#id rather be educated on what happens in real life through her books than through tiktok

[thunkinator]

jaqoline wilson should be a much bigger part of childhood entertainment like UGHHHHH

[words-writ-in-starlight]

I'm a little late to the party but for the ask meme: Danny Phantom 5, 13, 14, 18, 20 + Trans!Danny headcanons. I know that wasn't on the list but I have a feeling you'll do it for me anyway ;)

MY NEWEST BOY.  For this ask meme!  Also thisgot long so I made a separate post about trans Danny because I care about it alot byeeeeee.

5)  Guilty pleasures

Barring times where he’s being, A, imprisoned, or, B, hunted forfun and profit, Danny actually—really likes the Ghost Zone.  It’s soothing in a way that he’s pretty sureis not quite right, in a way that Sam and Tucker and Jazz do not seem toagree with, but he likes it there.  Theslow, billowing curls of green drift through the air like nebulae, currents of energyrather than wind that he could drift on like thick water if he wanted, dottedwith doors and islands that orbit whatever passes for gravity wells in a skyscapeof ectoplasm.  Almost every touchstone inthe Ghost Zone moves, although most have a predictable pattern—about once everyten months, Danny tries not to use the Fenton portal if he can avoid it, onaccount of how it comes out practically on top of Walker’s prison—and learningthe rhythms of it is sort of like a hobby, at this point.  Danny doesn’t have a ton of time to kill, buthe’s figured out that, as long as he’s in ghost form, he can go for a longtime without feeling hungry or thirsty or tired, in the Ghost Zone, so onetime he told Jazz he was going to try his hand at cartography and spent theentirety of his parents’ five day out-of-state conference coasting on ectoplasmand trying to plot the place.  It cameout looking kind of like a star map, full of arrows trying to indicate movementdirection and a lot of scribbled notes like Pretty sure Clockwork moved thisand AVOID and Possibly Vlad’s portal, maybe close this.  

Danny doesn’t talk about it much, because the Ghost Zone makes hisfriends, his family, jittery.  He’s prettysure they’re worried he’ll decide not to come back some day.

13) What gets them flustered

One time a reporter manages to get a camera intoDanny’s face before he can book it after a fight, and she’s smart enough toalready be asking her first question before he realizes what was happening.

She’s also smart enough to start her first questionwith “Excuse me, Inviso-bill–”

“It’s Phantom,” he snaps,looking around in annoyance, and the reporter smothers a triumphant smirk.

“Yes, Phantom.  What made you become a hero,Phantom?”

Phantom just hangs there in the air for a moment, gapingat her, and then squeaks, “Excuse me?”

“You’re a ghost,” the reporter says, keeping aprofessionally straight face and a neutral, friendly tone.  “Whatmade you decide to be a hero?”

“I–didn’t?”  Phantom scratches a hand backthrough his hair, and the reporter silently thanks whatever quirk of ghostlyfunction is bringing a green glow like a blush to his cheeks and throat andears.  She’s going to lock down a raise with this interview, even if heflies off right this second–the first person to interview Amity Park’s ownsuperhero.  And he’s blushing.  “I’mjust keeping things under control, you know?”

The reporter grins.  “Well,” she says withfalse nonchalance, “would you mind answering a few questions?”

“Uh,” Phantom says.  “I have to–go.”

He turns invisible and makes a break for it,and the reporter’s fifty-second clip of a conversation runs on the local newsfive times in the next seven hours.  She gets a reputation for being ableto snag the neighborhood super for a few seconds, sometimes even multipleminutes.  She discovers real quick thathe’ll blush pretty reliably the second she drops the H word.

14) Ingrained habits/forces of habit

Danny works hard to seem helpless at school.  It kind of makes him crawl the walls, but he workshard, okay?  He lets himself getpushed around, he occasionally gets punched in the face, he does his best toconceal it when a year or two of ghost hunting as a full time job starts toshow in his human form, he spends a lot of time and energy projecting a façade oflocal hopeless wallflower.  He can’thelp seeming like a delinquent, given that he’s been living the C-average lifestyleby the skin of his teeth and misses about three class periods on a good week,but at least he can seem like a delinquent who would never, ever be a candidatefor competence.  He’s protecting a secretidentity out here.  Official Team PhantomPolicy, much as everyone might hate it, is that no one intervenes with Danny’scharade.  It gives Tucker hives and Samhas a hit list of bullies, but Danny’s always quick to smile off their concernand get on with his life.  He has ahealing factor and it’s been years since Dash was actually concerning tohim except as a potential stalker, Danny can stand to bite his tongue and take it.

Aaaaaaand then when he’s sixteen, Dash punchesTucker, instead.  Over some pettynothing, something that Tucker doesn’t even remember afterward—refusing to makea fake ID for him?  Laughing at Dash forfumbling a catch at the game on Saturday? Joking about how Dash’s grades were even worse than Danny’s?  It could’ve been anything.  It didn’t really even register with Tucker assomething worth getting punched over, whatever it was, but he guesses thatbullies can have bad days too.

So Tucker says whatever he says, and Dash whipsaround and sucker punches him, a swift hidden jab that only someone alreadywatching would see.  And then–

And then Danny dislocates Dash’s shoulder.  It’s not on purpose and it’s not subtle.  Tucker doesn’t really remember what happened—hewas a little busy gasping for air. Mostly he just remembers the crash of someone being slammed into a locker,and Danny’s voice, deep and un-Danny-like, snarling You don’t touch them,and a shout, a howl of pain and shock. By the time Tucker can stand upright, wheezing and clinging to Sam,every kid in the silent hallway is staring wide-eyed at Danny, skinny weakDanny Fenton who isn’t really so skinny and weak anymore.  Danny’s stepping back from Dash, who’sclutching at a shoulder that looks wrong under his letterman jacket, andDanny looks mildly horrified with himself, but he’s still standing betweenTucker and Dash.  

When the teachers show up, Danny goes quietly to theprincipal’s office, and gives a plain-spoken explanation of what happened—Dash punchedhis best friend, Danny slammed him into the wall, and somewhere in there hepopped Dash’s shoulder out of place.  He getssuspended for two weeks and detention for the next month, which he cooperateswith, and non-negotiable anger management counselling, which he mostly just…doesn’tattend.  Danny has decided that he doesn’tdo school counselling anymore, thanks.

After he comes back, Danny slips back into therhythm of things without any change in his behavior, but—it’s hard for everyoneto forget that they watched Dash’s favorite punching bag nearly put the king ofthe school through a wall.

Sam and Tucker enjoy a very peaceful remainder oftheir high school career.

18) Things they’ll never admit

Danny has not and will not talk to anyone about the accident withthe portal.  The actual events, yeah.  But he’s thought about it, and—they just don’tneed to know.  Sam already frettedherself blue over the Lichtenberg figure lacing up Phantom’s left arm to hisheart.  They don’t need to know how clearhis memory of being electrocuted is.

(Jazz watches Danny skirt around the Specter Deflector with abouta five foot radius of nervous respect, and she makes some educated guessesabout why, exactly, her brother doesn’t like being shocked.  But if he doesn’t want to talk about it, for once,she’s not going to wring it out of him.)

20) What Ifs/Alternate Timelines

I’m sure everyone and their cousin has done this but…I love Jazz and Danny’s relationship.  

So.

Jazz has been keeping an eye on herbrother for…ever.  This is partly becauseshe’s a worrier by nature and partly because their parents are both brilliantand affectionate and completely hopelessly scatterbrained.  Jack and Maddie are fine and all, but alsoJazz is frequently awestruck that she and Danny lived long enough to be able totake care of themselves.  Holy shitis she ever going to write a memoir.  TheChristmas I Re-killed the Turkey or something.  So when their parents are out for the day andshe wanders through the living room into the kitchen to see if the Nilla Wafershave been contaminated yet, and she realizes that she hasn’t seen Danny in fourhours, she starts looking around.  

Sam and Tucker’s bags are in hisbedroom, and all three of them have left their jackets by the door.  It’s a cool autumn, and Tucker complainsconstantly that he’s not built for the cold, he’s built for indoor rooms fullof computers, so they wouldn’t have gone out. The TV is off.  Danny’s room isempty.  It’s not dark enough yet forDanny to have dragged them up to the roof for stargazing.  

It’s about this point where Jazzstarts to feel like something is about to go horribly wrong.

She passes the door to the lab andhears Sam’s voice echo up the stairs, and then��

“Fine, fine,” Danny says from thebasement.  “It doesn’t even work.”

Jazz opens the door, already composinga lecture about not poking around in the lab (for Danny) and a lecture aboutremembering to lock the lab when they’re going to be out all day (for herparents), and starts down the stairs.

The crack-boom of the portalkicking on hits like a thunderclap, and then there’s a scream, someonewailing like they’re being killed.

Jazz never does remember how she gotdown the rest of the stairs, but she makes it just in time to see her brotherstumble out of the glowing green portal and fall straight through Sam’s armsand collapse into a pile of black-clad limbs and shocking white hair.

[gotatext]

PREFERRED NAME — nora. i think i started going by it in like, 2009?? my full name is eleanor but i hated it n thought it was way too pretentious n i never felt like it fitted me so when i started writing on forums i decided i’d be a nora rather than eleanor and then my school friends called me it and it just kinda stuck, the only person who calls me eleanor is my mum

PRONOUNS — she / her / ethereal being beyond comprehension

AGE — 23 but i tell everyone im 21 because even tho time is literally fake im desperately clinging to that fleeting thing we call youth trying to catch it like smoke in my hands

PINTEREST — i actually have two. this one is my main one where i just cram all my shit n i’ve had it for years and some of its super unorganised. then i also have this one which is one i made for exclusively female characters. it started as mythological figures but now its like, women in literature and the occasional oc as well. variety is the spice of life!

DISCORD — lindsay lohan’s meth#8664

TUMBLR (PERSONAL/MUSE/RPH) — i used to be froseths but now im pvrscphones cos ya gal is a fucking whore for mythology 

OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA YOU’D LIKE TO SHARE — oi oi guvna ere’s me twitta. also here’s my letterboxd n my goodreads if anyone still uses tht

MYER-BRIGGS — enfp / infp border .... the classic profile of a lit student

HP HOUSE — hufflepuff, am fuckin mad. 

ZODIAC — libra which is a joke because i am in no way balanced but i guess i AM indecisive and a peacekeeper so?

DO YOU BELIEVE IN ASTROLOGY? — i believe it when it says good shits gonna happen in my life and blame it if bad shit happens but i don’t strongly follow it i just find it interesting

HOW OLD WERE YOU WHEN YOU STARTED RPING ON TUMBLR — maybe like 14?? my first rp blog here is literally so embarassing i wrote as clove from the hunger games n my best friend irl wrote cato :/ it was wild

WHAT YEAR WAS IT? — like 9 years ago?? 2010 maybs

NAME A RANDOM ROLEPLAY THAT STICKS OUT IN YOUR MEMORY — me n my friend ellie made this really cool group the summer before we left for uni which was loosely based on a concept mentioned mayb once in the divergent series, but it gave us loads of freedom to make it our own thing. it was called the fringe n it was like..... this dystopian society where people with different genes were cut off from the rest of society n lived in overrun slum cities where different groups had like, a monopoly over weapons, produce, etc.... my character jack was the leader of this lost-boy-esque tribe called the wolf pack who were hunters n used to run across the rooftops wearing the skins of animals they’d killed and engage in tribal rituals with sacrifices to the gods n shit. sounds lame but everyone there was so invested in their character arcs that it was a shame to see it go. but ! it kind of reached its end point so we blew it up w nukes n they all died. tragic.

WHAT WEIRD ANIMAL WOULD YOU HAVE AS A PET IF IT WAS REALISTIC — a fox?? do ppl keep foxes? idk i’ve always just felt a sense of connection w them like when a fox stares at me im like this shit is life i am living and breathing in this bitch.... visceral

NAME THE FIRST SONG ON YOUR DISCOVER WEEKLY ON SPOTIFY OR THE FIRST SONG THAT COMES ON APPLE MUSIC / ITUNES SHUFFLE — everbody party tonight by cobra man n summer girl by haim..... not my usual stuff but big summer chillin vibes,.....

NAME A BOOK THAT YOU READ IN SCHOOL THAT YOU SURPRISINGLY LIKED — lord of the flies and also the handmaid’s tale. one of assignments was to write a chapter from another character’s perspective n i chose moira

NAME A BOOK YOU HATED THAT MOST PEOPLE LIKED — skellig. fuck off with ur asprin ugly bat man i don’t care. also of mice and men. don’t care about the rabbits or curley’s goddamn wife.

WHAT TV SHOW DID YOU RECENTLY BINGE? — im not a big binger bc i find it jst makes me depressed if i watch tv all day but im nearly finished stranger things season 3 n i recently finished euphoria (big rec but proceed w caution as quite triggering content)

FAVOURITE QUOTE — cool girl speech from gone girl. but also “there’s something dangerous about the boredom of teenage girls” i know its like.... such an overused quote but it really encapsulates this kind of feral girlhood that a few of my characters like bridget n greta have tapped into. i also loved the line “i feel like i could eat the world raw” from song of achilles, that really captures this kind of.... pure n childlike enthusiasm tht i wanna achieve w rory 

LINK TO A VINE THAT EXUDES YOUR ‘ENERGY’ — this is my energy completely am always covered in glitter n staring broodily out of the windows of ubers at 4am like im in the sad bit of an indie film 

DO YOU WRITE OUTSIDE OF RP? WHAT DO YOU WRITE? — uhh.... not as much as i shd.... i want to be a writer so i shd be makin some effort to get my stuff Out Into The World but im just not.... lol. ive done a lot of poetry collections . i wnt to finish a novel @ some point too.

THREE YOUTUBERS YOU STILL TRUST — bold of you to assume i trust any youtubers

A CELEBRITY CRUSH THAT JUST WON’T QUIT — id literally die for saoirse ronan n timothee chalamet :/ chance perdomo also owns my ass. 

EVER MEET A CELEBRITY? SHARE YOUR STORY — i once high-fived dani harmer, the actress who played tracy beaker. today my sister text me tryin to make me guess what celebrity she just saw on holiday in wales and for ages she let me think it was timmothee but it was actually bradley walsh from the chase :/

WHAT’S YOUR PICTURE-PERFECT NIGHT? — i am in a bomb ass crop top and mini skirt, several scrunchies in my hair, glitter all over my face, wearing cowboy boots. we eat dinner in a trendy but affordable pub that doubles up as a cocktail bar n then we drink zombies or sex on the beaches n go to a rave where everyone is on the same wavelength n i share drugs with girls in the toilets and we swap numbers knowing we will never text each other but its ok bc in that moment we feel like we are soulmates and everyone is super drunk n touching everyone else n its all very visceral and we walk through the woods when the rave ends and lie in the grass because we wish to suck out all the marrow of life 

A CONSPIRACY THEORY YOU KINDA BELIEVE IN — princess diana was murdered 

ARE ALIENS REAL? — maybe the real aliens are the friends we made along the way

PLAY ANY PHONE GAMES? WHICH ONES? — love island game im addicted and way too invested in my fictional relationship with bobby, a cartoon

WHAT’S A FILM YOU LOVED WHEN YOU WERE YOUNG AND RECENTLY WATCHED, ONLY TO FIND OUT YOU DON’T ANYMORE — bold of u to assume i remember my childhood. but if we’re talking last 10 years angust, thongs n perfect snogging is so so cringe 

DO YOU COLLECT ANYTHING? — pairs of glasses belonging to other ppl when they break / get new ones even though i can see perfectly well. 

WHAT’S SOMETHING YOU WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT BUT YOU’RE TOO LAZY? — mythology...... always a craving and a wish i’d read like ancient texts but my school wasn’t good enough to do greek or latin or any of that shit n even tho i could read english translations i cant be bothered. also criminal psychology

THREE LANGUAGES YOU DON’T SPEAK, BUT WISH YOU COULD — italian, french and latin

MOVIE YOU’VE WATCHED MORE THAN 5 TIMES — ladybird, about time, angus thongs, shrek 2, what we do in the shadows, the history boys, atonement, coraline, the breakfast club, ferris bueller’s day off

NAME A FICTIONAL CHARACTER FROM TV/FILM/MOVIE/GAME/BOOK THAT YOU FIND YOURSELF PROJECTING ON / YOU RELATE TO — cecilia lisbon. rue in euphoria. alison brie in glow. adam parrish in the raven cycle. richard papen. olivia cooke’s character in thoroughbreds. allen ginsberg in kill your darlings. lily in sex education. holliday grainger’s character in the film animals --- i too am an aspiring writer who never writes and just gets drunk instead .

DO YOU FOLLOW ANY SPORTS? WHO DO YOU ROOT FOR? — no. cba

HOBBIES BESIDES WASTING AWAY HERE? — i go to the movies basically every day bcos i work in a cinema. im also a voracious reader n i occasionally do theatre or costume making

PLUG A TV SHOW / MOVIE / BOOK / VIDEO GAME / ETC… YOU WISH MORE PEOPLE WOULD CHECK OUT — where the wild things are (film by spike jonze).  animals. beats. the book fen by daisy johnson and a girl is a half formed thing by eimar mcbride. andy warhol’s biography from a to b and back again

WHOSE BRAIN WOULD YOU LIKE TO PICK, ALIVE OR DEAD? — phoebe waller-bridge on how i get her life. carey mulligan on how she got to be such a good actress n how i can become her. maybs wes anderson. maybs gillian flynn. i tend to listen to podcasts w the ppl i really wanna pick the brains of.

TEAM EDWARD OR JACOB? — edward :/

LAST MOVIE SEEN IN THEATRE — blinded by the light n i lovd it

DO YOU STILL READ? — when i finished uni i kinda got out of the habit but this week i finished two books so ive set myself the challenge of a book a week.

IF SO, WHAT ARE YOU CURRENTLY READING? — i finished song of achilles yesterday n i also finished call me by your name yesterday. started circe by madeline miller today, im also partway through milkman by anna burns and the plays of annie barker

ON A SCALE OF 1-10, HOW MUCH DID YOU HATE FILLING THIS OUT? – 3 i didnt hate it bcos at heart i am self-indulgent and love fashioning some sense of self when i feel lost in a world that is scary and constantly changing 

[sawthefaeriequeen]

Top Ten Books Read In 2018

1) The Last Summer of the Death Warriors by Francisco X. Stork

I picked this up at a book fair, read the summary, and figured I'd surprise myself with this author I'd never heard of before. It's about the friendship between DQ, a guy with terminal cancer dealing with his complicated feelings for his estranged-but-conciliatory family, and Pancho, a guy who's biding his time until he can get revenge on the person who's killed one of his family members. I like that both boys are raw and real and people—Pancho obviously has messed up emotions, but DQ can be plenty bitter and angry too: he's not an Inspirational Cancer Patient stereotype.

2) The Sherwood Ring by Elizabeth Marie Pope

Girl moves into her uncle's old ancestral house sometime during the 18th century and gets immersed into the past lives and loves of the ghosts that thrived there during the days of the Revolutionary War, their paths often crossing each other's. I swear I have never seen more delightful ghost characters in my entire life.

3) The Unbound by V.E. Schwab

So by the time I'd picked this up, I was having mixed feelings about V.E. Schwab – on one hand, she'd always written worlds that engage me almost instantly with their creativity. On the other hand, I'd just recently been horribly disappointed by the ending to what's been her most popular series so far: I thought her final Shades of Magic book did a most spectacular job on dropping the balls on everything good about it. Up to reading it, I'd thought the author's hype was deserved. But after, well…

So when I picked this up, it was with much trepidation. I'd loved the previous book, The Archived: the big old house setting, the grim closed-off girl/sweet sunny boy dynamic the lonesome warrior setup, all were like catnip to my id. I didn't want it ruined by a bad sequel. Fortunately, this book took everything I loved about the book and turned it up to eleven. It upped the stakes, it intensified the relationships, and it also added a mental illness angle that I personally found very meaningful.

The author is still kiiinda on notice so I'm not sure I want a third book. If there is one, dear God, please be good. *crosses fingers*

4) Turtles All The Way Down by John Green

I remember thinking, as I was reading this: this is really, really working for me but will it work for someone neurotypical? 2018 was hell and I was just so desperate for the people in my life to get it, and so I kept hopping on trains of thought like this.

Anyway, this book was spot on in what goes on in the wirings of my anxious brain. Green's usual turns of phrase took an incredibly frenetic turn at times, which, I know, is exactly what it's like to have a mental illness. This is not a book about "this is what to do" it's about how it IS or how it can GET.

I'm still really grateful for that quote about the spiral – how it tightens, but also how it eternally widens. When I first saw the cover, I thought it was kind of blah; now I look at that spiral and see something different. I see the hope of creating a new 'normal'.

5) The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

This was so readable it surprised me. I thought I'd go slow on it because: war story where it's a foregone conclusion that it ends tragically for the leads? Yeah, I'm not in a rush to reach the end of that. But I blazed right through this book. There's something really addictive about Madeline Miller's storytelling and how she brings her characters together and follows their blossomings and downfalls through the years. And then, the course of the Iliad and the inevitable sadness for Achilles, Patroclus, and Briseis was more like the slow turning of the tide rather than getting hit with a tidal wave. Anyway, not only was it readable but I'm finding myself eager to re-read it.

6 ) The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley

Part of my Read Everything Robin McKinley Writes mission that began last year. I'd liked the sheer escapism and the desert setting in The Blue Sword, but that whole white savior thing kinda put me off from enjoying Harry and the book more fully than I would've liked.

It was not so for this book, thankfully! Who knew that reading about the nitty-gritty of slaying big scaly beasts could be so satisfying? That's classic Robin McKinley, as I'm learning – you love what the protag loves. And then I really dug how the dead dragon's ghost haunting Aerin acts as a metaphor for mental illness.

(As I continue to wrestle with my diagnosis, I continually appreciate all the depression/anxiety metaphors I encounter in media. Maybe one day I'll make a post about it) AND ALSO: a love triangle that's actually well done and that serves our heroine's identity and character rather than taking away from it? Yes. Yes, thank you.

7) A Certain Slant of Light by Laura Whitcomb

Yeah so, this book killed me. It's about two twenty-something ghosts with unfinished business who find themselves in the bodies of two teenagers whose souls appear to have completely vacated theirs. They find themselves falling for each other and trying to find out what happened to their 'hosts' and what went on in their past lives. They also find themselves battling to survive the hostile home lives that their 'hosts' left behind. It's all very beautiful and kind of twisted and also a love letter to words and probably my most unexpected book of the year. And I have NO idea to rec it to people. "Read this, it's kind of fucked up but gorgeous but also can get triggery so step warily?" Uh.

8) Deerskin by Robin McKinley

See warnings above. Oh God. But really, I totally respect Robin McKinley for going full-out faithful to how utterly fucked up fairy tales can be while still creating a survival story. I'm not just talking about Lissar surviving spoilers incestual rape and miscarriage (indeed, I'm not qualified to talk about it) but how hers is a story of healing: by surviving the elements, by nursing living things back into life, by building herself up into a legend without even knowing it.

9) Muse of Nightmares by Laini Taylor

Just an incredibly satisfying ending to a duology that at the same time echoes that quote from Michael Ende's The Neverending Story: "but that is another story and shall be told another time." I love when something ends with that sense of: "there are even more stories and adventures for our beloved characters out there than you can possibly fathom, and you are now free to make up them yourself."

10) Autoboyography by Christina Lauren

I was intrigued by the premise: a half-Jewish guy and a Mormon guy fall for each other over the course of a writing class. And upon starting it, I could tell straight (heh, straight) away that it was going to be a favorite. It's an unabashedly kilig romance about falling for the wonderfulness in each other,and both mains are fucking adorable, and made me want to give them both a ton of hugs. Oh, and this book further reinforced my belief that the key to first-person writing is having a good voice.

Another thing is, I basically never see YA books that deal with growing up in a religion and actually-loving it and having it be an inextricable part of your identity… and then having to deal with the darker, prejudiced sides that you really wish would be excised from it altogether especially if they are opposed to who you are. To deal with it sensitively and touchingly, not only in a YA book but in an m/m romance? Well done.

honorable mention!

-The Secret History by Donna Tartt

I was reading this on the bus on the way home to the province for Christmas and I could not stop laughing and I had no idea to explain to my very curious sister that it was because half the protagonists were high as a kite at the funeral of the friend that they all killed and one of them had just very noisily killed a bee in the church vestibule and it made the loudest sound on the planet and they're all gonna have to ~aesthetically grieve and pallbear now even though THEY killed their friend and w o w it's like Nuwanda from Dead Poets Society was cloned five times.

Sometimes "pretentious people murder someone and somehow it is hilarious" is just exactly my cup of tea.

and a couple of series binges!

Almost 10 years ago (god, what the hell), I had a "YA Paranormal Romances I Might Actually Like" list, and the two trilogies below were on it. There's something gratifying about finally crossing off books on your TBR that have been there for ages:

-The Shade Trilogy by Jeri Smith-Ready (Shade, Shift, Shine) This series came out on the tail of the Great YA Paranormal Romance boom and I really wish I'd picked it up then (I also really wish some of the covers it got weren't so damn off-putting. It's like Animorphs all over again) because it's such cut above so many of the books that were being churned out in those days.

The premise is: what if there was a global paranormal event that left the portion of the population born after a certain year with the ability to see ghosts? I really like that the author thought this out thoroughly – it's not just a oooh spooky ghosties gimmick. Everything is affected: the educational system, the police force, politics, technology, travel, you name it.

The heroine was smart and truth-seeking and had nuancedrelationships with lots of female characters (bff, mentor, aunt who raised her, mom who died… ), the Betty love interest was a total sweetheart who also didn't seem too good to be true and who was capable of making major teenage fuck-ups, and the Veronica love interest was a rock-and-roll ghost who had the post-life character arc that I sadly wish Maggie Stiefvater had given Noah Czerny. I kind of loved them all a lot and one of the reasons I wish I'd read these books as they came out was so I could've been un-jaded just a little bit about Those Pesky Love Triangles.

(Someday I…really ought to make an analysis about why I dislike love triangles in general and what exactly was up with the ones that DID work for me.)

-Wolves of Mercy Falls trilogy by Maggie Stiefvater

I read the whole series toward the year's end. It was precisely the cold-weather binge I was craving. I may have my quarrels with some of her writing decision, but really few people can do atmospheric, poetic writing the way Maggie Stiefvater does. The romances were a bit too YA for me in this one, but I ended up really sympathizing with every single POV character anyway. And I mean, cold and poetry and family and books and wolves-as-family*.

(*One day, I'll have the emotional armor to watch Wolf's Rain again. )

[untidywords]

a daughter’s resilience

Full Name: Isabella Margaret Crowe

Hometown: Baltimore, Maryland, USA

Current Residence: Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Occupation: Podcast host

Birthday: November 1, 1986

Zodiac: Scorpio

Species: Human

Gender: Cisgender woman

Sexuality: Bisexual

Relationship Status: Single / Thread dependent

Shipping Status: Closed

Opposite/Ship Tag: Delta Hastings / OTP: You were there all along

Verse: Realism

Theme Song: “Dawn” by Dario Marianelli (Spotify/YouTube)

SUMMARY trigger warnings: death, depression

Growing up, Isabella’s family had a lot of money-related struggles, and her childhood was modest to say the least; but she wasn’t unhappy. However, when she was ten years old, her father went missing, and it sent everything into chaos. They found his car and his belongings on the side of the road to the grocery store, and in the following years his disappearance became a cold case for the police. Isabella took to true crime and horror to distract herself from the pain of her family, and quickly became obsessed. At seventeen, she got the news that they’d found her father’s remains, and though a burial helped her heal somewhat, her mother slipped into a depression. No matter what she did, Isabella could not help her. Eventually she went to college in Boston, studied journalism, became a podcast host focusing on true crime and horror. During all of this she met someone and later got engaged, though their nine year long relationship ended with him leaving her shortly before the wedding. 

BIOGRAPHY

Born on november 1, 1986 in Baltimore, Maryland

Her parents were lower middle class at best; they had a lot of money-related struggles, mostly pertaining to debts, so it was often that a family member had to help them financially or that her parents had to hop between jobs in the search for something that would pay better

Her mother was an educated teacher though due to a scandal in her youth had trouble finding work anywhere, while her father was a construction worker with dreams of becoming an architect

Isabella’s childhood was modest to say the least; she had clothes on her back and food to live on, but aside from that she didn’t have much else, never really got any toys that weren’t passed down and outdated (not to mention half-broken)

When she was ten years old, her father went missing. he went to the grocery store and was never seen again, his car, wallet, and ID left on the side of the road halfway there.

A lot of things happened in the following years. her father’s disappearance was broadcast on local news, though no one came forward with any information. Isabella's mother, now being the sole caretaker, couldn’t afford to keep them in their apartment, and they had to move in with Isabella's aunt temporarily.

Isabella missed her father dearly. after a few years of no progress and the case going cold, her mother hired a private investigator in desperation, a man who came to have a lot of contact with Isabella and her mother.

Ever since she was a teenager, Isabella has been obsessed with true crime and fictional horror. she read horror books as a way to distract herself, and through the experience of her father’s disappearance she started researching other cases like that. coming in contact with the private investigator helped further strengthen this, and he was the one who encouraged her to get into journalism, since he’d previously been a journalist

When Isabella was 17, her father’s remains were found. a skull and teeth confirmed his identification. though they’d never know who killed him, they at least knew what became of him, and could offer him a proper burial. though it tore up some old wounds, eventually it helped Isabella in healing from her father’s passing.

Her mother wasn’t as lucky – the woman was never quite the same again. she was a much weaker version of her old self, someone who had steadily faded over time. Isabella always did everything she could to be there for her mother, but oftentimes she felt like she couldn’t get through to her. 

Despite the lack of money, Isabella went to college in Boston when she was 18 to study journalism. 

It was a nice change of pace – so much of Baltimore just reminded her of her father and her mother’s suffering, and Boston offered her a new perspective on life. it helped her heal more than she ever thought was possible.

Though she amassed quite a lot of debt, Isabella decided to go for her master’s in journalism as well, during which she had many internships at various newspapers locally. 

When she was 23 she met a man and fell in love with him. the two started dating quite quickly -- it started as a very “in the moment” relationship, until the man proposed a year later. 

Isabella finished her master’s at 26, and spent most of her late twenties working at different local newspapers (both online and physical). she used these new resources available to her to research different cold cases and missing persons cases and started to become a little obsessed with them.

She had no real outlet for them, so she started taking to online sleuthing forums to connect to other people interested in the same things. eventually, after a year of almost spending more time there than actually working on her day job, someone suggested Isabella start a podcast to talk about these cases. which she ended up doing when she was 28. 

She didn’t entirely know what to do at first but eventually learned how. with an increased audience came increased profit, and soon she was able to downgrade her job as a journalist to only part time, giving a lot more focus to her podcast which had become fairly popular by then. it had evolved a lot through the years and branched out a little to account for a wider audience, and it was paying off. 

In 2017, Isabella's mother decided to move to Boston to be closer to her daughter, and though their relationship isn’t what it was when Isabella was a kid, she can feel the distance between them decrease. she feels as though her mother has finally found peace in her father’s death. 

After having been engaged to her fiance for seven years, the wedding date was finally set in February 2018, a cozy winter wedding followed by a honeymoon to a tropical island -- but time had worn down Isabella’s fiance, who ended up breaking things off just a mere week before their wedding

Isabella was crushed, having thought him the one -- but she wanted to be strong, and rather than wallow in despair, she decided to take her best friend on the honeymoon instead

PERSONALITY

Isabella can definitely hold her own -- all throughout her life she’s displayed initiative and independence, showing that as long as you love what you do, you can succeed. There isn’t a whole lot that can shake her foundation, although the things that can certainly do a good job of it -- particularly so the loss of someone she cares about. Isabella hates not being on the same page as the people around her, although at the same time she can be quite stubborn with what she wants and what she knows. Not afraid of dialogue, though, she’d rather work through something than fight through it. 

[freechoicedreamer]

Body and Soul (Ch. 2)

AO3

A side note: a potential plea against the 'canon-compliant' claim - a fundamental premise set out to both stories of this alternate Final Season series - may come from the background seen on the thematic illustration of this chapter. It is a screenshot of the United Realms, as portrayed in one of the final scenes of OUAT series finale. Despite the clear visual evidence, I refuted the idea of all realms being this closely gathered around Storybrooke, seemingly as if they were mere aggregated parts of one single town. I based my assumption on the likelihood that practical production/logistics issues were more prevalent than the need to craft more carefully a setup that would not imply on geopolitical garbage and storytelling nonsense. To be honest, that came with no surprise, even for OUAT typical narrative patterns, well known for not going beyond a superficial and only apparent coherence; after all the series finale condition loosened the need of establishing a minimum continuity level. As a matter of fact, the image appears to be just an iconic concept instead of an accurate representation of a real (and reliable) geographic distribution of the united realms. Actually, it looks - more likely - as a random collage of castles and kingdoms (taken from some OUAT-CGI database) quickly assembled for just one single and short scene. In other words, one may argue that this conclusion is open to interpretation but I may counter argue that the concept all realms physically gathered like all-stuck-together has not been consolidated-by-a-solid-narrative enough to acquire the 'canon' status. In summary, in any feasible configuration, even taking into account the innumerable storytelling possibilities opened by the 'magic' combined with 'mixed fairy tales' formula, the realms should be, at least, a little bit more physically spread, say... throughout the territory of Maine, for instance. That would assure to each kingdom a minimum space to breathe without culturally suffocating their neighborhood neither being suffocated in reverse, thus preserving their original identity. That is the premise I chose to assume, as proposed by the thematic illustration on the previous chapter. 

Opening theme

There are people who paint it as the absolute absence of heat; there are those who imagine it as the infinite absence of cold. Neither cold nor heat, neither ice nor fire, there are souls who know it as the absolute absence of love, the pinnacle of hopelessness, the utter void of hatred, the utmost devastation of war, the despair of hunger and thirst, the desolation of loneliness, the consummation of envy, the slavery of the ego, and the corrosion of jealousy. For as far as these souls know, more than the absence of the breath of Life, more than Death itself, Hell is the lack of Significance.

*

Storybrooke, Sweet-Jones home

Emma and Emm are spending the afternoon together, one more afternoon in a recent row of three afternoons together at Hope's insistent requests, always justified as being “very important, Mommy”. Visiting Luna, Missy, Aunt Em, and the Belly Babies is the recurring excuse. Usually, Emma does not like to fulfill all requests for not spoiling her daughter too much but, given the current exceptional circumstances, she has found it best to give in to the girl’s wishes. And for her it is also nice, she loves talking to her sister. Each day the two realize how deeply bonded, by mysterious ties that transcend any purely familiar connection, they are. And so, here they are, sitting by the kitchen counter for a little snack while Hope runs around the house playing with the two pets. If times were different, Hope would be at Storybrooke’s Kindergarten so that Emma could work half term, but because of the exceptionalism of the moment, she took a leave of her Sheriff duties thus freeing herself to observe– and to protect - her daughter more closely.

“It's amazing how the loft became the exact expression of you and Key, Emm. I never imagined that you two would be able so soon to superimpose your personality on the legacy of who was once known as 'Mary Margaret'. The aggregated details are just a few pieces and touches here and there, such as the paintings on the walls, new curtains, a new rug, other quilt covers on the beds, but all the little details make up a whole that adds to the atmosphere in an incredibly harmonious way, not to mention the musical instruments on the mezzanine - where once was my room, creating a magical atmosphere. Your music is really magic, you know that, don’t you? It lights up the house."

"Thanks, Emma, coming from you the compliment has a special significance to me. While Mary Margaret lived here under a curse that prevented her of being close to her daughter, in a parallel reality, my mother was fulfilling the dream that was denied to yours: the dream of seeing her kid growing up, of being able to raise her daughter together with her Prince Charming. Therefore, it is a deep honor for me to live in this space, you know, it is with reverence that Key and I add such 'little details' to the vintage decor. You see…” she then starts to pointing to the objects, “these nautical-motivated paintings are all Key’s, except that canvas that we both painted ‘magically’ during the Sweet Suite adventure. There are also those oceanic-motivated frames and the big starfish, which is a magic connection with Alice - her and Robyn’s gifts to us, something like our ‘wedding gift’, and those two landscape paintings near the sofa, which are my Henry's gift. Other than that, the curtains, the bedspreads and the rug were manually woven on Hearty Island, one of my hobbies there. Now, about the magic music, I think you and I have it in our heart – and I know that not because I watched your ‘music in the heart’ story through the magic mirror, but because I feel it. Music is as much of your essence as it is of mine. Our stories may have shaped us differently: I may not have developed the warrior side towards being a bad-ass - as you use to say. Nor may you have not developed the domestic docility side, but in essence, our magic has the same origin, our essence has the same substance, our strength will always show itself – on its own style - when necessary."

“I agree with you, I also feel this connection with Music, even though I have not had a formal music education, I feel this force so deeply, like an explosion of feelings. You know, it is really impressive how mysterious this empathy between wish and non-wish versions is. For example, in my turn, I understand and deeply feel the loss of your parents and I know - I feel - that you understand on a deep level the difficulties I had in childhood mainly, to cope with the abandonment of my parents, unaware that through Music in my heart I was always connected to them. This degree of empathy doesn't just happen between us, look at our husbands, or even see how my parents feel connected to you and, I believe, to their deceased wish counterparts. This is an incredible mesh of love and union entwined after an evil wish of Split Regina - it’s really incredible..."

"Yes, it is a Mystery, one more in the Book of Mysteries: Split Regina... Back in Hearty Island, I used to hate her. I’m not very proud of that feeling, but it is the truth, I simply could not accept what she did. But… ironically, it was this wish, driven by dark feelings, that originated, in a distant past spread to the present, the duplication of worlds thus creating the wish and non-wish versions. She changed our lives with only one wish against you – and me. And then, I also hated the Good Queen because of her cruel method to bring your memories back – at least that’s how I used to think based on what I had watched. You know the story, thanks to the gods’ intervention, who kept me in touch with my parents’ souls, I could finally understand, accept, and forgive her. And thanks to all of that, Key and I could find each other, could live on its plenitude our true love. And then… there is also Wish Regina, the Evil Queen I grew up fearing and hearing about, now a reformed sorcerer in charge of the Social Assistance Ministry of the United Realms. Too many turns and plot twists with too many Reginas, don’t you think?” she asks playfully while watching Luna in Hope’s lap, both surrounded by a watchful Missy.

“Too many, I agree. I have had my own dose of struggle to deal with them, that is, rigorously speaking, with the first two of them, but I also have learned to cope, to accept and to forgive them… About their names, Killian told me that Captain Nemo suggested a numbering system to simplify their identification but they are still reluctant to accept that. Particularly, I think this may be a good ID system. Differently from the multiple wish/non-wish people, who come in pairs, in their case there are 3 of them!!" Emma chuckles.

Thoughtfully, Emm caresses her belly, "yeah, coming in pairs..."

“Confirmed then?” Emma asks tenderly.

"Twins, indeed…" Emm nods. “We have to concede this one more credit to our little Pythoness’ account!”

“Yeah…” sighs little Prophetic Priestess’ mother, “get ready for a daily renewed surprise brought by your little products of squared True Love! Wait for squared surprises, in your case!” Emma grins reticently, noting in awe the tiny points of light Hope is creating in the air to entertain Luna and Missy, and then completes her question: “How are you feeling about that? How are you and Key dealing with the idea?”

“I’m feeling truly happy and scared at the same time. You see, it is intense in two extremes: extremely amazing but also really scary given the present uncertain context and then… things are changing so quickly that Killian and I… oh, rephrasing, Key and I, had no option rather than adjust ourselves really fast to the news. Perhaps, if the circumstances were different we would have more time to freak out about the prospect of being parents of twins. But given the scenario, we both went into ‘protecting offspring at any cost’ mode and then we calibrated our momentum in that direction.”

…

As the afternoon falls and the sisters’ conversation continues, Hope and the two pets eventually join them for a snack. Emm mentions that she and Key were positively surprised and became very fond of Dr. Stephen Maturin, not only because of their personal rapport with him but, also, for his patience to explain in details all medical procedures they will follow along the pregnancy. She confesses that, despite having had a good preparation about the modern world, it was not enough to provide all the knowledge related to what she would deal with. In this sense, Dr. Maturin’s empathy is natural since he experienced the same learning stages when he came from the Land of Untold Stories less than 10 years ago. In terms of adaptation, strictly speaking, Dr. Whale's entire medical team has been updating their skills because the 21st century medicine was recently introduced to them with the arrival of those who lived in Hyperion Heights.

…

“Mommy, why Daddy and Uncle Key did not come for a snack with us yet? They are hungry too and I miss them."

"They won't be long, Sweetie, first they had to meet with Grandpa David. They learned that two other kids of Storybrooke also had sad visions that same day you had a sad vision and, as it happened with you, they didn't like it at all."

"Aye, I did not like it, Mommy, too scary... Want to know why?"

“I do, only if you want to talk about it, Honey. If you are okay with that, tell Mommy and Aunt Emm, please, why nobody liked the vision…”

“Because.... it was dark, it had a green river... Hmmn, what more… it had other colored rivers… it had Mommy, Daddy, Hope, Uncle Key, Aunt Emm, Belly Babies, everyone and… all scared… and it had empty bodies and empty souls. Luna and Missy saw everything too, they told me what ‘body and soul’ is; I did not know before, but now I do.”

Exchanging glances with Emma and changing the subject of the conversation, Emm intervenes: "Speaking of emptiness, I'm seeing two empty bowls and one empty glass of juice, so... Who will want more rations with water and more juice with chocolate cake? Raise your hand, who has a hand, and wag the tail, who has a tail!!”

…

In the late afternoon, Killian and Key arrived and joined them at the snack table. Hope asked to bathe in Aunt Emm's tub and is now in the bathroom playing the game of ‘sailing the pirate ship’ while the two couples continue to talk. Emma comments about the girl's revelations and the brothers, in turn, tell them that Storybrooke's other two children also spoke about the world of the dead. Gradually the pieces of a huge puzzle begin to fall into place and some shapes and contours begin to unfold. In this way they already know that there is indeed a threat coming from the Underworld.

Embracing Key, head resting on his shoulders, Emm mutters under her breath: “It would be so good if my parents could talk to us now, as it happened on Hearty Island through the magic mirror...” Turning to Emma and Killian she explains: “even though it has been installed on the mezzanine next to the same musical instruments as before, the mirror never turned into a magic screen again. Maybe it was the case of going upstairs tonight and trying to contact them; I could sit at the piano, meditate, concentrate and then, if I am fortunate to be inspired, play a heart-dictated song… I really wish I could talk to them again, if only the gods gave them permission...”

Elysium, Islands of the Blessed, Wish White-Nolan’s home

Sitting on the lakefront pergola at Wish Charmings' home, Rumple, Belle, W. Snow and W. David silently watch the parade of images reflected by the calm water mirror. As if watching the scene, the whole landscape of the garden - birds, leaves of the trees, flower bushes… everything is quietly still. The only movement comes from the black and white images transmitted by the retinas of Luna and Missy in their dreamy state on Earth.

"Fascinating and disturbing," Rumple breaks the silence to comment. "So .... Every time Luna and Missy sleep on Earth they broadcast images, like journalists reporting to you the latest news?"

"Not always," Snow replies. "In general, they do not communicate at all, that is, if there is no transmission, we infer that there are no problems and we are released to our eternal rest in peace, even though there are times that they dream happy dreams and we can watch our Emma with the other Snow and David, or with her twin sister, their respective husbands, and Hope. Luna and Missy simply love the sweet little girl, a special child indeed, as far as we could observe..." she sighs, turning to the lake, worried with the sequence of projected images showing the scary visions shared by Luna, Missy, Hope and the other seer children.

"I have one question. Well, actually, I have several questions, but I will start with this one," Belle chuckles trying to lighten up their mood before continuing, "exactly, do you know who Luna and Missy are?"

David shrugs before saying, "to such a straightforward question, Belle, an equally straightforward answer: exactly, we don't know. Now, by inference, we know that they are beings of Light most likely sent by the gods to the Heart-shaped Island as a company to our daughter, to look after her. I believe the time will come when we will know the exact answer to your question but until then, the inaccuracies and doubts are many..."

Snapping her fingers, as if remembering useful information, Snow goes on. "We also have a mirror in our living room that has functioned as a magical screen transmitting colorful images from Earth; actually, it used to function as a screen when Emma was in the Heart-shaped Island, it never worked that way since Emma moved to Storybrooke," Snow remembers. "It was through this mirror that we were able to talk to her, you must remember when we told you the story."

"Yeah, we do remember," Belle confirms, "… and now that you mentioned it, you see, there is a mirror in our living room as well, but it has never worked as a window between worlds. So far it has been just a mirror..."

"We should confess something," Rumple interrupts Belle. "It’s about what brought us here. It all started with a philosophical talk about rules of incarnation, a curiosity that led us to wanting to talk to the gods about the subject and that, by its turn, ended up on us missing our son and triggering our memory about the story of your communication with your daughter. We know that it happened thanks to a divine intervention so, because of this sequence or reasoning, we decided to visit you. What happened during our teleportation to your house, on the light of these transmitted images, adds more relevance to the case: Belle felt an inexplicable concern, an intuition about a metaphoric storm getting close to Gideon, which should be enough to increase our initial need to meet the gods. Now, seeing these premonitory images clearly indicating a real threat originating from the Underworld hovering over the Earth – I assure you that the need has just become an urgency."

“Well, what I can tell you is that they found us…” David explains, thoughtfully searching his own words for clues on how they should act in the present situation. “To be precise, the gods found us. Actually, Zeus found us; he came to us and told about an intense outburst, from our Emma, addressed to the Sea gods from the sands of the Island. He said it was a completely justifiable outburst that deeply touched them to the point where he came to meet us in our house and allowed us to talk to her. The rest is history but I have no idea how we could try to contact the gods...”

“There is no need, they have already contacted us…” says a voice coming from the backyard, approaching the group. They all turn to the voice direction and meet a smiling Merlin, accompanied by his loyal Apprentice, Jack.

…

After everyone exchanged greetings, Merlin revealed the reason for his and Jack’s visit. He told them that Jack was meditating in the tower, where they live, when a mirror on the wall began to display the image of a cocoon opening and morphing into a transparent-winged butterfly. Almost in a trance, he called Merlin and they both witnessed the butterfly turning into a woman of extraordinary beauty.

She introduced herself as Psyche, the goddess of the Soul and the wife of Eros, the god of Love, and told them that she was, once, a mortal princess that became immortal because she drank the gods’ nectar of ambrosia. She then explained to Merlin that the origin of his full name, Merlin Ambrosius, dates back to the desert oasis where he was born. The first trees whose fruits came to be known as ambrosia were original from that oasis although, initially, they had no magical property. Only later, when planted in the orchards of Mount Olympus and irrigated with waters of the Holy Fountains, did the fruits acquire special properties, among them to confer immortality on those who drank the nectar produced from them. Psyche then reveals to Merlin that it was this nectar, drank in the Holy Grail, which made him an immortal Wizard. Or rather quasi-immortal, since immortality is not synonymous with invulnerability - and Merlin, better than anyone, knows this Truth.

"And why did you come to me to reveal this story?" Merlin asked.

"Because the Ambrosia trees from the Olympus Orchard are drying up, as well as the waters of the Holy Fountains. Some gods - my husband included, believe that the source of the problem lies in the Underworld Rivers, and we will need the help of the Elysium souls as well as some souls in the Underworld, under the command of Persephone, to locate and neutralize this source. If the problem spreads, everyone may be affected, especially the mortals, on Earth."

…

The visitors are already gone and W. David and W. Snow are now in their living room. Sit in front of the mirror - functioning again as a magic screen, they watch their daughter playing a piano piece she has dedicated to them. The harmonious notes cross the spaces until pulsating in sync with the two monarchs’ ethereal hearts and, although not seen by her, they feel that she feels their presence. Resigning themselves to what they are allowed, the two send to their  Emma - and to the two little points of light shining in her womb - the blessings of their eternal love.

“And they say rest in peace for all eternity…” David mutters.

“Yeah,” Snow chuckles, “they never mention the stormy weather in between two lulls.”

“What can we do, Snow? Psyche didn't explain much beyond what she briefly told Merlin. According to him, she only warned that we will be – her words – ‘activated’ when the right time comes. Until then ... what can we do, Snow?"

"We can listen to the music our daughter is dedicating to us, David; we can send our beloved ones all our best energy. We can keep in tune with the other Snow and David. In practice, they are our representatives on Earth and worship our daughter as their own. In addition to looking after our loved ones, we can keep the flame of Hope alight - theirs and ours...”

On Earth, sensing the presence of her parents, Emma raises her head and looks at the mirror. In a flash, she sees their smiling faces mouthing ‘I love you’ while their image dissipates.

Enchanted Countryside, White-Nolan’s home

“Neal!”

From the porch of the ranch headquarters Snow shouts for her son, whom she hasn't seen since early in the morning, at the breakfast table.

Looking around, she sighs. The Charming Farm is the fulfillment of an old dream of David combined with more room for the vibrant energy of a preteen practicing light magic and within easy reach for Snow on her way to work. They were well adapted to the routine of a country life close to an urban life but since David accepted Regina's invitation to the Ministry of Defense the farm has not been so carefully taken care of. Snow would not say it has been neglected; on the contrary, it would not be fair to belittle Anton's good work as a farm administrator, but the lack of David's almost magical touches everywhere - in the stable, in the pastures, in the corral - is remarkable. Exception, of course, for the magic bean plantation, always over zealously cared for by Anton. Although magic beans are no longer needed to open portals between realms, as they are now unified into the same time-space dimension, the delicious feijoada prepared with them by Snow for special occasions, an adaptation of the classic Brazilian feijoada - became famous. In fact, its fame crossed the borders of Storybrooke and for the Summer School closing dinner, in Camelot, in response to everyone's insistent requests, she prepared a cauldron of feijoada that deserved the highest praise. The ceremony just couldn't be as triumphant and joyful as Snow would have liked because of the worrying news that began to come from various parts of the United Realms…

PUFFF!!!!

Lost in thought, Snow jumps in fright at Neal's sudden appearance on the porch, surrounded by a pale blue cloud.

“Did you call, mom?”

“Neal, how many times do I have to ask you not to scare me like this? Yes, I called you, my boy. Although we are discussing in the Ministry about setting up a school recess while dealing with the current crisis, classes have not yet been suspended. Are you ready to go?”

“I do but… look, there comes Dad; he seems in a hurry - as always, recently.”

“Snow! I just got a call from Killian warning that Nemo is about to land on the northeast coast. He reported an anomaly in the Enchanted Sea on the same day as the premonitions. It seems that, with the exception of humans and humanoids, all other inhabitants of the oceans exhibited, during a few hours, a completely chaotic behavior as if in a collective trance, an underwater hysteria that only ended with Poseidon's intervention - neither Triton nor Ursula could contain the sea fauna fury - the seas have been very rough, it seems. If that happened with the creatures of the Ocean, now I’m worried about the inland creatures. I’ll call W. Robin, Merida and Kristoff asking for a report on the Enchanted Forest, the Enchanted Highlands’ and the Enchanted Mountains’ wildlife; maybe it’s the case for increasing the vigilance in these areas to protect the animals.”  

“Dad, you are thinking Wish Cruella may be behind all of it, isn’t it?

“Yeah… I'm suspecting she may be behind the erratic behavior of the sea creatures, indeed.”

“Then, Dad, I'm telling you what I am thinking. I think I should work on the protection spell that Gideon taught me so that Wilby won't be left defenseless. And I think we should leave him indoors, is that okay?”

“Agree about protecting Wilby, good idea, son. If you feel safe preparing the magic, go ahead, maybe we should ask Anton to help you in extending the spell to the other animals. Do you think you can manage that? You will be late today for school but it will be worth.”

“Sure Dad, be back in a minute!!” Neal answers already puffing himself into the house to get the ingredients he will need.

“David,” Snow says, “I do not want to increase the overall worry or to generate another panic wave but, is that a case to sanction a general school break?”

“Maybe, but we’ll have to talk to Regina and some ministers first. We will deal with that in Storybrooke, after Neal works in the protection spell, okay?”

…

On their way to Storybrooke, Snow and David talk about what they are working with and what they would love to do. David knows he is much needed in the present crisis but he wishes he could go back to his farm activities, he misses the country life. Snow is happy in her dreamy work, being able to promote a real revolution on Education…. They keep talking and end up commenting on the good partnership the two Killians are developing at Storybrooke’s PD, despite Emma’s temporary license, and that reminds them how the two Emmas are becoming as close as two close sisters. To be quite honest, they have to admit that not only the two Emmas are tightening their emotional bond, they feel that the ‘girls’ are more and more becoming their very dear twin daughters...

“David, because of the fuzz yesterday night caused by Hope’s description of her vision, I forgot to mention that Emm had called me earlier with good news: they are indeed having twins!”

“That’s great news, Honey,” David smiles at his wife and sighs, “at least one really, really good news.”

“Yeah… two more babies for us to love,” Snow completes, looking at the countryside landscape through the car window.

“Mom,” Neal cut them from the back seat, “isn’t that Zelena’s farmhouse entrance? Look, there is a car getting into there!”

“It’s Robyn’s,” David explains, “she and Alice are temporarily living there while deciding where to move for good, to finally settle down – I guess they are tired of being on the roads. They have traveled a lot in the Land without Magic since they got married.”

“Oh, that reminds me of another novelty, Charming. Did you know that Zelena and Chad are our neighbors now, I mean, sort of?” Snow asks.

“Really? How come? What about Chad, doesn’t he have relatives that will want to visit him?” David asks, impersonating his Defense Minister mode.

“Split-Regina didn’t enter into little details, we talked just a bit, while waiting for Neal and Coralline at the school door, but what I know is that Zelena and Chad moved to Portland, Maine, a couple of weeks ago. It seems that he got a transfer to the East Coast in a scheme that appears to be safe, David, no need to worry. Living in Portland will allow Chad’s relatives - as well as the couple’s friends from San Francisco - to visit them without any suspicion. Regina told me that their house is near Storybrooke’s town line, it looks like Zelena has created an amulet for Chad so that he may cross it whenever he needs regardless of whether she is with him, so they both have free access to the United Realms."

“This is so cool…” Neal smiles dreamily, “I would love to have a strategic base for horseback ridings and explorations outside the Realms…”

“You can get your little horse out of the rain for now, young man. As long as the current crisis is not abated, the only strategic base you are allowed to have is our home, next to your parents," David warns him playfully..

Portland, Maine, Zelena and Chad’s new home

“You were right, the view from the room at the tower top is really beautiful, Zelena: a panoramic view of the city and the sea. A view of Paradise, with this blue sky; and I can imagine how incredible it might be during starry nights, I’m sure they will love it!”

“I agree, it’s perfect for them. It’s not a hexagonal room with a balcony, like ours on the floor below, but it has the exact breadth of sight they asked for. It was really fortunate that we found this house in such particular coordinates and with such an architecture that satisfies Robyn's poetic request, and I quote:  an architecture that reminds towers but, at the same time, invokes free space, liberation; a tribute not only to Alice's experience of breaking free from her prison in the tower but also my passing ritual of giving up magic in favor of becoming an archer, thus embracing the dream of honoring my father’s memory: a tower symbolizing a springboard for us to fly freely.”

"Poetic… Robyn was quite inspired when specified her dreamy room in our home if we were to buy a house. Listening to this quoted description leave me with no doubt, they will love their towered room. The house is beautiful. To be honest, it’s a bit too much for just the two of us but it’s fitting to be always full of life and visitors. Besides Robyn and Alice, I hope to get more guests occupying our 4 bedroom house,” he turns to Zelena.

"They will come, from the Realms and from the West Coast, I’m sure. I will love to welcome your parents and our friends from San Francisco. This is a fresh start for us, Chad, but it is also continuity. I am happy to be here, near my family and friends from the Realms and, at the same time, to keep the door open for the world we built to ourselves in the Land without Magic."

All of a sudden, interrupting Zelena's words, a feminine voice echoes off the hexagonal tower walls: "the doors of this house are also open to the worlds below and the worlds above, Zelena!"

Petrified by fright, Chad can only move his eyes toward the woman's form materializing before him and his wife. "What the hell!?" he mutters.

"Technically, not necessarily a 'hell', Chad." Smiling, the beautiful woman walks slowly towards the couple and continues, "please, do not be scared, nor fear, I come in peace. Oh! What a bad behavior on my part... I did not knock neither introduce myself. Forgive my bad manners…  So, I ask permission to come in.  I’m Persephone," she bows extending both hands to them, “nice to meet you”.

“Persephone, as in…. the goddess? I mean, Greek Mythology? Really?” he asks incredulously taking one of her hands.

“Says the Wicked Witch’s husband!” Persephone replies with a small chuckle and immediately corrects herself, “actually, ex-Wicked Witch, nowadays, a respectable sorceress. It’s an honor to finally meet you, Zelena.”

“Yeah, sure, ah… permission granted, I guess, and, thanks… my pleasure too, Persephone.” Zelena and Persephone shake hands.  “I’ve wondered so many times about you and your whereabouts, you have no idea. Hades once spoke to me about you. Despite the hardships you couldn't quite solve, he said you were determined and firm…” Zelena returns the compliment and invites her to the living room on the first floor.

…

“You must be curious about my visit," Persephone explains, "it is natural to be so. I'm not planning to go around in circles, because time to lose is something we no longer have, but... I believe it is necessary for me to explain the context of my visit to you. As a start, I think it is important to make it clear that, in the time count, Hades and I broke up for over a thousand years. While in a marital life, our marriage arrangement was described in the literature with reasonable accuracy. I did in fact alternate - and still do - my stay on Earth and Underworld with a periodicity of six months, although the part that associates this alternation with the creation of the seasons has been very romanticized and mythicized. In other words, there are truths and there are myths related to that. Truths refer to the majority of storylines dealing with my relationships in a more personal level, the mythicized part, to the creation of the seasons. You see, I’m not affirming that there is no relation between the cycles of my stay and the seasons; I’m just saying that everything is much more complex and intricate than a metaphoric legend, or myth, describing something that is real but too complex for the rational mind to absorb completely… there are Mysteries and Secrecies that are so named for a reason; for decoding them one needs to combine wisely all sciences, all areas of human knowledge, so to speak...” she smiles reticently.

“But resuming this not so short ‘introduction’, in general Greek myths are about an early world; usually, they explore themes of parental treachery alternating with tales of filial betrayal,  love and loyalty - all the essentials of good plot-lines linking birth and cosmic creation. Seen today, they have become ancient stories and part of the ancient mythological worldview. But, believe me, gods and goddesses, existed then and still exist now. We may be known only for the ancient part of our existence, but we are still ‘around’. This way, to contextualize, Demeter is in fact my mother and Zeus, her brother, is, indeed, my father.  Athena, Aphrodite, Ares, Apollo, Artemis, Dionysus, Hermes, and Hephaestus are indeed my brothers and sisters. And Hestia, Hera, Demeter, Poseidon, Hades and Zeus are, indeed, brothers and sisters…”

“The moral code of your family is, indeed, quite different from ours,” Zelena mutters with high dose of sarcasm.

“Indeed,” Persephone agrees, with a wink, “but you must remember that we are talking about early human civilization. I understand that incest is a taboo now, but it was considered ���normal’ and most prevalent in families of royal lineage to keep the bloodlines ‘clean and pure’. Non-royalty rarely participated in incest. Maybe that is the origin of all the drama in my family, that and our immortality, but, looking cautiously, even in many religions and traditions of nowadays, the myths of creation start with the narrative of incest…”

“You are right, when we really think about we see that most of them do start this way,” Chad concedes.

“Of course they do. The key is to never be too judgmental and keep in mind all historical and cultural context. We are talking about metaphoric stories explaining complex transcendental science. These stories usually use hyperbolic language to exaggerate some colors, or to emphasize some attributes. Take Hades, for instance. He was not as bad as they usually say, at least until the Olympian Crystal incident.  As the god of death and the Underworld, he suffered a bit from a bad image. He is often treated like the Greek version of devil, but that’s a bit of a stretch. To start, Hades never chose the Underworld as his domain. He and his brothers, Zeus and Poseidon, drew straws to see who would be lord of what realm. Zeus drew the Heavens and the Upper world, Poseidon drew the Seas, and Hades drew the Underworld. As the Underworld rulers go, during the time we were married he was a pretty decent king. When Orpheus descended into the Underworld to retrieve his bride, Hades was moved by his pleas and agreed to let the woman go, on the condition that, when leaving, Orpheus wouldn’t look back. You know, he did, of course, and lost her – but that was not Hade’s fault. Today, when I think about it, I see how Hades started to downgrade into darkness because of that passage, which led him to cut the Ambrosia tree in the Underworld. That used to be the only tree of my garden - in that quadrant - that wasn't dry… But it is important to note that he was not responsible for the condemnation or redemption of souls. Those who died were subject to the judgment of demigods, not Hades. As for me, although he did in fact, tricked me to stay in the Underworld - he kidnapped me - after a deal with my father he became a respectful and good husband. Differently from most gods and goddesses, we were both faithful to each other – and quite possessive, I must confess. There was a time that he fell in love with a nymph and I turned her into a mint plant so that my husband wouldn’t be able to have her as a lover. That is not my most glamorous story, I know, but, as far as a marriage between gods goes, those were good times for us,” she sights reminiscent.

After a pause, while Zelena and Chad exchanged discreet glances but didn’t say a word, Persephone continues. “Anyway, things deteriorated fast between us because of that ancient crystal, shaped like a crude lightning bolt, the Olympian Crystal. Because of an old sibling rivalry, the crystal, which belonged to my father, was stolen by Hades. My father, by his turn, cursed Hades' heart and, since then, Hades changed radically. He could not love, he could not feel. You know the story, Zelena. For us, that's when we parted and he became the cruel, vengeful god without noble feelings. Only you, Zelena, was strong enough – and I admire you for that – to penetrate his petrified heart and break the curse with a true love kiss. You were able to see his remaining good, but even that was not enough to lead him into a redemption path. On the contrary, with his distorted mind he deceived you, he schemed against you and your sister, and he caused suffering and losses. Eventually, he ended up losing his immortality. Not even his soul could be saved and, sadly, disintegrated. The irony is that he ceased to exist because of the illegitimate power he wanted to possess. That was the end of Hades but that was not the end of Evil, and that is the reason of my visit today.”

“Are you implying that you came because you didn’t like me not only killing Hades but also disintegrating his soul and your father’s Crystal? Well, I’m sorry and not sorry at the same time. In my defense, I had no option, he was going to disintegrate my sister in the same way he tried to do with Robin right in front of us. You see, I did love Hades, but not to the point of living with the burden of Regina’s death. At the end of the day, after all struggles, many curses and turns of the world, here I am. I met a man who loves me as much as I love him and we built up a healthy and happy life together. Even Regina, despite not being allowed to live side by side with the love of her life, came out of all that victorious. She was able to save his soul by opening her heart to host his soul; in other words, their love was so strong that they could overcome the soul disintegration power of the Olympian Crystal, did you know that? ” Zelena vents, holding tight to her husband's hand.

“Yes, I did, they were impressively brave. And let’s be clear, I’m not here because of Hades or of what happened to him and the Crystal. As I told you, Hades and I rarely spoke or saw each other for over a thousand year. You see, the Underworld is big enough to ‘accommodate’ its King and its Queen in such a way that I always managed to keep my distance from him, mainly because I didn't approve his evil behavior. Only after his death I went back to where you and your friends have been, that place he called Underbrooke - a section of the Underworld he built to please you. There, I helped Arthur to reorganize the broken kingdom, as Arthur used to call it. Thanks to my intervention, Arthur was able to rescue and to retrieve the essence of some lost souls who had accidentally fallen or been thrown into the Lost Souls river before being judged and without deserving such a sad fate. Actually, to be extremely honest, my coming here is indirectly connected with Hades. Going straight to the point, I came because of Hades’ legacy, the evilness he planted in a land that cannot be called fertile unless the sowing is dry, hard, and… cruel. For Evil, the ground is fertile, and that is what Hades sowed. Unfortunately, it seems, the harvest has just began. In fact, the process started a few months ago, a period of great light and love for people from the United Realms thanks to the harmonious waves of the Sweet Suite. Meanwhile, the counterpart was being unfolded downstairs, so to speak, as reported to me by Arthur, when he noticed the first anomalies in the smoke coming from Tartarus.”

“Anomalies?” Chad, increasingly frightened and uncomfortable, interrupts to ask. “What kind of anomalies do you refer to? Could you be more specific?”

“Of course,” Persephone concedes, “I’ll get there. Continuing, I was talking about Arthur. Although he and I have taken every precaution in our bailouts, some lost souls not supposed to get free and to recover their evil ego managed to escape without our help, probably they were helped by the one who took over the Underbrooke’s City Hall and became a stumbling block in Arthur's path: Cruella Deville. Apparently obsessed with the idea of returning to Earth and taking revenge on Emma Swan, who killed her to save her son's life, after freeing some lost souls Cruella stole from the library of Hades one of the ‘Mysteries & Secrecies’ books accessible only to the gods and a few humans who get permission – in this case, granted by me to Arthur."

Taking a sip of tea, Persephone inhales and exhales deeply before continuing. "Here, a parenthesis is needed, since you and others have already been in the Underworld and may wonder about what I'm about to reveal. Despite having similar buildings, as you must know Storybrooke and Underbrooke do not share exactly the same layout - quite the contrary, actually. Particularly, downstairs, the public library - where Wish Belle, a soul with unfinished business, works - is adjacent to Hades's forbidden sector. Belle isn't allowed to get in there but she has been given permission to borrow some books from there. To read and decipher their ancient texts she uses a magical translator, a gift of mine, an appreciation for her good behavior and impressive achievements as a researcher. Now, closing the parenthesis and going back on track, Arthur and I found out that Cruella not only had stolen Belle's translator but had also broken the magic lock to the forbidden library. We managed to prevent her from stealing all banned books but one of them she hid and, especially with the help of two other souls, Pan, whom she rescued from the river of Lost Souls, and Wish Rumple, she managed to read - and learn - the content of a very specific Mystery & Secrecy tome: ‘How to clone human bodies’.”

“Is that a Mystery, or a Secrecy, really?” Zelena interrupts Persephone with a nervous chuckle. “I mean, not that I don’t believe the seriousness of what you are telling us, but I’ve seen so many wish and non-wished versions of people, or split versions, of whatever that it’s really doubtful this is such a mysterious secret…”

“There's a big difference between what you have seen and what I’m referring to: you have seen body-and-soul alternate versions of people, duplication even triplication of people in a so-called quantum process of magic involving the concept of infinite possibilities. I am referring to cloned bodies, you can think about them as empty bodies, ready to host deceased souls in a process that does not involve reincarnation as we know it. It does not involve a restart, a reset with forgetfulness and detachment of the past life, with the loss of ego for starting all over again aiming at a spiritual evolution. In short, their plan is to clone bodies – your bodies, before killing you so that in a fraction of seconds they will magically switch places with your souls which will force your souls to descend to the Underworld. This way, by taking  your place, they will enter your clones. They also plan to clone all gods’ bodies, after drying our source of immortality. The process of this kind of cloning involves a hibernation state of the cloned body until the new soul enters the empty ‘vehicle’.”

“Bloody hell…” Chad interjects.

“You have no idea how bloody this hell is,” Persephone acquiesces. “The anomalies refer, as I said, to a kind of smoke that may change Nature's behavior across all kingdoms - including the Underworld. They precede, as an alarm, the main and final cloning magic, which involves the use of a special fruit cultivated in the Olympus associated with water from a special fountain there. With them we have indications that our enemies are on their way, unfortunately. Although we managed to send Pan, Cruella, Gaston and James Nolan to Tartarus, attempting to avoid the problem, now we think that sending them may have increased the likelihood that it will occur. Wish Rumple hasn’t been judged yet and remains in Underbrooke, Arthur and I will see what we will do with him, but I guess sending him to Tartarus will not be a good idea…”

After a prolonged silence, during which Zelena and Chad processed the huge amount of information, Persephone concludes: “There are some facts that we don’t know yet, for example, it seems that they have a connection on the Upperworld, some sort of help coming from the United Realms, and we really fear that, led by Pan and Cruella’s souls, the condemned souls may be plotting from Tartarus. As I said, there are lots of things we still don’t know but we do know that the situation goes beyond what our power alone can handle. We need you, humans from Earth and souls from Elysium, to help us. There is a major disaster with proportions that I would not like to think about being forged and we need to prevent that. So, there you have it, the reason of this unexpected visit of mine. I came to ask for your help.”

Enchanted Seashore, Wish Regina and Roland’s home

“Roland, where have you been? After my sister Queen announced, this morning, the suspension of classes, I didn't see you anymore; I was starting to worry and thinking about using a location spell...  I waited but you took so long that I decided to have lunch first. Now… let's go to the kitchen, my dear, to warm up your food.” Wish Regina tells the 15-year-old as he begins to climb the back porch staircase.

"No need for worry, Gina, I won’t go too far from here, promise. I was in my other room, at the tree house and didn’t hear you calling because I was chatting with Lucy, Neal and Coralline. Neal and Aline are staying at Lucy's house while their parents are in a meeting with the Queen and the others, at the City Hall."

"I see…  Well, as you know, I attended this meeting via Web, as well as a few other ministers who did not travel to Storybrooke, but in my case I only needed to be present for 2 hours. We decided that, at the moment, the activities of my Social Assistance Ministry will remain in a standby mode, waiting for more information regarding the mysteries behind the children visions and the ocean ‘turbulence’. By the way, one of the absent ministers, Nemo, warned us that he is about to land near our house and I have, since then, been waiting for the Nautilus, cooking a few dishes, a couple of apple pies… I guess they shouldn't be long. Now, about you: seriously? 6 hours of chat?" she asks playfully. “Thankfully, the power consumption of the equipment developed by Nemo and the Dragon is 100% self-sustainable, otherwise people with magic in all United Realms, working in sync, would not be able to energize all transponders that the young people use!" she quips.

“I see no problem in talking too much. Adults can spend a whole day in conversations and meetings – which is accepted as normal. What about us? This is our world too, what happens now affects our future. The current crisis seems to be so serious that the four of us needed to get together to discuss our positions, nothing that won’t be coordinated with what you will decide, don’t worry. Adults are in charge - and we know that, but we needed to align our claims and we can help. Neal and Coralline have magic, Lucy is a True Believer and I am a champion Archer, not to mention our cunning intelligence! And do not forget:  as the senior of the group, I’m kind of their leader!” Roland responds proudly, already devouring a heated lasagna.

“We will see about that, young ‘senior’…" Regina’s reply would be longer but, fortunately for Roland, the conversation was interrupted by the arrival of Nemo, Liam Jr, Wish Brennan and Liam Senior, together with Ursula and W. Ariel, who traveled swimming by the Nautilus' side, “just for the fun of it!”

…

"Like Lieutenants Martin & Harris who, by the way, opted to have lunch and stay nested aboard, those four out there are becoming inseparable couples, if you know what I mean..." Brennan smiles muttering under his breath to be heard only by Liam Senior and Regina, the three sat on the oceanfront balcony. He refers to the couples walking arm in arm along the shore with the excuse of digesting Regina's hearty meal but, in fact, looking for an alone time. That is especially valid - it seems - to Liam Jr and W. Ariel, moving away as if in search of a more private corner.

“You prepared a real feast for us, Regina, everything was delicious,” L. Senior says, between sips of an herbal tea.

“Thanks, Liam. Knowing that six people were coming was an ideal excuse for me to try and forget about the problems. Unfortunately I didn’t have time to prepare anything special, I hope you stay long enough to enjoy something more elaborate. Oh yeah… something that doesn't involve seafood, out of respect for Ursula and W.Ariel. Maybe a cheese soufflé with a good red wine...” she plans dreamily. “You know, cooking for me is a therapy, especially when I'm just like now, really worried. There was a time when I used to vent going to the 'witch's cauldron', instead!!” Regina and L. Senior have a good laugh at that, and she goes on, “but now that my witchcraft times are past, my hobby is cooking, I love to try new recipes, combine new seasonings and condiments ... Sometimes I resent from not having a taste keeper more open to novelties, you know, since Roland is not that much given to spices - especially seafood, I must confess. Well, I love the sea, no wonder I chose to live in front of it taking care, obviously, to find a seaside location close to the Enchanted Forest, which is Roland's natural habitat.”

“Well,” Liam Sr. replies bluntly, “if registration for tasting your cuisine is open, I'll be the first in line to appreciate the Chef's production!”

Rubbing his beard thoughtfully, Brennan interrupts the flirtation to ask about Roland, and Regina goes on to explain how the two eventually got closer, and today share a bond resembling the one between a son and a mother.

…

Approaching the balcony, Ursula, accompanied by Nemo, asks:

"Regina, do you know why we came to your house before going to Storybrooke?"

“No, I don’t. Although I feel much honored by your visit, I must confess that I was curious about it,” Regina replies.

“The reason is simple and complicated at the same time, but I'll try to summarize it,” Ursula explains. “The location of your home is special. In fact, Nemo and I found out that some homes in the United Realms are very specially located. I do not know whether by the architects’ intuition or knowledge of occult sciences, or both, but many houses are located at points of telluric energy chakras and they are very useful as a communication channel for the members of my family. You probably know my family tree from literature – so you might know that I'm the daughter of Poseidon's union with Amphitrite and I'm Triton's sister. You might also know, I imagine, that I have many uncles, aunts, and cousins, including my cousin Persephone, daughter of Zeus and Demeter. So… yesterday, Persephone telepathically contacted me to let me know that she was going to visit your half-sister, Zelena, at her new home in Maine. Although it is located outside the borders of the United Realms, Zelena chose a house positioned at one of these energetic crossing points to which I referred, and that opened Persephone's passage to the Earth plane coming from the Underworld. I don't know exactly the subject of their talk, but I do know that my cousin asked me to be at one of these energy points because she needed to talk to me too - with urgency - and the conversation would be lengthy, thus more complicated to sustain, via telepathy, if I were outside of them. In face of that, Nemo and I searched in his maps to locate the nearest point in relation to where we were – in other words, your home was the answer. And this is, my dear friend, the original reason that brought us to your welcoming house. The extra bonus, that is, our great time here and the opportunity to strengthen the emotional ties that bind us, might be a result of one of Cousin Eros’ romps,” Ursula mumbles and Nemo giggles.

“I see, interesting…” Regina replies, pensive. “Well, while Persephone doesn’t contact you, I invite the two of you to join us in our tea time and, then, if possible, I would like to know more about these energy lines and points, that is, if you or Nemo, or both, could teach us about them. If I got the idea roughly right, they may be useful for us to deal with what is coming even though we don’t know yet what it is.”

“I will tell what I can for now,” Nemo addresses the small audience, soon joined by Roland, Liam Jr, and W. Ariel, while Ursula quietly retreats to the living room, “so that Ursula may be free to relax and meditate.  Well… let’s start from a scientific fact: there are straight fault lines in the earth’s tectonic plates, to many people known as ley-lines. It’s also scientifically known that through these cracks the magnetic energies released are very powerful. Our ancestors have known about these lines for thousands of years: each culture on the planet has known about them yet with different names. Native Indians of this same region where we are right now, for example, used to call them spirit lines  because their electro-magnetic energy helped their Shamans to contact the spirits. The druids called them  mystical lines. In Wales, as in eastern countries, they were called dragon lines. For the aboriginal people of Australia these lines were known as dream lines. Throughout history all megalithic structures have been strategically built on top of these so called ley lines. These electro-magnetic lines may be seen as veins that receive energy from the sun, thus connecting and affecting every living thing on this planet. The atoms of our bodies, because they are surrounded by electrons, are connected to the earth’s electro-magnetic fields and our heart, as a battery, may be charged by them. Right now, Ursula is in the living room, meditating on one of these crossing points, or megalithic centers, to elevate her electrical aura, intellect, and connection to her higher self, which will activate her energy centers (or chakras).”

“Wow...” Roland exclaims softly.

“Of course there are dark forces that are knowledgeable of these lines and concentrate effort to manipulate these fields and to control or influence the geo-electrical grid. For this reason the access to this knowledge is not allowed to every mortal and few cultures have it completely mapped - the maps in my possession are a rare treasure, among the few out there with the complete grid involving all alternate and superimposed realms – such as the United Realms, which is superimposed to Maine, the Upper world, the Underworld and the Olympus. Around the world, multiple alternate realms, aligned to multiple cultures and traditions, are superimposed, which explains how Henry Mills, our Author, ended up in a realm with another Rapunzel, another Cinderella – which is made possible due to a magic quantum process of infinite possibilities.”

“I have a question, Sir!” Roland raises his hand.

“Go ahead, young man,” Nemo replies in a benevolent tone.

“How is it possible to converge, to the same time and space, characters and stories, known through literature for hundreds of years, which were, according to their origins, mismatched in time and in space? And how come that they all speak the same language - English, in our case?"

"Wow, I'm positively impressed with the complexity of your question... what's your name again, my boy?"

"Roland, sir."

"Very well. So, Roland, the ley lines - which I usually refer to as Earth’s meridians of energy, in an analogy with the millennial Chinese medicine, allow connections that mix time and space and activate, on those that are transported through them, the necessary adjustment of language skill and, sometimes, cultural adaptation. In other words, they equalize the inner communication channel of the person crossing a portal. This means that you need portals, like those opened by magic beans, like the ones I used to open, for the Nautilus, with kraken blood fuel - thanks to Ursula, this is a method I no longer use - or any other magical means to open portals between realms and dimensions. They translate different temporal and spatial planes to converge into the same plane. Before you ask – yeah, I’m seeing your eyes shining while your mind is processing the information - let me tell you one thing. Time travel in the same realm is far more complicated than that between planes of different realms and often requires dark magic. So, back to the convergence of characters originated from different times in History into a common space-time, you’ve got to remember that they are characters like all of us, right here and right now. We obviously know that these characters and stories are absolutely real – we are real!" Everyone laughs at that, before Nemo resumes, "the fact that we are known in the Land without Magic literature is also explained by the Earth’s meridian theory: during their dreams, writers, supposed to be our creators, travel through the dream lines and visit our original and very much real realms, they get to know real people that they turn into fiction characters, and by doing it the way they do, they frequently translate their dreams into mixed distortions of our real stories, you know the rest. In summary…” he sighs and pauses for a little while, “there you have it. Are you happy with my answer, Roland? "

"Very, Sir, thank you very much," the boy responds with a distant, dreamy look, sailing the waves of imagination fueled by Nemo's response.

Concluding his explanation, Nemo takes another sip of his tea and finally states, “to conclude, the Grid, with capital letter - that is how I call my maps, establishes higher levels of consciousness in a scale of 7 keys, but this is something to talk about in another day. Let’s hope Ursula will help us in understanding what is going on in our present situation and, also, in knowing what we should do to prevent chaos or to fight potential enemies.”

Underworld, Underbrooke

The air is dry, reddened by the pollution caused by a high dose of toxic gas spewing from chimneys spread along the sidewalks. However, for those who inhabit the decaying town, the existence of the permanent anomaly does not affect them yet: they do not properly breathe with lungs; though through their semi-densified souls, molded in the shape of the body they had on earth, runs a viscous liquid which - under the effect of torture, in Hades' time, gushed and bled.

The streets are empty; most of Underbrooke’s inhabitants are gathered in an assembly promoted by Arthur and Persephone, at the City Hall. The subject of the meeting may be or may be not new to everyone except for the two beings walking down Main Street: Wish Belle and Wish Rumple discussing and, in vain, trying to seek an understanding, a convergence of viewpoints.

…

"Rumple, no matter how hard you try to justify it, the fact is that you lied about not acting dominated by your Dark One persona. Dark Ones trick, Dark Ones lie! When Baelfire came back from Neverland, you tricked him and lied to me!"

Tousling his hair with his hands in exasperation, Rumple continues to argue. "Belle, we were a happy family until Regina killed Baelfire and you. We lived years of peace, harmony and love. What difference does a harmless lie make?"

"Harmless? Really? It's the cornerstone of everything that went wrong later, Rumple. It's the first domino, the first lie followed by a string of more lies. It means that all our happiness was grounded in lies. Our harmony was false, and I no longer know if your love was false too. Your love of power has corrupted your noblest feelings, Rumple.”

“How dare you?! Of course I loved you! I love you. Everything I did was because I loved you and Bael more than anything!” Rumple cuts her.

“Rumple, you know that I've always been able to see beyond the Beast, to see your primary light source despite your Dark One persona. The fact that you can't understand a truth as basic as this: our happiness was built on a lie, makes me wonder. It makes me think that you continue, even after you are dead, trying to delude yourself and, as a byproduct, to fool me too!"

"I lost everything Belle, I lost you, I lost my son, differently from the other Rumple I was left with nothing. My only option was to give up. I know I am worse now than I was when you died but ... I had no choice but to surrender to darkness. I lost Hope."

"Don't you see the pattern? Everything and everyone to blame but you! You're victimizing yourself again and we're going around in circles. I know it got harder for you after Bael and I died. But it was hard for me too! After dying we arrived here but he quickly moved on to the Islands of the Blessed. Meanwhile, with this hellish unresolved business called Rumplestiltskin, I've been here for almost 12 years now, always in a library, reading, studying the human psyche, and waiting for my unresolved, unfinished business to come in. Then you arrived, a soul completely darkened but … still, I still hoped, I still do, Rumple. I have not given up on you or on us. I wait because I'm your Hope. Can't you see, Rumple? You haven't lost Hope."

“Nah… you are the one not seeing, Belle. I know that I had lied to you and to Bael but I had good reasons. I did that so that I would be able to trick Regina and Hook by making them believe that she would cast the dark curse and he would follow me in a world where I would be vulnerable. I made them believe that I needed to go the Land without Magic to find my son when, in reality, I had already found him and we were secretly living in peace. All I wanted was Hook to cross the realms and be trapped there, staying there for the rest of his life. And why should I care in betraying Regina? She was Evil, she was a villain. So, I plotted with the fairies to capture her and to steal her magic – in one way or another, the result would be positive: the Enchanted Forest would get rid of two villains. What happened was not exactly what I envisioned, but it worked well, for a while at least. Hook moved to the other Enchanted Forest, to raise his daughter, and we neutralized the Evil Queen’s power - all realms benefited from that. I was convinced, and still am, that the end justifies the means - and the end was noble: to live in peace with you and my son, being a family of nobles with noble attitudes: charitable, generous, fair … Bael became a knight and married a Princess! We lived a happy life, we did!”

“Until we did not,” Belle sighs, and continues, “I don’t know what else I could do or say to make you see, Rumple. I don't know how far you still have in your soul traces of the connection with the Dark Ones lineage, or if it's all just you. I do not know how far you have not understood that lying is like non-consensual, abusive, sex; it is the absence of resonance, of transparency, of respect. There is no nobility where there is a lie. Nobility is, above all, a state of honesty, of sincerity. I’m not saying you did no good to a lot of people, I’m saying you did no good to yourself, mainly. Once I read a text, written by a man called Carl Gustav Jung, in his ‘Memories, Dreams and Reflections’, stating something like: You may feed the hungry, you may forgive an insult, and you may love your enemy…these are undoubtedly great virtues… But what if you should discover that the poorest of beggar and the most impudent of offenders are all within you, and that you stand in need of your own kindness; that you are the enemy who must be loved? What then?”

“Are you implying that I should love myself? Well, dearie, that would be the opposite of what you have always said when you accused me of being selfish, don’t you think?”

“Absolutely not, these are two different things and there you are again, trying to locate a loophole in my reasoning. I’m saying that you are your own enemy. Don’t trick me with your word playing, Rumple. You know what I meant. We are both too old and too dead for this kind of game.”

“One more reason for us to go back to Earth, to inhabit healthier and younger bodies, Belle...”

“Please, Rumple, not this nonsense again. I asked Arthur to come for a walk because he knows how and why I know the news he and Persephone are, right now, communicating to everyone and trying to find out who else, besides you, is behind the plan. He knows I’m aware of you being behind the sad news…”

“I still don’t see the sad aspect of it. You are neglecting a unique opportunity to keep your memories as Belle intact and be given the experience of a new life without repeating the same mistakes of the previous life. Look at my dark soul, I could evolve towards the light, don’t you see? I would be able to learn what still needs to be taught to me. Just imagine, you and I together, no dark magic this time, no magic at all, no tricks, and no lies: a new beginning – a reincarnation without forgetfulness. The prospect is fabulous: a new life in young bodies ready to express physically the pleasures of loving and being loved. Would you do that, Belle? For us, would you build with me a new life? Would you go back with me, if you knew that the cloning plan would work as it is supposed to work?”

Sighing, despite not breathing, just out of habit, Belle responds. “I love you, Rumple, I honestly do, I know – I sense – that underneath your darkness there are resilient seeds of goodness. But I could never go ahead with you in this craziness. And … you know what? I’m so tired; I need to evolve, I need to rest in peace.” Slowly, head down, Belle walks away from him, leaving Rumple completely alone.

…

"Fate behaves irrationally, and the energy of life inconveniently demands a gradient agreeable to itself; otherwise it simple gets dammed up and turns destructive. It regresses to former situations. […] Psychic energy is a very fastidious thing which insists on fulfillment of its own conditions. However much energy may be present, we cannot make it serviceable until we have succeeded in finding the right gradient. […] Life can flow forward only along the path of the gradient. But there is no energy unless there is a tension of opposites; hence it is necessary to discover the opposite to the attitude of the conscious mind. It is interesting to see how this compensation by opposites also plays its part in the historical theories of neurosis. Freud’s theory espoused Eros; Adler’s the will to power. Logically, the opposite of love is hate, and of Eros, Phobos (fear): but psychologically it is the will to power. Where love reigns, there is no will to power; and where the will to power is paramount, love is lacking. The one is but the shadow of the other: the man who adopts the standpoint of Eros finds his compensatory opposite in the will to power, and that of the man who puts the accent on power is Eros. Seen from the one-sided point of view of the conscious attitude, the shadow is an inferior component of the personality and is consequently repressed through intensive resistance. […] The conscious mind is on top, the shadow underneath, and just as high always longs for low and hot for cold, so all consciousness, perhaps without being aware of it, seeks its unconscious opposite, lacking which it is doomed to stagnation, congestion, and ossification. Life is born only of the spark of opposites…" (Carl G. Jung, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology)

*

[optimizedfamily]

How To Teach Your 2 Year Old To Read (An Overview)

Sometimes, just living with a two-year-old is challenging enough without adding more mayhem to the mix. As parents, though, we want to give our children the best start in life we can, regardless of how difficult it might be. Maybe you’ve studied up on how important early childhood education is and have decided you want to teach your 2-year-old to read. So did I. And…I did!

Be warned that you’ll probably encounter some of the same reactions I did: “Are you crazy?” and “Two-year-olds can’t learn to read.”

Rest assured that yes, 2 year olds can be taught to read. The trick is learning how to teach them.

Why Teach Your 2-Year-Old to Read?

I’m sure you’ve noticed – two-year-olds are all over the place. They are into everything. But did you know their little brains are busy too? According to a 1997 study1, the brain of a two-year-old is as active as an adult is. By age three, their minds are twice as active as an adult’s. You might say the brain of a two-year-old is fertile ground just waiting for seeds to be planted.

National Education Association studies have proven that reading to your child of any age is one of the best ways you can boost the likelihood they will succeed academically. When you teach your child to read, the chances are even higher that they will excel in school and after that as well.

Why teach your 2-year-old to read? When the signs are all there that your little one is ready and able to learn, why wouldn’t you?

Is My 2 Year Old Ready to Read?

No two children are the same, especially two-year-olds. While one toddler might be recognizing letters as early as one year of age, some three and four-year-olds are far too preoccupied or unfocused to do so. If your two-year-old is soaking it all in when you read to them and is interacting by pointing out words, letters, or even pictures, odds are they are ready to take being read to on to the next level – to do the reading themselves. After all, just in case you haven’t noticed, that’s being two is all about doing things on their own.

Two-year-olds can learn to read, as shown by the Children Learning Reading program. See our Children Learning Reading review to learn more.

Am I Ready to Teach my Child to Read?

No matter what age your child is, teaching them to read is a commitment. It requires time and patience. You’ll need to be willing and able to set aside a portion of quality time regularly. Brushing up (or learning) some basic reading techniques, like phonics and coding, is optimal. Teaching your two-year-old doesn’t happen magically, but it is magical when you do.

How to Teach Your 2-Year-Old to Read

Teaching a child of any age to read takes a little preparedness. Since two-year-olds are from a different planet entirely, you may want to spend a little extra time getting in the right place, both mentally and physically. Here are some terrific tips:

Setting the Stage

Many people are skeptics when it comes even to believe that a two-year-old can read; a good number of parents don’t prepare their children for reading until their children are older. By leading the way and developing the path, however, it is very likely your little one will naturally follow along.

Lead Up to Lessons

From the time my daughter was born, I began to lead up to the day I (or someone) would teach her to read. I read to her for 10-15 minutes every day in a way that involved her. Reading to her was always an interactive experience – I asked questions, made comments, and made story time fun.

I also made sure to expose her to plenty of writing. I often showed her the wooden letters on her bedroom wall that spelled out her name and told her what each of the letters was and what they spelled. We made word games out of most everything we did together like spelling out words onto brightly colored sticky notes and placing them on coordinating objects like “doll,” “book,” and even on the “dog.”

Words became fun and familiar, and when that happens, the scene was correctly set for my child to read and it will be for yours too.

Keep Your Child in the Loop

Communication is vital when it comes to teaching your child anything. Get your child excited by letting them know they are going to learn to read. Tell them when and how too. You know a two-year-old wants to know all the details!

Do What You Need to Do

You can’t give out what you do not have. Just keeping track of a two-year-old can be mentally and physically exhausting, much less adding on the task of teaching your child to read. Be sure you are getting some good “me” time in. Get a manicure. Treat yourself to a cappuccino. Take a nap. Do whatever it is you do for you and then. You’ll be refueled and ready to roll.

Don’t Be Afraid to Reach Out

If you are a teacher, chances are you’ve got the reading thing down and don’t need any assistance. But those of us who don’t often need a little help. Some of us need a lot of support!

Don’t be afraid to ask a friend who has taught their child to read for pointers or to go online to find out how others mastered the plan. If you are considering using an early childhood reading program in your venture, don’t feel bad.

There are some great ones out there that can work wonders for teaching even two-year-olds to read. Do your research, reach out if you feel the need, and do whatever you find necessary or helpful to teach your little one to read.

For a comprehensive reading program, see our in-depth review of the Children Learning Reading program.

Flash Forward

Two-year-olds can be very head-strong. Five years down the road, this attribute can be a good thing (ok, let’s give it ten). The less you focus on the trials of the moment and look toward the future, the more encouraged you will be. Who knows what all your labor of love might bring to the life of your child in the days to come.

Lights, Camera, Action

With everything in place, you and your child are set up for success. Here are some easy steps to teach your child to read.

Familiarity

Two-year-olds love familiar things. The more you can have reading lesson time at the same time in the same place, the better. It’s even okay to use the same book for a while. Sound out the words with your child while showing them the letters.

Using phonics and coding together is very useful. Be sure not to do all the work yourself. Interaction is the name of the game.

Fast

Two-year-olds have a short attention span. Keep lesson time simple and keep the time short. When your little one loses focus, you’ll know the class is over. Unrealistic expectations shouldn’t be placed on a youngster.

By doing so, you could be setting your child up for failure rather than success. Fear and disappointment spur learning blocks. Praise encourages success.

Fun

Two-year-olds love to have fun. Anything can be made fun so be sure their first exposure to reading is sheer joy. Lots of laughter is undoubtedly in order because learning to read is loads of fun when you make it that way.

Fidgeting

Fidgeting is as essential for a two-year-old to do as breathing is. They will wiggle and scoot and run off for a minute only to return to wiggle some more. You’ll need to get on their level to meet them where they are.

It’s alright for your child to move around, to ask questions, and to learn however they naturally need to. When learning to read it’s ok for a two-year-old to be a two-year-old.

Finale

After repetitively being shown letters and words and being taught to sound out and recognize the words and letters, your little one will begin to repeat the words. Then, they will most likely start to read the words before them.

Some of this can be their sharp memory skills in motion. You’ll be tempted, like I was, to think it is only from memory. But, here is the real test the finale.

Give your child a fresh, new book. At first, your child may panic. Something is different, and two-year-olds don’t always like change. Once they warm up though, wait for it, wait for it, boom!

When your two-year-old begins to read words he or she has never seen or heard before, you will know that you know your child can read. And you are the one that has taught them. Get out the tissues!

Plan that outing at the park or whatever it is your child loves to do. A celebration is in order!

And they said it wasn’t possible. Well, I am here to tell you it can be. Two-year-olds can, indeed, learn to read. Mine did, and yours can learn too.

“The End” is Just the Beginning

There is nothing like hearing your very own child read through an entire book to hear the most precious words ever, “The end.” Teaching your two-year-old to read is a reward like none other. Don’t stop there though. It is essential for your child to read regularly, every day if possible.

Bump the difficulty level up a notch now and then. Challenge your child. Most importantly of all, give both yourself and your two-year-old a big pat on the back for a most excellent job done. Now, it’s time for the next chapter.

For more info on a comprehensive reading program, check out our Children Learning Reading review.

References: 1Shore, R. (1997). Rethinking the Brain: New Insights into Early Development. New York: Families and Work Institute.

National Education Studies – http://www.nea.org/grants/facts-about-childrens-literacy.html

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[vjwildlife]

Tag...YOu R It

Most of us think of our beings, our bodies and minds and selves, as separate and individual and fully under our own command. This is a misleading way to consider your "self". We are in fact a relationship...... and the culmination of this inter dimensional and  outer dimensional relationship is what our frequency is. Our cosmic signal, our BEING....the one note that we play in the Eternal Orchestra of consciousness and energy taking form as physicality. Let me give you and example. Our bodies are made up of four to ten times more cells that are other than human as they are made up of human cells. There is an ongoing profound relationship between every cell that makes up the community that you call YOU. How intelligent and harmonious this community relationship is is what creates your own experience of harmony or dis -ease, intelligence or the lack thereof etc.  Throw into the mix that there must be a ongoing process of communion in order for the community of cells called YOU  to thrive and exists and now the entire relationship that is YOU becomes far more profound. SO you need energy and intelligence in the form of fruits, vegetables, roots, water, air, light, heat, electrical information from the Earth grid to regulate your circadian rythms, information from the SUN to tell you how to BE, communities of culture in the form of bacteria to actually feed into your body what you put into your alimentary canal, etc. You are a relationship! SO to think that you are independent and controlling your experience is ridiculous. You are being stimulated and informed every nano second. You are the sum total of this in-for-mation. Your structure or lack therof is  YOU. SO to call something a drug that is dangerous is curious, as there is not one thing that goes into our being that does not alter our chemistry, biology, immune system, metabolism, brain wave patterning, hormone profile, and everything else that is going on in order for YOU to be YOU. From every breath taken to every sip of water, every word uttered or heard, every fraction of Light being taken in by your retinas, every degree of light being calibrated and measured on the surface of your exposed skin, every parts per trillion of hormonal input per second which is regulating your entire body process from depth of breath to heart beat regulation to secretions from your ovaries........so when you throw food into the mix...if there was EVER a drug, thats the one sister. Every morsal is altering your state. ALWAYS! SO the question really becomes NOT is it smart to later my state? As you are altering your state endlessly and cannot NOT later your state. That is LIFE and you are THAT relationship that is altering itself endlessly until you are feeding worms in the Earth for the next round of manifested Light. SO again, the relevant question becomes, what do I want to commune with in order to maximize the Light potential of my SELF? What shall I inform myself with, tap water or spring water from the source? Cheerios or kale blood? Artificial intelligence in the form of twinkies and soda or Living Intelligence from the Original Author in the form of wild blueberries raw and Reishi mushroom tea to educate your immune system with HYPER INTELLIGENCE obtained form the experience of growing in fungus and mold and decay and THRIVING rather then the artificial intelligence of the human brain in all of its limitation that would even think to create wonder bread and pop tarts, let alone actually eat it and call it food.  So getting intentional about what you relate with as you continually become what you are is the only real question here. YOU ARE DEPENDENT and EVERYTHING IS A DRUG! Thats the nature of relationship. The more complex it is the healthier and happier it is. The more limited and controlled the relationship is, the more lifeless and dull and dead it is. The smaller your box, the less you are alive. Rules and love have no place together. YOu follow rules because you have no wisdom. Once you have the wisdom, there is no place for rules, you simply live off of inspiration. Only love can consider everything and be perfectly expressed with nothing being left out. Rules are a  dead brain program based on fear. The NO DRUGS rule is stupidity. Get particular about what you are saying here....choose your drugs well. Living plants are my  drug of choice along with living spring water. These drugs inform and educate and structure and edify my being so that I can contain and express more Light. RIGHT ON!!!!!!! If My Mother made it and I can eat it from her as created, I will eat it. If it has to be altered in some way, Id rather not eat it.  There is a reptilian consciousness alive and well in this third dimension today. IN our bodies it is called parasites. These extraterrestrial foreign invaders breach our weakened defense system and poor culture-less relationship in our guts and the first place they go? Your Central Nervous System. They wind themselves into your nervous system and begin to clip off the tips of your nervous system called telomeres. Now your nervous system is what gives you information about your environment and consequently how you can know yourself. A stunted and not growing nervous system will never be able to receive the entirety of the information that it needs to navigate intelligently through its environment. Why would this reptilian consciousness do this? because it wants to feed off of your energy as its Life Force. IT does not want to create the intelligence required to increase its own energy so it will parasitically rob you of yours. Having control of how you view the world gives this lizard consciousness control over what decisions you make....and it does not want you to make decisions to perpetuate your own life force. It wants you to be afraid and dull and confused and hungry for SHIT!!!! because shit is what keeps it alive. The second thing it will do is take over your immune system.....if you cant procreate, then more energy for it. Our population is well on its way to being completely unable to recreate itself. How many women are no longer having periods? How many men are sterile and even impotent? This reptilian consciousness is found in the micro universe called our bodies as parasites. It is also found in the macro Universe as the consciousness striving to control our consciousness on this planet. It is a reptilian alien consciousness  that literally wants to feed on your body as you die. If that particular consciousness is in charge, WE ARE FUCKED in the worst way ever. Look at the program of our culture? You are infected with it! Fear, guilt,  shame, doubt...all frequencies to keep you enslaved.  This lizard type consciousness is making decisions like these every day and while you donwload the visions being sold to you on your TELL-A-VISION.... WE are literally under attack on every front.  From our fear and guilt and shame based cultures, to our poisoned water supply, poisoned and denatured food supply, dying oceans, mercury filled teeth, poisoned air,  institutionalized thinking, domesticated mind sets, useless educations that have taught us nothing about how to live on this planet and eat well and pray and play and laugh and sing and commune with The Divine within ourselves...., no relationship to our Mother, and we have systematically destroyed all of the wild people on this Earth, along with their tools for healing and accessing Source...primarily the intelligent use of plant medicines as the consciousness that can guide us through this version of eternity in a good way.      Plant intelligence gets us out of the books and scriptures and traditions of Men...and into the Living Truth of NOW. The more potent plants actually erase the false programs out of our DNA and nullify the self destruct cultural programs that are actually running our show. What we see going on outside of ourselves such as war, genocide, chemtrails, and the literal collapsing of human consciousness is what is happening within us. We have literaLLY BEEN HIJACKED. ....TRUE STORY! If you want control of your own consciousness, its time to play space invaders intelligently . I dont know of another way to do that than with plants, plants and more plants. Living wild plants carry the pattern of the Original Intelligence which created them. They slowly and surely clean out our hijacked systems and restore us to our Original Master Program. For some it is too late. Think of the last stages of cancer when there is not enough life energy or intelligence left to restore the massive damage created by a lifetime of poison.  For others, there is still time.  If you are this fortunate, get the reptilians out of your body immediately!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Cleanse as if your very Soul depended on it.  The only way out is in, and in means cleaning house.  Eating Shamanic plants can retune your frequency to the Trtuh and break through the patterning of delusion which has led you very far from home. This life on earth experience is full on! You must be clever as a fox and innocent as a dove in order to navigate the Armageddon that it happening right now.    It is part of our karma and part of the Karma of this Earth. We will ether ascend with her into the fifth dimension or we will die off in the compost heap of this third dimension. Getting the poison and sickness and culture out of our systems and getting back to the Truth of what and who we are by reading the Original Program written by The Master Programmer is the only game in town....and it is full contact and full on...people are losing their MINDS and their  LIVES and  their HEARTS and their SANITY. This is NOT target practice. There is actually something going on and if you are not paying attention, something else will pay attention for you and I can promise you that it wont be what you would willingly choose for yourself.   These parasites are real and they are foreign and they desire to control and destroy us. Im not making this up. Consciousness takes shape and form. If you want to know what evil looks like, pull a tapeworm that is eating you alive out of your butt.  Your life will radically radically radically shifted from that moment on.  Evil is part of our evolution to push us and teach us to choose our complete ennoblement. Through the friction and pressure of seeming opposing forces, we grow and learn exactly what we are and are not.   We must rise up to meet the challenges presented to us and learn the lessons required so that we can fire the teachers and move on to Higher Learning and Education. I fired my parasites. They were amazing teachers and I love them for their role in my evolution. Im so glad to have graduated from that class. Please join me. There is so much more to learn. Get this one and move forward. Its important. Its not the whole story though so dont get stuck here. We must learn and grow in order to evolve. I am sharing this in an attempt to help as clearly and intelligently as I possibly can. We are in an Earth School. Choose your Teachers wisely. If its green and alive, I say go for it!   I bless it all, and I especially bless plants.......Shamanic plants being at the very top of my list. I  absolutely do believe that mushrooms can and just might save this planet and San Pedro might actually save our Souls from a horrific journey into darkness before finding the Light. Ayahuasca might actually reconnect us to our Source  and Shamanisms is the only religion that I trust.  Im all for paying up front for my lessons rather than learning through consequence...so I pay up front and take my lumps and become more of what I am and less of what I am not.  So in a nutshell, I say  SAY THE PRAYERS EAT THE PLANTS SING THE SONGS TELL THE TRUTH Saving the planet is the most spiritual thing you will ever do, and saving yourself is what you are destined for. Tag...YOU ARE IT! Do it now. 

[whimsically-ominously-auspice]

I love this girl. She make me laugh. She make me smile

And I know she's suffering and I know she's being honest.

But I feel and I understand her frustration and that is what makes me smile.

Y'all gotta watch she goes off on Corona and COVID -19 calling it a her and a she.

Saying she didn't do no wrong and she don't deserve house arrest.

I believe her and I love her for her pure honesty and raw anger and hate for the situation.

I felt that same so many times in my life for aliens and for situations beyond the means of the Earth.

People like her i been worried for. People trying their best But just one day its too much.

I worry because I'm like that myself.

While she seem like... A volcano... Realize she took herself outside. Yelled loud enough so the kids were warned to not approach her she needed her own anger time out.

And she yelled her heart and mind out. She yelled it so strong and powerful.

And for that i am proud of her.

I'm sure she went inside and gave them kids all the love they deserve and juice without making a pool.

You can send your kids in the backyard and play. I see there's a garage open... Let them draw with chalk and get out your pretty hair.

They're bored as you auntie. Idk if you're baby sitting or live in... But it seems like you got someone essential working, or someone other than you that isn't pulling "at home weight" as much as you.

Being in front of the open garage... Laughing a bit at yourself when you said you wanted to make lil girl a pool... Drinking.. Feeling trapped ... Just seems like Some one else is leaving every day and you can't. And if you ask me to look real good you was waiting the last few minutes outside for them to come driving up.

So you may wanna go pick up a Wal-Mart pick up order of grocery. It sometimes is a long line. I looked this morning and its all booked to Monday for my local one. But doing that will keep you in less contact with others thus ideally healthier. Then spin through the drive thru and take the long way home.

There's no law saying the stay at home personnel must stay home at all times. Just limited.

You wouldn't necessarily wanna go in the stores seeing as yoh are the number one to care for the children, auntie. As the germs are more likely to be there. But to do a pick up. Idk who else is doing pick up. We just have Wal-Mart here... But may be others,in your local area. Well pick up you Just verify its your order. Through your car window so it's very limited contact with one person and they load up your groceries and you sit and wait in the car.

At the same time there's no law you and the kids can't go in the store. Its just limited.

It's clear you're not going anywhere. You can go places. Just limited. I do believe you can get in the car and just go for a drive. Just get out in the car and drive wherever. Idk where you live and if they have a ban but here in New Mexico we can drive anywhere in the state. And hotels are still operating. So drive to the next city and get a hotel for a night.

Its okay in many areas to do so. Even in NYC you can book a room.

But if we have to social distance. And we are in our cars following traffic laws and just driving without getting out of our cars. Then we are obeying the rules.

Loop hole baby.

Many of us feel like our cars are as personal as our homes. So #stayhome would be same as #stayinthecar on a nice drive.

And she has a 3 year old. Its a perfect time to show her the neighborhood and let her get familiar with it and how to get to the store. Test the little one

So, then it falls under education.

Loop hole baby.

How a cop gonna be all "you can't"???

Now as long as you remember to say "we're doing this in case you get lost (or kidnapped) or get a ride from your friend's parent that i said you could and you can make sure you can tell them how to get home and/or make sure they're going the right ways to get home"

Then for sure a cop can't tell you you can't.

Just in case neighborhood watch don't recognize your car... And calls you in. And you have the little one repeat the lessons to you because you explain it So in case you do get stopped then they know what they are doing in the car with you. And the SMS if the cop check it will also notify "safe distance patrol" which means all you need is verification you live there. Car registration or ID is preferred. That is for a worried cop. What it does actually signal is "having fun let's join in, too" So, when or if you see the cop you can pull over and they can give you tips on being safe if the cop wants interaction currently they probably will not pull over because of social distancing. But all they're doing is saying "SMS notified action in the area. We want you to know if this happens you're safe"

Because home invasions will often use the victims car, if a a person inside is moving around or the cop senses something not,right they will pull over the car to double check. So an ID is the most preferred method and they will visually check all ID of all adult passengers if they choose but it is recommended.

So make sure you're following laws. Kids are buckled and you're going the posted speed limit.

If you're going to your house then back out and over and over.

This case im speaking would look suspicious. So you drive down to the 711 four times so they can memorize and no one gets out and yoh just keep driving that circle

Its how you need to teach the kids but it would look suspiciously to the SMS computer system and for our safety I don't want to override it.

I'd rather a nice cop check and speak to the kids and thank the adults for looking out for the children's safety and for helping them do their jobs.

Usually a cop isn't in protocol to pull over unless its a wreckless danger. So like if I'm a kidnapper I'm a trip out. And either gonna try to get away from the cop or drive super cautious.

So cops may do some Dick moves around you to check you.

So y'all teaching your kids how to get home safe realize the cop is trying to protect you and realize they are in practice mode they may not think so but you know they are. So they may pull you over and so you have already explained to the car what y'all doing. So everyone should be able to explain it back to anyone.

So otherwise just take a nice long drive to the next town and then turn around and just have a nice drive.

Take time to see sights you don't normally see. Or like say you been wanting to go to the zoo but you're unsure of the drive. Well there's no traffic so you can practice driving there so you learn that way to get there easy.

But #StayInTheCar.

I love this girl in the video so much i made a movement after her.

Remember #DriveSober

So staying in the car does mean drive through!

Get you and your babies a treat. So them Quarentine Loop Hole fries are all jacked up and down under the seat until for eternity.

So y'all Just let your family out. Don't keep your beauties locked in because it's safest. Get a little creative.

So babies with some chalk. Or in the backyard playing ...pick up some balls online... Like Oriental Trading company is cheap and i know that you can get a dozen of a variety of different balls. And jump ropes and all kinds of things delivered straight to your house. Chalk, too.

Now you could stay in your little square in the front yard but i would imagine the back yard is more contained. Something with a fence and that is just for safety and not so much about social distancing But just to "stay in the yard" and not deal with nothing bull shit someone bored can come up with.

So I know

.i been waiting... I been i know people are losing their shit.m. I need to see it so I know what to say or do.

So thank you, ma'am for being so public and raw and straight from the soul and heart.

Letting your frustration out so the dark grainy images of my imagination have a voice and a way to be visible to the needs of the world.

Because I'm not realizing what all is going on every where so i need my Soul Warriors letting it out to be known.

My life i go out and my daughter has been trapped in and she don't mind so much but last night finally i could take her to the gas station just for a minute late late night... We both had to wear masks... She was all "I don't want you getting sick" and so i told her "you need to wear one too"

Which i was glad we did because the car we borrowed is leaking antifreeze into the car and it stinks like Hell and a smoker it makes me cough like Hell so the mask actually helped a lot. So i didn't cough with it on. So after this is all over if i borrow his car youre gonna see me wearing a mask just so i came breathe unless i fix my car... And Idk...

So y'all if you're tripping or tense or even if you're not because you're just trying to chill and cope and Don't realize you're building up a bubble of lava

Switch it up a little bit!!! Y'all are all up in there together you know your schedules. Who does what and who dont do what.

Who don't ever leave.

At least open windows. Something. Switch it up.

Y'all essiential workers coming home to dinner made and a clean house... Y'all gonna come to a volcano one day and don't know why

Then you gonna make it worse all what the Hell? What i do?! You wanna go to work?! I'm doing all i can to keep this home together and you act like that?!

And mother fucker honey. You're gonna get stabbed in the throat.

The shit just builds. This is why I didn't like this plan.

It builds on both sides. Believe it or not the ones going out are worried about the ones at home getting sick. And actually about them being cooped in... Some are.

But i know without a doubt they're loving home cooked meals and the family all home and safe and the house all clean

Hello were in the 1950s

So yo let the adults trapped at home drive the car if they are licensed. Let them capture that freedom..sit in the passenger seat and be the host. Sit side way and make sure the back seat is being good. Talk to them. Give them love and attention

Let that adult box herself in to a space filled with love for the family and her have that freedom at the wheel

Because that is what it is. She/he running that home. You need to give her a break stop them kids from going on about auntie and momma and so on and give them the strong love and attention they deserve. "How was your day?" "You looking how to get to the store?" "What is that street name?"

Just let her be quiet and enjoy the ride.

As women that's all we want.

Control. Lol. And love. Attention. Help. Strength. Patience.

And I know men want the same exact thing.

But we need to switch it up. Add some spice to the bland. Or its gonna taste like lava and not lots of lova.

Y'all know i am the Queen of Lava.

And y'all going out. Make sure you're on time!

But take them stuck in the house out.

I prescribe no less than a 30 minute outing. I saw gas here was $1.58 on the interstate for regular. I know places like California and New York are lots more and i know some places are even cheaper. But point. DNA4U says y'all should be able to afford it. Every where it must be less than $3 per gallon for even premium. Right?

So #StayInTheCar and check out some low cost online shopping. They are essiential employees.

And love yourselves even if you turn into a tornado spewing lava hurricane

And if someone around does. Love them

Help them. Add something they need to your routine.

Its not too late to save a life.

[deythbanger]

Bible Arguments 10

By DeYtH Banger "You might object that the appearance of animal morality is just a thoughtless expression of an automatic instinct and that we could also give numerous examples of animals not caring about each other. But we could say the same thing about humans." - Dan Baker "Some people break into tears when they see cruelty to animals, and if you are like my sister-in-law Suzan, you will break into a rage..." - Dan Baker "We have many instincts—some nurturing, some violent—and they often conflict with each other. But Freud did not think the Id was moral in itself. He thought it was something for the Ego and Superego to control..." - Dan Baker "Daniel Dennett, in Freedom Evolves, writes that it makes no difference whether our moral impulses are evolved or learned. “[T]he theory that explains morality … should be neutral with regard to whether our moral attitudes, habits, preferences, and proclivities are a product of genes or culture.”" - Dan Baker "…think “instinct” is purely biological or a learned habit, or a combination of the two, it comes down to the same goal: the minimization of harm to biological organisms Craig Packer points out in his book Into Africa, that is because ‘we make it all up as we go along,’ whereas an ant has ‘every small instruction laid out in advance.’”13 Since none of the other animals have such a proportionately large and complicated brain, they are, as far as we know, unable to construct a formal moral philosophy, but this does not mean they lack altruism, empathy, or moral sentiments." - Dan Baker "We can think about other people thinking about us thinking about their thoughts. (This is sometimes called Theory of Mind.) We can deliberate, compare, anticipate, contrast, imagine, and prioritize. We can run “what if” scenarios. We can refrain from acting and wait for more information. (That is one of the functions of the frontal lobe, which checks our actions in social settings. It is what keeps you from burping loudly at a wedding or funeral, for example.) We can investigate, read, and ask for help. We can search our memories for consequences to similar situations, past lessons, previous mistakes." - Dan Baker "…of the Unconscious, show that very often we simply “know” what to do intuitively, without deliberation. A hunch can be a signal from your lower biological brain to your higher consciousness that something is wrong, though you can’t put it into words. Your “gut feeling” happens somewhere beneath your conscious awareness, but it is no less important than reason. Instincts are a huge advantage, but Gladwell and Gerzinger also give examples of gut feelings gone wrong. Animal instincts are valuable not because they are always right but because they were advantageous most of the time when they were being naturally selected. “I’m not a textbook player. I’m a gut player,” President George W. Bush told Bob Woodward about his disastrous decision to go to war in Iraq. Gut feelings can go horribly wrong sometimes—especially when they are prompted by religion rather than evidence—because they are firing in a different environment from which they originally evolved." - Dan Baker "Sometimes such actions result in two tragedies instead of one. Call for help. Don’t become a dead hero. Yet the fact that most of us have these automatic impulses to do good tells us something about our human nature.." - Dan Baker "Morality is not a code. It is a compass. A compass does not tell you where you are or where to go; it only shows you where north is. Think of north as the direction of less harm and south as more harm. If your actions are heading more to the north, then you are acting morally. Of course, you can’t always travel directly north—the terrain is often complicated and actions can conflict with each other, and you might have to detour east, west, or even south for a while—but if you intend your general path to go more northerly than southerly, your journey is moral. (No offense to my friends in Australia, Brazil, and South Africa! If you live below the equator, then head south." - Dan Baker "I]n no instance has a system in regard to religion been ever established, but for the purpose, as well as with the effect of its being made an instrument of intimidation, corruption, and delusion, for the support of depredation and oppression in the hands of governments.”" - Dan Baker "In his book The Moral Landscape, Sam Harris identifies the “well-being” of conscious creatures as the aim of morality. I think that is right. “Well-being” is perhaps a more positive way to characterize the harm principle, but it boils down to the same thing. All through Sam’s thoughtful book, when “well-being” is unpacked with real-life examples, they always involve the avoidance of some kind of harm or limitation. Well, you can’t be “well” if you are harmed." - Dan Barker "The third moral mind, on the right shoulder, is not located in dead ancestors or individual consciousness, but in the social agreements formed by the large tribe to which we belong. Remember that I am not suggesting that law is actually one of your own minds: in a democratic society, humanistic law is a result of a collective mind (including yours) that expresses itself as social expectation or obligation. Unless you live alone on one of the moons of Saturn, the laws you encounter come from somewhere other than your own conscious mind." - Dan Barker "They replace reason with faith. Reason shows us, for example, that there is nothing wrong with being gay, and if the bible says homosexuality is wrong, then the bible is wrong, not homosexuality. These people are free to have faith and live by their own rules. They are even welcome to try to persuade the rest of us to think like them, but in a secular society, they are not free to impose their theocratic beliefs on everyone else by law…" - Dan Barker "But I also know there are good reasons for the state to impose a law on how fast I drive on a road that is owned and used by all of us. I may not know all those reasons. They probably have to do with efficient traffic flow, public safety, and convenience. In the absence of a true emergency (such as rushing a heart attack victim to the hospital), I willingly surrender part of my moral decision-making to the collective mind of society..." - Dan Barker "What about stem-cell research, abortion rights, birth control, prostitution, polygamy, military draft, tax laws, nude beaches, animal leash laws, motorcycle helmet laws? What about laws based on religious principles? What sense does it make, for example, to outlaw same-sex marriage or a woman showing her face in public? Those religious laws are simply an attempt to legitimize primitive homophobia, sexism, and sectarian orthodoxy. A truly moral law would deal with such discrimination by aiming at the attackers, not the targets. When considering any law, I think we should simply ask, “What is the harm?” Bad laws increase harm. If following a law more often results in less harm, we can say it is a good law." - Dan Barker "I am going to break the law, and I want all of you to witness. The god of the bible, if he exists, is an evil, immoral, selfish, arrogant, jealous, brutal, bloodthirsty bully, and if he created hell, he can go to hell. I am not saying “God Damn It,” I am saying “Damn God.” There. I just broke the Third Commandment. I took the name of the Lord Your God in vain. Are you going to have me arrested for blasphemy…" - Dan Barker "Thomas Jefferson concluded that “Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.”20 It was originally a jumble of regional legal decisions based on common sense and precedent that roughly came together after a long evolution of trial and error. It is not based on written statutes but on the “survival of the fittest” ideas that had been naturally selected by experience. The prohibition of murder, for example, is (to this day in England) not based on “Thou shalt not kill” or any other statute, but on the legal decisions of ancestor judges amassed over time into a “common” understanding of how we should…" - Dan Barker "Look what happened with Harvard, originally a religious school founded by Calvinists to educate preachers (“dreading to leave an illiterate Ministry to the Churches”) that grew into a humanistic institution of liberal arts education. The seventeenth-century theocrats, at any rate, did not found the United States of America. It was a century and a half later when our actual founders, not wanting any part of the religious divisiveness of the earlier colonies, continued evolving into a secular democratic republic." - Dan Barker "The constitution arose naturally from a group of people struggling to be free of authority, not to submit to rules. American citizens are not subjects.22 We are a proudly rebellious people…" - Dan Barker "…In Losing Faith in Faith and Godless, I describe the shortcomings of theistic morality, which is based primarily on a might-makes-right mentality. With its threat of eternal torture, inept role models, and a cosmic dictator who is praise-hungry, angry, and violent, the bible offers an ethical system that reduces to the morality of a toddler who fears and flatters the father figure. In most religions, behavior is governed by rules, but in real life behavior should be governed by principles." - Dan Barker "…you don’t believe in God you have to be reminded of the punishment of the law? If you do believe in God you can simply say, “so help me, God,” and that is enough to warrant honesty. If you don’t believe in God, it is assumed you have less motive to tell the truth, the “pains and penalties of perjury” replacing the threat of “hell” to force you to be a good person." - Dan Baker

[circlesfitness-blog]

White anxiety

The rise of the black intellectuals

Fear can be caused by a lot of threats and often than not people are never knowledgeable of the best action to take when confronted by it. Different people deal with fear in different ways. When fear presents itself, the natural reaction is to either fight or flight. Even so there are school of thoughts that suggest that fear is nothing but an illusion, an emotion of nothingness. In this post I will be reflecting on the content of the course discussing my opinions about responses to and experiences of digital media as it relates to the cultural life. I will be looking specifically at ‘White Anxiety’ and I will substantiate my discussion with reference to examples from my own knowledge as well as from the course material. My blog will include links, memes, gifs, images and other digital content, as well as citations from academic books and articles to further support my point.

White anxiety is a term used to describe the fear and panic experienced by white people in contemporary South Africa. When talking about ‘White’ here we are referring to the structural notions of race and not necessarily people or individuals. The anxiety is mainly caused by the rhetorical discursive statements and ‘white talk’ repertoire of conversation amongst white South Africans.  The sense is that they are permanently at risk, and under some sort of threat. Generally crime rates in South Africa are very high, and poor black people who live in rural areas and townships are the most susceptible to it. Statistically the idea that only white people are under threat or some sort of attack is unfounded and data does not back it up. White anxiety comes from the racial discourse from years of apartheid and colonialism “black South Africans suffered social and economic discrimination for many years under the apartheid regime. White South Africans occupied a position of privilege in the socio-economic arena by virtue of their colour” (Wambugu, 2005:57). That is no longer happening, and that is the true source of the anxiety.

According to Wambugu (2005) the tables turned in favour of the previously marginalised and racialized group when the apartheid regime was replaced by a democratically elected black government in April of 1994. The general fear is that black people can oppress them as apartheid did to black people. To some extent the fear has become some sort of a reality to them, according ‘white talk’, as in, instead of confronting the aftermaths of apartheid, let us redirect fear by distorting reality and cry foul. Well, Steyn (2001) as cited in Wambugu (2005) further states that in the new South Africa, whiteness is perceived as a disadvantage since the privilege that accompanied it has been suspended (Steyn, 2001 as cited in Wambugu, 2005). The manifestation of this frustration has turned into fear and distortion of reality. Hence they want to believe that they are under some sort of attack and their lives are at risk instead of addressing the impact apartheid had on black people.

Truth is, the power of whiteness seems to be diminishing with time and the dominance of whiteness is becoming unclear. The line is blurring out. Which means that white people are loosing control and power they’ve enjoyed in the past and that frustrates them in that all that privilege is no longer there for them to enjoy. The hegemonic power systems and policies such as apartheid are no longer there to help maintain their power. Their ideological ideas that whiteness is pure and classy are no longer dominant in black peoples psyche and that creates the anxiety.  So within the digital space whiteness is trying to strengthen itself through discourse and displaying racial protests using ideological cross dressing. Examples online campaigns like #Red October & #BlackMonday. Even though a lot of them still enjoy the generational wealth gained from exploitation of black people.

Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, says that defence mechanism redirects anxiety by distorting reality. According to Freud, an individual’s feelings, thoughts, and behaviours are the result of the interaction of the id, the superego, and the ego (what makes up the personality of an individual). Santosa further explains that they are continually in conflict with one another. This conflict generates anxiety. If the ego did not effectively handle the resulting anxiety, people would be so overwhelmed with anxiety that they would not be able to carry on with the tasks of everyday living. The ego tries to control anxiety (i.e., to reduce anxiety) through the use of ego defence mechanisms. Furthermore Santosa states that defence mechanisms operate at an unconscious level. We are not aware of them during the time that we are actually using them. However, we may later become aware of their previous operation and use. Agreeably “fear is the screaming physical response to the threats of injury or to threats to survival, it is a response to the obscurity of the unknown. Or fear is an ideological formation, an affect we learn in response to cultural and political prompts” (Coole & Frost, 2010:158).

Indeed this anxiety is out of fear posed by cultural and political discourses. The ideological notion of whiteness and westernised ways of life seems to be diminishing a lot when it comes to black people in contemporary South Africa, particularly black intellectuals. Historically black intellectuals are key players in the transformation of the country, in his book Gerhart (1978) recounts events of historical importance, but primary emphasis is on the intellectual dimension of black political history and in particular on the interplay of ideologies which has marked the post-war era and which has brought many present-day African intellectuals to their current Black power perspective.

Robert Sobukwe is a major figure with an international reputation. Ditshego (2012) wrote in his article about how Sobukwe was totally against white supremacy and stated so in no uncertain terms, quoting Robert Sobukwe: “In Africa the myth of race has been propounded and propagated by the imperialists and colonialists from Europe, in order to facilitate and justify their inhuman exploitation of the indigenous people of the land. “It is from this myth of race with its attendant claims of cultural superiority that the doctrine of white supremacy stem” (The Star). Robert Sobukwe like Steven Bantu Biko are the black intellectuals who have inspired a lot of the rising intellectuals in contemporary South Africa today, and that I feel is what is most contentious with white people in South Africa. Black people are waking up to education and many of them building their own businesses and taking their rightful place in the economy of the country. They are no longer that submissive garden boy who slaves away all day in the sun or that submissive helper who is raising white people’s children, while her own children are left alone at home without their mother. Black people are now educated and informed and passing on the knowledge to other black people. There is a silent black intellectual movement.

The rising black intellectuals are unapologetically pro-black and understand what apartheid was and what it did to the black nation and swear not to go back there. The black nation is slowly and surely building a space where black people can flourish without the dependency on white people. For example Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), rising South African political party, “members are expected to study and apply the theoretical line of the organisation being Marxist, Leninist and Fanonian philosophical thought and tools of analysis in a living way” (EFF online constitution), which means you have to be registered with a higher learning institution to be a member.

When it comes to business in relation to digital media. A lot of black businesses are using social media to promote and market their businesses and build a rich network of black intellectuals and likeminded ‘brownies’. Brownsense is one such platform for black entrepreneurs “it is about the promotion of Black business, creating an easily accessible database of Black owned businesses and professionals, and building and enhancing a community of like-minded people” (Brownsense). If ever there was a time for black people to stick together and pursue their dreams, it's now. Mzuzukile Soni, CEO and founder of Brownsense, shares why he created a platform that empowers and celebrates black business owners “SA is budding with young black entrepreneurs who have decided to take control of their financial freedom and are part of the ‘vukuzenzele’ phenomenon. Hashtags like #BlackExcellence and #unapologeticallyblack, have seen the deliberate celebration of black pride, something we reckon is long overdue” (Mbhete, 2016). Futhermore “With a membership of over 17 000, Brownsense is a growing platform that enables anyone who wants to buy black to do so. On the Facebook group, also named Brownsense, one will find black-owned businesses as well as customers who are in search of certain products or services” (Mbhete, 2016).

Initiatives like these are popping up everywhere around black communities, ideas of buying black are becoming an everyday narrative amongst black communities. Blacks are becoming more and more conscious of who they are and are expressing it through their everyday life in everything they do while also claiming their place in the economic landscape of South Africa through flourishing in business. White anxiety is just the heat felt from the rising black intellectuals. It is a defence mechanism that is meant to redirect by distorting reality and rather play victims instead of confronting the real issues underlying the aftermaths of apartheid and the impact it had on black people.      

Bibliography

Brownsense. http://www.brownsense.co.za/.

Ditshego, S. 2012. Intellectual with a vision for Africa. The Star. February 29.

Economic Freedom Fighters. http://www.effonline.org/constitution.

Frost, S. 2010. Fear and the Illusion of Autonomy. In: Coole, D. & Frost, S. (eds) New                  Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics. Duke University Press.

Gerhart, G. M. 1978. Black Power in South Africa: The Evolution of an Ideology. University        of California Press.

Mbhete, B. 2016. Brownsense founder on why he created a platform for black people. Destiny      Connect.com. October 12

Wambugu, j. 2005. ‘when tables turn: discursive constructions of whites as victims of       affirmative action in post-apartheid south Africa’. Psychology in Society 31, pp. 57-70.

Santosa, E. T. Theories Personality & Assessment

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[voiceathlete-blog]

So now I had established I was quite mad I needed to make a choice. Do I have an exorcism or settle for a bit of reiki. As I didn’t know anyone who preformed exorcisms I opted for reiki. The thing that bothered me was I did feel like there was a beast living in my throat and chest. I got a grip though and decided it wasn’t Satan himself or one of his demons working for him. So reiki seemed a better choice. I knew a little bit about it. Reiki is a system of spiritual healing or ‘energy’ medicine which is similar to the laying on of hands. This universal energy flows through a reiki healer’s hands when he or she places the palms upon or close to the recipient. This allegedly enhances the recipient’s own healing potential. OK, I will give it a go. Maybe shift some energy and get back to normal. Off I went to the nearest practitioner. It was all very nice and calm. However, when I spoke to the practitioner I could not bring myself to tell her I was having difficulty speaking. Why? Shame. Simple as that. I told her anything but. So essentially I was telling fibs to everyone. At this point I had become a professional liar. She did lay her hands, not on me, but very close to me. I was informed I had some energy blockage somewhere in my abdomen which represented family issues. Nothing about my throat. I enjoyed the session simply for the relaxation but I knew deep down it would not help me. Now, at this point my voice was very much in and out, so some days I sounded normal. I decided to delve into the world of energy healing, self help books and spirituality. I am not a religious person but I do have faith. I would describe myself as spiritual. Its just different if you don’t know what I mean. So, I read book after book about how past lives affect present life and how we agree to everything that happens to us good or bad. I became fascinated and could’t stop reading. I went even further and phoned up a past life regression guru to see if I had been bad in another life and had asked for punishment. He answered the phone and I hung up on him. Oh no, I had caller ID, so he called me back and he said ‘I know you’re there so ring me back when your are ready’. I was cringing with embarrassment. What if he tracks me down and comes looking for me to heal me and then everyone will know I’m nuts. I moved on from past life regression-although I do believe we have all been here before, and life is a journey and we are here to learn before we can fully evolve. That is just my opinion. You don’t have to agree with me. Next step-I did a Chinese medicine course and shiatsu massage. God it was hard. Proper exams and real study. I thought; this will help me, I need to align my chakras and move the beast out of my body. Now don’t get me wrong I really enjoyed the course and made friends, but my voice was still in and out of spasms. So the beast was still within. I was really frustrated by this point. What next? well shiatsu is kind of like acupuncture using your hands rather than needles. I decided to have acupuncture-stick those needles into me. Bring it on . Off I went to a local therapist. Again, I could not tell her I couldn’t speak properly. More lies. Instead, I  said I was feeling stressed. I had multiple little pins stuck in my head and I lay there willing the beast to leave me. I did have a few sessions of acupuncture which were nice and calming. Did it help my voice? No. I didn’t give up. I had more reiki after all you need a good few sessions to move bad energy right? I then decided to join a meditation group. Clear the clutter from your mind-speak your truth. I would if I could but I can’t get the damn words out. Again, I did enjoy the meditation sessions, but I couldn’t clear my mind nor speak my truth (whatever that was). I stuck around because I made friends and had a bit of a laugh. I decided to meditate on my own. I dedicated time and energy into this. I asked for help through my meditation. It did relax me and my intuition soared. I have always been very intuitive, but now things were starting to happen that I won’t go into. Let’s just say I had frequent visitors. I remember being annoyed one day about someone on TV and their basic lack of the English language. I heard a very distinct voice in my mind saying ‘They’re only words’ Was this a wind up? Am I now a psycho hearing voices. Especially ones who talk about words!! Was some demon taunting me. Oh God I am truly mad. For some reason I then decided to change my diet. Lets detox I thought. After all I was living in California and everyone else was doing it. It may rid my body of toxins and my voice will return to normal. I drank disgusting smoothies that tasted like mud, I took detox tablets, I said hello to my food before I ate it. I was becoming one of those California hippy chicks searching for answers and finding myself. Some of it was cathartic, but some of it was a waste of money and made me feel even more frustrated. I then delved into the world of tarot card reading. Well you’re supposed to get answers through them aren’t you. I joined a class and learned the basis principles. I bought tarot cards, fairy cards, angel cards. You name it I had it. I willed my answers to come in. I wanted to rid myself of whatever was robbing my voice. Now I will say, for a while my voice was pretty good. I became more confident and just got on with living my life. I still had a fascination for all things spiritual so I continued my metaphysical journey. I then branched out into the world of aromatherapy (which I still love to this day). I bought oils and burned them religiously. My apartment smelled gorgeous. I was relaxed. Things were not so bad after all. I plodded on things seemed pretty normal for a while. All was good. Then out of nowhere my voice went again. The terrible straining came back. I couldn’t stand it. So off I went to a hypnotherapist. I remember it so vividly. She apparently hypnotised me, yet she didn’t! I didn’t ‘go under’ I didn’t feel trance like and I didn’t go anywhere in my head other than thinking I wanted to get out of there. Enter the lies again-I pretended I had been hypnotised so I wouldn’t offend her. I paid her the $300 and left feeling like I had been robbed. Why didn’t anything work. Was my life going to be a continuous up hill battle trying to ‘heal’ ‘release’ ‘let go’……..Let go of what!! I was perfectly fine before my voice went. I’d had a normal decade in my twenties and in to my mid thirties. I had lots of fun and many adventures. Normal stuff and extraordinary stuff. I felt lucky. I was educated, I had lived in London, New York, Savannah Georgia and now Santa Monica right next to Malibu. I was earning good money, the sun was always out, I met some great people. So why was I so discontented. Well my voice of course. What is life without a voice or in my case an unpredictable voice. It became depressingly obvious that nothing was helping me. Now to all those who work in the alternative therapy industries, I have great respect for you and later in my journey I revisited some of these therapies. However, at this particular time in my life they simply didn’t work. Maybe I wasn’t ready who knows. In some ways it made me even more nuts. I was able to put a facade on to the outside world but inside I was falling apart. Maybe it was time to commit myself after all? I’d be cared for, have three meals a day and would’t have to speak if I didn’t want to. I could think of worse things. Maybe I’d go to Africa and help the poor and live a basic life. Be a martyr. I might even get a sainthood after I’m dead. That poor woman who could hardly speak dedicated her life to the needy lets immortalise her. They may even build a statue of me. Millions of people from all over the world will flock to it and pray at my feet. I will become the patron saint of voices. No I won’t because it’s not real so that won’t happen. The thing is everything was now getting out of hand. My thoughts were becoming irrational yet I functioned in a normal manner and was able to do my job even though it was difficult. I still could not tell anyone how I felt. Even my family. I was still so ashamed. Looking back, because my condition is so rare how could I possibly explain it. It’s not normal. And so I carried on and on and on. Good and bad days. Good and bad weeks. Trips home to the UK seemed to help. No one noticed my voice. This is good I thought. Maybe I am healing after all

[bthesisideas]

Hapa: The Word of Power by Wei Ming Dariotis

[Note: A slightly different form of this essay was first published on the website for Hyphen Magazine, 12/3/07:http://www.hyphenmagazine.com]

Preface: I have been struggling for several years with this apparently un-resolvable issue: what to do about “Hapa/hapa”? I finally decided I had to start writing about it, had to start engaging the dialogue, even though I have been afraid of what the controversy might visit upon my professional career. Nearing 40, and having done everything I can to get tenure (though not, as of this writing, having it), I have resolved to live a life more free from fear. This essay represents my commitment to be fully involved in this dialogue, this journey, no matter where it might take us.

The poet Truong Tran told me that when he was a young boy his Tolkiensian "ring of power" was the English word "fuck." This word made him American; it was like a secret language, something his parents didn't speak, a word of his own.  He used it gleefully, like Bilbo used the ring, to set himself above where he had been.  Eventually, like Frodo, Tran had to destroy the ring before it would destroy him.  Tran accomplished this by writing his book of poetry, Within the Margin.

My ring of power was also a word, the word “Hapa.” I first learned this word in 1992, when I was 23 years old.  I was a second-year English Literature doctoral student at UC Santa Barbara, and I was enrolled in the course, "The World of Amerasians," taught by Teresa K. Williams. When I learned the word “Hapa” I felt as though a whole new world had opened up to me.  Before this, when anybody asked me, "What are you?" I had to answer, "Chinese Greek Swedish English Scottish German Pennsylvania Dutch." This was a list of my ancestry.  It is my heritage.  However, this list is not my identity.  Heritage does not equal identity. To paraphrase the title of the book on Asian Americans of mixed heritage edited by Teresa K. Williams and Cynthia Nakashima, my identity is something more than the sum of my parts. “Hapa” gave me such an identity.  Instead of worrying, "where am I going to find another Chinese Greek Swedish English Scottish German Pennsylvania Dutch American?" I realized I already had a Hapa community.

The word “Hapa” made me something more than just a half Chinese or a fake Filipino. When I joined the board of the Asian American Theater Company, I fulfilled the need for diversity in terms of being Hapa despite the fact that most of the other board members at that time were Chinese -- and so am I. When I joined the faculty of the Department of Asian American studies at San Francisco State University, I also fulfilled their need for a mixed heritage Asian American.  In fact, the position I occupy, as far as I know the first one in the US so described, is for a specialist in Asian Americans of mixed heritage. For reports from the various ethnic units in our department, I am not counted among the Chinese American faculty, rather, I am referred to as the Hapa unit, or to paraphrase the Eurasian writer, Diana Chang, "The Hapa Contingent."

Of course, the years I worked with Hapa Issues Forum were the height of the power of the word Hapa for me.  In particular, I recall a leadership retreat in which two remarkable things happened.  First was simple, and nobody planned it: throughout the entire weekend, among the more than 30 people present, I never heard anyone ask anyone else, "What are you?"  I find this remarkable because it is actually quite common for mixed heritage people to ask each other about their ethnic heritage -- we are often trying to find points of commonality, but sometimes we are just competing a little bit to find out who has the longest list. What struck me during this weekend, was the fact that the 30 of us may have shared almost no common ethnic heritages, but for that weekend it did not matter; we were all Hapa.  We were part of a larger community.  The other thing that happened was planned by our executive director, Sheila Chung. Sheila, who is Argentinean and Korean, lead us on a visioning exercise that I have never forgotten.  Sitting around a campfire, we were instructed to close our eyes and envision the earth below us while we hovered above in the sky.  Slowly we descended through the clouds and we could see a landscape below us.  Within this landscape was a building; a sign on the building read, "Hapa Culture Center." Within the building there was a library stocked with books about Asian Americans of mixed heritage, an art gallery for art by Asian Americans of mixed heritage, a theater for gatherings and performances, a space for an after-school program and a summer camp, and meeting rooms.

We never built that building, or have not yet built it.  Hapa Issues Forum as an organization lasted only from 1992 to 2004. Yet the word Hapa in many ways has been that building for me and many other mixed heritage Asian Americans.  It has given us a space of our own, a place where we can be us, without having to explain ourselves. Anyone entering the space created by the word accepts our identity. In this way it works opposite from Bilbo and Frodo's ring of power, which makes the wearer invisible; the word “Hapa” makes my community visible, that is its power.

However, power, as we all know, always creates the seeds of its own destruction.  The very success of the word “Hapa” has been in some ways its downfall.  What I mean to say that the word “Hapa” as it is used now can never go back to what it (or what “hapa”) once meant: a Native Hawaiian word meaning mixed or part or half, as in the phrase hapa haole. This phrase means part European American, with the implication being that the person is also part Native Hawaiian. In Hawaii there are other kinds of hapa people. You will notice that I'm not capitalizing the word when I use it in its Native Hawaiian context.  I am also not using the term here like in ethnic signifier, which is what the word “Hapa” has become in the mainland context.  In contrast, the native Hawaiian word is an adjective.  Increasingly, many Native Hawaiian people object not only to the way the word has been changed in its grammatical usage, but also to how it is applied to anyone of mixed Asian and or Pacific Islander heritage, when it implies Native Hawaiian mixed heritage.  This is not merely a question of trying to hold on to word that like many words encountered in the English language has been adopted, assimilated, or appropriated.  This is a question of power.  Who has the power or right to use language?  Native Hawaiians, in addition to all of the other ways that their sovereignty has been abrogated, lost for many years the right to their own language through oppressive English-language education.  Given this history and given the contemporary social and political reality (and realty—as in real estate) of Hawaiian, the appropriation of this one word has a significance deeper than many Asian Americans are willing to recognize. To have this symbolic word used by Asians, particularly by Japanese Americans, as though it is their own, seems to symbolically mirror the way Native Hawaiian land was first taken by European Americans, and is now owned by European Americans, Japanese and Japanese Americans and other Asian American ethnic groups that numerically and economically dominate Native Hawaiians in their own land. In “Foregrounding Native Nationalisms: A Critique of Antinationalist Sentiment in Asian American Studies,” Candice Fujikane argues that Asian Americans are “settlers” in Hawaii, and therefore “support American colonialism” (76) even while trying to fight racism and discrimination in a “colonial context” (80). She defines the term “settler” in opposition to “native,” and argues that Asian Americans “refuse to see themselves as the beneficiaries of [the US] colonial system” (84). Although Fujikane does not here specifically mention the use of the word Hapa by Asian Americans, her argument is certainly in line with the critique that Asian Americans have wrongfully appropriated the term in a way that disenfranchises Native Hawaiians from their culture.

There is a website called www.realhapas.com, on which Lana Robbins states When Hawaiians began to mix with Caucasians they began to have offspring who were Hawaiian and Caucasian. That is when Hawaiians of Hawaiian and Caucasian ancestry created a Hawaiian word to describe themselves and people like them. Eventually these Hawaiians of Hawaiian and Caucasian ancestry began to use the word "hapa" for a part, portion, or fragment of Hawaiian people, places, and things. Until [Japanese Americans] began to rape their language. Today's rape of the Hawaiian language also implies that the Hawaiian language means nothing and thus the Hawaiian people are nothing.

Robbins continues, The raping of Hawaii continues with a new group of Colonizers, the California Wanna Be Hapas. As colonizers, California Wanna Be Hapas raped from Hawaiian Hapas their very identity, culture, and history and called it their own. These colonizers justified their illegal actions by creating organizations such as Hapa Issues Forum and other "Hapa" online forums. They gained allies from elite mixed Eurasians who like California Wanna Be Hapas, stole their term from the wartime and colonial Eurasians while stomping on the rights of Amerasians and Hawaiian Hapas.

My response to first hearing this protest was to say, "But I like the word Hapa; look at everything it has done for us." I didn’t want to give “Hapa” up. I remember how hard it was just to get people to use it. When I first started to use the word in 1992, I encountered Korean, Chinese and Filipino people of mixed heritage who objected to using the word Hapa because they thought it was a Japanese term.  They didn't want to feel colonized by the Japanese language the way their ancestors had been colonized by Japan.  When I informed these people that the word was Native Hawaiian in origin, they gladly adopted it for themselves. Native Hawaiians have never colonized anyone.  Besides, most mixed Asians are mistaken for being Hawaiian -- and there is a certain glamour in being associated with the islands. Like many of us, I have been frequently told, "You must be from some exotic island somewhere!" (I had long hair at the time.  I cut it.)

When criticism against Asian Americans using the term “Hapa” first started being raised strongly in 2002, I realized that the fact that Native Hawaiians had never colonized anyone, and that is therefore why mixed heritage Asian Americans feel comfortable to use the word, was a sign of the relative power of Asian Americans in this context.  Maybe the word “Hapa” was a colonizing violence in which I was participating.  At a 2003 talk at UC Berkeley I mentioned my increasing concerns about using the word Hapa. I was very surprised when a young man in the audience became visibly upset at the suggestion that the word Hapa might be somehow taken away from him. It meant so much to him for the same reasons it meant so much to me—it provides a sense of community and identity in one simple word.

In other words, quite possibly, the word “Hapa,” which I had been so happy to wear because of the sense of identity and community it gave me, might have to be destroyed—or like Frodo’s ring, which was forged in the fires of Mt. Doom, returned to the point of origin to be destroyed or at least re-shaped. I say this knowing that the word can never be again what it once was. There is a nostalgia here that cannot be satisfied even if everyone were to stop using the word “Hapa” to refer to non-Native Hawaiian mixed Asians. But while I certainly do not have the power to fling this word into a ‘Mt. Doom’ of linguistic destruction, I do feel responsible to participate in the dialogue. I have been silent on this issue for too long, perhaps hoping that it would go away, so I could keep “my” word.

The controversy has not gone away, it has only grown stronger, and it is time for me—and other mixed heritage Asian Americans—to recognize that when we use the  word “Hapa” it causes some people pain. What is so troubling about this is that the word “Hapa” was chosen because it was the only word we could find that did not really cause us pain. It is not any of the Asian words for mixed Asian people that contain negative connotations either literally (e.g. “children of the dust,” “mixed animal”) or by association (Eurasian). It avoids the confused identity and the Black-White dichotomy implied by English phrases (e.g. mixed blood, biracial). It was adopted to enhance an Asian-focus to our mixed identity, thereby allowing us to use the word to participate more fully in our Asian American communities—rather than being separated into the larger mixed race community (and perhaps being subsumed under the Black-White dichotomy).

Making a change away from using “Hapa” will be a steep uphill struggle. Aside from the growing usage of the word both within and beyond the Asian American and mixed heritage communities, the word is featured in the titles of such publications as Marie Hara and Nora Okja-Keller’s anthology, Intersecting Circles: the voices of hapa women in poetry and prose; Kip Fulbeck’s photo book, Part Asian 100% Hapa; and the recently published memoir by May-Lee Chai, Hapa Girl. Where does that leave us?  Is it too late to stem the tide? Languages grow and evolve, and how they do so reveals the traces of power—but is it our lot to merely record and uncover those changes? Or is it our responsibility to shape those changes? I have to acknowledge that, through my work with Hapa Issues Forum and as a writer and an educator, I have contributed to spreading the use of the word Hapa by Asian Americans.

Meanwhile, Hapa Issues Forum has folded as an organization, though many still believe that there is a real need to have an organization specific to the needs of mixed heritage Asian Americans (it focuses on issues specific to the Asian American community, outside of the Black-White binary oppositional racial dialogue, and it provides mixed heritage Asian Americans a venue in which to be authentically Asian American). The Hapa Clubs that had started on so many college campuses in the late 1990s and early 2000s have mostly abandoned this term in favor of more general mixed heritage inclusion: Berkeley’s Mixed Student Union, Variations (UCSB-formerly VariAsians and SFSU—formerly the Hapa Club), Fusion (Wellesly), Half and Half (Bryn Mawr), Students of Mixed Heritage (Amherst),The Biracial and Multiracial Student Association (NYU), The Multiracial Identified Community (Stanford), Multiracial and Biracial Student Association (University of Maryland), Check One (University of Pennsylvania), and MiXed (University of Washington). Cornell Hapa Student Association, Harvard HAPA (Half Asian People’s Association), and the UCLA Hapa Club retain the term Hapa. Communities and the language that represents them change quickly, and redefine themselves even before you have a chance to write them into history.

I presented an earlier version of this paper on November 15th, 2007, at a talk at Occidental College. At the end of my two hours of sharing my research and my poetry—which included a series of “Hapa Poems” written mostly around 2002-2005—a young woman, who identified herself as Native Hawaiian and Japanese American, told me that my use of the word Hapa felt like a violence—like something was being taken away from her—another piece of Hawaii, another piece of Native Hawaiian culture and identity. She reminded me that I am part of this problem, that I am responsible and have influence and power in this dialogue. She was right. So here is the first step—my first attempt to send the word of power into the fire, to be re-forged to serve the community for which it was originally intended—people of mixed Native Hawaiian heritage. A word used to give power to one community, while taking power away from another, is not a word I can use in good conscience. However, I will still slip up, I will still say Hapa to mean people like me the way I still sometimes use sexist language despite 20 years of trying to train myself not to, but I will not read my “Hapa Poems” any more until I can find a way to elegantly revise them [Laura Kina kindly reminds me that perhaps I should simply recognize that these are the works of a particular time period, rather than trying to revise all of my former work to meet a new standard], and I will not use “Hapa” anymore in my academic writings as a shorthand for Asian Americans of mixed heritage.

What to replace it with? We could switch from using “Hapa” to using “Asian Americans of mixed heritage,” which is the title of the class I teach at San Francisco State. The problem is that it is much harder to rally around the “mixed heritage Asian American community” than it was to be part of the Hapa Club. But it is for other reasons that I am growing uncomfortable with using the term “mixed heritage,” which has always seemed something of a stop-gap measure. It is meant to be inclusive of transracial adoptees as well those who are of mixed ethnicity (who must deal with ethnic hierarchies within racialized groups), but then it seems to elide what is still the main issue in our society—race. Jayne Ifekwunigwe makes a good argument, in her introduction to ‘Mixed Race’ Studies: A Reader, for using ‘mixed race’ in quotation marks rather than mixed heritage—because “mixed heritage” can be so easily co-opted—who is not, to some extent, of “mixed heritage”? Furthermore, as I mentioned earlier, heritage does not equal identity, and “Hapa” was for me an identity that conveyed community.

It was Marlon Hom, as Chair of Asian American Studies at SFSU, who set up the course I teach and named it “Asian Americans of Mixed Heritage,” not “Hapa Studies,” though this is what many people regularly call it. It was also he who recently suggested maybe we should change the name because mixed heritage does not quite seem to satisfy. Ah, but to what? Multiple Identity Asian Americans? –That raises the specter of split personalities, which of course is a common stereotype of us. Manifold Community Association Asian Americans? Asian Americans Plus? I am drawn to the image of the Venn Diagram implied by the title Intersecting Circles, but while that makes a great visual to describe how we can and do maintain allegiances to multiple communities and identities, it isn’t a great label (Venn Asian Americans?). I hate to say this, but “Hapa” has great mouth feel as a word, until the bad taste of Native Hawaiian oppression slips in. My talents as a wordsmith do not extend to creating new language whole cloth, with no negative connotations, so, for now, this essay is only the first stage in the anti-colonial project of refusing to mis-use the word “Hapa.” Stage two will be coming up with a new word that encompasses mixed heritage Asians and Pacific Islanders, without coming from a dominating or oppressed language. I feel a little bit like an advertising executive, being asked to avoid another Chevy Nova fiasco. Calling all poets--we’ve got to be able to come up with something good, short, and catchy—that’s the challenge. My dear friend, Dr. Marianne Maruyama Halpin, reminded me, after reading this essay, that “A name, to work, needs to be something loved.” With that in mind let us find a name we can all love calling ourselves and that also causes no one else pain.

Works Cited

Fujikane, Candace. “Foregrounding Native Nationalisms: A Critique of Antinationalist Sentiment in Asian American Studies.” In Asian American Studies After Critical Mass, ed. Kent A. Ono. Blackwell: Malden, MA, 2005

Halpin, Marianne Maruyama. Personal email, 11/20/07

Ifekwunigwe, Jayne. ‘Mixed Race’ Studies: A Reader. London: Routledge, 2004

Kina, Laura. Personal email, 11/30/07

Robbins, Lana. www.realhapas.com, retrieved 11/15/07

Tran, Truong. Personal communication, 4/20/06

* My thanks to the students of Occidental College, San Francisco State University (especially AAS 550: Asian Americans of Mixed Heritage), UC Davis (ASA 120), Spring 2000), and UC Berkeley; the former members, staff and Board of Hapa Issues Forum (especially Andrew Bushaw, Anthony Yuen, Claire Light, Eric Hamako, and Sheila Chung); my teacher, Teresa Williams-Leon; Cynthia Nakashima; Paul Spickard; Laura Kina; Marianne Maruyama Halpin; Mohammad Salama; Stuart Gaffney; Lori Kay; Kent Ono; Sachiko Reed; Aaron Kitashima; Danise Olague; Joemy Ito-Gates; Truong Tran; and Native Hawaiian hapas, all of whom have contributed to the ongoing dialogue that has lead me to write this essay or have acted as sounding boards for these ideas.