Now, what do you need?"

Jay pulled out his phone and pulled up a Spanish newspaper article from two weeks ago. He laid the phone in front of Mouse. "This. This is why I need you."

Mouse looked at the phone and back up at Jay with raised eyebrows. "I'm gonna need you to translate that. I don't speak Spanish."

"Says that the guy who killed everyone in the orphanage that Y/N was in is meeting with his lawyer about an appeal. That son of a bitch. And, it's happening on Monday."

"He's meeting with his lawyer on Monday or you'll know if he won the appeal or not on Monday?" Mouse asked.

"He's meeting with his lawyer on Monday."

"And you need me because...?"

"Think you can hack into Spain's maximum-security federal prison system?"

"You cannot be serious."

"I am dead serious, Mouse."

"Why don't you just wait to hear the news?"

Jay sighed and took a seat next to Mouse. "Y/N has to write a paper and was using my laptop. It was this narrative thing for her senior project, so it's due in a few years. But, I'll spare you the details. Y/N had to write what one of her wishes for the future was and she wrote that she wants to know why the guy killed everyone in the orphanage. Not who, because we already know that it was Raúl Rodríguez. She wants to know why."

"That guy's the one who told them to attack the orphanage? The one that killed her sister, right?"

"That's the prick."

"Okay, I'll see what I can do. I'd know that if it was my sister or my kid that I'd want to know."

"Thanks, man."

"Video and audio?"

"Yeah. I'm probably gonna get Emilia in on this too to translate."

"Why? Don't you and Hailey speak Spanish?"

"We do, but they're gonna talk really fast and I probably don't know law lingo except for the word lawyer."

"Fair enough. I'll get to work."

***

"Hails, Hails," Jay shook Hailey awake.

"Jay? Why are you home so late?" she asked as she rolled over and opened her eyes. It was almost 11:30 and she had gone to bed half an hour ago...she thought Jay would've been home by 11:00.

"Paperwork," Jay answered honestly. He instantly regretted his decision of waking Hailey up knowing her history of insomnia. "But, I shouldn't have woke you up. I'm sorry, babe."

"No, I'm awake now. What's up?" She sat up in bed and turned on the lamp to see Jay changing out of his clothes and into his pajama pants and an old t-shirt. "You don't have to sleep with a shirt on you know."

Jay smirked. "You'd like that, wouldn't you? But, don't want our daughter to walk in on me shirtless."

"She's spending the night at Rosa's," Hailey informed him.

"In that case..." Jay trailed off and took off his t-shirt along with his pajama pants so that he was just in his boxers. "Better?"

"Much better."

Jay pulled back the covers on his side of the bed and slid in next to his wife. She cuddled into his side and he wrapped an arm around her.

"What'd you want to tell me?" she asked.

"How do you know I wanted to tell you something?"

"You had that look in your eye, Jay Halstead. Now, tell me."

"So persuasive." He rolled his eyes playfully.

"Shut up."

"You love it, though." He gave her a quick kiss on the lips. "You know how Y/N's biggest wish was to know why Raúl Rodríguez attacked the orphanage?"

"Mhmm," she mumbled.

"Well, I'm gonna find out why."

She pulled away from him. "What? How? You're going to Spain? To interrogate him? You know the CPD doesn't have jurisdiction there even though you were a ranger there, right?"

"Hails, I'm not going overseas to find him. I promise you that."

"Okay." She settled back into his embrace. "Then what are you doing?"

"Having Mouse see if he can hack into the prison system so that I can watch the lawyer talk to him."

"And you're going to be able to understand everything they're saying?"

"No, but Emilia will."

"You called her and told her your plan before you told me?"

"No! The only person who knows is Mouse. I figured I'd call Emilia tomorrow. Like I said, I was just at the district late doing paperwork."

"Okay, I believe you. And, we're not going to have her in the room with us, Y/N that is? We're going to tell her why he did this so she doesn't have to hear it from him?"

"Precisely. Now, am I right in assuming that since Y/N's gone for the night that we can be as loud as we want?"

"You are very much correct in that." Then, he gave her a kiss...and this time, he didn't phone it in at a peck.

***

You were sitting in the breakroom Monday afternoon trying to do some American history homework. There was so much reading involved, but it was okay because you liked history. And, there were pictures in the textbook...it wasn't like you were reading Romeo and Juliet like you had to do in English class.

You knew Emilia was here because she had brought you some fries, much to your mom and dad's dismay since your mom had packed you a few extra snacks. But, Emilia said she had to hold up her reputation as your cool aunt...even if she wasn't related to you whatsoever. And so far, she was holding it up.

You didn't know why she was here, but you assumed it was because Kim was in the field and they needed someone to translate audio. Sometimes Jay would call in Emilia if he knew that she wasn't working to do some translating so he didn't have to deal with calling up a patrolman. You also knew from hearing some of his conversations with Will that Will wanted to ask her out.

And, you hoped she say yes. You wanted Emilia to be your actual aunt. Apparently, she had a thing for doctors according to Jay's side of the phone conversations you'd heard, so you hoped it'd work out if your uncle Will ever got the balls to ask her out.

All of a sudden, Emilia came into Jay's office and he took off running. Hailey saw this and she started following them.

"What?" you asked yourself.

They always would tell you if they had to leave and they'd always be sure to tell you they loved you before they left.

You quietly walked out of the breakroom and towards where you had seen them running to. You assumed they were in the tech area because of the direction they ran in and the fact that whenever Emilia was here, she was most likely in the tech room.

As you got closer, you started hearing Spanish.

Someone talking about an attack...an attack on an orphanage.

A man said it was in the Tabernas Desert.

You peeked your head around the corner to see that on the screen there was a man in a nice suit and someone sitting at a table with handcuffs on.

"Anything we don't already know?" Hailey asked.

"Not that it sounds like right now," Emilia answered. "They're just talking about the orphanage Y/N and Illiana were in and where it was."

So this is the guy who did it. This was the guy--no, the monster--who led the attack that killed your sister.

"The lawyer just asked Rodríguez why he did it," Emilia said.

"And?" Jay asked

"Jay, I need to be able to hear them talk, so shut up."

Jay held his hands up in a sign of surrender.

"The lawyer just asked if it was something personal, something like Rodríguez being an orphan and he didn't have a good experience there so he attacked it, something that would tug at the board of appeals heartstrings essentially." There was a pause as Emilia continued listening. "He said no." She paused again. "Oh my God."

"What?" Jay asked frantically. "Why did that prick kill innocent children?"

"He said he ordered the attack because the orphanage was receiving aid from the US, for things such as food, clothing, and basic necessities."

"Un-fucking-believable." Jay wanted to punch something, but he restrained himself. "So, because our country was helping those who couldn't help themselves, this prick went after them?"

"That's what it sounds like. I'm sorry, Jay."

"Hails, how are we going to tell Y/N?"

"You guys don't have to tell me," you said as you made your presence known. "I heard the whole thing."

Jay sighed. "I'm sorry cariña, really I am. I'm sorry that this happened to you. That you had to find out this way. That this was the reason for what that monster did. I'm sorry."

"Dad read my outline?" you asked, turning to Hailey.

"Yeah, nena, he did. It was just open and you know him, he couldn't stop himself."

"Because he's a detective before he's a sergeant, just like Nancy Drew," you said, bringing it back to the books you'd used to read with your dad every night when you had just come over to the states from Spain and were working on your English.

"This should never have happened," Jay said softly as he walked over to you and brought you into a tight hug. "People that do these kinds of horrific acts shouldn't have the right to be born, much less to live."

"But if that wouldn't have happened you wouldn't have found me. And I wouldn't have found my forever Mom and Dad."

A/N: I wrote over 6.5k words to get this posted today! That's a new personal record for me! Also, my neuroscience class is kicking my butt right now, so if I don't update as frequently, that's why. Hopefully, I'll get one out every week or every two weeks at the latest. Please like/reblog and comment because I love getting feedback and it keeps me motivated to write. If you want to be added to the taglist, just tell me and I’ll add you! 

taglist: @theambracer88 @virtualreader @kelelas-life @celyndavies @brookerz122493 @musicismyescape27 @anotherfan07 @thexplosivegirl @dreamingwithlens @xoxmariaxox @onechicago18 @iamasimpingh0e 

[hekatekun]

The metanarrative’s grand narrative: Osomatsu-san’s characterization throughout the franchise

The growing cynicism throughout the entire Osomatsu-san franchise shows itself in season 3 with more prominence than anything prior. I think that’s pretty common amongst any “long-running” gag comedy - replacing a plot with spiteful commentary that’s admittedly pretty hit or miss at times. However, it invariably creates a negative but pretty funny character growth, and I love the way the show (I’m including the movie too as “canon” material considering season 3 has referenced it way too many times for me to disregard) has set up this metanarrative across seasons. Long post ahead.

Obviously, Osomatsu-san is self-aware and has a casual relationship with itself. No linear plot (though S3 seems to be trying it out and I’ve enjoyed it - I love that they’re willing to experiment), rather a collection of unrelated skits; and so it points out its own metanarrative because of this “lack of consequences.” With comedy comes impermancy and Ososan AND -kun will always bounce back from that week’s insanity. From the Oxford Dictionary, a metanarrative is “a narrative account that experiments with or explores the idea of storytelling, often by drawing attention to its own artificiality.” Basically: a story about stories.

On top of this, is what I’m calling the “grand narrative,” which is often used interchangeably with metanarrative, but here I’m making a distinction to make it less confusing. Of course, Ososan is a story about stories, but with that comes a story it’s not directly telling, which is where most of the (little) character development is taking place. This is what I’m going to call the grand narrative of a show whose premise is being a meta-aware comedy. I’ll admit I’m by no means an expert on these subjects, but storytelling methods are something I enjoy trying to analyze. As a media format, Ososan really utilizes the fact that it’s a tv show.

Right off the bat S1E1 makes it clear what to expect: Nothing. Not a damn thing. But, the show had already been cleared for this first season, so it has to be produced. This same episode’s preview is done by Osomatsu, which I’m just gonna quote instead screenshot because there’s too many.

“...we plan on properly starting the anime the next episode.” “...you ended up with an extra minute, so you need me to do something to fill it?! Actually, is this anime going to be okay with episode one being like this? I’m getting worried about how the rest of this is going to be...” “There, I used up a minute! [EPISODE ENDS]”

Episode one is not only batshit referential, but downright mocking the state of anime in 2015. Which, truthfully, I don’t have much to comment on in that regard, as I’m not an avid anime fan. However, it does this under the premise of being indecisive about what kind of anime they wanted the Osokun reboot to be. 

They’ll do just about anything to stay popular and relevant considering that is, quite literally, all they have going for them as characters in the series and just being characters in general. They may be pieces of shit, but they’re likeable pieces of shit. The dynamics they’ve built upon to be entertaining is encouraged, and they’re basically just roleplaying different skits and fucking around.

All the AUs! All the skits! They’re just playing! They’re just fuckin’ around!! They couldn’t come up with any interesting plot nor could they “graduate” from being anime protagonists and join the real world, so they just fuck around and make a gag anime!

Even if we follow both as the audience, the show makes a difference between the what’s them in their “normal life” (crazy begets crazy, no?) and what’s their “show.” But, really, that’s just one way to look at it, as they don’t really follow any rules as a show. I could say the Joshimatsus are separate characters from the sextuplets, and it’d be a “correct” interpretation. It doesn’t really matter - I’m choosing to examine it all as being the six of them just running around and playing, because being entertaining and having fun is all they know as characters. Besides, having it blended together beyond recognition reinforces how it prioritizes entertaining us, the audience, above logic. Storytelling doesn’t need to make absolute spatial-temporal sense for it to be enjoyable to fans.

In any case, that mentality really seems to be what pushes their character development negative, as they look to reinforce habits and rituals despite them being really detrimental for them in the long run. They know they’re popular characters as is, and with really everyone from staff to fans encouraging this behavior further, so they see no point in fixing what isn’t really broken.

I found this 4 year old article from Manga.Tokyo discussing the Ososan phenomenon in Japan because while the craze died off pretty quickly in American anime circles (which deserves a whole other post), Japanese fans went fuckin’ nuts.

This portion caught my attention, as it makes sense that entitled and enabled asshole children would grow up to be entitled and enabled asshole adults. The article also goes on to compare them to idols (even beyond the F6 spoof) and that they are rooted in being comfort characters above all else. 

It’s worth a read, especially because Japanese fan response is what drives majority of the content post-S1, and, inevitably, ties into their character development. 

They know that they’re Characters, particularly Protagonists. You know what happens to protagonists? Everything works out. Just about every single story created has stuff working out for protagonists. In fact, we have a whole genre made that separates stories with bad tragic endings from our Normal Stories. Ososan is a comedy, not a tragedy, so surely there’s gonna be some payoff somewhere along the road, especially as the seasons and other content are still being pumped out. To a self-aware, entitled, enabled protagonist, assuming everything is just gonna work out for you isn’t that far off from your narrative truth.

However, Ososan is a gag anime, and a lot of gag content (like 4koma mangas) is dropped for other projects before any emotional cathartic ending is provided for characters and fans alike. So, three seasons and a movie later, nothing has happened. It’s a great idol cash cow with a Family Guy filter, and the characters (and writers) don’t even bother to hide it anymore. And I know I’m being hypocritical concerning my definition of “canon material” but I think this portion from one of the drama cds “Choroplex” basically summarizes my point:

CHOROMATSU: Wait, don’t make this into a gag! You don’t even care about becoming employed, right? KARAMATSU: There’s no way that could happen... CHOROMATSU: What kind of future are you imagining? Is it nothing but this? [HUGE PAUSE BEFORE THEY MOVE ONTO SOMETHING ELSE]

They’re parodies of themselves and are running out of ideas. Stagnation and decay is normal, if not unavoidable, at this point in time for them. They’re just 20 somethings who’ve hit a wall but they’re too scared and insecure to bring about permanent positive change. It’s easier for them to fall back into normal patterns and joke off the rest.

They have an antagonistic relationship with expectations. They can’t handle a single iota of expectations, or responsibilities. They’ve never needed to worry before, so why bother now? Once the biggest hits on the block, now they’re just guppies in the ocean, and there’s nothing they believe themselves to be able to accomplish to keep up with this big brave new world. This is epitomized in S3E15, where old man Osomatsu tells a bastardized version of the Tortoise and the Hare, blatantly projecting his feelings onto it. Again, too many screenshots so let me pull more quotes (bolding for my own reference):

“The place that the tortoise thought was the goal was not actually the goal. His journey down the road of life still continued on. The tortoise was quite tired, but he continued running anyway.” “No one actually knew who was in front anymore. There are too many people above you.” “After the tortoise found out how society worked, he thought, ‘So this is the difference in talent? No amount of hard work is going to fix this. All right. I’m done competing with others.’”

S3 has left more questionable endings than its counterparts. The last 2 skits I referenced don’t even a gag to them, and the marriage skit doesn’t play music for the entire second half of S3E5. There’s more involved too. I haven’t even brought up the rice ball twins becoming actual entertainers in their universe, or how they introduced this whole AI subplot only to reject it because All Six Of Them aren’t interested in expanding their little corner of the world. Here’s a transcript of the ending preview from S3E1:

“Hey, hey, Osomatsu here. I thought we were saved from being replaced, but I guess we get new characters next week. Man, we’re busy. New encounters, changing surroundings... We’re NEETs to begin with because all that is a pain. I guess a lot can happen after three seasons. [EPISODE ENDS]”

The sextuplets’ mindsets are extremely self-centered, which is also an environmental thing (the parents don’t even really care that they’re NEETs, for one) and an understanding of what they ought to be (epic successful protagonists). They also have a very black and white mentality, all or nothing. They’re extremely sheltered, and once they realized where they stood in society at large, they just gave up. To them the world is divided between winners and losers, and somehow, “inexplicably,” they found themselves to have fallen from grace. But they’re protagonists, that has to count for something! Everything’s gonna end up okay, right? Well... what this show has told them: No, not at all. They are consistently compared and warned of Iyami, and are perfectly aware of this fact, and have come to internalize it as a truth rather than a reversible self-fulfilling prophecy.

Too many screencaps, taken from the S3S5 marriage discussion:

JYUSHIMATSU: I wonder if we’re gonna get married someday, too. CHOROMATSU: Well, I mean... probably? I’m not exactly sure, but... TODOMATSU: What? You’re gonna get married, Choromatsu-niisan? CHOROMATSU: Huh? Well, yeah... someday.

Surprise! They have commitment issues! The same group that couldn’t commit to a fucking plot! Though their personality issues have several factors involved, I can’t overlook the theater motifs abound. Life’s a stage, and they’re performing entirely unscripted and it shows.

Do I think all of this is 100% intentional on the writers’ part? No, probably not. There’s also an extra layer here regarding contemporary Japanese commentary that I’m not familiar with, so I just ended up focusing on the characters. I can’t be in the writers’ heads, but whatever decisions are being made by executives regarding censorship and “compliance” are reflected in these character changes that result in being significantly more bitter and defeatist.

In the all or nothing, winner-take-all mentality, the only way to save face at this point, in their minds, is to own up to it - act like it’s what they wanted all along. And, hey, it’s funny to watch, right?

“Why is Osomatsu all my examples”, you might be asking. Well, he’s the damn blueprint for it all. The leader of the bunch, the first personality to grab your attention, has had all his issues projected and ricocheted in their echo chamber.

Ultimately, my point here is that you could think their “canon characterizations” (though canon means nothing in a show like this) as being intertwined with the nature of their self-aware existence. They’ve shown you all their tricks, the smoke and mirrors are getting boring, and they’re stalling long enough the story seems to be moving on without them - in spite of them. And when something genuinely threatens their way of life, they don’t know how to respond.

You can play it all straight, of course. Remove the meta jokes and all the same plot points can be hit, but, as a slapstick comedy, it’s able to easily add this additional layer in that I appreciate. I’ve said it in my last post and I’ll probably say it in more, but with comedy comes sincerity - the caveat of all the cartoon violence is that, on some level somewhere, this is how they really feel.

[harry-sussex]

You're lovely, and I enjoy seeing your blog on my dashboard. I'm sorry this has been such a difficult thing to process. It's always really difficult to rework an image of someone you once thought you knew. However I'd like to just put it out there - sometimes (I think the large majority of the time) news is presented in the most sensationalist way, such that nowadays I make a point of de-sensationalizing any news I read in my head. In the case of the whole Harry's memoir thing- I can sympathize with Harry as a person possibly just wanting to take back some control of the narrative for himself. Not just in the most recent events with family (that I tend to think are less horrifying than the fandom/Twitter sussex squad discusses it anyway), but in all aspects of his life. I do not at all think he's going to put his family on blast. I can easily imagine Meghan reigning that dialogue in; she has the tendency to think before she speaks that he seems to lack. And he loves his family. Similar to The Interview promos, I imagine the publishing house knew to increase the interest by implying it to be a tell all memoir. I think he's just done a lot of growing up that he didn't know he had to do over a short period of time, esp re: implicit bias/racism in the setting of media's blatant attack on someone he loves, and is disappointed by the institution's and his family's response to it. I think he's emerged a more introspective and aware human, albeit a disillusioned one. Yes it breaks my heart to think that Meghan won't get a break from the tabloids any time soon. If I were him I'd counsel him to write it & sit on it for a few yrs. But I don't want to give the media the power to destroy Meghan in my mind, and I pray she & Harry won't either. I think she'll be okay. She's a strong one, and I think he's able to draw that same link for himself and be thoughtful about what he does. No one likes being misunderstood/misinterpreted, and I wouldn't be surprised if Harry's especially triggered by that given his history with the press. Maybe this idea emerged from therapy, idk. I can empathize with that, even if I wouldn't do it myself. I hope and pray Meghan gets the support she needs from him and her loved ones in the meantime. I'm honestly not going to read it. I think the less attention I give the BRF the better off they are, unless they're doing something immoral/illegal (see: Woking pizza alibi). And I think at the end of the day, people will unfairly judge other people, especially public figures that have tragic pasts and are publically fighting with the media. A lot of it is going to be noise and I'm not going to give my energy into figuring it out. I like to think I've got a good sense of who they are as people - flawed but ultimately well meaning and earnest. I'm a huge admirer of Meghan and think Harry got really lucky with this one and I'm proud of him for choosing her in more ways than one. I believe Harry and Meghan are lovely people, and I 100% believe their interview. I believe that there are people in the palace with a lot of unchecked power who deliberately uncovered her and Archie from BRF protection for reasons of believed superiority over Meg & Arch. And they're figuring out how to deal with that as a couple and a family. And it's none of my business past that imo. I pray for them and hope it'll eventually end in peace for them all. Just wanted to add another perspective, and hopefully some levity. xx M

Hi, dear. First thing’s first, I really appreciate that this is off anon lol. I love it when people own their opinions, and it says a lot that you did. So thank you for that.

Second of all, I really appreciate the nuance and perspective that is in this message. I agree that the news is sensationalist, and my initial reaction was based off of that. I did watch the promotional clips of the interview and I believe it did sour my expectations going into it when I watched it nearly a week after it aired. I did my best to stay away from Tumblr because I didn’t want that to hinder my view, but it was impossible to separate the promotions that presented the information one way from what it actually was, and thank you for bringing that up with respect to the memoir because I hadn’t considered it. I will say that my knee jerk reaction is pretty on par with the way I still feel about it 24 hours later, especially since I got the news directly, not from Tumblr or Twitter or anywhere else, but you’re right that it could have soured my view from the very start.

I appreciate that he wants to take back some of the narrative but I think that ship has sailed, tbh. He did that with the interview and now I just think it feels like information overload. At some point, people are going to get tired of hearing the wealthy, privileged, powerful Prince complain about his life while more than 4 million people have died due to a global pandemic in less than 2 years. Not to say that he doesn’t struggle - in the words of Roxane Gay, there is no oppression Olympics (and that can be extended to struggle Olympics) - but people view it that way and will get tired of it, if they haven’t already.

I also agree that Harry’s past with the press has tarnished the way he has handled the media and the public post-exit, when he’s finally in a position to strike back without being somewhat obliged to them as part of the circumstances of his birth. I understand and sympathize with him but I just don’t think the public does, and the public matters much, much more than the perspective of one single American fan, to whom he’s never been obliged, and I simply do not think the public will afford him that same understanding, sympathy, and leniency. The public and the media are critical to his humanitarian work - his mother never realized that towards the end of her life, and I truly don’t think she would have been the martyr/saint she is perceived to be now if she had lived, because she did not know how to meet the media in the middle and eventually that started to piss people off. He’s starting to piss people off now and if it doesn’t bother him personally (which it definitely does), I don’t want it to affect his causes. The Invictus Games, Sentebale, Walking with the Wounded, WellChild, Mayhew, Smartworks, Archewell, etc. deserve better than to suffer the wrath of the media and an apathetic public because their patrons simply will not shut up lol.

I guess my point is that they will be unfairly judged (regardless, but especially due to the way they’re handling things), and I think it would suit them better in the long run if they adopted a different strategy. I really sympathize with the fact that he feels frustrated with the narrative that has been manufactured but I really, really think the narrative will only get worse and worse as he continues to go on and on about how badly his life sucks, basically. Again, I don’t deny that he struggles - we all do, some more than others, especially when there are mental health issues - but the public, to me, simply does not care. My own therapist has told me to simply stop caring about the things that I discuss with him. Not to say that they’re not relevant, important, or worthy of discussion - they absolutely are - but his point is that you cannot change people and you are wasting your energy and struggling yourself because you want to change them so, so, so badly that you’re neglecting your own self care in the process. I hate that I do it to myself and I also hate that he appears to be doing it to himself. I’m sure a lot of this conversation has been brought up in his own therapy, and I’m no professional, but I’m doing my best to heed the advice of my own therapist - which is the opposite of what Harry is doing - and it’s done wonders for me, when I actually can do it.

If there’s anything I know from this whole thing, it’s that Harry is absolutely punching above his weight, love him as I may, and that he adores, adores, adores his wife. He has chosen her from the very second she came into his life and I couldn’t want anything more for him or from her. I’m not going to lie, I would have been in this thing for any wife that Harry chose, because I was here long before Meghan specifically came into his life. However, I am glad every day that he chose her, that he loves her, that he wants to protect her, that she loves him back, that he lives the life with her that he’s wanted as long as I (and I’m sure he) can remember. I love her because he loves her, and I would have no matter what, because at the end of the day, it’s his happiness and comfort that matters to me, that has mattered to me since I discovered him and how wonderful he can be more than 7 years ago. What more could I ask of Meghan? What more, as his fan to the end (annoy me as he may), could I want for him? Who could say anything about her in that regard? If there’s anything that has come of this mess, to me, it’s that Harry loves, loves, loves his wife. I will always be happy for him and I will always be proud of him for choosing her, even if I don’t always agree with the way he goes about it.

I’m looking forward to peace, too. I cannot wait for things to just die out, for them to work things out as a couple and as a family, and for everyone to move on. The family will still do their thing and the Sussexes can do theirs, but I cannot deal with this back and forth, tit for tat, petty nonsense anymore. They’re wonderful and flawed, like the rest of them (except Andrew), and I just hope that they can all come to some kind of agreement or terms that lets this die down. It’s exhausting for everyone - themselves included. If I’m this tired, I can only imagine how tired they all are.

Thanks for stopping by, and sorry for the essay (essays, these past 24 hours lol). I really appreciate your kindness in this message, your presence in my notifications (I do see them!), your nuanced perspective and like I said before, I really, really appreciate that you own it!

[questionablysound]

“Spider-Man – the superhero who could be – you!”

I know that Spider-Man's relatabilty has been talked about in different ways by a lot of people but, hey I did my masters dissertation on Miles Morales and his representation, which means I did an extensive amount of research into Spider-Man, and I have to do something with this information. The first chapter is literally entirely about Peter Parker and why he's such a big deal. I mean it's actually about the ways his original characterisation played into ongoing evolutions in YA lit and how despite being unique within comics he still fit into the overarching white all-American man idealism of the comic book superhero, but it very much made the point I'm about to get into.

The reason Spider-Man is iconic is because he was someone readers, particularly teen readers, could connect to. He had financial problems, was socially awkward and was just a bundle of anxiety. He also struggled to do the right thing. He initially only sees his new powers as something to be used selfishly, and even after his turning point has moments of doubt and used his powers for monetary gain, both things that were pretty uncommon in comic books at the time. Furthermore, from a visual perspective, he wore a full body costume which meant when he was Spider-Man the reader could picture themselves behind the mask. Even for Peter it was a way to take on a new self and escape his reality.

This mirroring for the reader was a factor that was built into every aspect of his comics, such as the sign off I quote in the title that highlights this very point. The hero that could be you. This is why we love Peter. He is a hero, he always keeps fighting, he always helps, but he has moments of doubt, he fails, he makes the wrong choices. He's as human as he is superhuman. And so we believe that we could be Spider-Man too.

I mean, this is the central theme of Into the Spider-Verse, Miles handily summed up in his monologue. "Anyone can wear the mask. You could wear the mask." It's honestly why I think we don't even question the concept of the spiderverse or never get tired of seeing all iterations of the masked spider. And why Spidersonas are a concept we so readily accept. The entire movie portrays this so well in a hundred different ways. If this wasn’t already getting long I’d go into how Miles’s costume moment in this is a thousand times better than in Bendis’s origin story in Ultimates, Stan Lee’s cameo, or the individual introductions for each of the Spiders, and how they all come back to this point.

So you’re probably wondering what the whole point of this is, outside of me trying to make use of months of research. Putting it simply, that very specific demographic of comic book readers that have a fit at the very suggestion of rebooting Peter Parker as a POC or gender flipped, or in any way LGBTQ+, and who were furious at the introduction of Miles or the decision to give Spider-Gwen her own series, are fundamentally misunderstanding who and what Spider-Man is. When Marvel say’s Spider-Man is the hero that could be you, they do not mean only if you’re white, straight and male, they mean whoever is holding the comic book. It is why he has endured for so long, why he has been brought to the screen by three different actors and been constantly animated. It’s why he is the favourite hero of people from all kinds of backgrounds.

Yes, his powers are narratively satisfying, his characterisation complex, and his origin iconic, but the idea that behind the mask could be anyone is what truly makes him special. He, like comic books by their very nature, holds the innate possibility of evolving and changing, and this is a powerful thing.

[whitmore]

what is your opinion on Jordan?

i think he’s a compelling villain. i think neil jackson does a good job at playing him and despite the slight sympathy touches thrown in to make him feel like a real person and give him motive, he’s still, without a doubt, a morally bad and evil character.

my main issue with him is the immigrant narrative that has NOT been subtle. (same w the american dream being a wagon for supervillain activity) because there’s already SO much anti-immigrant sentient rn, ESPECIALLY in the us, that seeing immigrants demonised is just... tired. i’m tired of it. having immigrants be the proprietors of such a white supremacist-esque narrative is scapegoat-ish for excusing citizen immigrants who share the same sentiments as jordan so that they can be like “oh but i’m not a villain bc we’re fundamentally different!!”

i know that it’s fiction but i’m a huge believer that media doesn’t exist in a vacuum and that every piece of information we consume changes how we think in some way (whether we agree or disagree w/ the media, processing that information AFFECTS us and our brains) and i just. it’s a villain story and i don’t really agree with the premise of it when it could have been written better without the subplot of “immigrant bad!” that was thrown in there. the whole white supremacist vibes that he’s got going on are already bad, but associating that with immigrancy just leaves a REALLY bad taste in my mouth, especially during these years where anti-immigrant sentient already rages in america & across the western world.

i know that’s he’s a (descendant of) white immigrants, and i know that intersectionality definitely affects the overall meaning of his character; it’s just that the white supremacist arc SHOULD have been enough to villainize him, except that to make him a “better villain” or to villainize him in the eyes of the people, the writers decided to make jordan part of the “other”, so that non-immigrant (read: born-citizen) white ppl in america don’t relate because he’s the bad guy, so that citizens can excuse themselves if they feel similar sentiments bc they’re not closely related to an immigrant story (even tho everyone in america who is not native is either descended from immigrants or the immigrants that forcibly brought slaves) (also there’s a huge difference between immigrants & second & third gen immigrants compared to fourth and beyond bc of the proximity to actual immigrant oppression)

adding in that he’s (CLOSELY descended from) immigrants allows the white ppl of america to excuse themselves as well as ascribe that he has that sentiment BC of immigrancy, which villanizes the immigrant story itself. also the whole “american dream” being a wagon for supervillains is also just bad and i hope that barbara OR AN ACTUAL NON-VILLAIN IMMIGRANT gets to control it when the isa is gone

tl;dr: i have a huge issue w the immigrant narrative bc it exists solely to make jordan part of the “other” and in turn, functions to villainize immigrants in america. i’m not like anti-jordan as a character i’m just very anti-the way he’s written and how immigrancy is used as a scapegoat

[worryinglyinnocent]

Fic: Dead Man Walking (5/?)

It’s been 84 years! Enjoy nonetheless.

Summary: Prime Ministers don’t normally wake up in morgues after they’ve been murdered, but that’s exactly what Robert Sutherland has just done. Right in front of Lacey’s nose. With limited resources and not knowing who to trust, Sutherland and Lacey must work together to get to the bottom of the attempted assassination.

Based loosely on this dream I had.

Rated: T, eventually E.

Note: This is meant to be ‘darkly humorous and amusing mystery’ rather than ‘gripping political thriller’…

[One] [Two] [Three] [Four] [AO3]

—

Dead Man Walking

Five

Lacey was alone in the living room with Sutherland. Mrs de Ville had vanished off somewhere and Carrie was outside talking to Ursula about the best way to get into Chequers without being questioned, trying to convince the taxi driver that everything was perfectly above board, honest. 

Before, when it had just been her and Sutherland in the morgue, it hadn’t been anywhere near as awkward as it was now. Before, there had been much more urgency, and Sutherland had been a lot groggier from having just died and come back to life, and Lacey had had a lot more to focus on than the fact she was alone with the Prime Minister.

Now that she didn’t have to worry about someone coming along and finding them and she didn’t have to worry about keeping him safe from a bunch of civil servants who were probably the ones to kill him in the first place, things were much more awkward. For some reason, she kept replaying the moment she’d run into the morgue in her mind, and she could barely string more than two thoughts together before something in her brain would helpfully remind her that she’d seen the Prime Minister naked and that he did have a rather nice arse. 

To be honest, the rest of him wasn’t too bad either. He’d look better if he weren’t quite so stressed, but Lacey had always had a bit of a soft spot for silver foxes. She might not agree with his party line, but that didn’t mean that she couldn’t find the man himself objectively attractive. 

The silence in the living room stretched on, and Lacey wondered what she ought to say to fill it, rather than just sitting here staring at the man until someone came to rescue them from this void. 

Thankfully, Sutherland spoke first. 

“Thank you,” he said. “I don’t think that I really had the chance to express my gratitude back when we were in the hospital before, everything was a bit…”

“Frantic?” Lacey suggested. 

“Yes.” Sutherland sighed. “I do really appreciate all your help. I think that there are quite a few people in your position who would have been quite happy to leave me to my fate. Or finish the job, you know.”

Lacey snorted. “Oh, believe me, I’ve been tempted over the last couple of years, and you and I are still going to have a discussion about student loan forgiveness at some point. But, ultimately, I’m a decent human being and I like to believe that you are too. And, you know, murder is bad, even if it does happen to people you don’t like.” She paused. “Well, it’s not that I don’t like you.” Good grief, why was she trying to justify herself? She’d saved the man’s life and snuck him out of the hospital; she didn’t need to be friends with him so why was she trying to ingratiate herself? “More that I don’t like your policies and the way your party thinks.”

“Fair enough.” Sutherland drained his coffee and made a face. “You’re right, maybe this experience has served to put me off coffee a bit.”

Lacey laughed. “I told you so. You know, when I was growing up, I always thought that politics was the most boring thing ever and I couldn’t believe that anyone would want to be Prime Minister. Now it’s got a lot more exciting. Although, that said, I still can’t believe that anyone would want to be Prime Minister when the rate of assassination just went up by a hundred per cent.”

“It would only have gone up by a hundred per cent if they had actually succeeded,” Sutherland pointed out.

“According to everyone who isn’t us, they did succeed.” Lacey shrugged. “Face it, you’re in a dangerous line of work. Not as dangerous as being the American president though. We’ve still got a while to go before we catch them up in terms of assassinated premiers.”

She paused, thinking deeply into her long-perceived notions of politics and politicians. Since she had one here, the top dog no less, she might as well get a few things off her chest. “Why did you want to become Prime Minister anyway?”

Sutherland sighed. “Because I thought that I could change the country and make people’s lives better. It’s only once you get into government that you realise just how hard that is. Power is always limited, and so it should be – think what would happen if there were no restraints in place.”

Lacey nodded. “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

“Exactly. It’s something that you’re all too aware of when you get to be in my position.”

“Ever been tempted?”

“What?”

“Ever been tempted to use your power for evil? I mean, come on, we’re slap bang in the middle of an excellent villain origin story here. Poisoned and left for dead by the people you trusted…”

Sutherland scoffed. “I wouldn’t trust Sir Albert as far as I could throw him.”

“You’re ruining my narrative here!” Lacey sighed. “Why do I bother? I should have left you in the morgue.”

She didn’t mean it, and the worst thing was that she knew Sutherland knew she didn’t mean it as well. He gave a little chuckle, but it came out more tired than anything, turning into a yawn that he tried and failed to mask.

It served to remind Lacey of how late it was – well, how early now, given that it was long past midnight – and that she too was running on empty. She wondered how long this limbo was going to last. She had done her part, so to speak, delivering the Prime Minister into safe hands, and yet here she was still, for some reason unwilling to go home and consider her job done.

She tried to justify it to herself by saying that Carrie couldn’t possibly allow her to go home now and possibly ruin the secret of Sutherland’s survival, but she knew deep down that she still felt the same sense of responsibility towards him that had driven her to get him out of the hospital in the first place. It was the same acute sense of justice that had fuelled her in her current career path – the need to see victims vindicated and the perpetrators of the crimes against them punished.

“I have to say, although I’ve not met many forensic scientists in my time, you’re not at all how I imagined one would be,” Sutherland said presently, startling Lacey out of her train of thought. Spooky that he should mention it just as she was pondering it herself.

“Well, it’s not all the glamour of CSI,” she said. “Not that CSI is all that glamorous most of the time. Most of it’s sitting in laboratories looking through microscopes. And not all forensic scientists are nerds in lab coats like procedurals would have you believe. Some of us ride mopeds and rescue politicians in our spare time.”

She leaned back in her chair, running a hand through her hair and wishing it were possible for her to teleport out of the situation, get a few hours’ sleep in her own bed, then blink back in as if nothing had happened and continue the conversation. She didn’t want to leave Sutherland and Carrie to fend for themselves against whatever internal workings had brought them to this, but at the same time, she wasn’t really sure what she, Ursula and Mrs de Ville could do to help them.

She was saved from any further awkwardness by the entry of the lattermost into the room again.

“I’ve made up the spare beds,” she said, completely matter of fact. “I for one have been completely exhausted by this ordeal and if my errant daughter doesn’t come back in here soon I shall go to bed without saying goodnight or getting the latest in the plan off her.” She paused. “Although, that said, if Ursula wants to stay over as well, then people will have to start bunking up.”

Her gaze travelled from Sutherland to Lacey and back again, giving a sage nod before she disappeared out of the room.

Lacey leapt out of her seat, following the older woman out, not for any reason other than to get away from Sutherland’s physical presence whilst she also had the mental image of bunking up with him. She should not be finding the Prime Minister, of all people, this attractive. She definitely should not be thinking about sleeping with him. She absolutely should not be thinking about sleeping with him when he’d been functionally dead just a few hours ago. The poor man would need rest and recuperation, not riding into the mattress.

Although, given his current levels of stress, perhaps riding him into the mattress would provide the relaxation that he needed.

She stepped out into the driveway, where Carrie and Ursula were still very confidential beside the taxi. Carrie noticed her.

“Are you leaving us, darling?” she asked. “I was going to ask if you wanted to participate in the great expedition.”

Lacey shook her head. “No, no. I’m still here. I’m in this deep already, I might as well stick it out to the end.”

Ursula nodded. “That’s the principle I’m working on too. Anyway, we’re off to Chequers and praying we don’t get killed. Are you coming?”

“No, I don’t think so. Someone’s got to stay here and keep an eye on Sutherland. We don’t want anyone coming and finishing the job, and no offence to your mum, but I think she might need back up.”

“No offence taken. I’d best let her know that we’re going. Actually, can you do that, darling? If I tell her then she’ll want to come too, and whilst I just about managed to keep her reigned in at the hospital, I don’t trust her in the vicinity of government buildings. Wish us luck! We’re going to need it!” She flung herself into the back of the taxi and waved out of the window.

“We’re going to need more than luck,” Ursula muttered as she got into the driver’s seat. “We’re going to need a bloody miracle.”

The taxi backed out of the driveway just as the sun was beginning to come up, and Lacey felt the events of the day beginning to weigh heavy on her shoulders. All she really wanted now was a nap, but she had thrown her lot in with Carrie and Sutherland for better or worse.

Just as she was turning to go back inside and ponder her next steps, her phone buzzed with the arrival of another message. It was from her father again, and she remembered that she had never responded to his first frantic question of if she had stolen the Prime Minister.

Where are you? Is everything all right?

Lacey felt a sharp pang of guilt that her dad was so worried about her. Although she didn’t want to tell him the full extent of what was going on, she knew that she had to let him know that she was safe. Before she could reply, another message arrived.

Is you-know-who alive?

She snorted, immediately reminded of Harry Potter, and typed out a quick response. She loved the fact that he was using a strange little kind of code, but then again, she wouldn’t put it past the government to be tapping their phones whilst all this upheaval was going on and the Civil Service were desperately trying to find the Prime Minister’s corpse.

Yes, y-k-w is alive. I am safe and well and hiding out with him. Being taken care of by an old lady with a taste for gin and cigarette holders. I’ll tell you everything tomorrow. Well. Later today.

She paused before sending and added: I’ll call you at midday.

Hopefully by then, she’d have more of a plan, and if something did go terribly wrong and she ended up imprisoned in a basement at Chequers, or, in a terrible worst case scenario, in a morgue herself, then her dad would know to send out a search party if she didn’t check in.

His response came a moment later.

Stay safe, Lace. Keep y-k-w safe too.

She smiled and stepped back into the house, closing the door on the world outside and hoping that whatever Carrie and Ursula got up to at Chequers, they would be both successful and quick about it, so that her life could continue back on the nice and boring course that it had been taking before.

Lacey already knew, however, that it would likely never be quite the same again.

[qqueenofhades]

I love the term militant idealism from your last post. I wonder how you think about the ongoing removal of names on buildings and statues as Americans become woke about eugenics, systemic racism and sexism, and other fuck ups across white American history?

A couple years ago in August 2017, at the height of the furor over removing Confederate statues/imagery from public places, and after the Charlottesville white supremacist riots, I wrote this post in response to a similar question. It outlined extensively what the rationale for the “we should preserve history and keep those statues up!!!” defense is (i.e. racism and systematic amnesia). My position hasn’t changed much, and I think it demonstrates the depths of white fragility in this country and the utter inability of white Americans to think about what their history really consists of and what the construction of this geopolity has entailed, apart from all the fuzzy feel-good stuff and giant flags and slogans about Freedum!! and so forth. We… we realize that we live in a hyper-capitalist fasciso-patriotic militarized nightmare land, right? The giant flags and flyovers and the fact that the entire month of November in the National Football League is now “Salute to Service,” after they couldn’t stand one black man taking a knee for the national anthem? Where coaches wear camo on the sidelines and everyone acts like they actually give a crap about veterans aside from their use as convenient propaganda? We… we know this isn’t normal, right?

See, I do think there is a useful application and a genuine need for militant idealism. It just isn’t in throwing slogans or personal attacks at each other on the Twitter echo chamber, or any argument at all on social media about politics, culture, entertainment, fictional ships, etc. Most people picking fights on social media really aren’t doing a whole fuck of a lot of anything useful in the real world. The internet has brought a lot of use into our lives, and indeed we cannot function without it, which is a little terrifying (turn off the internet for 24 hours across the entire world and welp, nice knowing you civilization). But it’s also morphed into a giant, ravenous beast that you really, really have to approach with caution in a whole different way from the “oh no you might meet a pedophile” panics of the 90s. (And I mean, there are still trash men everywhere, so it’s just with extra Terrible now. Winning?) You are not going to change this overwhelming, violent, omnipresent system by holding hands, playing nice, and singing Kumbaya. Sometimes, a little violence and militancy is needed in return. You need to stand up and play hard and not back down. And since the general liberal ethos is that “violence is always bad!!!/if you use violence you’re Just As Bad As Them!!!”, that is cut off and stigmatized in the name of social order.

The thing is, this is the first time in American history that there has been even any kind of visible and sustained public debate on whether these things that we’ve just all gone with for so long are actually acceptable. That’s why we have “OK Boomer” and similar movements, because young people are taking a long hard look at what they’ve been left with and are understandably being like are you fucking kidding me. But as I have also been discussing, a certain subset of young people are also extremely insistent on having the Right Opinion and Only The Right Opinion, and that demonstrating any uncertainty or looking like they’re not sufficiently Woke is Unacceptable. This is why I can never get students to talk in class. They have been raised in a culture where they will be mercilessly punished for being Wrong, and it’s hard to conceptualize a space, i.e. a university classroom, where you’re allowed to start at zero and work your way up with dialogue and engagement. That just isn’t how it works anymore, and frankly, we have to blame social media for a lot of it. Especially when combined with CEOs (why yes, I am looking at you, Twitter not banning Nazis and just all of Mark Zuckerberg) who are more willing to cater to the alt-right in the name of “freedom” than to enforce any kind of standards for public discourse or try to tell 21st-century Americans that they can’t have something they want. Our society is built on the maxim that All Consumption Is Good Consumption, Consume More Now. And… that’s a problem.

I feel like I may be getting away from the point of what exactly you asked, but these things are all interconnected. If someone is going to actually translate internet outrage to real-world action, and actually put some skin in the game and fight against the terrifying normalization of these narratives: please. We need more people to do that. But real life is scary in a way that the internet isn’t. You might face immediate consequences for something. You might have someone tell you that you’re wrong and you can’t just block or mute them. How do you change someone’s mind without the two of you just yelling pithy, polarized slogans at each other? It’s fuckin’ hard work. So it’s easier to just retweet someone that you agree with, to other people who agree with you. And so the cycle goes.

Obviously, I 100% support any and all efforts to bring to the collective American conscience just how fucked up American history actually is. But I sometimes worry that the shortcomings in the methods used to do so make it easier for the tired old class of establishment bigots to dismiss as “snowflakes.” After all, I’ve just been ripping into the self-righteous infighting and tendency to rigid ideological purity and insularism in the left, and… what do we do about that? I don’t know. We can’t just immediately remove people from the entire contextualising framework in which they’ve grown up and made meaning and understood themselves. We can try to educate them, but presenting people who have already made up their minds with conflicting information really does not do much. It usually makes them double down on the positions they already hold, because they can feel unfairly victimized by the people who Just Don’t Get It. It can oftentimes feel hopeless, but we have to do it anyway.

So yes. We should take down statues of Confederate generals. This goes without saying. The “we shouldn’t pretend it never happened” defense is functional only to a point. As I said in the other post, Confederate statues can go into storage. They don’t have to be destroyed, if it’s really so vital that we keep them. But their enforced presence in public life is an act of white supremacist violence, and their defenders know it. Besides, how about, uh, we try goddamn being able to talk about what the Confederacy really stood for first, instead of clinging to it as a token that is specifically intended to deflect public debate or constructive discourse on the issue?

This also reminds me of the recent backlash happening on historic plantations in the South. These are often beautiful manor houses with grounds, and they are tourist attractions. They are also, brace yourself for grossness, popular locations for weddings. (I don’t know why, but White People.) The tour guides at these places have finally been empowered to talk somewhat more honestly about how all this beauty was built by slave labor, and white tourists hate it. They tie themselves into knots about how slavery wasn’t that bad or how the Civil War was about “states’ rights” or why are you bringing this up now, that was Just What Our Bad Ancestors Did. This… this is the level we are still at. It’s bad. The white tourists seem to feel that they can go to, again, a plantation in the South and just enjoy the beauty and not to be “forced” to hear about slavery. It spoils the illusion. They want to keep living this way, so they throw fits, and why shouldn’t they? The entire establishment of this country thus far has supported them. It threatens their whole identity. It must be destroyed. And I just… sigh.

Anyway. This has gotten away from me, and I’m still not sure if I answered your question. Sorry. But there you have it.

[roseunspindle]

Tired of Sex and Nudity and Cursing in every single show...

Not every single one of course, but I dunno, it’s getting old. Very, very old. I try to start a new show and some don’t even have real dialogue for the cursing, or have a character established by having them have sex....

I do understand that part of my issue is that I’m on the ace spectrum, so sex scenes are weird to me, especially when sex is used as the vehicle to establish a relationship, meaning that I don’t understand it at all. Nudity is fairly boring to me, in all honesty. 

American Horror Story started out well for me, I eye rolled at some of the drawn out sex scenes in season 1 but they mostly served their purpose for the narrative so I let it be. Season 2 made a show of blatantly showing a rape of a lesbian character, but we’d never seen her really be with her female partner at all.

After that I’ve pretty much lost interest because the show feels oversexed and more into jump frights that the genuinely creepy tone season one had, and very little interest in doing anything with their characters.

As for the cursing, I’m not ragging on every instance, I complaining about the massive over use (looking at you HBO). There comes a point where the amount of cursing is less “adult” which cursing really isn’t “adult” and just comes across as middleschool kids giggling to themselves over how many swear words they know. It’s immature and stupid. Trueblood is an even better example of over sexing and over cursing, the books were fun, and I’d been excited to see them brought to life, only to massively disappointed with the pathetic and bland thing Trueblood was.

For wasteful nudity, I had just read Outlander, and hopped onto my libraries website to check out season 1 part 1 of the show, and so many instances of nudity weren’t in the book (there were some but they had a point to the narrative) and like, Claire being dressed int he first episode I think? We didn’t need long, long, long, moments staring at her boobs. That time could have been spent on developing her relationship with various characters or showing her finding out stuff like the book, nope, boobies, butts, that’s all way, way more important.

Ugh...

[showmethemon3y]

What Black History Month means to me - guest post by Pauline Mayers

So it’s October,  and as usual I’m having a lot of thoughts about Black History Month. In advance of my conversation with the wonderful Pauline Mayers tonight for Real Talk, we got talking on the subject. When she told me about this piece she had written, I wanted to read it. And then when I read it, I wanted to pos it. So thank you Pauline for the gift of your words and experience. I will post the rest verbatim from her text here. 

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What Black History Month Means To Me by Pauline Mayers

Originally written 1st March 2019

The furore over the apparent rebranding of Black History Month (BHM) to Diversity Month by some London boroughs last year (2018) is of no surprise to me.

I remember when the idea and subsequent rolling out of BHM across the UK began in 1987. The following year, I began my dance training at the internationally known dance conservatoire, the Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance. Being a young Hackney girl and just turning 18 at the end of the 1980’s this was a big deal for me. I decided to specifically audition for the school as I had watched the associated Rambert Dance company and noticed there were no dancers in the company that looked like me. Without really thinking about it, my audition and subsequent training at the school was a challenge to the status quo. Much like BHM in its very beginnings. 

BHM was a challenge to the UK perception that black people were muggers, thieves and rioters, not to trusted and certainly not to be tolerated. Not that I noticed any of this at the time. My awareness of BHM was consigned to a footnote accentuated by seeing Diane Abbott and Bernie Grant every so often on the news. My attention was very firmly placed on becoming a dancer.

In hindsight, my training was the real beginning of being othered. At the school, I wasn’t seen as a pioneer from Hackney, the first cockney girl (to my knowledge) to attend the school. I was viewed by some of the staff as simply a ‘black body’ who was attempting the impossible. ‘Black People don’t do ballet or dance’ was a mantra that was very definitely felt by me. It’s a mantra that Cassa Pancho MBE, creative director of British ballet company, Ballet Black has spoken of recently. And one that still exists today despite the presence of the extraordinary Dance Theatre of Harlem who were a company of twenty years standing at the point I was in training. This was a fact that school staff at the time seemed to have ignored. For teachers who in theory were experts in the ballet world, this omission is rather startling. Indeed, thirty years after I had begun my training, Ballet Black working with Freed of London have launched ballet shoes for darker skin tones. Which tells me by the omission happened.

Given I had begun my training at a local youth centre and went on to train at the Weekend Arts College I had up until this point always been around people who looked and sounded like me. Being a British black girl at a world renowned ballet school was not the ‘Fame’ experience I was expecting.

I never imagined for a second, the colour of my skin would have such a impact on my every day experience at the school. Born and raised in Hackney, it never occurred to me that being British and black would become a serious bone of contention. A couple of teachers seemed to take some sort of exception to my presence at the school. It certainly wasn’t ALL of the teachers... sounds familiar...

There were however, two teachers who made a massive difference to my experience at the school. With staff that had no POC representation, and students predominantly white European, with some students as far afield as Japan, Canada and the US, seeing examples of black excellence in dance was challenging. I needed to see people who looked like me succeed in the arena I had chosen to live my life, to keep going, to be inspired, so that I didn’t falter. Thankfully the director of the school had cottoned on to how I was feeling and gave me a gift, one I have treasured to this day. The biography of African American performer, activist and French resistance agent Josephine Baker called Jazz Cleopatra. It was about how she who took Europe by storm at a point when the idea of a famous black woman seemed impossible. I read the book until it fell apart. And then bought it several times more.

In much the same way, BHM was a way of celebrating Britain’s black community and its contributions to the U.K., which is a home from home. The reach of what was once the British Empire has morphed into the Commonwealth countries, extending to the Caribbean, where the British had ruled for centuries, leaving it’s mark through the Privy Council which various parts of the Caribbean still adhere to today. West Indian citizens had been told through their educational, legal, and political systems for 400 years that they were British. A fact seemingly denied upon independence from and entry into the U.K. during the 1960’s. The British decided that being black and from the Caribbean meant you were not of Britain but something else entirely, “no Blacks, no Irish, no dogs”. And this way of thinking remains to this day as we have seen with last year’s breaking of the Windrush Scandal. Make no mistake, the illegal deporting of Black British citizens had been going on for decades before The Guardian newspaper shed a light on it.

BHM came after the race riots of the beginning of the 1980’s when the black community railed against the overuse by the police of the SUS laws on young black men around the country. In my recollection BHM was a way to build bridges that had been burnt by shining a positive light on the contributions of the UK black community. The recent return of such rudimentary and abusive laws now come in the form of stop and search which has shown, yet again, to disproportionally target the black community… sounds familiar?

My awareness of BHM really came into being as my dance career took off. Cool Britannia was in, as was Suede, the Gallagher Brothers, etc. Soul to Soul, the Young Disciples and Mark Morrison were showing the world that black music didn’t only come from America it was a part of British culture, the MOBO’s were in its infancy and the U.K. perceived itself to be multi-cultural. Everyone was welcome and could be whoever they wanted to be. Britain was in effect was open to all.

My first offers of working on BHM projects came in 2001 at a point of unemployment. Theatres and venues I didn’t know somehow managed to find my details, making enquiries about my availability for October with a view to making collaborations with Black History as a focus. The only downside was there was very little preparation time (enquiries began in August) and not much money. However, I believed it was worth it, considering the opportunity to work with such established organisation could foster new lucrative relationships. I felt at the time the opportunity to work during BHM was a chance for organisations to see the way I worked and witness the success of my projects. They were opportunities that couldn’t be passed up…. or so I thought.

After three years of repeated promises to work in a more sustainable way across the year instead of the one month lead up to BHM and then working across the month for very little money, I decided this particular avenue was like a parasite. BHM was feeding off my very presence. It began to signal to me Whiteness’ attempt to validate its existence by delivering BHM as a means to an end. The idea to working longer term with me would literally disappear into the shadows for the following 10 months without even so much as a thank you for some of the frankly Herculean efforts I was making for such low wages. I know I’m not the only one, this was and is being replicated across the country. At the time, BHM seemed to be nothing more than a way to service the system and give the illusion of a non-existent cohesion. Besides, I was growing tired of the slave narrative that seemed to dominate BHM.

It’s the same slave narrative that keeps being brought up as ‘black history’. Contrary to popular belief, it’s not. It’s history. British history to be exact. 

The slave trade is the history of colonial white European domination inflicted on the world. It’s the story of how the British along with the French, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese amongst many others fed and gorged themselves until bloated with gout upon the profits made from enforced “free’ labour entwined with the horrors of enslaving millions of africans for centuries, and how the accrued wealth turned turned Britain into a super power, gifting it an empire which ruled over 23% of the world’s population at it’s height. It’s the continuing narrative of how Britain’s educational, legal, political, financial and social systems were aided by the profits of the slave trade, indeed the rise of the industrial revolution could not have happened without the slave trade. None of this is ‘black history’.

The black history I want to understand speaks of kings and queens, education and empire on the African continent, a time before the europeans enslaved Africans on a mass scale. The black history I’ve come to understand speaks of Bussa, Nanny Maroon, the Haitian Revolution, as well as many other uprisings by the enslaved which continued throughout the entire period of the slave trade against the colonisers who refused to see human beings. It speaks of the British Civil Rights movement (not American) with events like the Bristol Bus Boycott, and hear the stories of activists like Olive Morris. This is the black history I want to see. Others agree with me, indeed Jeremy Corbyn’s announcement for Labour’s proposals to change the way Black history is taught in the U.K. shows there is indeed some sort of a will to do things differently. I want to see such history embedded in the British education system. But this I believe will never happen in my lifetime, not least because it disproves the notion of black people being knife-wielding, uneducated, service providers who should be grateful for being here in the UK. And if a black person doesn’t like how they are being treated then they, and I quote “have the means to leave the country’ as Piers Morgan told Dr. Kehinde Andrews. This insipid ‘othering’ is the thing whiteness always does to protect itself. And too many people racialised as white fall into this diatribe with wild abandonment when faced with accusations of racism. I say this with a vague hope that I’ll be proved wrong… although I doubt it.

But, I digress. 

As a black woman, I am constantly called to justify my presence in the U.K. to white people who literally don’t know the history of how the black community came to be in the U.K. Every single day, I’m faced with a continual barrage of micro aggressions, pictures and articles from a media hell bent on demonising people who look like me and constantly triggering of racial trauma. In order to navigate my daily existence, as well as having artistic expertise which is frankly outstanding (you can’t say that as a black woman… yeah, I can) I’ve had to become part historian, psychologist and social scientist simply so I can defend myself against the daily assaults of whiteness. Funny how I feel I have no choice but to become a sort of collector of facts whilst all whiteness needs to question my valid criticisms of the U.K.’s continuous attacks on blackness and the on-going racial injustice in general is a ferocity of opinion. I think it’s fair to say that in the thirty years since BHM came into being, the U.K.’s relationship with the black community has at this point fallen to an all time low. BHM has been become a silo, a mouthpiece to keep black people placated. And given the contexts I’ve given, my thinking is being born out by the facts.

The current and blatant attempts to rebrand BHM to Diversity Month seeks to both service whiteness’ wish to erase black people from the British historical canon and maintain the negative perception of the U.K. black community whilst at the same time, promoting through the back door a heightened sense of whiteness’ diversity as proof that we are ‘all in this together’. From the notion of White Jesus right up to the lack of acknowledgement by the U.K. of the West Indies effort in fighting in the armed forces in both World Wars on behalf of Britain, whiteness merely seeks to maintain itself as top of the food chain. White supremacy has been going on for at least three centuries.

My criticism of BHM is not about denigrating the efforts of the many in the black community who year in, year out are called upon to deliver a programme of work, and depending on where you are in the country, for not much money. Working BHM is a thankless task which is not seen as a very necessary and integral way to celebrating a community whose efforts over the centuries have directly contributed not only to the development of the U.K., but to the world. My criticism is about the response whiteness has to BHM. A response which I feel will always typify how the dominate white culture in the U.K will always see the black community. The systems in place demands there is no alternative to the fake narrative.

BHM to me has become a series of wasted opportunities for discussions around how UK society wishes to view itself in the 21st Century. In my experience, it’s a severely under-resourced month of a string of broken promises. And it serves as yet a further reminder that the system of whiteness will do anything it can to protect itself. U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May’s statement October 2018 about the importance of BHM to U.K. does nothing more than give lip service in a vain attempt to deflect criticism. 

My feeling is it’s time to do away with this farce. In the face of Brexit, Britain needs to face up to and confront it’s colonial past with honesty and bravery. 

I won’t be holding my breath.

[mst3kproject]

Panther Girl of the Kongo

Panther Girl of the Kongo comes to us from Republic Serials, whose logo was mocked over and over every time it appeared in front of Radar Men from the Moon.  It stars Phyllis Coates from Invasion USA and Myron Healey from The Unearthly and The Incredible Melting Man.  It's also got giant lobsters for its monsters, and oh, yes, this is every bit as unbelievably silly as it was in Teenagers from Outer Space.

Our heroine is Jean Evans, wildlife photographer and vine-swinging Panther Girl!  She and her crew are looking for a lion, but instead they find a giant crawdad that wrecks their camera!  Understandably concerned (giant arthropods in the 50's were normally a sign of radiation), Jean calls up her friend Larry Sanders, a safari guide. Together they discover a truly diabolical plot: mad Scientist Dr. Morgan has discovered how to mutate arthropods into giants!  What's he doing with them?  Well, it just so happens that he's also found a hitherto unknown diamond mine, and is determined to scare the natives away[crustacean needed] so he can claim the land and have the gems all to himself.

There are thirteen episodes of this and almost all of them contain a furniture-smashing fistfight scene.  I'm amazed they didn't run out of Jungle Hut props.

Let's get the technicalities out of the way first.  Like Radar Men from the Moon, Panther Girl of the Kongo is designed around a series of cliffhangers – every episode must end with the hero and/or heroine in mortal peril so that the audience will come back next week to find out how they escaped.  The answers are usually not exciting: at the end of Episode One (The Claw Monster!) Larry is knocked out by members of the evil Returi tribe while Jean is menaced by a crawdad.  At the beginning of Episode Two (Jungle Ambush!) it turns out Larry was only momentarily stunned, fights off his attackers, and saves Jean in the nick of time.  At the end of Episode Six (High Peril!), he appears to be about to fall onto spikes, but in Episode Seven (Double Trap!) we see that he actually lands well away from them.  And so on.

The monster effects are... well, they're awful, but they're entertainingly awful.  The crawdad attacking the miniature camera is pretty great, as is the one that's shown 'growing' by putting successively larger crawdads in a miniature cage!  The giant puppet claws that reach out from behind rocks and trees to menace people are utterly hilarious – and of course we never see any blood on the 'injuries' these cause.  And man, if you think the crawdads are stupid, wait until you see the movie's truly abominable gorilla suit.  We saw better-looking shit in Season 11 Bigfoot movies!

There is a lot of stock footage here.  Critic William Cline described the plot as functioning ‘to move the heroine from one piece of stock footage to another’.  There's a sequence in which Jean promises some guests film of the strange creatures she's discovered, but adds that it's on the same reel as some of her other footage, which they'll have to wind through first.  This is an excuse so that we can look at a bunch of documentary animal footage showing creatures like giraffes and cranes that definitely do not live in the jungle.  There's a totally unnecessary recap episode.  Jean's elephant friend Beela exists almost entirely in stock footage, and the same stock footage every time she appears (to be fair, this would have been way less noticeable in a weekly serial than it is watching the whole thing in a day).  All the vine-swinging is from the earlier serial Jungle Girl, and is clearly a man in a dress and a wig!  At least they matched the costume.

But we all know by now that what I love talking about in these pieces of antique media is their politics, so let's take a look at the political situation presented to us by Panther Girl of the Kongo.

We are shown two tribes, the Utanga who are Jean and Larry's hosts, and the Returi who work for Dr. Morgan.  Do I need to specify that both are totally invented?  No?  Good.  The prop and costume department gave these two peoples distinctly different looks, but these are designed less to suggest different cultures than to establish who are the 'good' and 'bad' Africans.  The 'good' Utanga are a little Westernized.  They wear textile clothing without much embellishment beyond Chief Danka's beads and feathered headdress, and live in houses with domestic animals such as chickens.  The Returi, on the other hand, wear 'leopard skins' with body and face paint and jewelry made of bones and teeth, carry weapons everywhere, and seem to be a more nomadic hunter-gatherer tribe.  The treatment is intended to dehumanize them, making them the obvious 'bad' guys.

The two tribes seem to coexist peacefully.  As in Voodoo Woman it's the white people who have brought trouble with them as they seek resources.  Voodoo Woman hinged on Dr. Gerard's quest for power and Marylin's for gold, while Panther Girl of the Kongo concerns Dr. Morgan's interest in diamonds.  The gems are quite useless to the local people who own the land, but very valuable to Morgan.  He can't ask permission to mine the area because he doesn't want to have to pay taxes or fees on his finds, so instead he sets out to steal the land.  In order for him to get the resources he needs, the natives must be either driven away or enslaved.

The monsters are intended to frighten off the Utanga.  With the Returi, Dr. Morgan employs a different approach – he keeps them compliant by providing them with a 'tonic'.  Exactly what this is, we're never told, but it's addictive and mind-altering, making those who take it more obedient and less concerned with their personal safety.  I expected this to be a plot point somehow, but it's never returned to.  It is reminiscent of a number of situations in real-life history: the fur traders would give the Native Americans alcohol in exchange for beaver pelts, and the British would sell the Chinese opium for tea.  Now that they're under his thumb, Dr. Morgan can have the Returi do a great deal of his dirty work, while blaming the violence on the 'primitive tribe' who don't know any better. When one of the Returi men is shot and hurt, he is simply abandoned despite his friend insisting that he needs help.  In Dr. Morgan's mind the natives are either tools or inconveniences.

There's a thread of the White Saviour trope in the story, too. While Dr. Morgan considers himself the master of the Returi, Jean and Larry seem to think of themselves as the protectors of the Utanga. Jean says that with the monsters running loose in the jungle, the men of the village would rather stay home to protect their families than go out and hunt the creatures down, so the latter job is left to the white people.  Indeed, Morgan's men are counting on this – they believe the Utanga will depart at once if Jean and Larry are killed and therefore no longer able to protect them.  Later the Utanga actually do flee en masse, and the white people have to promise protection to make them come back.  The government and police force who will solve the problem if Jean can only find proof against Dr. Morgan are also white – history would suggest that they're Belgians, but they speak with British accents.  I guess the writers didn't research anything else, why would they bother to get that right?

In this case, I really don't think any of this is social commentary.  It's much more superficial than it was in Voodoo Woman, and I get the idea that it was written this way because somebody just figured that was how things worked in Africa.

Another thing I find kind of interesting about the series is how, despite the jungle and savannah setting, Panther Girl of the Kongo often feels like a western.  This may be mainly on account of the 'mining' plot – trade diamonds for gold or silver, give the two tribes faux-Native-American names instead of faux-African ones, and shift us from the jungle to the desert, and the whole 'chase the locals away from the undiscovered mining site' plot would work equally well.  When we see a larger settlement than the Utanga village, many of the sets have a very 'wild west' feel to them, possibly even being hastily-redressed leftovers from a western movie. There are certainly plenty of shootouts and barfights that would be right at home in a cowboy movie, and probably contribute to the 'western' atmosphere.  Such a story could even keep up Jean's friend-to-animals persona, having her hang out with bears and feral horses instead of lions and elephants.  'Coyote Girl of Nevada'?  Why not?

The ease with which this could be done speaks to something else: the formulaic nature of the story.  It's made of tropes, pieced together into a plot that would use (as Cline noted) as much of their stock footage as they could.  The only reason it's a jungle story rather than a cowboy story was because they happened to have the jungle footage on hand.  If they'd had stuff left over from Radar Men from the Moon instead of Jungle Girl, it might well have been a space story instead ('Rocket Girl from Venus'?).  Panther Girl of the Kongo was the sixty-fifth serial Republic had produced, and like Disney with its princesses, they pretty much had their formula down.

But that's not necessarily a bad thing.  If you just sit and watch it, Panther Girl of the Kongo keeps the animal footage and jungle peril coming steadily enough to keep you from getting bored, and the story is reasonably engaging.  The monsters and gorilla suits aren't believable for a minute, but they're amusing, and the bite-sized serial format means you can watch a couple, get tired of it, and come back to it later, when the title cards will kindly remind you which heart-stopping cliffhanger you left off on.  Each episode has a mini-plot that contributes to the overall narrative while also feeling acceptably self-contained, and Jean is a fairly capable heroine, saving Larry's life almost as often as he saves hers.

It’s not art.  Indeed, it’s clearly a sort of assembly-line product, but I can see how this stuff made money.

[sartle-blog]

The Handmaid’s Tale: Art History goes Atwood!

In her seminal 1985 novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood paints a nightmarish picture of a post-democracy America. Christian fundamentalists and misogynist despots have scapegoated radical Islamic terror as a pretext for suspending all civil liberties. Environmental irresponsibility has led to toxic food and water and a drop in fertility rates. Female bodies are commodities controlled by the state, gay people and abortion doctors are prosecuted according to Biblical law, and people of color are deported to uninhabitable “colonies.” In short, it is pure fantasy with no relation whatsoever to our current political climate.

Surely it must be The Handmaid’s Tale’s quaint escapism that has made Hulu’s recent adaptation of the novel into the most hotly anticipated series of the season. It might make a light diversion if, in the words of our supreme leader, you’re “sick and tired of all the winning” we’re doing. To aid your diversion, I’ve compiled some examples from art history that prove the hostile patriarchy presented in The Handmaid’s Tale is just a feminist myth, with absolutely no grounding in Western culture.

Handmaids of the Good Book: you won’t see this on VeggieTales!

Dante’s Vision of Rachel and Leah by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, in the Tate Britain.

Margaret Atwood prefaces her novel with a passage from the Bible:

“And when Rachel saw that she bare Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister; and said unto Jacob…Behold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her; and she shall bear upon my knees, that I may also have children by her.” – Genesis 30:1-3.

In ye olde Holy Land, Rachel and her sister Leah were sister wives who were also literally sisters. Both married Jacob, patriarch of the 12 Tribes of Israel. The fertile Leah bore him six sons, whereas Rachel had difficulty conceiving. Luckily, biblical patriarchy had a cure for that; namely offering your enslaved women as vessels of childbirth for your husband to inseminate. Rachel’s handmaid Bilhah bore Jacob two sons, who Rachel claimed as her own. Just when everything was going so well, Leah and Jacob’s son Reuben decided he wanted in on the action.

“And it came to pass, while Israel dwelt in that land, that Reuben went and lay with Bilhah his father’s concubine.” – Genesis 35:22

Reuben brought dishonor to the family by plowing with his father’s heifer, but Bilhah, the passed-around handmaid with the “for rent” sign on her womb got the real raw end of this sick family deal.

This ancient stone carving of a woman squatting in childbirth in the arms of midwives invokes Bilhah bearing “upon [Rachel’s] knees,” and Atwood’s description of mistresses holding handmaids between their knees during sex and labor.

There are no new ideas in Hollywood the Bible

Don’t think that Bilhah’s story is unique in the Bible. A similar story has been an inspiration to artists for centuries. Abraham, father of Israel, was married to Sarah, reputedly the most beautiful woman in all the world. After a lot of wandering in the desert, Sarah was getting on in years and was still childless. Solution? Offer up her Egyptian handmaid Hagar to do the dirty deed for her.  

“I pray thee; go in unto my maid; it may be that I may obtain children by her.” – Genesis 16:3

Hagar by Edmonia Lewis, in the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Edmonia Lewis, a female African American sculptor of the Civil War period, certainly had reason to be interested in the narrative of an enslaved African woman subjected to reproductive abuse. White male European artists had also long been fascinated by the story, possibly more captivated by the bizarre kink factor than issues of subjugation.

Sarah Leading Hagar to Abraham by Matthias Stom, in the Gemaldegalerie.

We’re talking about Western-European art history here, so Hagar is of course an alabaster-skinned blonde. Even Edmonia Lewis used the colorless power of marble to give us a racially ambiguous Hagar. The Bible tells us she was Egyptian. History tells us she may have been black, since Egyptian slaves were typically prisoners of war captured from Nubia and other parts of predominantly black Africa.

Miraculously, Sarah did get pregnant in her old age, and consequently said to Hagar, “Beyotch, get the f#ck out of mah tent!”  so Hagar and her son Ishmael were banished into the desert.

Detail of Hagar in the Wilderness by Camille Corot, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Presumably, Hagar is grieving because she and Ishmael are lost in the wilderness, but her face says, “No, I’m pissed off because this is the thanks I get for all the gross old man sex.”

Sally Hemings: An American “Handmaid”

Thomas Jefferson by Mather Brown, in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery (left). This portrait of an eighteenth-century, mixed-race woman (right) gives some idea of what Sally Hemings might have looked like.

Sally Hemings makes a disturbingly cohesive follow-up to the biblical prototype of a captive African woman forced to bear children. Confederate Civil War diarist Mary Chesnut was brutally honest in her assessment of black-white concubinage in the antebellum South, and her association of slavery with patriarchal marriage in Judeo-Christian culture:

“Like the patriarchs of old, our men live all in one house with their wives and their concubines…this is not worse than the willing sale most women make of themselves in marriage…The Bible authorizes marriage and slavery…poor women! Poor slaves!”

Sally Hemings made headlines recently because PBS controversially labeled her as having had a 40-year “relationship” with Thomas Jefferson, whom she bore 6 children. The critics are right that an enslaved person is incapable of a consensual relationship, not to mention that Sally was a minor (by modern standards) when a middle-aged Jefferson started sleeping with her. In the least sinister of a multitude of horrifying scenarios, captive women were coerced into sex with their masters. In the worst cases, they were violently raped. But is it fair to say that Sally’s was the latter case? It should be noted that she chose to leave France, where she was free, to return to Virginia with Jefferson when he promised to free their children. This is not a justification. Slam Poet Clint Smith poignantly asks,  “…did you think there was honor in your ultimatum?” The fact that Jefferson never freed Sally herself, even on his deathbed, speaks to a twisted dynamic of control.

This Portrait of Dido Elizabeth Belle and Lady Elizabeth Murray in Scone Palace, attributed to Johann Zoffany, evokes the conflicted situation in which Sally may have found herself. Dido, though not enslaved herself, was the daughter of a British officer and an African slave. This portrait reflects her experience as a beloved, but not quite equal member of an elite white family.

The irony of Thomas Jefferson, who proclaimed in our Declaration of Independence, “all men are created equal,” owning and sexually abusing slaves speaks for itself. We should neither defend nor deny the heinous circumstances of his fathering children with Sally Hemings, but this remarkable woman endured a lifetime of bondage and produced generations of American families. Why not regard her as what she is? One of our founding mothers, as worthy of respect and study as Abigail Adams or Martha Washington.

Is Sally not, in a perverse way, the story of America? Are we a nation founded on freedom, or on concubinage of enslaved women? Michelle Obama is descended from both slaves and slave masters, and as first lady, woke up every day in “a house that was built by slaves,” (the White House). What is that if not a testament to who we are as a nation, at once powerfully inspiring and deeply unsettling. Margaret Atwood’s novel of a crippled American civilization surviving on the backs and bellies of captive women has never been more relevant, yet perhaps it is as much a story of where we are, as where we came from.

Don’t take my word for it, decide for yourself. Tune into The Handmaid’s Tale on Hulu, or better yet, read the book!

By: Griff Stecyk

[angrycollectordaze-me-blog]

Paper代写：Cat in the rain

本篇paper代写- Cat in the rain讨论了小说《雨中的猫》。《雨中的猫》是美国著名小说家海明威早期的代表作品。该小说讲述了一位和丈夫在意大利停留的美国女子在一个雨天偶然看到一只试图躲雨的小猫，于是钩动恻隐之心，意欲将猫救下可是当女子冲入雨中找猫的时候小猫却不见了踪影，于是一整天女子都魂不守舍地在记挂着那只雨中的猫。傍晚时分，饭店老板却派人给她送来了一只漂亮的花斑猫，“猫”在小说中蕴含着丰富的隐喻意义。本篇paper代写由51due代写平台整理，供大家参考阅读。

The cat in the rain is a representative work of the early American novelist Ernest Hemingway. The novel tells the story of an American woman and her husband staying in Italy on a rainy day accidentally saw a cat is trying to shelter from the rain, so the hook move compassion, to save cat but when woman rushed into the rain to find the cat cat is gone, so women's spaced out all day in spite of the cat in the rain. In the evening the restaurant owner sent her a beautiful tabby cat. The novel embodies Hemingway's consistent concise style and the "iceberg theory principle" of his creation aesthetics. The plot of the novel can be simply condensed into "losing a cat, looking for a cat, and finding a cat". In my opinion, this circular plot clue is also an embodiment of the inner structure and form of the novel. As an important image of this film, "cat" also contains rich metaphorical meaning. New criticism theorists think that: "the key to read a story is to see the inner forms of the story and the vapor into the form of image", therefore, this article in the new criticism theory under the guidance of "cats" the main image of the novel and the deep structure to excavate the novel rich cultural metaphor meaning.

As one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century, Hemingway wrote many classic works. Although in the light of so much of the world's shining work, "cat in the rain", Hemingway's early masterpiece, seems to be less than dazzling. However, it has attracted the attention of many Chinese and foreign literary researchers for decades. In particular, the main Hemingway researchers have conducted in-depth studies on the work from different aspects. The critics for the works of foreign research mainly from the new historicism, feminism, narrative and other aspects, but almost all these studies finally get the conclusion: "Hemingway used and its concise and powerful strokes, history will be written into the short novel, he tells the story of the real history in the form of text, or under the big historical struggle of gender identity" domestic also has many commentators on the theory of new criticism to research the main image of the novel Hemingway USES symbolic writing style in great quantities to mining. Major part of researchers from the novel image such as "cat" "rain" such as "candle", this paper analysis the image of metaphor meaning to conclude: "these women image is full of rich symbols, it expresses the author sympathy and concern of women's status. At the same time, it also expresses the decades of feminist struggle, but what women really want is a happy marriage and family... All of this seems to be back to the beginning, and Hemingway has revealed a profound cultural metaphor in this short story. Although these studies using different literary theory start to analyze it from different sides but these studies did not discuss the basic structure of the work, and according to the theory of new criticism, novel "inner form and structure is the foundation is to convey the meaning of literary works is one of the main body", so the author will mainly analyze the work of "organic form" to dig out the rich cultural implications.

The new criticism theory holds that "various images in literary works interact with each other in an organic form to create and convey meaning". As the "cat" contains the main image of the work and its rich connotation and its interaction with the main image of the novel form of the novel the inner structure and form of a "circle". The image of "cat" appears at the beginning of the novel, with the reader looking at a kitten "crouching in the green table" with the eyes of the "American wife". She rushed into the rain to save the cat who was trapped by the heavy rain. But when she came to the table, the cat disappeared. After that, the limited plot of the novel is centered around a cat that is only wanted. In the novel, the cat in the rain is not just an animal, it is a weak, helpless, waiting for salvation. And this coincides with the image of women in the patriarchal society for thousands of years. The bible, one of the sources of western culture, describes the origin of man. God created the first man Adam, a man, and the woman eve is a rib in Adam's body. Eve is the temptation of the devil by a snake eat first after wisdom had bewitched Adam ate the forbidden fruit, thus human against the will of god banished from the garden of Eden to human forever "suffering" tour, which is the so-called "original sin".

Therefore, the beginning of mankind is a man, and the source of sin is woman, therefore, women are regarded as the object of salvation in essence. In "cats in the rain", Hemingway takes a male, or even a god, view of the woman and the cat as two references. The cat is trapped in the rain and the American wife is trapped in marriage and self. To a certain extent, the cat in the novel, shivering in the rain, is the woman herself, or the one who makes the woman miss and feel so much love. The "American wife" in the novel is not named, but the husband is called George, which makes the image of the woman more imagistic. In a broader sense, the wind and rain the kitten is the middle of the twentieth century, after several times feminism women facing dilemma: feminist movement for women obtained the certain power, the new women "had a French short hair and wear a suit pants, like a man smoking, drinking, chatting loudly in the street... However, like the "American wife" in the novel, in the deep heart of women, these women's external liberation does not bring happiness and solutions to women. In the novel "the cat in the rain", Hemingway to its keen social insight, accurate with few words convey the "new woman" the plight of women return to room after find cats may not we can't forget and express themselves repeatedly has a the cat, she picked up a mirror to the left and pictures to the husband said, "I want to keep long hair... The way I look now really turns me off. I'm tired of looking like a boy."

So she continued to look into the mirror and imagined her long hair. In addition, the "American wife" in the novel does not come from the outside but from itself, which makes it more and more sad. The struggle, after the change, still wants to go back to the traditional woman's shell, to find the lost kitten in the storm. However, at the end of the novel cat this image concrete representation, only from restaurant owners is a big and beautiful spotted cat it brings to the "American wife" is amazed, as experienced all this after the baptism of women's rights and traditional woman again, more prominence and happiness does not come.

The whole story revolves around the discovery of the cat, the cat, and finally the structure of a tabby cat. This is a circular narrative structure. The structure itself represents a cycle of female identity, while the circle represents a blockage and a dilemma. Cat this image of the novel is the "American wife" in the novel a externalization of self-identification, although the novel space is limited, really only two lines of text to describe the cat, however, less than twenty words, but throughout and let the reader feel "cat in the rain" this name right, why such a contrast? Although in my opinion the cat just a moment, but over the whole, it is the no name woman oneself, even is to imagine a self in her mind, a former, weak, waiting to be protected and redemption of traditional women drive shell, it is one thousand to a symbol of expression of giving women in the patriarchal society, but affected by the feminist movement burst forth new brave women are in the inner depths of their longing for a return to the family, "lit candles" "stay up long hair. It is women themselves do not escape from a reincarnation, Hemingway here with a simple enough pieces, mix the writing technique of the outline of the era of women facing the reality of the dilemma, the dilemma does not seem to have a break. Because the blockade is within the circle.

The first paragraph of the novel USES a natural paragraph to introduce the geographical environment of the hotel. The author tells the story from the American couple's point of view: "there is no one in the column who they know. The seaside hotel in Italy, away from the city blatant "because the paper stressed several times the war memorial, which is opposite the hotel this is, of course, have the effect of the replacement time but it has also revealed the people to go a long way to the readers in the war memorial. Result from the geographical point of view, they stop to the hotel is a small self closed environment, the rain is an important image characterization, in the novel is caught in the rain the kitten, is stuck in the rain, and rain cut off to sketch artist. Rain also symbolizes the plight of the women encountered, this dilemma is not just about women in the process of struggle, stuck in the family, but also refers to women after protests from the outside into the new ranks of women after the actual inner anxiety and confusion. At the end of the novel, the rain was still falling, but at the end of the day, the owner of the restaurant brought a beautiful tabby cat to the American wife. From the perspective of narrative structure, the representation of the cat has completed a circular narrative structure, but it has made the female predicament more intense and profound. Although the cat may not be the "American wife" after the anxiety, in the room to the mirror to self-pity, disturbing. But when the hotel waiter holding the cat, knock on the door, obviously a woman's face is a face of surprise, because the waiter arms cat, that one is belong to her cat is not to let her/want to get and protect the cat in the rain, but a larger, more beautiful spotted cat. It symbolizes the women return home again after a struggle back to the original give up her image in the patriarchal society, but not as a once its regression, the regression does not bring happiness, so as if women are trapped in this kind of like the fate of reincarnation, I don't know whether to run away in brewing the next? But then the development of history also proves that the image and dilemma of the modern female state portrayed by Hemingway in the novel is indeed in circulation.

The readers and critics of Hemingway and most of his works have shown a strong style, with few female protagonists. "The cat in the rain" is Hemingway's one of the few women centered to explore modern women survival of the state of the novel, the novel use of "poetry writing skills" clever use of "rain" and "cat" two main image constructed a circular narrative structure, the structure symbol after several rights movement women seem to be difficult to escape a cycle: Through curing images of women in the patriarchal society, but can not get happiness has been as the cat in the rain, so want to regain the traditional female image self-salvation, finally seems to achieve a goal, as the "American wife" in a novel eventually got a cat, but the cat brought her more and consternation. Hemingway told the reader a cultural prophecy about the modern woman with his cold brushwork, which was infinite and sad but helpless.

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[laurafosterphoto-blog]

CONTEXTUAL STUDIES 5

AFRICAN AND STUDIO

Annegret Soltau - evidence of how arts, materials, craft are all becoming even more a part of photography

Richard Mosse: Incoming - 3 screen projection, massive spectacle, used inferred light, showing how you can use technology in presenting your work

Discourse Analysis:

Analysis of how we communicate in wrriten, spoken and visual forms

Knowledge is socially constructed, it is built by social institutions and the roles we play in them

We are socialised to believe in the same ‘objective universe’ - shared behaviours uphold this universe as do universal held myths

Norman Fairclough (Language and Power) examined how language is used to uphold power structures

Language is power, knowedlge is power - has an effect on what you believe and what you see

Joan Fontcuberta:

Joan Fontcuberta makes work that demonstrates how language and presentational strategies are used to evoke power

Had a background in advertising

Brought up in Franco’s Spain - facist dictatorship, manipulating truth experienced on a basic level

Has direct experience

Uses language of the documentary, the archive and the museum - make his audience question when you believe in what you see

Herbarium:

Used typological language of photography

Referenced Karl Blossfeldt - shoots them in the same way Invented absurd examples of flowers and plants - but did it with a ‘straight face’

Using typology is the photographic document/musuem, everyone immediately assumes they are real and believes they are photographic truth

“in my work there is always a reference to art history and Blossfeldt is an impressive reference because he was the aesthetic model for new objectivity. This was the movement that generated the language of photography as truth. It has the documentary approach with the clear background and the strong graphic elements”

“im also fascinated by the way Blossfeldt saw himself. He regarded himself as a sculpture and he made his pictures to use as a pedagogic tool. Today his sculptures are completely forgotten and this is a very important lesson. When we want to be artists and we become pretentious we fail, but when we have happy accidents we succeed”

Dr. Ameisenhaufen’s Fauna - vitrines - ‘discovered new species in different areas’ - character - staged photographs - letters and documents - a variety of photographic genres - the character of Dr Amesenhaufen provided a narrative - makes it believable - uses everything from the way the images are framed to make it all believable - explores the idea of what people believe and why we believe them

“im interested in the authority of museums in general. When they deal with science they impose filters on how we see the world. It’s an authoritarian way of imposing a particular kind of knowledge on people and photography is used to add pressure to that knowledge”

“my work has pedagogic sense. Its a prophylactic approach that creates doubt in people’s minds. It questions people’s credibility in photographic culture”

“I was influenced by Marshall McCluhan when he said that the Medium is the Message”

Orogenesis

Creates fictional landscape using computer software

“I’m interested in fakes and fictions. I think there are 3 levels of fictions: criticism, parody and pastiche. I use fiction to create a critical discourse of how information is trans pitted and filtered through academic and cultural institutions” - Foncuberta

Masao Yamamoto - prints presented in glass frames, compliments prints - uses language of the material to present work

Cristina de Middel

Used to be a photojounalist

In the Afronauts created her own fictional world

Use migrants in Spain to be her Afronauts

Used found consutrctuons to be her spaceship

Published as a beautifully made photobook

referenced Zambian idea to launch Africans into space in the late 1960s

De Middel says that with the Afronauts she wants us to think why we think the idea of Africans going into space is so absurd

Josh Oppenheimer: The Act of Killing

Used a variety of techniques to both reflect on the documentary medium and to get subjects talking

Expository

Observational

Participatory

Performative

Reflexive

Uses the language of the musical and pretends he’s making a kind of Bollywood film

The Four Images Repertoires:

the portrait photograph is a closed field of forces. Four images repertoires intersect here, oppose and distort each other. In front of the lens, I am at the same time:

The one I think I am

The one I want others to think I am

The one the photographer thinks I am

The one he makes use of to exhibit his art

Erwin Blumenfeld

Born in Berlin in 1897

Fashion photographer who have images that are made interesting not by the clothes themselves, but by his creates and his talent/art

Overlap between gender and identity and dress and art

Started out making art and collage

1929 arrested in Holland for letting a strap of a swimsuit slip

Mainly known for fashion, but used collage for political images Fashion images about visual interest, concealment Hides what is obvious, making things go beneath the surface

Makes beautiful, colourful and interesting images but at the same time makes much more conceptual images with depth and meaning - even within fashion - not often seen

Cristina de Middel

Used to be a photojounalist

In the Afronauts created her own fictional world

Use migrants in Spain to be her Afronauts

Used found consutrctuons to be her spaceship

Published as a beautifully made photobook

referenced Zambian idea to launch Africans into space in the late 1960s

De Middel says that with the Afronauts she wants us to think why we think the idea of Africans going into space is so absurd

2014: Zun Lee’s Father Figure, tired of stereotyping of African American males - dealers, pimps and baby daddies - searched for his own identity - started as a search for the ‘right kind’ of black father - progressed from this idea and different view, going against the negative stereotype

Eugenics - the best form of civilisation in respect to the improvement of the face … where the pride of race was encouraged, where the weak could find a welcome and a refuge in celibate monasteries or sisterhood, and lastly where the better sort of emigrants and refugees form other lands where invented and welcomed, and their descendants naturalised

1846, Agassiz said he believed that blacks and whites were different species and blacks had a different mental age, tried to prove this using images (proved nothing, just his own prejudice)

[clubofinfo]

Expert: Jonathan Freedland’s ‘committed denialists and conspiracists’, and Paul Mason’s victims of Putin’s ‘global strategy’ clutching at ‘false flag theories’, presumably include Lord West, former First Sea Lord and Chief of Defence Intelligence. In an interview with the BBC, West commented: President Assad is in the process of winning this civil war. And he was about to take over and occupy Douma, all that area. He’d had a long, long, hard slog, slowly capturing that whole area of the city. And then, just before he goes in and takes it all over, apparently he decides to have a chemical attack. It just doesn’t ring true. It seems extraordinary, because clearly he would know that there’s likely to be a response from the allies – what benefit is there for his military? Most of the rebel fighters, this disparate group of Islamists, had withdrawn; there were a few women and children left around. What benefit was there militarily in doing what he did? I find that extraordinary. Whereas we know that, in the past, some of the Islamic groups have used chemicals [see here], and of course there would be huge benefit in them labelling an attack as coming from Assad, because they would guess, quite rightly, that there’d be a response from the US, as there was last time, and possibly from the UK and France… We do know that the reports that came from there were from the White Helmets – who, let’s face it, are not neutrals [see here]; you know, they’re very much on the side of the disparate groups who are fighting Assad – and also the World Health Organisation doctors who are there. And again, those doctors are embedded in amongst the groups – doing fantastic work, I know – but they’re not neutral. And I am just a little bit concerned, because as we now move to the next phase of this war, if I were advising some of the Islamist groups – many of whom are worse than Daish – I would say: “Look, we’ve got to wait until there’s another attack by Assad’s forces – particularly if they have a helicopter overhead, or something like that, and they’re dropping barrel bombs – and we must set off some chlorine because we’ll get the next attack from the allies….” And it is the only way they’ve got, actually, of stopping the inevitable victory of Assad. Another senior military figure, Major General Jonathan Shaw, former commander of British forces in Iraq (his responsibilities have included chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear policy), was shut down by a Sky News journalist 30 seconds after he started saying the wrong thing: The debate that seems to be missing from this… was what possible motive might have triggered Syria to launch a chemical attack at this time in this place? You know, the Syrians are winning… Don’t take my word for it. Take the American military’s word. General Vergel [sic – Votel], the head of Centcom – he said to Congress the other day, “Assad has won this war, and we need to face that”. Then you’ve got last week the statement by Trump – or tweet by Trump – that America has finished with ISIL and we were going to pull out soon, very soon. And then suddenly you get this… At which point Shaw’s sound was cut and the interview terminated. Peter Hitchens asked: Can anyone tell me what was so urgent on Sky News, which made it necessary to cut this distinguished general off in mid-sentence? Sky News gave their version of events here, claiming they had to take an ad break. Also taking a more cautious view than Tisdall, Freedland, Rawnsley, Lucas, Mendoza, Monbiot, Mason and the Guardian editors (see Part 1), is James ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis, the US Secretary of Defence, who said: I believe there was a chemical attack and we are looking for the actual evidence. Only ‘looking’ for actual evidence? As each day goes by — as you know, it is a non-persistent gas — so it becomes more and more difficult to confirm it. The evidence clearly, then, had not yet been found and the claims had not yet been confirmed. Peter Ford, former British ambassador to Syria, voiced scepticism: The Americans have failed to produce any evidence beyond what they call newspaper reports and social media, whereas Western journalists who have been in Douma [see below] and produced testimony from witnesses – from medics with names so they can be checked – to the effect that the Syrian version is correct. Before Trump’s latest attack, Scott Ritter, former chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq, made the point that mattered: The bottom line, however, is that the United States is threatening to go to war in Syria over allegations of chemical weapons usage for which no factual evidence has been provided. This act is occurring even as the possibility remains that verifiable forensic investigations would, at a minimum, confirm the presence of chemical weapons… Even a BBC journalist managed some short-lived scepticism. Riam Dalati tweeted: Sick and tired of activists and rebels using corpses of dead children to stage emotive scenes for Western consumption. Then they wonder why some serious journos are questioning part of the narrative. ‘#Douma #ChemicalAttack #EasternGhouta’ The tweet was quickly deleted. Craig Murray wrote: For the FCO, I lived and worked in several actual dictatorships. The open bias of their media presenters and the tone of their propaganda operations was – always – less hysterical than the current output of the BBC. The facade is not crumbling, it’s tumbling. Robert Fisk – Hypoxia, Not Gas Veteran Middle East journalist Robert Fisk visited Douma and reported his findings in the Independent. He spoke to a senior doctor who works in the clinic where victims of the alleged chemical attack had been brought for treatment. Dr Rahaibani told Fisk what had happened that night: I was with my family in the basement of my home three hundred metres from here on the night but all the doctors know what happened. There was a lot of shelling [by government forces] and aircraft were always over Douma at night – but on this night, there was wind and huge dust clouds began to come into the basements and cellars where people lived. People began to arrive here suffering from hypoxia, oxygen loss. Then someone at the door, a “White Helmet”, shouted “Gas!”, and a panic began. People started throwing water over each other. Yes, the video was filmed here, it is genuine, but what you see are people suffering from hypoxia – not gas poisoning.’ Not gas poisoning? Why was this not immediately headline news in the ‘mainstream’ press and on BBC News? In fact, almost throughout the ‘MSM’, it was quietly buried. The glaring exception was an article in The Times with the pejorative headline: Critics leap on reporter Robert Fisk’s failure to find signs of gas attack The piece suggested that there were big question marks over Fisk’s record: Fisk is no stranger to controversy. A list of Fisk’s ‘controversies’ followed. There was no mention that, among many accolades, the Arabic-speaking Fisk has won Amnesty International press awards three times, the Foreign Reporter of the Year award seven times and the Journalist of the Year award twice. In an article published by openDemocracy, Philip Hammond, professor of media and communications at London South Bank University, observed that: In seeking to close down such dissident thought, Times journalists are acting, not as neutral defenders of truth, but as partisan advocates for a particular understanding of the war. A Guardian article by diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour and world affairs editor Julian Borger commented of Douma: A group of reporters, many favoured by Moscow, were taken to the site on Monday. They either reported that no weapon attack had occurred or that the victims had been misled by the White Helmets civilian defence force into mistaking a choking effect caused by dust clouds for a chemical attack.’ Not only was Fisk not mentioned by name, he was lumped in with reporters ‘favoured by Moscow’. Jonathan Cook’s observation said it all: They managed the difficult task of denigrating his account while ignoring the fact that he was ever there. In The Intercept, columnist Mehdi Hasan wrote an impassioned open letter addressed to ‘those of you on the anti-war far left who have a soft spot for the dictator in Damascus: Have you lost your minds? Or have you no shame?’ The piece began: Dear Bashar al-Assad Apologists, Sorry to interrupt: I know you’re very busy right now trying to convince yourselves, and the rest of us, that your hero couldn’t possibly have used chemical weapons to kill up to 70 people in rebel-held Douma on April 7. Maybe Robert Fisk’s mysterious doctor has it right — and maybe the hundreds of survivors and eyewitnesses to the attack are all “crisis actors.” So, Fisk’s evidence with its ‘mysterious doctor’ was clearly worthless, something shameless ‘apologists’ were using to try and convince themselves of an absurdity. Hasan named no other names, but readers could guess from the many smear pieces in The Times, Huffington Post, on the BBC, and spread by the likes of Oliver Kamm, George Monbiot and Alan Mendoza. Hasan portrayed Assad as a satanic figure while the US and its allies – countries that have sent 15,000 high-tech anti-tank missiles, as well as billions of dollars of other weapons and training to fighters in Syria – are mere ‘meddlers’. The jihadists are ‘rebels’ (a generally noble term), not fanatical invaders from Libya and Iraq. Hasan referenced biased sources including Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch, Martin Chulov of the Guardian, and the White Helmets. The Intercept’s co-editor, Glenn Greenwald, defended the piece: There is a meaningful debate to be had on Syria and, as I’ve said before, most media outlets (including us) have been quite one-sided about it. That said, Mehdi’s article, well-documented though it was, didn’t name anyone who guilty of loving Assad so I’m not sure who is offended We replied: Mehdi’s article, well-documented though it was, didn’t name anyone. That’s the problem. Hasan’s article arrives in the context of a cross-spectrum, name-and-shame smear campaign making similar points We linked to three high-profile examples from the BBC, The Times and Huffington Post. Political analyst Ian Sinclair declared Hasan’s article a ‘Necessary and important piece’. It certainly wasn’t ‘necessary’ to damn Assad yet again – the world’s corporate media have been packed with news and comment pieces doing exactly that for years. As for the need to expose left ‘apologists’ – as we have seen, corporate media are currently mounting a fierce campaign targeting leftist university academics, apparently with the intention of getting them fired. The question of importance is less clear-cut. The piece will, of course, have no effect whatsoever on Assad, whom Western ‘apologists’ on ‘the anti-war far left’ would be powerless to influence even if they came round to Hasan’s view. On the other hand, as a purported ‘leftist’, Hasan’s piece is important as ammunition for foreign policy warmongers, neocons and others. Thus, Jonathan Freedland tweeted: Strong piece from @mehdirhasan George Monbiot: To all those who have been trying to persuade me that the Assad government is simply maintaining order, please read this excellent article by @mehdirhasan #Syria’ Oliver Kamm of The Times: Is this atrocity denial really necessary?” Well said by Mehdi on the extraordinary, scandalous spectacle of people purporting to be anti-imperialists while denying the crimes of Assad. Hasan, of course, knew his article would receive this kind of favourable attention, and he has form in reaching out to this audience. In 2010, whilst senior political editor at the New Statesman, he wrote a letter offering his services to Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre: I have always admired the paper’s passion, rigour, boldness and, of course, news values. I believe the Mail has a vitally important role to play in the national debate, and I admire your relentless focus on the need for integrity and morality in public life, and your outspoken defence of faith, and Christian culture, in the face of attacks from militant atheists and secularists. I also believe… that I could be a fresh and passionate, not to mention polemical and contrarian, voice on the comment and feature pages of your award-winning newspaper. For the record, I am not a Labour tribalist and am often ultra-critical of the left – especially on social and moral issues, where my fellow leftists and liberals have lost touch with their own traditions and with the great British public… I could therefore write pieces for the Mail critical of Labour and the left, from “inside” Labour and the left (as the senior political editor at the New Statesman). Because, as we all know, being ‘ultra-critical’ of the left ‘from “inside” Labour and the left’ – for example, asking ‘the anti-war far left who have a soft spot for the dictator in Damascus: Have you lost your minds? Or have you no shame?’ – carries enormous weight. In his piece for The Intercept, Hasan commented: And, look, we can argue over whether or not to support… regime change in Damascus (I don’t). And yet, in 2013, he wrote: I want Assad gone and I believe him to be a brutal and corrupt dictator. Hasan’s angry mockery of doubters on Douma is ironic indeed, given his own record on Libya. At a crucial time in March 2011, with NATO jets bombing Gaddafi’s troops, Hasan commented: The innocent people of Benghazi deserve protection from Gaddafi’s murderous wrath. The reality, as we saw in Part 1, is that the claim was ‘not supported by the available evidence’. Fisk’s account, irrationally scorned by Hasan, was backed by on-the-ground testimony from reporter Pearson Sharp from One America News Network: Not one of the people that I spoke to in that neighbourhood said that they had seen anything, or heard anything, about a chemical attack on that day… they didn’t see or hear anything out of the ordinary. As far as we could tell, there was nothing on the flagship BBC News at Six and Ten about any of this testimony from doctors and residents claiming that there was no evidence of a chemical attack in Douma on April 7. It is shocking that the BBC ignored evidence supplied from Syria by Fisk – one of Britain’s finest journalists – when it has cited hundreds, perhaps thousands, of times evidence supplied by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which is run by a clothes shop owner in Coventry who supports regime change in Syria. On BBC News at Ten on April 15, presenter Mishal Husain, Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen and political editor Laura Kuenssberg discussed the missile strikes on Syria and the political fallout here at home. There was no mention that the strikes had taken place just as OPCW inspectors had arrived in Damascus. Nor was there any discussion of expert opinion from international lawyers contradicting the government’s assertion that the attacks were legal. A group of international law experts warned: We are practitioners and professors of international law. Under international law, military strikes by the United States of America and its allies against the Syrian Arab Republic, unless conducted in self-defense or with United Nations Security Council approval, are illegal and constitute acts of aggression. Meanwhile, the BBC joined the McCarthyite witch-hunt against anyone challenging the official narrative. In a piece titled, ‘Syria war: The online activists pushing conspiracy theories’, an anonymous BBC journalist commented: Despite the uncertainty about what happened in Douma, a cluster of influential social media activists is certain that it knows what occurred. Of course, the irony is that an incomparably bigger and better funded ‘cluster of influential’ state-corporate media has been vociferously claiming certainty about what is happening in Syria; not least 100% conviction of Assad’s guilt for a string of chemical weapon attacks. We have no idea who was responsible for the event in Douma – we don’t know even if there was a chemical weapons attack. Our point is not that credible, sceptical voices are right, but that they should be heard. On April 12, novelist Malcolm Pryce sent us this poignant tweet: I remember in the run-up to the Iraq War a friend I had known all my life suddenly said to me, “We must do something about this monster in Iraq.” I said, “When did you first think that?” He answered honestly, “A month ago”.’ This is the power of the corporate media to shape the public mind it is supposed to serve. But to achieve this effect, it must present a black and white view of the world – ‘we’ are ‘good’, ‘they’ are ‘bad’; ‘we’ are ‘certain’, ‘they’ are morally bewildered ‘apologists’. When reality threatens to get in the way, when there is no choice, an increasingly extreme ‘mainstream’ will resort to deception in plain sight. • Read Part One here http://clubof.info/