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writing-reaper · 2 years ago

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Bound Through The Force

The Bad Batch x f!OC Mara

Description: Finally put in a corner, Mara has no choice but to tell them everything. Ready for them to despise her, their response turns out surprising.

Note: Mara explains her past, so it’s a shit ton of dialogue. Feel free to just skim through, I’ll have something else at the end.

Warnings: trauma dumping, mentioned death, mentions of abuse, cult, breeding, mistrust and then forgiveness and fluff

Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four |

Part Five | Part Six | Part Seven (here)

“What do you think it means to live?” Mara asks, looking toward the Jedi sitting cross legged across from her. She hums, keeping her eyes closed.

“I think it means to enjoy the things around you, to find the light in things.” Shaak Ti answers. “Why do you ask?”

“I heard once that if you’ve taken a life, that you could never live one.” Mara answers. “I’m simply curious, if I’ll ever be able to live. Do I even deserve to?”

“I do not believe you’ll accept any answer I may have for you. Though I ask you consider this.” The Jedi begins, finally opening her eyes to look at Mara. “That girl that follows you around—”

“Omega.”

“Yes, Omega. You care for her, don’t you?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then care for her. Enjoy the every moment she’s in your life. When it rains, look out the window and smile. When it doesn’t, still smile. For living means appreciating every moment of time and every person you meet.”

Mara sighs and looks out the window. For the first time since she’s been there, she smiles. And when it finally falls from her face, she opens the door to her room and smiles once more.

“Omega.”

Mara raises her brow at the man holding the ice pack to her head. Her hand grazes over his as she grasps the ice pack, slightly adjusting to move away from his reach.

“Everything…” she hums, laying on her side to face him better. “Everything is… a lot.”

“I know.” He answers. “But nothing about you is making any sense. We need answers.”

“Fine.” She sighs, a tear leaving her eye as she visually slouches. Her heart felt like it was being crushed by the weight of it. “There’s no use in hiding things any longer. The truth will inevitably reveal itself. Perhaps it is best to hear it from me.”

“That’s all we want.” He states, trying to remain unfazed by the tears in her eyes.

“My mother was born of a cult. I only recently learned of her existence, as I had always been told she abandoned me. However, like many children of the Hye Society, I had been abducted to become one of their weapons, a mindless toy, made to destroy their enemies.” Mara begins, eyes glued to her feet as painful memories ache in her head. “Priya had been an older child of this abduction. If it wasn’t for her, I think I truly would be the mindless doll they expected me to be.”

“The friend you named your Tooka after?” Mara nods.

“Priya told me about her parents and how she was raised before they died. Maybe it was the idea of some day having a normal life is what kept me the slightest bit sane. She showed me compassion and warmth before I could completely despise it.” Mara wipes her eye at the falling of a tear. “When the final trial began, we learned that our relationship wasn’t as secret as we hoped because we were put against each other. We had made a prior agreement that if it would happen, we’d come to a draw then strike the same, leave the first drop of blood to chance. I didn’t realize just how prepared Priya was to die.”

“Did you kill Priya?” Her heart throbbed when he said her name, so much so she wanted to scream.

“I might as well have. She was dead either way. The elder killed her when I hesitated. For that, I was punished. Everyday I’d train, and every night for a month after I’d be whipped till I bled. If you need proof you can still see the scars.” Mara shifts up right, turning from him and raising her shirt.

“Kriff!” A startled shout left him at the sight. She releases her top and lays back down, finding it harder to meet his gaze. Perhaps because of that pitying look on his face.

“I’d train, then they’d tell me who. Who was in their way, who I had to kill. And I’d do it. I didn’t think there was a way out. Every opportunity I had, it felt like I was being tugged back to them on a chain. I thought if I did what I was told that the pain would go away, that the guilt would whither with their praise, but no matter what I did, I was doing something wrong. Then they told me to burn down a town. I don’t remember where, I just remember the warmth.”

Hunter remained silent as he watched her with uncertain eyes, her head tilting to the side as she stares toward the window.

“It didn’t come from the flames, but this little boy. He ran to me, hugged my leg and he begged. He begged me not to hurt his family. And then I realized that my suffering would never end, so why should others suffer? The town will burn, but I could save the people who lived there.

“I didn’t save many with half the town already turned to rubble, but I managed to save some from the destruction I had already caused. When I returned, I earned my name: Mara the Wyvern. A dragon for the fire, but a wyvern to convince their mindless followers I served them by choice because all I had were my wings and my two feet. Wings to fly away if I needed, if I ever had wings they were clipped before I knew what they were used for.”

“Did you manage to save anyone else?” Hunter questions, thinking of the relief in her voice when she said she realized that she didn’t have to kill anyone.

“At any opportunity.” She states firmly, red tracks running down her face as he realized just how much she’d been crying despite her steady voice. “There was a short period of time where I didn’t kill anyone. Three months. And then the breeding program began and the only person I wanted to kill was myself.”

“A breeding program? You don’t mean…?”

“I don’t remember much from that time period. Only one of my partners sticks out in my memory because he was beaten half to death when he asked me if I was ok. The only other thing I remember was being ill. Between what was expected of me and constant panic attacks, I had to be chained to a medical bed, once I was put on life support because I tried to scratch myself open.

“When they finally gave up on me, they looked for other options. Luckily, they found them and I was no longer required to participate, no matter how many of my traits they wanted their future slaves to carry.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’ve been suffering long before you were even created.” Mara shifts to face him, happy he didn’t flinch when she placed her hand on his cheek, as Omega had done to comfort her before. “I am grateful to have met you when I am actively trying to be my best self. I may be broken, inside and out, but at least I get to choose what to do from here on. And I’d be forever more grateful if you let me continue to figure things out with you all than without.”

“I know you’re a good person, Mara.” He states firmly, sending a shiver through Mara’s heart. “Do you feel comfortable continuing?”

“I must admit, there’s not much else. I saved more and more people, mostly children, but eventually I was caught. When I was caught, I was ready to accept my fate. I finally got to take pleasure in my acts of rebellion, spit in the face of the ones who wronged me and then simply waited for that blade to chop off my head in a single fatal swoop.” Mara begins once more. “And then… I didn’t want to die anymore. My tormentor revealed a truth I didn’t realize would gift me so much courage. They told the crowd I would be given my mother’s name of exile. Mara Deoradhán. I was told my mother had abandoned me, not that she had been exiled. Suddenly, I had a reason to live. I didn’t know how I stopped the blade till I met Shaak Ti. But as soon as I had escaped the execution stand, I found a supply ship and wound up here on Ord Mantell in this very Parlor.”

“What happened when you came to Cid’s?”

“I told her who I was, and that I’d do anything she needed me to so I could break the shell that had been created.” Mara answers. “She complained that I was too skinny and that I wasn’t very social. When I opened up to her, I told her about my self loathing and gave me some half assed excuse of why I should love myself and I’ve been clinging onto it ever since. And then, just as my body was going out of survival mode, Shaak Ti arrived.

“She recognized me and still talked to me like I was a person, not a dangerous killer. It was scary, like she looked straight through me. I still don’t understand why she scared me so much. Even so, I followed her blindly when she told me she could give me answers about myself, answers to questions I never bothered to ask. She took me to Kamino and helped me get to a healthy weight and taught me how to relax. She called it finding peace, but I despise myself too much to achieve that. And then I met Omega.”

“I’d say I know where things go from here, but you haven’t exactly explained that either.” Hunter comments, earning a small smile from Mara.

“I appreciate you turning the comm on, because I would not have been able to do this with all of you in here.” Mara answers, watching his face shift to one of surprise. “Omega wasn’t allowed to be around me. A rule I tried to follow because I didn’t want to be sent back to Ord Mantel as I got super sick in the healing process. However, she was incredibly persistent.”

“She is extraordinarily persistent.” He agrees with a chuckle.

“Hey—!” A quick shush follows and Mara smiles at the comm device.

“Eventually, I let her start following me around and talking to me. While, Shaak Ti was certainly helpful, her company was rarely… enjoyable.” Mara hesitates at the last weird, grimacing at how awkward it felt.

“I understand.” He reassures.

“I have a difficult time socializing, but she spoke enough for the both of us. Of course, I eventually found it in myself to respond and we bonded quickly afterwards. But after that… I left. I didn’t know where exactly I would end up, but I eventually wound up with Elliot. I had went to an underground market I’d traveled to many times to find a ride to the outer rim. He was crude, but he was easy. Act oblivious, don’t show you’re offended, and he gave chase. He was only supposed to take me to where he was delivering his next shipment. Unfortunately, his experience didn’t match his intelligence and I had to get us out of a dangerous situation.

“Apparently the misunderstood bad girl gone good only made him more interested in me. He’d insist upon random stops, faked problems with his ship and his efforts became more and more desperate the closer we got to my location. Then he faked a crash and we were ‘stuck’ on a moon for a few days. I let my guard down under the impression no one was ever going to come. So I told him about the only good thing in my life, the only person I had who was waiting for me. I don’t know why, but I told him more about myself until he assumed I was at my lowest and made his move. My assumption is after he got what he wanted the ship was going to miraculously start working again and he’d finally decide to move on with his life. Instead, I rejected him and the next morning he came up with the idea a necessary part of the ship had broken off in the crash. When I went out to get it, he flew away. Got lucky that a supply ship made a pit stop and eventually made my way back here.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re here and not stuck on that moon.”

“Thanks for hearing me out.” She replies, brushing her hair back and to the side. “I don’t want our relationship to change after what you’ve learned about me and I really don’t want your pitiful stares. I don’t expect you to be any different toward me, nicer or otherwise. I just want to be in Omega’s life, as long as I can, because I have nobody else to live for.”

“Don’t say that!” Omega’s voice comes through the comm once more and Mara winces.

“I forgot she was also listening.” Mara whispers, not wanting the comm to pick it up.

“She is right.” Mara shakes her head and brushes out her hair with her fingers. “You have your life to take back.”

“Every experience that is supposed to be enjoyable has been taken away from me. There’s nothing left for me to take.”

“You’ll find something, we’ll help you.”

“Thanks.”

“Hunter? Can you give Mara a hug for me?” Omega asks through the comm. Mara felt her heart skip a beat and her face turn red at the child’s suggestion.

“Omega, you can come up here—” she was cut off at Hunter’s sudden embrace.

Suddenly, she felt weak. Weaker than before as she leaned into his welcoming embrace, returning his hold. The hot tears filled her eyes once more and she turns off the comm right before a sob leaves her lips.

Mara let go to move away, but his embrace just seemed to tighten, keeping her in place as another sob left her lips and her head rests on his shoulder. When he did let go, she apologized for almost breaking down on him. If he wasn’t already so flustered he probably would’ve pulled her back in.

“You should get some rest.” Hunter says, his own cheeks flushed as he rubs the back of his head.

“C-can… can you stay with me…? Just a little longer?”

“Sure.”

Hunter left when Mara finally fell asleep. He found his brothers how he’d left them, still sitting at the large booth with Omega. Tech was examining the bottles from the bag Mara had requested, and Omega was listening to him as he rambled on about the different liquids, their origins and their uses.

“How’s she doing?” Echo asks, sounding concerned.

“She’s asleep.” Hunter answers, not quite sure of her actual emotional state as she fell quiet and held the purple Tooka. When he had met her gaze, she’d smile and her face would flush, and he could only assume the poison would result in a fever. “Omega, you knew that Mara was an assassin?”

“Nala Se told me before I met her because she didn’t want me around her.” Omega answers. “She said that she was dangerous, but after watching her for a while in the training room with the cadets I couldn’t see her as dangerous.”

“Why’s that?”

“Well… she never really worked with the cadets, she’d always just watch Shaak Ti train them. Then there was this one cadet, who wasn’t doing well. He fell and just didn’t get up. Some of the others seemed to laugh at him, but she laid down beside him.” Omega explains, thinking back to the day she saw Mara’s true colors with a small smile. “I don’t know what she said to him, according to Nala Se it was the first time she’d spoken since she’d arrived, but he was encouraged again and she helped him throughout the rest of the training.”

“Do you know why?” Echo asks, sounding rather swayed by the story.

“I never asked, she didn’t talk to me for a month.” She answers with a shrug. “And when she finally did, it was because I asked about one of her scars.”

“She’s still weird.” Crosshair scoffs, earning a laugh from Wrecker.

“I like her!” Wrecker declares before elbowing him. “You can’t deny she’s been fun to hang out with!”

“I’m sure you can forgive her behavior. From the sound of things she’s never been allowed to conduct herself in a proper manner.” Tech comments. “Furthermore, individuals who have been victims of abuse so early in their youth tend to have childlike tendencies and underdeveloped brains. And while Mara certainly acts an adult, she still portrays a childish behavior, especially around those she trusts, such as Omega and Cid.”

“Shouldn’t you add Crosshair to that list?” Omega inquires, earning a look from all five of them.

“What do you mean?” Tech questions, adjusting his goggles.

“She did that drinking game with him, Mara usually refuses alcohol from people. Even the medical volunteers on Kamino could never get her to join them.” Omega explains.

“Does that really make a difference? She just told Hunter something she clearly didn’t want to.” Crosshair scoffs.

“I guess it could’ve also been because of Tech. She seems to hang around the two of you more until Hunter talks to her.” Omega reevaluates aloud.

“I’ve noticed that as well.” Echo comments. “Whenever Tech’s fixing something, she’s always nearby watching and when you start making some sort of comment she’ll smile and participate in the conversation.”

“Didn’t think you’d be paying that much attention to her, Echo.” Crosshair quips with a smirk.

“Sh-she just doesn’t make any sense to me.” Echo stammered, his face flushing in embarrassment. Maybe he had been paying a little too much attention to her, especially when trying to trust her.

“Maybe Mara likes them more because they treat her like a normal person.” Omega suggests, quickly earning a look from Hunter and Echo. “Then again, that doesn’t explain why she doesn’t spend much time around Wrecker.”

“It’s probably because I grabbed her that one time.” Wrecker admits with a frown, scratching the back of his head. “She looked pretty freaked out.”

“I’m sure she’s already over that.” Cid scoffs, approaching the group. “How long were you going to wait to tell me Mara left?”

“The bars empty, besides those two. Didn’t think it’d be a big deal.” Hunter answers. “Mara got poisoned so she’s resting upstairs.”

“Uh huh, not a big deal, I’m running a business here. Someone’s always got to keep an eye out. Mara’s a grown adult, she can handle herself.” Cid scoffs, annoyed knowing they probably didn’t even realize when a new customer had come in.

“Sorry!” Omega apologizes for the group, seeing as it would’ve only taken them a second to grab Cid.

“Anyway, I got another mission for you boys, but we’ll discuss the details tomorrow. I want Mara to join you.”

“But she’s been poisoned—”

“That’s like saying Tiny here scraped her knee. Why do you care? Considering what Mara told me about that client, he wouldn’t want to kill her.”

“Why’s that?” Hunter questions.

“Because whoever hired him wanted to make sure she was alive. Mara may have “told him everything” but every assassin knows not to disclose their sanctuary.” Cid explains. “That means one of these customers gave out her location.”

Taglist

@mybigfatspoonielife @gjrain20-starwars @goddess-of-congeniality @redpool @chxpsi @stardust9905

#star wars #the bad batch #tbb #tbb wrecker #tbb x oc #x oc #oc #tbb crosshair #tbb tech #tbb omega #tbb echo #star wars tbb

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mega-ringsandthings-world · 1 year ago

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Ahh! Well that be glad for I also love talking about this au! And I have some many questions!

So Mihawk activates armament on their way out? Any chance, since he doesn’t know how armament works, he uses it in such a way that it’s like, well shit, I don’t know enough about armament to say that can't work, and then he does something fucking crazy with it? Like how Sanji lights himself on fire or Zoro creates several other body parts? Like it’s an extension of your will—why should it be limited when your ambition isn’t?

Thoughts on tattoos? The boys could get them to cover up scars or other forced tattoos or brands. Also, will Mihawk dress less exposed in this AU? Maybe in the beginning of their escape, slightly ashamed of his scars, a bit self-conscious or at people looking at his body, developed body dysphoria from all the torture--the scars could trigger memories maybe? Maybe as they heal more slowly, he starts to stop covering up as much as he does? I don't know. Shanks would be just as much of a disaster when it comes to clothes as his older counterpart, and you know, for those first few years of freedom and being able to wear whatever they want, they'd either A. Freak out over all the choices now that they have them. Or B. Wear some of the most outlandish stuff, which from One Piece probably makes everyone shrug and go, "Yeah, they can slaughter a whole Marine base without breaking a sweat; we don’t give a shit what they wear." I still want to write/draw Shanks clothes covered in Mihawks embroidery projects though.

Oh yeah, wanna bet about how absolutely terrifying and confusing freedom is for them once they get out? For two years, they had a routine, had their life structured, and even if it was horrible, it was a predictable type of horrible. Do you think they sometimes lie awake at night wishing they could go back and then hating themselves for thinking it? And are absolutely confused with stuff like shopping and human interaction that’s beyond fighting, faked complacency, and/or trauma-bound?

Do they freak out grocery shopping and walking in a crowd? Does Mihawk forget how to act human, and all the refined intricacies that are no longer muscle memory? Does Shanks refuse to talk to anybody who isn’t Mihawk for a good long while? Like if he talked to anyone else, it was probably interrogation or something worse? Are they confused by normal everyday things that they used to understand, but now it just doesn't make sense? Do they do things in public or around people that were fine when captured but are completely faux pas or uncomfortable to see in public?

Anyway, healing sucks, and learning to rejoin society and not try to kill everyone who so much as looks at you wrong will probably take a long time for them, like a soldier rejoining from the army or an inmate getting out of prison. And I've read and watched a lot of interviews from soldiers and former prisoners, and one of the things you can spot after you get out is another prisoner or soldier. Do you think the Loguetown kidnapped can just spot each other across a crowded room? Can they just look and go, "Yeah, them. I know that general vibe?"

Are their conversations then from their perspective reminiscing while everyone else is like, "Uhh, that's torture, you all were tortured? And your wistfully looking off into the sunset thinking about it?”

Like a conversation can go— "And man, food, Oda Christ! When we first got out and I had a peach again, I thought I'd fucking die, man. But then, sometimes, it's like the food is too much? You know what I mean? Like too much flavor and color and choices and health and shit? Like, we can't just eat chocolate all the time, and while gruel was disgusting, it at least kept us in top shape, ya know?"

"Oh my god, man, I totally get it. Sometimes I'll just be sitting, wondering why I'm hungry, and then remember, 'Oh yeah, I actually have to make my food now,' and like, food is just so much, man. I miss the gruel sometimes." And everyone, like staring at them, talking about getting their teeth pulled out like it was the good old times and not deeply horrifying.

Keep 'em coming, lol! Both Mihawk and Shanks discover their full haki while escaping/shortly after escaping. There's some amount of discourse on this, but I'm planning for Mihawk to use his Armament haki to turn Yoru black. Or more black. Haki (and armament haki's black color )wasn't a thing yet when Yoru was shown to be black, so Yoru is technically a black blade with no influence of haki, but shhhh, I do what I want. We also know Yoru is one of the twelve supreme grade blades, among which Roger's blade, Ace, is one of, so a big thing is that Mihawk takes Yoru from the marines, because Marines had rounded up as many of the twelve blades as they could. As far as doing improbable feats with Armament Haki, Mihawk does, because at that point, he's desperate enough to. And so does Shanks with his. And while we're peaking of tattoos...armament-black imprints from Mihawk grabbing Shanks to protect him, anyone? (Yes, I know that's not how it works. I can get a pass here.) Tattoos are always a draw. What they'd actually be of is really interesting to think about. I think they'd dress as close as possible to the way they did before their capture, because it's a way of maintaining control/grasping at their former selves. But of course, there will be be the aspect of a security blanket, so while the style remains the same, their clothes become armor. (Mihawk does wear high-collared vampire shirts for quite a while, though. And he won't be found without his coat.) They'll be more structured and ornate, meant to project status and stop people dead in their tracks. i.e Mihawk gets his hat, his coats are fully embroidered and embossed/beaded and have gold hardwear, he wears gold jewellery. Shanks takes to wearing long heavy leather cloaks he can wrap himself fully in, flowing red silk sashes. Silk shirts too. Real shoes. Mihawk embroiders everything of his. All those patterns canon Shanks wears? Loguetown Shanks wears Mihawk's patterns. Dripping bloody red flowers and gold filigree everywhere. Oh, it would be. During the times when they are fighting/unable to be around each other because of their recovery, they would think that. Too, they both secretly expected the other to be the one who would survive. They'd never thought it probable that they'd both be free again. And now they are, and they are dealing with it, and they can't. pt.2 coming up

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morihaus · 3 years ago

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Dragons

Emperor Belharza stands in the plaza of the Imperial City, his old bones aching with the chilled air of the dreary day. It has not been a long day- indeed, it is the shortest day of the year, hence the festivities that surround him- he is only weary with thought.

He stands with his family, his children, his grandchildren, and his great-grandchildren, who in turn speak with cousins and relatives of their own, from within and without the Imperial court. The youngest circle around the group, chatting away and enjoying themselves among the other children at the festival, the adults catch up with one another, sharing word from throughout the distant realms of Cyrod and of the disparate lives they've grown to lead. The old emperor smiles, listening and speaking to them in turn, and in his own time looks to his surroundings.

The Imperial Isle is bustling as ever on this occasion. The customary Festival of the Dragon has been a tradition since he was a boy-calf, apparently drawn from some old Atmoran traditions, a ceremony of appeasement for the world-eating dragon of the Nordic faith. It, as many things in Cyrodiilic society, was a compromise reached by his mother, the one time of the year that all would come to acknowledge and honor Akatosh for his patronage of the Nedes in the years of revolt. It is equally a relic of traditional Ayleid worship of Auri-El, which White-Gold had not seen for centuries at the time of her ascension to the throne. Many Nedes wished to honor Akatosh as the Aedra worshiping Ayleids had honored Auri-El as their sovereign patron, but such a thing would invoke outrage from those who leaned closer to Nordic spirituality, the honoring of Kyne and Shezarr. So this festival began in the Atmoran style, an acknowledgement of the passage of time as controlled by Akatosh, an acknowledgement of his power, an offering of appeasement, and little more. A scant thanks from an emperor with much more to say about the dragon behind closed doors.

And yet, over Belharza's long life, he had seen the somber ceremony become more and more lively, quiet reflections on the passage of time and the great cosmic acts of the divine gave way to banquets and songs to the dragon's glory, gallant tales of knight Pelinal and his liege, the so-called Saint Alessia, and the emperor began to hear old stories he'd heard from his mother as a boy; some small things changed, minor details, names and places, but what perplexed him most was the way they were told: painted in triumph, in glory, without darkness or shame.

A tug at his sleeve rouses him from his recollection, and he turns his horned head to see a lengthy procession of robed figures, swept in silken robes, white with red diamond patterns. The Brothers of Marukh, a relatively recent sect of Akatoshic worshipers, but quite the popular one. They and their forerunners have had much to do with the evolution of this festival. Belharza looks at the crowd of them, lined like a legion, stretching all the way down the street and out of site. There are more of them than last year, he remarks to himself. More than the year before, too, and the year before that as well. At the head of their procession is a woman adorned with golden jewelry, holding a lead wrapped around an old white bull. Her head is hairless, and around her scalp and face lays the dyed markings of a serpent, spiraling around her fair skin, looping over an eye and cheek, snaking down her neck and disappearing toward her breast, now hidden by her ceremonial silks. Ketra is a high priestess of the Brothers, taught by the Prophet Marukh himself. She wears a serious face, peaceful and purposeful, as she leads the bull up to a ceremonial platform, lying before a great carving of an endless serpent.

Emperor Belharza regards the animal, an old sire of many young calves, an animal chosen for this honor with great respect. Its face is noble, graying, and weary, like his own, but he, like many minotaur, sees himself as far different from everyday cattle, despite some visual similarity. And though part of him, descended from Morihaus, who is descended from Kyne, feels almost that the old thing should be given more of a fighting chance. Should a proud beast as he be offered up so placidly, without any say in the matter? Does the buck dive onto the hunter's spear? But Belharza simply shakes his head. He's grown more distanced from these Kynarethi worldviews as he's matured- he's never lost his appreciation for the wilds, for freedom and expression, but nearly a century in the Imperial Court has forced him to take on a more materialistic mindset, to belong to the world of men, of cities, of towers.

As is customary, the sacrificial bull is led onto the altar, spits of wood over a fire pit, and sorcerers of the Brothers cast calming spells on it, leaving it to stand still and somberly atop its final resting place, as though aware of the solemnity of its duty. The high priestess then moved to take a torch from her torchbearer, raising it aloft and saying her piece. She sings praise to the One Akatosh- an increasingly popular epithet- to his glorious patronage of mankind, to his divine-crafted knight, and to his anointed emperor. Many make a show of cheering and smiling in his direction, for he bears her anointed blood in his veins, and the blood of Akatosh in the jewel hung around his neck. Looking at Ketra, he cannot help but notice that she does not look to him, nor do any in the inner circle around the pit. She only turns to the bull and grips the ceremonial dagger. The weathered old sire doesn't flinch as she moves forward, reaching an arm around his neck to force him to kneel to the ground, and finally, sinks the dagger into his throat.

The old bull does not cry out, it is calm even in its death. Its blood pools out from the wound as she pulls away, dripping down into the pit below. It is joined quickly by fire from her torch, and the scent of searing flesh fills the streets, along with some jubilation.

Even so, as the smoke rises up, Belharza's eye tracks it to see the clouds, which had skirted around the edge of the horizon thus far, gather overhead. He looks down to the wall carving of the dragon, jaws open and hungry. The amulet around his neck feels heavy- it always has, but in this moment, he wonders at it.

---

An hour or so on, Belharza kneels in the gardens of the dragonfire, head bowed under cloudy skies. The brazier burns silently, its flame lit by divine magic, not mundane fire. It has remained burning without rest, through day, night, winds, and rain, ever since he lit them when his reign began, nearly a century ago. All the while, he's paid the fires little mind- not ungrateful for their protection, but content to leave them be- he's put more of his attention into the greenery surrounding them; wild grasses and flowers, fruit-bearing trees and bushes, he's cultivated much of these in a plethora of wild gardens over his lengthy reign, for they've always brought him comfort and closeness with his mother. As the empire has grown more complicated and in need of greater administration, he's been afforded less opportunities to wander freely as she used to, and as he used to along with her. It is a melancholy feeling, but he has made peace with it.

He is not worried about getting caught in the rain, even as the clouds grow darker and heavier. Any time with the sky over his horns, fresh air in his lungs, he'll savor it, even if he gets drenched or stormed on in the process. His ear perks to the sound of footsteps down the cobbled path. Many footsteps, an entire procession. He casts his gaze over his shoulder, only to see robed priests, the Brothers of Marukh, fronted by their head priestess. She clutches the ceremonial dagger at her hip, freshly cleaned. Belharza cannot help from noticing the lack of any guards- he sees only men, Nede-men, nowhere does he find family nor even his minotaur kin, who have been the most loyal soldiers of his legions, and most devoted of his honor guard.

Blowing air out against his nose-hoop, he grunts as he wills himself up to his feet, turning to look down at the procession. "Brother Ketra," He says, voice deep and subtle, like distant thunder. "To what do I owe this visit?" The priestess is cold and serious, her brow set like stone above her dark eyes. "Admiring the dragonfires, Emperor?" She asks, dismissing his own question. "It is a good day to wonder at the power of Akatosh."

Belharza stares silently for a moment. He counts 20 of them, rings and amulets of enchanted glows signified them as members of her inner circle, the closest to the mouth of the prophet, his most attentive students. He recognizes some from the council, his lip turns with distaste to recall the legislature they pushed, the discriminatory reputation many sects have made for themselves.

"I suppose." He lets out a sigh, hunched down yet still towering feet taller than the Nedic woman. "This has been the one-hundredth-and-twelfth festival I have seen. It's been ninety while these fires have burned." He raises a hand to brush the stone of his amulet, the red ruby is dull in the darkness, the light of its pyre burning behind his back. "I suppose I am thinking of Akatosh, in that I am thinking about time, and its passage." Ketra takes a step forward, slyly, as though he might not notice. "Which of the One's mysteries unravels in your mind, sire?" He gives her a long look. He turns around, staring into the silent god-fire. "...I've lived a very long life. Longer than most men or minotaur. Some have made jokes of it, perhaps I'll next outlive an elf? Who can say if I'll ever die, divine blood in my veins?" He pauses, unsure of Ketra's reaction. "I've considered it more seriously. I am very old, and very tired... I do not feel as though my end draws near, I only feel weary, weary with the responsibilities of my station, the needs of my people. One man was not meant to bear it for so long, I think."

Ketra and her procession are silent, only watching with rapt attention at the voice of the emperor. "I believe I will relinquish my throne," Belharza says, suddenly. "Bequeath it to a chosen heir." "You think you can bestow such a thing upon another?" She doesn't sound accusatory, she doesn't seem to doubt him. She seems curious. "I do not see why not. We do not know all the mysteries of this artifact... it is worth attempting, I think. I've spoken with my granddaughter, Varlesh- she is wise and gentle, yet firm, like my mother." Belharza turns back to face Ketra, who stands right before him now. The knife is still in her hand.

They look at one another for a moment. Thunder rumbles overhead.

Belharza snorts out a sigh. He looks down at her; a beleaguered old bull, a priestess with a sacrificial dagger, a fire burning beside them. "You think," Ketra starts, her tone and timbre certain, reliable, like a ticking clock. "You can bestow such a thing? To anyone you choose?"

"Yes." He says.

Then, Ketra surges forth, plunges her dagger into Belharza's chest. He might have kept his footing if two more knives hadn't entered at his flanks, the force of the assailants sending him careening back against the steps to the brazier. Lightning flashes. Ketra is poised atop him, knee against his sternum, dagger raised overhead. The burning fires reflect in her eyes. She screams, shouts as she drives the knife into his throat. Blood spurts, breath leaves his body, he finds no strength, not even to tremble. Rain begins to fall, mixing with his blood. It is coincidence that the fires ebb with the rain, for in truth, they ebb with his death.

Ketra reaches her hands down, collecting the ichor from his wound, lifting it above her head and letting it fall down her face. She chants hymns to the blessed Saint Alessia, to the Prophet Most Simian, and to Akatosh, and to Shezarr, and to the One. Finally, she rips the amulet from his neck, yanking roughly as she works it around his horns. Around her own neck it is oversized, the chain is too long, letting the red diamond hang nearly to her navel. She steps over the old emperors corpse, his blood covering her face, and she kneels to the brazier as the last embers flicker out. She takes the stone in hand and lights the spark in her name, in Alessia's blood, in Akatosh's blood, she honors the covenant.

Under the torrent of falling rain, the brazier lights.

#tesfest21 #mori writing #belharza #oc: ami-el #cw: this depicts a brief animal sacrifice and a murder #blood is especially involved

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antoine-roquentin · 4 years ago

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obliquely, this is in reference to how formerly working class bastions in the midwest that used to elect socialists now elect republicans. if we all gave up the theory that LGBT people are normal, we might once again go back to the days where we elected socialists across the country. thomas frank, what’s the matter with kansas:

But its periodic bouts of leftism were what really branded Kansas with the mark of the freak. Every part of the country in the nineteenth century had labor upheavals and protosocialist reform movements, of course. In Kansas, though, the radicals kept coming out on top. It was as though the blank landscape prompted dreams of a blank-slate society, a place where institutions might be remade as the human mind saw fit. Maps of the state from the 1880s show a hamlet (since vanished) called Radical City; in nearby Crawford County the town of Girard was home to the Appeal to Reason, a socialist newspaper whose circulation was in the hundreds of thousands. In that same town, in 1908, Eugene Debs gave a fiery speech accepting the Socialist Party’s nomination for president; in 1912 Debs actually carried Crawford County, one of four he won nationwide. (All were in the Midwest.) In 1910 Theodore Roosevelt signaled his own lurch to the left by traveling to Kansas and giving an inflammatory address in Osawatomie, the onetime home of John Brown.

The most famous freak-out of them all was Populism, the first of the great American leftist movements.* Populism tore through other states as well—wailing all across Texas, the South, and the West in the 1890s—but Kansas was the place that really distinguished itself by its enthusiasm. Driven to the brink of ruin by years of bad prices, debt, and deflation, the state’s farmers came together in huge meetings where homegrown troublemakers like Mary Elizabeth Lease exhorted them to “raise less corn and more hell.” The radicalized farmers marched through the small towns in day-long parades, raging against what they called the “money power.” And despite all the clamor, they still managed to take the state’s traditional Republican masters utterly by surprise in 1890, sweeping the small-town slickers out of office and ending the careers of many a career politician. In the decade that followed they elected Populist governors, Populist senators, Populist congressmen, Populist supreme court justices, Populistcity councils, and probably Populist dogcatchers, too; men of strong ideas, curious nicknames, and a colorful patois....

For a generation, Kansas has been the testing-ground for every experiment in morals, politics, and social life. Doubt of all existing institutions has been respectable. Nothing has been venerable or revered merely because it exists or has endured. Prohibition, female suffrage, fiat money, free silver, every incoherent and fantastic dream of social improvement and reform, every economic delusion that has bewildered the foggy brains of fanatics, every political fallacy nurtured by misfortune, poverty and failure, rejected elsewhere, has here found tolerance and advocacy.

Today the two myths are one. Kansas may be the land of averageness, but it is a freaky, militant, outraged averageness. Kansas today is a burned-over district of conservatism where the backlash propaganda has woven itself into the fabric of everyday life. People in suburban Kansas City vituperate against the sinful cosmopolitan elite of New York and Washington, D.C.; people in rural Kansas vituperate against the sinful cosmopolitan elite of Topeka and suburban Kansas City. Survivalist supply shops sprout in neighborhood strip-malls. People send Christmas cards urging their friends to look on the bright side of Islamic terrorism, since the Rapture is now clearly at hand.

Under the state’s simple blue flag are gathered today some of the most flamboyant cranks, conspiracists, and calamity howlers the Republic has ever seen. The Kansas school board draws the guffaws of the world for purging state science standards of references to evolution. Cities large and small across the state still hold out against water fluoridation, while one tiny hamlet takes the additional step of requiring firearms in every home. A prominent female politician expresses public doubts about the wisdom of women’s suffrage, while another pol proposes that the state sell off the Kansas Turnpike in order to solve its budget crisis. Impoverished inhabitants of the state’s most scenic area fight with fanatical determination to prevent a national park from opening up in their neighborhood, while the rails-to-trails program, regarded everywhere else in the union as a harmless scheme for family fun, is reviled in Kansas as an infernal design on the rights of property owners. Operation Rescue selects Wichita as the stage for its great offensive against abortion, calling down thirty thousand testifying fundamentalists on the city, witnessing and blocking traffic and chaining themselves to fences. A preacher from Topeka travels the nation advising Americans to love God’s holy hate, showing up wherever a gay person has been in the news to announce that “God Hates Fags.” Survivalists and secessionists dream of backyard confederacies out on the lone prairie; schismatic Catholics declare the pope himself to be insufficiently Catholic; Posses Comitatus hold imaginary legal proceedings, sternly prosecuting state officials for participating in actual legal proceedings; and homegrown terrorists swap conspiracy theories at a house in Dickinson County before screaming off to strike a blow against big government in Oklahoma City.

the problem with this simple story is that social liberalism actually grew in lockstep with an economic policy tailored to the poor. in the 70s, the most common place to get gender reassignment surgery was at a catholic hospital in small town colorado. in 2010, in response to deep opposition in the town, the practice was forced to move to california. the second most common place was at a baptist hospital in oklahoma city, where such surgery was viewed as routine until a number of religious leaders decided to oppose it in the 70s. at the same time, many other religious leaders spoke out in favour of the surgery, saying that it comported well with religious tenets.

likewise, colorado legalized abortion in 1967, as did states like kansas, missouri, georgia, and north and south carolina prior to roe v wade. today, these states are considered anti-abortion and anti-lgbt hotspots, yet prior to the late 70s, compassion for such people was viewed as paramount in the life of america’s christians. so what happened? it clearly wasn’t an emphasis on the social aspects of poor american lives that shifted the political arena in favour of religious conservatism. rather, as thomas frank points out in the same book:

Nobody mows their own lawn in Mission Hills anymore, and only a foot soldier in its armies of gardeners would park a Pontiac there. The doctors who lived near us in the seventies have pretty much been gentrified out, their places taken by the bankers and brokers and CEOs who have lapped them repeatedly on the racetrack of status and income. Every time I paid Mission Hills a visit during the nineties, it seemed another of the more modest houses in our neighborhood had been torn down and replaced by a much larger edifice, a three-story stone chateau, say, bristling with turrets and porches and dormers and gazebos and a three-car garage. The dark old palaces from the twenties sprouted spiffy new slate roofs, immaculately tailored gardens, remote-controlled driveway gates, and sometimes entire new wings. One grand old pile down the street from us was fitted with shiny new gutters made entirely of copper. A new house a few doors down from Esrey’s spread is so large it has two multicar garages, one at either end.

These changes are of course not unique to Mission Hills. What has gone on there is normal in its freakishness. You can observe the same changes in Shaker Heights or La Jolla or Winnetka or Ann Coulter’s hometown of New Canaan, Connecticut. They reflect the simplest and hardest of economic realities: The fortunes of Mission Hills rise and fall in inverse relation to the fortunes of ordinary working people. When workers are powerful, taxes are high, and labor is expensive (as was the case from World War II until the late seventies), the houses built here are smaller, the cars domestic, the servants rare, and the overgrown look fashionable in gardening circles. People read novels about eccentric English aristocrats trapped in a democratic age, sighing sadly for their lost world.

When workers are weak, taxes are down, and labor is cheap (as in the twenties and again today), Mission Hills coats itself in shimmering raiments of gold and green. Now the stock returns are plush, the bonus packages fat, the servants affordable, and the suburb finds that the princely life isn’t dead after all. It builds new additions and new fountains and new Italianate porches overlooking Olympic-sized flower gardens maintained by shifts of laborers. People read books about the glory of empire. The kids get Porsches or SUVs when they turn sixteen; the houses with asphalt roofs discreetly disappear; the wings that were closed off are triumphantly reopened, and all is restored to its former grandeur. Times may be hard where you live, but here events have yielded a heaven on earth, a pleasure colony out of the paintings of Maxfield Parrish.

america's workers and small farmers were saved by the reforms of the 1930s, as frank explains, then crushed as the wealthy found out how to squirrel away their taxes (in part thanks to the collapse of the british empire), accumulate wealth away from prying eyes, lobby the government for preferential treatment, and between 1976 and 2000, triumph completely in the political domain. mission hill donates more money to politicians than the rest of kansas combined. unions are swamped in state politics, and see declining fortunes. as a result, neoliberal social atomization takes effect, which sees even workers demanding beggar-thy-neighbour policies. and when thy neighbour is socially distinct from you, it becomes easier to justify voting for such politics based on a survival instinct. the majority of the working class tuned out and do not vote any more. among the rest, low skilled working class jobs in highly stratified and inequitable cities vote democrat, hoping for some patronage from the white collar creative class voters they serve, while blue collar skilled workers tend to vote republican, devoid of any examples of class politics in their lives with the death of unions and hoping to keep their share of wages against their only opposition, the tax man.

ultimately, any socially liberal politics sustained by donations from rich big city donors is unsustainable. on the other hand, the notion that “woke” politics is holding back leftism is, save for a few clearly absurd situations (robin diangelo, for instance) also wrong. economic leftism leads to social leftism, because respect to the working class leads to respect for its identities. neoliberal atomization is a much deeper force than can be surmounted at the ballot box, even in a primary, but it is always an economic force first and foremost.

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ryoryeonggu · 4 years ago

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Inspired by the bromance between Kang Tae and Sang Tae from “It’s Okay Not To Be Okay” and some drama Kwak Dong Yeon played psychopath (how amazing an actor he is, he could play different roles so naturally), I just think of a plot but like all of time, I’m so lazy and impatient to write a series fanfic so I hope if there are anyone interested in, they could write it for me.

Imagine Han Seok somehow (probably after his death) fell into another universe which was kind of reversed everything from the original one. In this universe, Han Seok and Han Seo were still brothers, but from very poor family - the bottom life of the society, they were growing up with the brutal abuse of their father. They didn’t share the same mother, like the original universe, but both of their mothers were also the victim of his father, either one killed herself or left. So the brothers was left alone in a nightmare house and only had each other, they loved each other very much and would do anything for each other. Han Seok in this universe was a very sane, sweet and innocent person, and definitely very protective over his little brother. Once time he tried to protect Han Seo from their father, he got hit in his head very bad, resulting in damage to his brain and he had a mind of 5 year old child since then. This got Han Seo snapped eventually, so when his father dared to lay a finger on his brother again, he murdered his father, burned his house from the ground to make it look like an accident, then ran away with his brother to built a new life. They moved into another town, got the new identity and Han Seo had been working his ass off everyday to take care of his child-mind brother until the psycho Han Seok came.

Han Seo recognized almost immediately something was wrong since he knew his brother very well and he was smart and subtle himself. He slammed Han Seok into the wall very hard with a knife pointing at his heart, demanding to know what the hell happened with his brother (he thought his brother was kidnapped or something). Han Seok was a bit terrified and confused with the situation, and he was already traumatized with something about to stab in his heart because of the way he died, so he quickly told Han Seo about what was going on. After checking every scars and specific details in Han Seok’s body, Han Seo finally believed his words and that’s how their life together started.

After recovering from shock and adapting the new situation, Han Seok went back to his usual maniac behavior. Despite the overpowering impression from the start, Han Seok intended to treat Han Seo like the way he used to treat his Han Seo because he had the same face as his weak, obedient brother who was always terrified of him. So when Han Seo showed up and interrupted his killing spree, he expected the horrified expression, the utter fear in Han Seo’s eyes like the day he killed their father in the hospital. Instead he looked dumbfounded as Han Seo calmly picked up a hammer and finished the job himself, then complained with a blank face about how Han Seok made a mess and draw the unnecessary attention as he got rid of the body and cleaned off the scene, like he had done it a thousand times. That made Han Seok realized this person was nothing alike his brother and he was just as crazy as him, probably even more. The next days, Han Seok tried very hard to reclaim his authority only to fail, whenever he came up with some murderous insane plan to do anything (mostly just to try to scare Han Seo off), Han Seo just pointed out all the illogical and ridiculous plot holes in his plan and called him an idiot with a straight and very bored expression in his face. It was kinda the karma biting in his ass because this time, he was the one who was treated like an useless unworthy person who couldn’t do anything right and was looked down, like the way he used to treat his brother in his previous life. But unlike Han Seok, Han Seo never laid a finger on him because Han Seok was in his brother’s body and he would never ever hurt his brother or let anyone hurt him, so he just casually dodged all the attacks every time Han Seok went violent on him or tried to kill him. Han Seo would always protect his brother even it was only just a part of him (and he still believed that his brother would come back someday), and in his perspective, brothers should always look after each other, so he usually shot Han Seok a dirty annoyed look as hearing him ramble about how he abused and treated his younger brother back then.

Of course there were also back and forth, right after finally figuring out the strong love Han Seo had to his brother, Han Seok took advantage of Han Seo’s abilities as he was running around to cause problems because he knew Han Seo would come to rescue the day and clean off his mess anyways. To the point that Han Seo eventually pissed off and reminded Han Seok (in a very threating way) that the only reason why he was alive was because of “his Han Seok” and if he kept getting the dirt on his brother’s hand and name, he would murder him in the most painful way he’d ever known then kill himself. And then there were a kind of good detective showing up to their place to look for the brothers, asking questions about the accident of their previous home and their dead father, forcing Han Seok and Han Seo work together to cover it up once and for all. Then they ran off again and became infamous murderous brothers xD

#jang han seo #jang han seok #jang brothers #the jang bros #vincenzo #ok taecyeon #kwak dong yeon #jang hanseo #jang hanseok #now i realized both of taecyeon and dongyeon have yeon in their name #and they both have an unique last name #and their chemistry is just so off the charts #murderous brothers #kwak dong yeon was great in psycho roles too #writting idea #fic idea

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tundrainafrica · 4 years ago

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i really thought hange was non-binary bc the one who said hanges gender was up for interpretation was kodansha us but isayama asked for gender neutral pronouns right?

here!

I’m gonna answer all of the gender asks in one go because for one, I don’t think I wanna flood my own feed and my own tumblr with the same arguments.

I think a lot of the questions on Hange’s gender and the topic of gender and sexuality overall are kinda intertwined and I feel like for anyone who actually reads my stuff, it’s better understood as one big wall of text.

So I was wondering, is that song the absolute proof about hange's gender?

No. I think the interpretation of the song which people are using to prove that Hange’s nonbinary is very western centric. I actually did research around this song and knowing what I know about Japanese culture, I actually interpret the song as a way for Japanese people to break out from gender norms.

For people who are not aware, Japan is incredibly strict with gender norms. The LGBTQ community is not as progressive as it is in Western countries (I mean gay marriage isn’t completely legalized yet). And just looking at it from the stand point of gender roles and gender expectations, despite the progressive thinking, there are a lot of things Japanese men and women have to conform to just to be respected in everyday society. Because in Japan, the community has always been more important than the individual and it’s honestly the same for most asian countries as well.

A lot of the pressure of living in Japan, working with Japanese people is the pressure to conform and I’ve seen my friends do it through small things like getting bangs (because all Japanese women have bangs apparently), wearing make up when going out (because this is generally an accepted for all Japanese people) and always dressing your best because in that manner women are held to an incredibly high standard in Japan. And this goes similarly for men who are constantly pressured to be the breadwinner in the family. If your wife is making more than you, be ready to hear people talk. I know these expectations exist in a Western setting too but Japan is incredibly stiff as a society and this is one reason why, despite having numerous opportunities to moveto Japan myself, I am not at all entertaining that possibility. I have worked in a Japanese company and I hated it and moved to a western company right after six months. I have completely accepted the fact that there is no mobility career wise from a non-Japanese (and a woman at that) in Japanese society.

In conformity, hierarchies etc, Japan is its own monster. That’s why when songs like Jibunrashiku, Hitchcock (by Yorushika) or Shisoukan (by Yorushika) come out, for one it’s in Japanese so I wouldn’t approach the songs from an English and as a Japanese speaker and someone who is pretty familiar with Japanese culture, I can’t help interpret that song as a social commentary for the shitty parts of Japanese society and how they tend to shoot the concept of an ‘individual’ down.

But does that mean I completely shoot down the idea that Hange is NB?

NO. Yams said so himself, Hange’s gender is unknown. But at the same time, Yams recognizes the fact that in the anime and in the live action, Hange is a female. If Yams were that adamant to make Hange NB, I think he would have at least made more of an effort to police how she is depicted in the anime and in the live action.

His exact words were:　「ハンジは彼（彼女）みたいな、ちょっと浮世離れした、枠にとらわれない自由な感じで描きたかったんです。」If I roughly translated it to English, “I wanted to draw Hange as someone otherworldly, free from the confines of gender.”

Tbh, I wanted to avoid these gender asks altogether but I’ve seen the environment in twitter and the ways many people approach gender, particularly ‘nonbinary’ or genderfluid and it really just doesn’t sit well with me. For one, what’s up with all these rules on how to approach our nonbinary and LGBTQ friends? What’s up with all these accusations that if we don’t follow them to a T, then we’re suddenly transphobic or homophobic?

The fact that we’re creating all these rules on how to go about her nonbinary gender for one, just defeats the whole purpose of Hange being a free bird in the first place who wouldn’t have cared and who wouldnt’ ever have been confined to gender in the first place.

I mean the establishment of set rules and social norms on how to navigate gender, sex, sexuality and gender roles is the reason why we had heternormativity in the first place. And what I can see, yes, we did get progressive, we did start recognizing other genders, other ways of thinking but the danger in all this is that, we’re once again creating frameworks and norms about how people that identify as these genders are supposed to act. And this defeats the whole purpose of why we recognized concepts of other sexualities, other genders and breaks from gender roles in the first place.

We wanted to show these people that their feelings are valid, that the way they’re navigating their relationships and their identities are valid and the heternormative society we’ve lived in that has been condemning for so long, was flawed, was wrong.

But the thing is, with the establishment of all these social norms on how to navigate our relationships with LGBTQ people and how to navigate our own gender, sexuality, sex and role is just making us regress back to that shitty heteronormative society of a hundred years ago. Because suddenly, everyone is questioning once again ‘How am I supposed to be feeling if I’m nb?” “How am I supposed to be feeling if I’m trans?” “How am I supposed to be feeling if I’m LGBT?”

And we’re creating these abstract ideas of how exactly, being genderfluid is supposed to feel like. Am I really supposed to be going by ‘they?’ Am I supposed to be uncomfortable with CIS pronouns?

And If I don’t go through this process… If I don’t feel this way then maybe I’m not NB? Maybe I’m not Trans? Maybe I’m not LGBT? And if I don’t conform to this clear cut idea of what NB is which people set up for me, god forbid I might just be transphobic or homophobic.

And Here’s the thing, everyone’s journey to self discovery is unique and there is no exact way to go about your gender or identity. I find it terrifying actually that creating all these clear cut rules have built misconceptions in so many people already on what they are supposed to feel like when they decide to identify with a certain gender which is no different from long ago when people had to hide the fact that they liked people of the same gender because god forbid they might just be persecuted for being gay.

Creating these frameworks, these incredibly strict rules on how someone is supposed to navigate relationships with LGBTs and their own personal identities is only making it all the more dangerous for people who are in the process of discovering themselves.

Back in college, I used to accompany a friend to a clinic when he was starting HRT treatments and before he started them, he had to consult with a doctor and the consultation lasted months. Before all that, they gave him a checklist of ‘feelings,’ which if he does experience them, he checks it and if he does check enough of them and agrees with a huge chunk of them, then he might have gender dysphoria and maybe the HRT treatments and sex reassignment was for him. It was a hundred item checklist, pages full of waivers, warnings and questions about his own experiences with his gender identity. And the fact that he had to consult for months after on that? There must be a reason.

Maybe because the academe realizes, maybe because those adept on the field on gender realize that gender is too complex of a subject to have been boxed into these categories in the first place.

And this whole discourse or I wouldn’t say discourse more of like, this ‘pushing of agendas’ as to say, ‘this is how being gender fluid or non binary is supposed to feel like’ this is how being transgender is supposed to feel like and if you don’t fit it to a T then you’re not transgender or you’re not nb. Or if you don’t fit it all, maybe you’re just transphobic is dangerous for many reasons. Either it gatekeeps people who want to explore their gender further. Or it forces people to have to conform to these and force themselves to ‘feel’ all of these things in the first place.

And god, this is just the gender issue, I haven’t even explored the sexuality, gender roles or biological issue.

i mean pronouns are important but they don’t really reflect someone’s gender??? like there’s people who use he/they, she/they or all pronouns(? they just don’t conform to gender binary ahaha

Given the environment on twitter and having witnessed the bullying first hand that came with one writer who is active on twitter using she/her pronouns for Hange, I feel like my own writing and my own POV on how I go about my writing and how I approach the gender of Hange (since I strictly use she/her) might just be a ticking time bomb and I might find myself at the end of whatever hate war or ‘education’ or as I like to just refer to as bullying, one day.

I believe though I at least have enough knowledge and awareness of the LGBTQ situation and I think I did put a lot of thought already into this before I made my decision to use ‘she’ to refer to Hange.

(And tbh, you can be nonbinary and you can be female at the same time and I’ve written about that multiple times already BECAUSE THEY’RE NOT EVEN IN THE SAME CATEGORY. And creating this mutual exclusivity between being nonbinary and female just kinda invalidates a lot of those people who are still deciding where exactly they fall in this complex web of identity discovery)

As someone who generally mainly hangs out with LGBT people and i have been doing this since high school by the way, and as someone who has tried all the sexualities on the spectrum, I talked to my asexual friends about possibly being asexual, I have experimented with women and sometimes, I just had dry spells and it just so happened that in the end of all these, I fell in love with a guy but I really believe that gender is such a flexible thing and even though I am with aguy right now, I still simp over lesbians, gays, ciswomen, transgenders because simping isn’t about gender.

And these set of rules on how to navigate genders is just invalidating the experiences of people who are flitting in between the two identities and it just hinders the process of self discovery for a lot of people.

Anyway, the point is, there is only one statement I found fundamental when approaching my relationships with the LGBT community and my own perspective on my self identity.

Recognition of someone’s feelings and their journey to a gender identity and the pronouns that come with it are important.

Then someone might go “THEN WHY DON’T YOU RESPECT HANGE’s NON BINARY PRONOUNS. Because just because someone is nonbinary doesn’t mean they automatically go for they. Just because someone is non-binary, doesn’t mean I have to use every single pronoun on the spectrum. The only one who can tell me what pronouns they want used on them is the person in question.

(I actually read an argument somewhere that going for ‘they’ just because someone is NB is transphobic lmfao. Assuming someone’s pronouns is apparently transphobic too lmfao.)

AND HANGE IS FICTIONAL. And we will never hear about which pronoun she would have wanted in the first place and I think the great ‘nontransphobic’ in-between is just letting people interpret characters how they want to interpret characters in this fictional world (And Hange can be both interpreted as nb and female). It’s the policing which makes the whole process of self discovery, the process of navigating genders all the more difficult for a lot of people.

And policing how exactly people should navigate gender and sexuality is just gatekeeping. Hange is everyone’s character. The only gender and sexuality identity people have complete jurisdiction on, is their own. And this policing of what exactly certain journeys to discovery are supposed to feel like is inherently harmful for those who are still in the process of deciding for themselves where they stand.

And going back to what Yams said “I wanted to draw Hange as someone otherworldly, free from the confines of gender/sexuality/gender roles.” I agree with that.

Because even though I do use ‘she’ with Hange, I do not firmly believe that Hange is a cisgender heterosexual female either. I just believe there are so many more layers to her whole identity and I believe similarly for every single person. Just concluding for one’s self that Hange is nonbinary with a very narrow minded view of what non binary just generally defeats the whole purpose of being ‘free from the confines of gender’ and hinders a lot of discourse and analysis on Hange’s identity over all.

I mean, I don’t know if people agree with this but in the decades I have spent with my close friends figuring out their gender identities, changing pronouns, transitioning, coming out to their parents, here is one thing I noticed. They weren’t asking for a celebration of their gender or sexuality, they weren’t asking for all these policing on how people should approach them. All they wanted was for their feelings to be validated, normalized as an everyday occurrence. I think the point of all these LGBTQ discourse (and by extension race and sex discourse) were all there to just make all these different identities normalized and to completely eradicate the concept of a negative bias or an other which was generally plaguing society for a long time.

And as their friends, I have never approached them as this champion who would make sure EVERYONE RESPECTED THEM IN THAT WAY IN TWITTER THEY BELIEVE LGBTQ PEOPLE SHOULD BE RESPECTED. All these nonverbal rules I have set up for myself on how to go about being friends with them is because I wanted them to be happy and comfortable in their shoes. And what were the types of things they appreciated? Me hiding it from their parents until they were ready to come out, me helping make their relationship work with their partner, me respecting the pronouns they requested for themselves, me accompanying them to HRT when their parents refused.

And you know what, that was only a facet of our friendships. My friends’ gender identities and sexualities never dominated discourse. None of them were the ‘token gay friend,’ the ‘token lesbian friend’ or the ‘token asexual friend’ or the ‘token NB friend.’ They were all people I genuinely care about who just happened to have fallen in love with someone of the same gender. They were just people who just happened to be uncomfortable with their original sex. But I would never just describe them as just that. My friend who just so happens to identify as assexual makes a great companion on a night out drinking. My friend who just so happens to be trasngender is really great with logistics and planning and was super helpful and I was eternally grateful when we worked together on that one project. My friend who just happens to be a lesbian has the cutest picture of her girlfreind on her phone screen.

I will memorize their favorite orders, what makes them tick, what makes them such a great companion, their talents, capabilities more than I will remember their gender. And that’s the characetr song in question is called “Jibunrashiku” or in English “just like me.” Because in the end a strict society which creates all these maxims of what exactly people of a certain gender should act would of course birth songs like “Just like me” A society which puts so much emphasis on gender and sex as an identity instead of other things like personality, preferences, skills etc.

And I don’t know if it applies to everyone. But my friends appreciate it because this journey to whatever gender identity they chose wasn’t rooted in some sort of strict framework on how they should be treated according to twitter. It was rooted in their own experiences and how these experiences made them feel.

Do they feel weird in a woman’s body? Do they just don’t feel any romantic attraction to the opposite gender?

Just treat them as how you would treat anyone else you respect. Just be a decent person. Just be a good friend.

Respect their requests for their own personal pronouns. If they need help, help them to the best of your abilities.

And here’s the thing, the approach I use with navigating identities, sexuaities genders are rooted in one very simple concept which can be applied to the race discourse, the feminist discourse etc etc.

Don’t be an ass. Respect people. Don’t reduce people to one facet of their identity. And by extension, when faced with such a dubious situation, think, discern for yourself what’s right or wrong. When there are people educating you, policing you on what is right or wrong, process that information objectively.

All I have here right now is my own opinions on the gender discourse on Hange and my own opinions on the discourse overall.

If you don’t agree with it, then have a nice day and I hope you find something else that will convince you to be more openminded but...

UTANG NA LOOB HUWAG LANG KAYO MAMBULLY NG TAO POTA. MAGHANAP NALANG KAYO NG IBANG PWEDENG GAWIN SA BUHAY MO.

ANG DAMING NASASAKTAN ANG DAMING NATRATRAUMA ANG DAMING NAWAWALANG GANA MAGSULAT KASI DI KAYO NAG-IISIP. PURO TIRA LANG.

Okay thank you for listening. Do what you want with the information up there but I have said my piece.

#hange zoe #hanji zoe #commander hange #commander hanji #meta

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moonlitarcticfoxnebula · 4 years ago

Text

Thoughts

So, I was typing in my (digital) journal when this came to me. It is important, and I think some of you need to read it, especially the artists out there. It’s long, but please, take the time to read it at some point. Well, here you go:

One part of me just wants to stay here forever, and another part wants to be as far away as possible, in a different universe. I wish I could just enter my own time zone where some of the stuff I want to be real is real, and I could live that life as long as I’d like. I’d then want to just come back at the exact time I left. That way, I could do both. Stay in the moment and go away. Stay and have adventures. Seek shelter from the real world and enter one with more adversities but also more fun. Break the time-space continuum and teleport elsewhere entirely. Not death. Definitely not death. The universes of my dreams, my imagination. Where time stays the same, and I can live carefree. Never grow older. Never enter a boring routine just to earn green paper. I don’t want green paper to be absolutely everything in my life. I don’t want to be controlled by it. I want to be free. Free of responsibilities. Free of pressure and oppression. Maybe those worlds from books are difficult, but they are also fun. The adventures bring fun. Life is complex but also overall fun. Why is everything we want influenced by money? We are oppressed into everyday routines that cause stress and anxiety. I want to soar free, be above this. Not everything we learn comes from school. It comes from experiences, feelings, and emotions. How did Newton discover gravity? He wasn’t in a classroom, focusing on what would later bring money. No, he was outside, by an apple tree. Did Shakespeare make poems for school? No, he poured his heart and feelings in lines and stanzas. Maybe Newton studied gravity after wondering how the apple fell and hit his head. He did this from simple curiosity, though. He wanted to know how it worked. He developed a natural sense of curiosity. Many people don’t like school. Why? Some people do. Who knows, maybe those people’s interest in school burns out from stress? Maybe the flame of motivation continues from dedication to others or through determination. Still, there are so many people out there who think school isn’t necessary. Learning some of the same things over and over throughout the years. Why does it matter to us? As children, we all felt curiosity, didn’t we? Why is the sky blue? How does day become night? How does love work, and why does it happen? We want to know more. How things work, why they are the way they are. What would happen if the world turned on its head, and it didn’t work that way? We made experiments and learned from them. Attempting to talk was experimenting a language, the feel of words. So why do many people begin to hate learning? We are forced to learn what they want us to learn. They try making us who they want us to be. Who? Society. So many people are trying to ‘fix’ or change us. Who we are. Some people’s creativity just runs out after people tell them it’s not important. Maybe they tell them to become doctors, nurses, or something of the sort. Why? Money. They think people without money don’t have lives. We cut trees, and give what we make out of it to people who ‘deserve’ it more. That’s not true. Does an actor deserve more money than a loving single mother? Just because people all over the world recognize you if you were on a piece of paper and not the mother? School. Why do we go to school? Money. Yet, you need to pay in order to get an education and get paid. Why do we shut down people who want to sing, dance, or create something so that they can receive money? Well, maybe they aren’t any good at it. How did Thomas Edison make the first working light bulb? Did he think he just wasn’t good at making stuff and give up on his dream of creating something helpful? What about Einstein? They all focused on their dreams and did what they dreamed of. They were curious. Sometimes, different people are curious about different things. Yet, we all want to teach them the exact same thing. Maybe one of them likes and is interested in the way we create color and how to define beauty. Maybe the other likes English and Math class. Yet, we almost always shut down the color kid and lean towards the kid who likes math. We give the kid who likes color a big fat F because he doesn’t like Math and English and doesn’t pay attention to them. Yet, you give the other kid an A and congratulate them. Over time, the other kid shuts down his creativity, because, hey, no one appreciates it anyways. They say he won’t get anywhere with color. Now, they have to do the same thing as the other kid. They pay attention, and get an A. They congratulate him on it. Why couldn’t they congratulate him on reaching his dreams and goals instead? On growing in something he likes? His happiness? They want him to make money. Still, these are just kids, and they don’t understand why they have to do this, isn’t money just paper? Later, they’ll get it. Will they still be happy? Maybe they became an engineer. Not that they wanted to. They would rather paint, no matter how badly it looked. It was colorful. It made them happy. Why? Why does society do this? Maybe money was created in order to organize ourselves and create a system. Those that worked hard would earn more money. Right? No. Some people are born rich. Yet, the people that need it most in order to do what they wish don’t have it a lot of the time. Wouldn’t we rather be free and be creative and curious in our own ways? Why do we need money? Why is it important? What doesn’t make you happy shouldn’t be important. Those that have money but are unhappy, why don’t they do what makes them happy? Maybe it doesn’t even involve much money. We could be generous, and give it to those whose dreams require money? Those who want to go to a four-year university to become an engineer. To those that really want to become an engineer? Is our imagination really that useless? That it doesn’t deserve any credit? That’s not right. The Wright brothers were creative. How would they get the idea of a flying machine otherwise? Do we all want a boring routine? Maybe we shouldn’t be lazy, but we should do what makes us happy without being lazy. Maybe it’s art, writing, reading, drawing, sports, inventions, math, finding out the way things work, exploring, etc. It’s important to find out who we are, isn’t it? Work on it. Don’t let anyone tell you creativity is less important than math. Do what makes you happy. Creativity is important. Stay curious. Create the universes you want. Stay happy. Become happy. Be yourself. We’ve all heard these a million times, maybe we thought they were stupid. They are important. Love yourself. Dream big. Don’t let anyone tell you who you are or what you like is insignificant. It’s not. You are important. We don’t need to rely on money for a happy life. We just need to find ourselves and the people who will always be there to love and support us. Live, laugh, love. Peace.

Thanks to those who decided to hear me out.

#artists on tumblr #a thought #creativity #creators #important #a message #please read when you have time #random thoughts #just hear me out

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lovelyirony · 4 years ago

Text

@ironmanspussy here we are, directly inspired by your wonderful texpost!

King Rhodes needed a partner to rule. It was ancient law, something he hadn’t really desired to follow. But unfortunately, the lawyers are assholes and want to create a monopoly of power that he just simply hasn’t the time to dismantle if he’s to follow his ten-year policy plan.

His partner should be well-mannered, aware of high society dress codes as well as how to navigate regular, everyday wear, and be calm in times of crisis.

So begins the search.

“You’re not going to find someone you like like that,” his advisor, Carol says, laughing. “I guarantee it.”

“We’ll see,” Rhodes decides.

Oh, they saw.

They saw a lot.

Almost every single candidate is bad. Or just off, in some way.

“Rogers seemed like a nice fit,” Carol says, tapping on her clipboard.

"He was nice, not for me. A bit too much.”

“What, muscle?”

“You could say that’s a factor. He’s also just a little too take-charge-of-everything.”

“Mm, that could pose a problem later. Well, the candidates who most matched your requirements are all out.”

“You’re kidding.”

“You’re a very particular kind of guy, Jim. So here are the rest.”

“Send in the clowns,” Rhodes says, waving his hand in dismissal and drawing the other one to his forehead to signal a headache about to come on.

“You just sent Barnes out,” Danvers reminds him, grinning.

“Asshole.”

“I’m still getting paid!” Carol sing-songs.

It’s almost better. Almost. Prince Clint Barton is an impossibly good marksman, and...that’s about it. His leadership style is far different from the Rhodes kingdom needs and he admits that he almost showed up in jeans.

Well, at least there’s honesty. Rhodes could find that forgivable.

But the jeans. Good god.

Bruce Banner is a total sweetheart, but his constitution is quite poor and again with the fashion choices. He shows up in a very nice outfit and has a nice wit about him.

They talk at length, and Carol swears that it will go well and perhaps there will actually be a wedding by June, all things said and considered.

This is until Rhodes leads Dr. Banner out to the gardens to meet Thor, their part-time warrior and full-time gardener.

Thor is completely gone on the scientist-ruler, and there it is.

“This is supposed to be your matchmaking,” Carol reminds him, scowling. “It was going well.”

“Once he met Thor anyways, it would have been all over. You know Thor’s type. The scientists that could ruin the earth if they truly had the thought to.”

“I suppose you’re right. Next person, then. She looks promising, Empress Romanov?”

Natasha Romanov is a terrifying figure. Very, very terrifying.

That being said, she has excellent taste in fashion and promised to send Rhodes some reviews, but “unfortunately has her heart spoken for.”

(It’s not very unfortunate. Rhodes feared for his life.)

He’s about to lose it, to be completely honest. Is there seriously no one out there?

“Your last candidate, at least for this month, is Tony Stark. High-profile inventor.”

“Not royalty?”

“Essentially, he is. Dad helped create weapons, he followed with protection and medical detail. He usually doesn’t agree to meet, so you’ll have to ask him why.”

“Refuse to meet royalty?”

“People.”

Tony Stark did, in fact, refuse to meet people. In general, people were not his strong suit and he saw no point to marriage.

“If you marry well, you get more access to resources for your reacting thing,” Pepper says.

“My reactor. I’ve told you that a million times.”

“And I’ve forgotten it a million and one. But if you meet Rhodes, he’s probably your best chance of not marrying a total shit royal.”

“And why is that?”

“Searching online for your answer is free, I am not. Your bill will be sent to your inbox.”

Tony stares after Pepper. She’s too damn capable.

He sighs to himself.

He does need more funding for his projects. His father cut him off completely and while that wouldn’t be the worst thing, Tony’s not going to charge obscene prices just to keep himself afloat.

So...marrying a royal. Not the best plan in the world, especially given Tony’s track record with people. Sure, he can play the part. But he just...won’t.

This is why Tony’s about five minutes late, cursing up a blue streak at a guard that has followed him into the hall because due to his appearance he thinks he needs to have a “check-in” with the people at the front desk for appointments, and in general? The day has been bad.

Also, Pepper forced him into “nice” clothes. While Tony can and has worn his nice clothing before, he does not like the ones that Pepper chose because they are uncomfortable, stiff, and absolutely a bit too long.

So he trips on the carpet.

“Motherfucker!”

Rhodes’ head pops away from his conversation with the chef regarding the dinner menu.

Here is a man with probably the most intricately embroidered robes he’s ever seen on, hair that looks like it was probably not even styled, just brushed through, and had about the entirety of the guard behind him asking him about an appointment time.

Obviously, he’s the most attractive man Rhodes has ever seen in his life.

“And who are you?” he asks.

“Tony. Stark. Mechanic and inventor. Um, you talked to Pepper about me? I think I’m in your circle of potential candidates for ruling. It’s totally fine if you kick me out, I kind of scuffed your carpet.”

“We need new carpet anyway,” Carol says. “We’ll disregard your entrance for now, Stark.”

“Tony, please.”

“Tony,” Carol says slowly, smiling. “You will be walking around the gardens with King Rhodes, pausing for dinner.”

“Cool.”

Rhodes has to stop from laughing. Cool. He’s already a fan of this.

Carol leans over to him, whispering in his ear.

“I thought you wanted someone who had a cool head, not someone like that.”

“Well, I can be wrong every once in a while.”

“Or more.”

“Every once in a while,” Rhodes reiterates. “Besides, I have a good feeling about this.”

“Hm.”

Walking through a garden with a stranger is not as smooth as one would expect. Rhodes isn’t exactly well-versed in asking people what their plans are for the future, and if they are amenable to perhaps marriage.

“What do you do for fun?” Tony asks.

He’s sort of taken aback at the question.

“Pardon me?”

“What do you do for fun?” he repeats. “Like, do you cook? Sew? Duel with your rivals? What do you do for fun?”

Well. He has to think for a moment.

“I go on runs.”

“That is not fun. Don’t tell me that that’s what’s fun for you.”

“What, can’t run?”

“I don’t run, there’s a difference. I’ll run when something’s chasing me.”

“And yet you won’t have training, like I will.”

“Did you forget my trade, Your Imminence?” Tony asks, voice mocking him.

It’s honestly refreshing. Rhodes doesn’t like it when people are so serious around him, so afraid to disappoint.

“An inventor? You’re going to invent a way to run better?”

“To fly, honey. Honestly...”

After that, it’s a dead-set decision from Rhodes.

He offers his hand in marriage, as well as the crown. Tony blinks.

“You haven’t even seen me take a turn in the ballroom.”

“It’s either going to be wildly entertaining or surprising, and I can’t wait for either.”

Tony enters his own room, in a panic.

This has to go well. He has to dress to impress.

“Pepper, he’s holding a party for our engagement. I have to dress nicely.”

“You know how to do that, I don’t know why you’re telling me that.”

“There are so many factors. Do you know anyone who can embroider his family crest on any shoes? What colors I’m meant to do? Oh my god, we have to fuse the colors together. This is going to be a disgrace. I’ll be exiled to be a hermit in the forest who relies on bark for sustenance, and this--”

“Can you. Potentially, maybe, chill? It’ll be fine.”

“You say that, but right now I’m imagining having to go to war because I didn’t wear the right color of red, so...”

“You are literally the worst person alive.”

“False, we both know Justin Hammer and out of the two of us, I think you’d want to date me more.”

“Don’t be a smartass.”

“Just practical, Pep. Just practical. Now help me shade match Rhodey’s red.”

“He’s Rhodey now?”

“In my head? Yes. I don’t like Rhodes, I absolutely will not call him Jim until we both hit seventy years old.”

“Better let him know that.”

Rhodes gets a text from Tony.

so a.) your new nickname from me is rhodey. don’t question it, honeybear. Anyways, would you say your royal family color is closer to garnet-red or blood-red?

Rhodey blinks. He likes the nickname. It’s different. He has to show the text to Carol.

“What in the hell does that mean?”

“Let me google it.”

She analyzes the results, frowning.

“I’m thinking blood-red.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

“Why does he want to know the color?”

“I don’t know, I’ll ask.”

we’ve decided it matches closer to blood-red, Tones. Why do you ask?

Tony blinks. Other nickname. Interesting. He likes it.

my outfit choice relies heavily on this.

He leaves it at that, grinning as he puts his phone away.

Rhodey is laughing. He’s excited to see his husband-to-be.

Tony knows he looks damned good. The whole outfit is incredible. Red with gold stitching throughout, and he got his hair to cooperate to be artfully messy instead of just messy.

“I’m surprised at you, you clean up well,” Pepper teases. “You ready to go and make your debut?”

“As ready as ever,” Tony says, fixing the chain around his neck. The gold glints off the lights, and he knows he’s about to be the best dressed person in the room, with perhaps the exception of Rhodey.

He knows that most people are surprised that he’s the one that King Rhodes has decided to marry. He’s not known for being a particularly polite royal. In fact, he has told multiple members of royalty to “get fucked or get out of my way” when they want him to build something that he refuses to build.

So he’s not exactly the perfect choice. But his outfit is still the best in the room.

“Hi gorgeous,” Rhodey says, smiling. “You look incredible.”

“Well I do know how to make an entrance, after all,” Tony says. “You’ll find out this is only the tip of the iceberg.”

“Well then, I’m in for treats all my life,” Rhodey says. “How are you tonight, Tones?”

“Doing well, finished up working on one of the cars for Thor today.”

“Wait, you’re the one who’s refinishing it? He hasn’t been able to shut up about it for weeks! I was the one who used to look at it.”

“You like fixing up cars?”

“Yes, of course I do!”

From there, conversation flows. They understand each other well, laugh at the same jokes, and agree on cake flavors.

It’s not love, not yet. But they’re getting there.

It is officially love when Tony steals Rhodey from his royal duties to get a cheeseburger.

“Sometimes it’s good to get out of the throne, don’t you think?” Tony says, grinning over his sunglasses.

“For a cheeseburger? Can’t say I’ve ever done anything like that.”

“That’s because you’re all fancy and posh, I bet you don’t even know the f-word,” Tony says.

“Fuck you,” Rhodey jokes.

Tony gasps. “The king knows a curse word? Oh my lord! What...shame you bring to your family!”

Rhodey laughs, and it’s in this moment that he realizes that spending the rest of his days with Tony is potentially the best possible option in the world.

“I’m so glad we’re getting married,” he says. Tony stills.

“You...you are?”

“You’re the best thing to happen to me, I think,” Rhodey says, taking a sip of water as if he hasn’t just said the sweetest thing Tony’s ever heard. “And I hope that I’m the best thing to ever happen to you.”

“I mean I don’t know, the AC/DC reunion tour was pretty sick...” Tony says, grinning. “I’m kidding. Rhodey, I think we’re gonna be a good team. And I’m glad that I get to be with you.”

Their wedding is the talk of the year. Literally no one can shut up about it, but maybe that’s because Tony accidentally showed up late because he was inventing and had wild hair and maybe a stray grease-stain on his forehead.

Rhodey just grinned.

“You better not be late to the reception.”

“I’ll try my best. You know how I am.”

They kiss, and Rhodey sends him into a deep dip. Tony laughs into the kiss, and it becomes one of the most well-known photographs of the year.

Sure, Rhodey didn’t exactly get all of the qualifications that he wanted out of his ruling partner. Tony is absolutely not calm in times of crisis, and stress-bought novelty socks.

He more than once told a difficult business partner to “absolutely get fucked up on a Thursday, see if I give a singular shit when my husband is ten times better than you,” and also has a certain unawareness of some of his public outfit choices. (Hello sweatpants with holes in them and a striped hoodie.)

But Tony makes the best coffee ever, always gets Rhodey flowers from the supermarket, and is perhaps the most compassionate man he’s ever met.

So not a bad trade-off.

They lay in bed together, Rhodey looking over his obscenely trashy detective novels with his reading glasses, and Tony battling Pepper in a word search competition online.

“I love you,” Tony says out of nowhere, smiling. He presses a kiss to Rhodey’s shoulder.

“You’re okay,” Rhodey responds, patting Tony’s thigh.

He makes a squawk of outrage as Rhodey’s head turns from his book, grinning.

“You better give me a kiss to make up for that,” Tony demands. Rhodey rolls his eyes.

“Of course, drama queen.”

“Drama queen? I was told by the love of my life that I was ‘okay’ after one year of marriage? And I am supposed to be unaffected? Absolutely unacceptable, I think I will fling myself into a pit in the ocean, and--”

Rhodey cuts him off with a kiss.

“Or not. Not could definitely work.”

#lovelyirony writes #rhodeytony #not the exact direction i was going in #but hey! u do what u gotta do #rhodey #tony stark #ironhusbands #pepper potts #natasha romanov #carol danvers #tony does Not care about his appearance rlly #like he knows how to dress but like. also overthinks it

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nclkafilms · 3 years ago

Photo

Looking at life from both sides

(Review of ‘CODA’ watched on the 31st of January 2022)

In the beginning of 2021, Sian Heder's 'CODA' became an instant crowd pleaser at Sundance taking home both the director, grand jury and audience award as well as a record breaking acquisition by Apple. Yet, I remember seeing people asking whether it would just fall in the slipstream of 'Sound of Metal' and be overlooked come the 2022 awards season due to the surprising success of Metal during last year's season. Luckily, that's not the case. CODA is still here, there and everywhere. Along with 'Sound of Metal' it is another great example of how to make films about marginalised groups with its focus on a fishing family of four in which Emilia Jones' Ruby is the only hearing member, making her a 'child of deaf adults' or CODA. The awards success of CODA (so far) shows that it's more than just a sweet, heartwarming coming-of-age film, but how come?

The film starts at sea, where we see Ruby with her family on their trawler. She sings loudly (to Etta James’ ‘Something’s Got A hold On Me’); her father and brother are there, but being deaf they never hear her singing. In a way she's singing for someone while singing all on her own. As she starts her last year in high school, the presence of fellow student Miles makes her pick Choir class, because as she says to her friend "I sing all the time”, but is it really Miles that draws her there? This is where her personal journey starts; the journey towards a future in music, a future driven by her own dreams. Dreams that are fuelled by her teacher, Mr. V, who offers to tutor her ahead of applying to a music college. Simultaneously, the fishermen in town - including Ruby's family - are hit by increasing demands, falling prices and bureaucracy. Challenges that only are bigger when you are forced to have a hearing member onboard. A job that can “only” be done by Ruby being the only hearing member of the family business. It's here, in the family drama that CODA both hits all coming-of-age clichés and ends up finding its overpowering strength.

One very big reason why it succeeds in spite of doing everything by the book, is due to some amazing performances from its main cast. Especially from Emilia Jones as Ruby & Troy Kotsur as her father, Frank. Jones not only sings like an angel, she also shows some true acting talent as she balances the feelings of Ruby with a fitting subtlety. She is in one way your everyday teenager caught in the middle of figuring out who you want to be and what love is while battling with embarrassing parents and an unreasoned self-doubt. On the other hand, she is - as part of a marginalised family who don't get or seek a lot of help and understanding from society - very much grown up with huge responsibilities. Jones caught me off guard with her charming, touching and fragile performance, that in my opinion deserves more awards attention than it ended up getting. And boy, her version of Joni Mitchell's 'Both Sides Now' is one of the musical highlights of 2021 as a film year (which included some big musical films!). That she had to learn both singing, sign language and trawling for the film only makes her performance more impressive.

Kotsur, deaf himself, is no stranger to Hollywood. However, his turn as Frank here seems like a late career kick starter with plenty of awards focus coming his way with an Oscar nomination the latest in his hat - fully deserved, that is. He gets quite a few big laughs as the embarrassing parent whether it is when arriving at Ruby’s school blasting heavy gangster rap from the car’s speakers so he can feel the bass or his suggestive sign language when Miles is at home with Ruby practising for the first time. His humour landed perfectly with me, but he is just as good when he has to be dramatic. Two scenes in particular stands out for me: when he finally “speaks up” at a council meeting letting all his frustrations go. Even though Ruby does the talking, Kotsur embodies all Frank’s frustrations as a businessman who is unfairly treated, as a father who tries to keep his family together, and as a marginalised person in an environment where he has never felt fully included. The other scene is when he asks Ruby to sing for him, so he can feel her singing. This scene was one of the most touching of the film - in particular because of Kotsur’s very fine work. The connection between Frank and Ruby in this scene feels so natural, so real.

That is in general how I would describe the family portrait in CODA: natural and real. Apart from Jones and Kotsur the family is made up of previous Oscar winner Marlee Matlin as Jackie (the mother) and Daniel Durant as Leo (the older brother) - both, like Kotsur, are deaf in real life. Matlin as Jackie has the least to do of the four, but she gets to shine in some scenes; as a mother realising her daughter is growing up and might fly away on her own journey and as someone who hides away from her surroundings in fear of not fitting in. Daniel Durant as Ruby’s bigger brother, Leo, really gets to be more than just the annoying bigger brother as the film takes its turns. Durant gets to highlight some of the most fascinating dilemmas of Ruby and the family’s situation. Is he good enough? Can he be the help to the family that he wants to be and maybe feel obliged to be as the oldest child? His reactions towards Ruby as she struggles to pick her right path are both hard-hitting and understandable. I actually believed the family bond between the four of them; one of the film’s strongest assets. Finally, Eugenio Derbez as music teacher, Bernardo Villalobos, grows throughout the film and ends up a stronger character than the initially indicated (classic) caricature of a music teacher. The chemistry between Ruby and Miles (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) is lovely, but their storyline is still the weakest and most bland aspect of the film.

It is, however, in the family bond and drama between Ruby, Leo, Jackie and Frank that the film soars. This is in many ways due to an unequivocal realism and authenticity. Naturally, Kotsur, Matlin and Durant adds a layer of authenticity to their roles by being deaf actors - something the original French film (on which this is based) was criticised for not having. It is clear that some of their characters’ frustrations, emotions and actions are relatable to them and it suits the film and their performances. The second reason for the film’s authenticity is the work of writer and director Sian Heder, who were adamant that the film needed to put more focus on Ruby’s family and cast deaf actors for all deaf roles, while also having CODA’s and the deaf community heavily involved in her adaptation of the French original. She has done a very good job delivering a tight and heartwarming screenplay that manages to tell us just enough about the family, its individual members and the other individuals surrounding Ruby for us to understand their actions and emotions while steering free from over-explaining and over-indulging on the obvious tear-jerker material in place.

While the acting, writing and directing are of the finer work in 2021, the film is somewhat lacklustre in its audio-visual visions. Perhaps in particular when it comes to the visual visions it falls flat; the cinematography is bland and to some extent the film’s visual style have some tv movie vibes. As previously mentioned, the film knows all the typical “needs” of a coming-of-age-film and it ticks nearly every box: a troubling love interest, a dilemma between following your own dreams and doing what is expected of you, embarrassing and troubling family relations, a close friend offering some comic relief and an inspirational figure to spur the dream initially. It’s all here and as such it is almost a paint-by-numbers example of this genre always balancing on the edge of corniness. Something I’m typically slightly allergic towards.

So how come it works so well anyway? Ultimately it is down to a combination of the stunning performances from the main cast, the empathetic directing and writing from Sian Heder and a brilliant soundtrack featuring a fitting score from Marius de Vries and some very well-picked songs performed beautifully by Emilia Jones in particular. The actors find their way to your heartstrings thanks to their natural chemistry, subtlety and nuanced emotions. Heder has managed to create a story about a marginalised family that gains its power and value by first and foremost presenting us with a view into their family life - it is the family tensions, drama and decisions that drive their story while never losing track of their marginalised reality. The latter never becomes a dominating or forced factor, though, and thus CODA never does to its subject matter what society so often does; it never marginalises the challenges the family faces nor the value they have to their surroundings. To me, that is why CODA ends up as the authentic, touching and empathetic film experience that is.

4/5

#Film #Movie #Film Review #Movie Review #Academy Awards 2022 #94th Academy Awards #CODA #Best Picture #Best Actor in a Supporting Role #Best Adapted Screenplay #Troy Kotsur #Sian Heder #Emilia Jones #Marlee Matlin #Daniel Durant #Eugenio Derbez #Marius de Vries #Ferdia Walsh-Peelo

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revlyncox · 3 years ago

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Muse of Fire

What practices can help us make creative use of the distance between what is and what could be?

This is a Platform Address for the first Sunday of the new year, 2022. Rev. Lyn Cox wrote this for the Washington Ethical Society.

O for a muse of fire that would ascend

The brightest heaven of invention!

A kingdom for a stage, princes to act

And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!

These words from the Prologue of Shakespeare’s Henry V often come to my mind when I wish for more flashiness in community life. A large part of what we do together in community is make meaning by telling stories. And, just like the map can never completely match the territory, the story will always somehow miss the mark of describing exactly what happened, even if we believe it’s true.

It would be nice if we could have fireworks, if our Platforms about nature could be experienced in the great outdoors while remaining accessible, if I could get real frogs and toads to speak to you about their friendship. It would be nice if none of us ever made mistakes in pronunciation, if our technology worked as intended 100% of the time, if the entire Sunday operation could simply happen without anyone having to think about it. But that’s not the world that Shakespeare lived in, and it’s not the world we live in. There is a gap between what is and what we imagine. That gap can lead us to disappointment or resentment, or it can lead us to cooperation and creativity.

The Chorus in Henry the V names some of the positive potential in this gap. Later in the speech, we hear, “Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts.” In other words, the listener is part of the co-creation of the story, and imperfection is part of the deal. There are no passive roles in storytelling or meaning-making. Speakers, players, musicians, teachers, all kinds of presenters do the best they (and we) can, and yet our community’s stories and ethics and living traditions can only come alive with group participation.

I want to acknowledge that the fire metaphor is powerful, and part of why it is powerful is because fire is dangerous. I am sure Shakespeare knew that when Henry the V first opened, and he certainly knew it after the Globe Theater burned down in 1613. Fire was a real and present danger in Elizabethan England, even as it was a necessary part of everyday life. For us today, if you are joining us from Colorado or have loved ones there, or anywhere that has been increasingly imperiled by wildfires in recent years, maybe fire or a muse of fire isn’t a metaphor you can be enthusiastic about today. That’s OK.

None of the traditional elemental forces - earth, water, fire, air - are free from danger. Air in the form of high winds contributed to the Colorado disasters. Waters are rising all over the globe. Earth, damaged by mining and fracking, is not as stable as it used to be. So it’s understandable if we want to interrogate those metaphors and decide what meaning they have now. I hope we can receive that sensitivity to elemental imagery as a call for balance and responsibility. Rather than censoring and silencing all poetry and literature that draws on elemental metaphors, let’s treat the earth, the water, the fire, and the air with respect. By recognizing the danger and opportunity of elemental metaphors, we cultivate awareness of the consequences of our actions. Let us celebrate creativity and collaboration and also channel those practices toward the common good.

“Pardon, gentles all.” There will always be a gap between what is and what we can imagine. There will always be a divide between the effortless, fluent perfection of what we wish and the beautiful imperfection of humans in community. That space in between holds possibilities, but also the danger of cynicism or even hopelessness. We invoke the “Muse of Fire,” not to obscure the in-between space, but to illuminate it in ever-changing flickers of imagination. We can be warmed by that flame as we gather around in a practice of collective meaning-making.

This in-between space separating what is from what we imagine is especially relevant at the New Year. For many people, this is a time of setting intentions, of outlining the ways we want to grow or heal or learn in the coming months. Not everybody. For some, this is a time to take stock, to grieve what was lost, and to clear a space in the unknown for what might yet arrive. For some, every day is simply another day to breathe, with no special power at the hinges in the calendar. Yet perhaps every day can be a chance to co-create the beloved community.

Whether as a greeting for a day like any other or as part of a process of setting intentions for the year, we might be asking ourselves what we are ready to let go of, what goals we will set, what practices will we cultivate at this turning point. In this liminal space, how will we co-create a path for being more fully the people we aspire to be? How will we make the in-between place a shaft of light that promotes growth and thriving–an interplay that connects us, rather than a chasm that divides us?

It is all too easy for the in-between place to become a barrier. The world as it is provides many opportunities for disappointment, grief, and pain. The gap between the worst of what we observe and the best of what we can imagine might be overwhelming. We have talked before and we will talk again about doing the next, right thing. Each small action we take toward collective liberation makes room for more. Among our community, with people who have such big hearts and complex ideas, sometimes we find ourselves divided by a common language, each keenly feeling our place in the vacillating journey between being frozen in fear and being moved to intense action. Sometimes we find ourselves divided with loyalties to different solutions, or different ways of describing the problems we face together. Looking out across the gap between what is and what could be, sometimes we haven’t even waved our hand over the empty space before we find ourselves in conflict.

The Muse of Fire might help us here by moving the conversation to another level. Perhaps by using metaphor and play, we might approach our challenges from a different direction. In recognizing that we each have a role in telling the story or making meaning from the tradition, perhaps we can make room for others to describe their own experiences. Allowing for the flicker of creativity might help us take ourselves less seriously, to lower the barriers of pridefulness that prevent us from appreciating each other’s gifts. Basically, we need to give ourselves permission to be silly sometimes, to pretend, to brainstorm without caveats and interruptions. I’m not an expert on improvisational theater, yet I have definitely seen a working group transformed by an exercise like tossing an imaginary ball around a circle. The group learns to focus their attention, to honor each person in turn, to respond to spontaneity, to release themselves from perfection for a moment.

In setting intentions for the next leap across the space of in-between, some of us may benefit from letting go of ego or over-seriousness or the drive to force everything to make rational sense in every moment. Creativity and playfulness can be practices that help us bring out the best in others and thereby in ourselves.

One of my favorite parts of the “Muse of Fire” prologue is the invitation to the listener. The Chorus asks the listener to join them in painting the scenery with their imagination, to allow a few actors to represent thousands, to travel through time and space with the narrative. “‘Tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,” says the Chorus; the listener helps to fill out the grandness of the story and the character and the setting. Storytelling is always cooperative, as is meaning-making, as is community-building.

Forgetting this collaborative imperative is another potential obstacle in the space between what is and what we imagine. If we believe ourselves to be powerless, it is much more difficult to find meaning and purpose in the experience before us. To be clear, there are some things we are powerless about, and some ways we voluntarily restrain our exercise of power for the common good. It’s not polite to physically jump into the action at a sporting event or artistic production when you are not expected. Our lives are full of incidents we can’t control, and yet sometimes we can choose how to frame those events or how to respond. Trauma can make our sense of agency much harder to access, so I’m not saying that it’s simple or even possible for every person in every circumstance to change their attitude or approach. When we are able to access our sense of agency, though, the challenges we face together can become a group improvisation, a jazz performance in motion, an adventure story that adapts to our times.

Forgetting or ignoring the agency we do have can lead us to view the in-between space with resentment instead of creativity. I have definitely seen this in community-building. When we work together to understand our roles and to pursue our mission as a team, there are all kinds of things we can imagine in that space. If we don’t feel empowered to be part of that process, all that’s left is disappointment that we are stuck with what is. Again, sometimes we are stuck with rotten stuff, at least for the moment, and it’s part of the work of community to support each other in coping with that.

When a person doesn’t see themselves as part of a solution that is unfolding, their feeling of separation can manifest as the person tearing others down, offering only critique to the exclusion of appreciation, and leaping to judge before understanding the effort that is going into the work in progress. Sometimes the invitation to collaborate wasn’t made clearly enough, sometimes the person needs encouragement to bring forth their gifts, and sometimes the person is more used to giving instructions than being in the middle of a messy improvisational collaboration. Any one of us is vulnerable to this pitfall. When we are feeling personally drained, and the pandemic has led to a lot of people feeling this way, the temptation to criticize first and ask questions later is close at hand.

The Muse of Fire reminds us that making meaning is a collective process. Building community is a collective process. Making our way through a troubled time in history is a collective process. People have, for centuries, gathered around council fires, camp fires, festival fires, and candle-lit tables to share depth and wonder and hope. We can let our Zoom screens be some of those fires we gather around. Offer appreciation. Ask open questions. Share the visions that the flickering flames bring to your imagination, and listen with love as others share theirs.

In setting our intentions, it may be that letting go of harsh judgement will lighten the load and help us rise together across this in-between space. Being curious might generate more solutions, or at least a sense of connection. We may find that cultivating awareness of our agency and cooperating with others in channeling that agency will help us find more possibilities in the unknown.

Moving toward a better version of ourselves, of our community, of our world requires imagination. Playfulness, curiosity, and a willingness to get a little bit messy might help us take action toward our positive intentions. We need each other. Let us draw each other out with mutual encouragement, listening, appreciation, and creativity.

May it be so.

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theladysexpistol · 4 years ago

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Hi! I love your writing and I’m wondering if you could do a one shot of Risotto wakeing up from a one night stand with s/o in bed. And you know the phrase every action has a consequence? Could the consequence be s/o pregnant?

I started this one super early because I was really intrigued by the concept and actually have not really written Ris like... ever

Again tried to make it suggestive and sexy like the Mista one where reader shaves his face, idk how successful I was 😬

This is probably the closest to smut I’ve had on my blog, so reader discretion advised!!

~~~

As the leader of Passione’s elusive La Squadra di Esecuzione, Risotto didn’t have time for relationships. Every single one he had tried had gone up in smoke. His work was more important to him than anything else, his team more important than anyone who could come along. Though he, like most but perhaps not all men, desired a sexual partner from time to time. He didn’t go to Passione parties often. But he went to this particular one.

You weren’t of much note in Passione, if you were being honest with yourself. A member of a team under Polpo’s jurisdiction, but you weren’t even the leader. You were a grunt - expendable, but vital to the gears that kept Passione churning money. You spent most of your days in the casinos of Milan, using your good looks to slip past the defenses of even the richest, most cautious members of Italian society, and wringing them for every penny they owed the mafia. It was work that consumed much of your life, and most relationships were out of the question when the men you dated learned you used your body for such a job. You weren’t usually needed or invited to parties hosted by Passione capos. But you were invited to this one.

The taste of expensive champagne was still on Risotto’s lips when he woke up. Lifting himself up onto his elbows, he glanced down to find he was naked. He gave a deep groan and reached to the top of his head, and could feel that his platinum hair was more messed up than a normal restless night of sleep warranted. He was in a bedroom he didn’t recognize. Upon hearing a soft breath, feeling it dust across his bicep, he glanced down at who he presumed was the owner of the apartment he found himself in.

When his eyes fell on you, the gaps in his memory slowly filled themselves in. He’d been bored as hell at the party the night before, and looking for an excuse to leave. It seems the two of you had migrated toward the same corner, you in order to avoid the drunk street thugs who thought they had a shot in hell with you, and him to avoid talking to anyone who wasn’t worth his time (which was most of Passione, he was quickly learning). Everyone else at the party was boring to him; but his eyes caught a glimpse of the beautiful skin exposed by your backless black dress, the way the straps crossed over your shoulder muscles reminded him of his preferred everyday look, as opposed to the restrictive suit he had begrudgingly put on. It was like you were purposely trying to draw his attention, and the thought of bruising up that flawless skin with his mouth turned him on in a way he hadn’t lusted after someone in a long time.

You had heard stories about the hitman team’s leader, but not a single one effectively communicated the experience of seeing him in person. Risotto was a hulking man, with an intense gaze that was only accentuated by his tattooed black sclera. Intimidating men didn’t scare you; they tried. But there was a strange sense of fear that struck you when those eyes looked over you. Like a predator hunting it’s prey, and it stirred a sick arousal from within you.

Flashes of words exchanged gave way to the sensation of his fingertips brushing over your bare skin. He lifted up one of the straps across your back and snapped it, reveling in the way it made you jump. He saw that fear and arousal in your eyes, and Risotto calmly responded by suggesting he bend you over the hors d'oeuvres table and take you there.

When his lips met your neck, you had honestly wanted him to do it.

Instead, you both went with the better option; ditching the rest of the party altogether.

He didn’t even know your name, and yet the two of you had gone for so long into the night, body to body, his cock sheathed all the way between your folds. The shape of your body, the way he could get such delicate sounds from you simply with his touch, the dirty things he whispered against you in that deep, baritone voice of his; Risotto played you as easily as a musician did their chosen instrument. The experience was unlike any other man you had ever gotten under, and you weren’t quite sure if you could ever go back. By the time you finished, you couldn’t count how many times he had brought you to climax, blinking back the stars that filled your vision when he’d released inside you. You were still dripping with his semen when the two of you had fallen asleep.

For a one-night stand, Risotto had been very careful and considerate of moving your body after the way he’d just fucked you.

That was how he found himself now, sitting up in your bed, under your sheets, next to you and watching you sleep. He’d made plenty of bad decisions before in his life, but this didn’t feel like one. There was a very good chance the two of you would never cross paths again; or maybe if you did, you’d enjoy a part two to this little escapade.

When you woke up, Risotto was still watching you with those dark, dark eyes of his. You’d barely blinked the sleep out of your eyes and muttered a good morning to the stranger in your bed when you were suddenly caged in again, staring up at the intense eyes of Risotto Nero once again. There was a hunger in them that you recognized.

“That’s certainly one way to wake up,” you teased him, enjoying the way his lips curled into a grin.

“You’re just so goddamn beautiful, I don’t think I can help it,” he growled, leaning down and wrapping his mouth around the exposed nipple of your breast.

Forget waiting for a part two. Why wait when you could continue where you left off last night the next morning?

~~~

“The boss has something on you.”

Those were the words of the goon that Risotto had forced to fix the burned picture of Venezia for him, moments after Risotto had created needles that buried out of the right side of his face, bloody and screaming in pain. He’d lost five members of his team, only hearing of Melone’s death some half an hour earlier when he sent Ghiaccio the restored picture. Almost all their hopes were riding on Ghiaccio’s ability to seize the girl - or whatever it was that the picture was telling them to look for at the gates.

Naturally a man with little patience, Risotto had sliced off his arm in response with a knife protruding from the man’s elbow.

“And do tell me,” he leaned in close, cold fury in his voice like the mafia capo he was. “What exactly is this weakness that I’m apparently unaware of?”

That was how he found himself barging into an abandoned apartment at 2am. Ghiaccio had been killed. He was all that was left of the hitman team. All their dreams, their desires to remove the boss for Sorbet and Gelato, it all rested on his shoulders.

All the more reason that he had to find whatever this was the boss apparently had over him, and snuff it out first.

There had clearly been a struggle here. Risotto didn’t understand; he didn’t have connections. His blood ran cold when he found a picture frame on the kitchen counter, smashed like it had been thrown and he recognized you. That beautiful stranger he’d slept with so many nights ago; but he still never learned your name, and as disappointed as he was the boss was using an innocent member of his own mafia as a hostage reminded Risotto just how sick and twisted his enemy was.

In the living room though, he found it. He found his weakness.

There were pictures of you, your family, but most importantly a little boy was in much of them. While he had the same shape as you, Risotto recognized the platinum hair and the crimson eyes on the boy. There wasn’t any doubt in his mind.

He’d had a son, who he didn’t even know about.

Risotto couldn’t help but shut down for a moment, any thoughts about revenge, about his team leaving his head. He’d had a son. Why hadn’t you told him? He was a Passione capo, and while he certainly didn’t get as much money as gambling or drugs did, he still could have given you a comfortable life. A life where he would’ve hid you and your son - his son - long before the boss‘ agents find you.

Instead he finds pictures of you working in a diner, presumably having left the mafia life to raise the child that had been his fault. He finds your apartment missing both of you. Risotto is overcome with not a sense of fatherhood, or duty to someone he met and spent a night with, but a sense of responsibility. He’s the reason that scum of the earth had taken an innocent infant boy hostage.

Risotto headed to Sardegna with more than vengeance on his mind. He’s going to find you or he’s going to kill the boss of Passione, whichever comes first.

#bree writes #jojo fanfiction #risotto x reader #risotto nero #spicyyyyy #😈😈😈#tw pregnancy #accidental pregnancy #request 💖

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haveanotherkpopblog · 4 years ago

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Vive la Revolution

Prologue

Genre: Cyberpunk!AU, Dystopian!AU, Gang!AU, Rivals-to-Lovers!AU

Pairing: TBA

Word Count: 2.5k

Warnings: Sexual Situations

Masterlist || Next Part >>

Society fell when the game came out. It was supposed to be a game for children, where they could let their imaginations run rampant. The game was meant for them to have an escape from everyday life. But then they didn’t stop playing. They spent all day in the game. Nothing else mattered except the game.

The game--the game wasn’t like other games. It was the future of virtual reality. It was a game where you didn’t need to stop to sleep or even use the bathroom. Your consciousness was transferred into the game, putting you in a deep slumber, a coma almost. The only downfall was you had to leave, until you didn’t have to.

The kids turned to the black market for medical IV’s so they could keep playing. Crime began to rise significantly over the mere months since the game’s initial release. The police did their best, but with limited resources and limited money, there was only so much they could do.

Then the adults started playing. In an attempt to save their children, adults entered the game. The only problem was, they never left. The curiosity of what had captured their children’s minds so effortlessly and quietly. Slowly, the adults stopped leaving the game. They followed in their kids’ footsteps, buying IV’s and locking themselves away in the game.

Businesses began shutting down from the lack of customers and the employees seeming to vanish into thin air. Life began slowing down, the only thing thriving in the dying country was crime. The police slowly began to stop doing their jobs, letting the country run rampant with illegal activities.

The worst of it was in the capital. The most powerful people, the socialites, lived there, including the manufacturer of Virtual Paradise-- the game responsible for capturing half the nation’s mind. The game went world-wide, and soon everyone who was anyone had purchased the game. People, desperate to escape their lives, stole the game from anywhere they could get it. The company, Tempestechnologies, had become the company.

However, that was the capital and all major cities of the world. What was really scary was the rest of the country that couldn’t afford the game. Or if they could, they were smart enough not to buy it. With the world and the nation in chaos, the country had been divided into three districts.

The first was the JYP District. It covered most of the coastline and was the mediator between the other two districts. The leader of the District referred to herself as Queenie. As the only female leader, she gave herself a fitting title. While rather small in size, she was a force to be reckoned with. She and her husband had made a quiet, but successful, living working mainly with oversea gangs. She kept the other two districts as close allies.

The second was the SM District. This District covered the northern side of the country. It just also happened to be the richest amongst the three Districts since the Capital fell within their territory. The leader was Leeteuk, a successful businessman turned into an even more successful gang leader. He knew where the game would lead the country from a young age, and he’d been preparing ever since for the inevitable.

The last District was the scariest. YG District was made up of the southern side of the country and what little bit of the coastal region JYP didn’t control. The crime rates were so high, the police had completely given up and worked for the District’s leading gang and the leader. The leader--the leader was so many things, finding one word to describe him was impossible. G-Dragon had done so many unthinkable things, had seen the unimaginable, and he had laughed at it all.

Now while Queenie had aligned herself and JYP with SM and YG, the two didn’t like each other. In fact, if it hadn’t been for her, there certainly would have been a civil war unlike any before. That’s where the story started, at the end of a feud that started before either of them reached double digits.

Queenie sat in one of the clubs in her District. For the best outcome, everyone needed to meet on neutral territory. That meant her territory, which she didn’t mind at all. Her turf, her rules. She smirked, eyes scanning the club, skimming every face she recognized and every face she didn’t. She watched as A, one of her informants, flirted with some random guy at the bar. He wasn’t bad looking, but Queenie knew A was simply biding her time.

“Are you sure they’re going to show?” JB, Queenie’s second in command, sat perched at the edge of his seat. He was staring directly at her, his eyebrows halfway up his forehead. His drink sat on the table in front of him, barely touched as the ice slowly watered it down. She smirked, reaching to grab her own glass off the table.

“Have patience. They’ll show up.”

As if on cue, Mandu, JB’s personal bodyguard, escorted four men in. Mandu had dark brown hair parted away from his face. His muscles bulged against his tight shirt, giving everyone a clear image of his strong physique that detoured most people, as long as he kept his mouth closed. Once he opened his mouth, any intimidation the other party felt disappeared. Even with his deep, intimidating voice, Mandu was simply too sweet and kind for his own good.

Leeteuk sat in the chair opposite of Queenie. His pink hair fell into his eyes, making him squint and occasionally toss his head. His suit jacket was undone, revealing the tight, black dress shirt that hugged his toned chest. It was a well known fact that he had quite the fascination with her. Whether it be because of her stunning beauty or the power she held was of little consequence.

Next to him was Suho, his second in command. Suho was to keep himself more put together than Leeteuk did when she was around. His black hair was combed away from his face, and his suit was well-put together, albeit more casual than what he usually wore. They were supposed to be more casual, relaxed, with each other. Hence them meeting in some bourgeois club. And that was strictly on Queenie’s request.

Behind them were their bodyguard, arms crossed over their chests as they eyed Queenie and her subordinates half-heartedly. They never saw her as a real threat. Whether it was because of their alliance or because they truly believed she wasn’t a threat to anyone was unknown to her. But she knew she could handle herself, and should the time ever come, she would show them just how well.

“Gentlemen. Welcome. I hope the journey wasn’t too hard,” she greeted.

“Seeing you again is worth every second,” Leeteuk said, shooting her a wink. Queenie peered over her glass, sparing a glance to Suho who was staring at Leeteuk with a slight scrunched face. He rolled his eyes, taking a prolonged sip from his cup. “I only wish it was under better circumstances.” She carefully set down her cup.

“I think these are the best circumstances. You’re finally putting that silly little feud behind you,” she said. She leant forward, placing a delicate hand just above his knee, giving it a light squeeze. “You know how much I dislike conflict.” He watched her hand with a dark gaze, his leg tensing under her touch. Suho and JB shared an unimpressed look before they both took a sip of their drinks. Queenie pulled back, crossing her legs as she observed Leeteuk.

Leeteuk observed her too, taking in her now short hair, the subtle makeup around her smoldering eyes and luscious lips. His eyes trailed down her body, admiring how the dress hugged her curves and even gave him a glimpse of what the thin fabric was covering. She was temptation. He knew that, she knew that, he knew she knew that, and he was more than aware she used that knowledge to her advantage, yet he let her pull him in. What they knew was of little consequence to them.

“I see they’re just letting anybody in here now.” Queenie and Leeteuk looked away from each other to the three people that had entered the room. DaH, Queenie’s personal bodyguard, had brought in two more people for their little celebratory party. Her long blonde hair fell down her back as she shot a harsh glare to the pair she’d brought in. DaH wasn’t built like Mandu, she was small and petite, but she made up for her lack of bulging muscles with speed and agility. And unlike Mandu, when she spoke, her words were laced with venom.

G-Dragon gave DaH a cheeky wink, to which she replied by narrowing her gaze more. She shot Queenie an unimpressed look before moving to stand behind her. G-Dragon oozed confidence. His hair was a disheveled mess, dark marks covered his neck and most of his chest from what could be seen of his unbuttoned shirt. She gave Queenie a sly smirk as she stood to greet him, a smirk of her own on her face.

“Well we let you in here don’t we?” she teased. G-Dragon chuckled, leaning forward to place a kiss on her cheek. He shot Leeteuk a wink as he did so, enjoying seeing him get worked up from a small action. Suho leaned over to whisper to Leeteuk, calming him down somewhat.

CL, G-Dragon’s second in command, sat next to Suho. She had at least followed Queenie’s request. Her curled, blonde hair fell over one shoulder, exposing her back and drawing attention to cleavage. She kept her eyes focused between Queenie, Leeteuk, and G-Dragon. She flicked her wrist, glancing down at her watch.

Suho, despite his best efforts to keep a bored air around him, watched CL carefully. He took in her poised posture and the unreadable mask that hid her emotions too well. He took in how her dress exposed her back, letting his eyes trail down the length of her spine. He felt his blood heat up the longer he stared at her back.

“I’m so glad we could have this little sit down,” Queenie said. She watched both men carefully, observing their subtle glances at one another. “I think it’s about time you two put this silly feud to rest.” Both men tensed at the statement, avoiding each other’s eyes. “JB, if you will.” JB cleared his throat, regarding each man and their associates.

“Queenie and I agree that the best way to show peace is to build trust. We’ve talked with each of you separately and from that we’ve come up with a plan. G-Dragon is being gracious enough to send someone to stay in the SM District for one year with absolutely no contact.”

“How exactly does that establish trust?” Suho inquired, leaning forward so his arms rested on his knees. “If anything, that causes more trust issues. One year to gather information to be used against us? I’m failing to see how that works in our favor.”

“Well firstly, the agreement is that our person lives with you for a year without any harm,” CL said, turning to look at Suho. “Meaning if you want to keep them locked in a dungeon, as long as they’re fed and clean, you can do so. Second, we’re not sending just anyone. He’s sending in his only living relative to live with someone he hasn’t gotten along with in years. If anything, that’s the most trust I’ve seen him give anyone.” Suho and Leeteuk both stared at her in shock.

“I wasn’t aware you had any family,” Leeteuk said.

“It’s not something I like to advertise. People like to use them against you. I’m sure you more than anyone can understand that,” he replied. “Now I’m sending them to show my complete trust. If and when they return, as long as they’re in good health and have been treated with respect and dignity they deserve, then I will let bygones be bygones.”

Leeteuk regarded G-Dragon carefully. Something wasn’t sitting right in the pit of his stomach. This seemed too easy. After years of them being at each other’s throats, G-Dragon was going to gift wrap his own blood to him? Leeteuk narrowed his eyes slightly, his fist tightening around his glass.

“I wouldn’t read too much into such a generous offer,” Queenie said. She leant forward, facing Leeteuk directly. “He’s giving you unsupervised access to the closest person to him, and all you have to do is keep them healthy and safe. If anything, I think you’re getting the better side of this deal.” She placed her hand on his knee again, tilting her head slightly and staring up at him with her big, round eyes.

“Unsupervised?” Suho said.

“Yes. One whole year of unsupervised access to them. YG will have absolutely no access to them while they stay with you,” JB said, shooting Queenie a pointed look.

“Don’t mistake me for a blissfully blind fool, Leeteuk,” G-Dragon said, pulling Leeteuk’s attention away from Queenie. “I don’t expect you to trust me or my family. So as a sign of good faith, they’re going in unaccompanied. Even their own personal bodyguard won’t be with them. That’s how you’re going to show me your trust. Return them to me unharmed and in good health, treat them like family, or at least better than the men you’ve so graciously returned to me before, and I won’t murder everyone in your district.” Leeteuk clenched his jaw. Suho leant over, lowering his voice.

“Wait. We can use this to our advantage. How much information do you think our people could get out of him? Who would know his deep secrets better than his own blood?” Leeteuk weighed Suho’s words carefully, slowly relaxing into his seat.

“So you want me to keep them for one year, three-hundred and sixty-five days, and then return them safely?” Leeteuk clarified. G-Dragon nodded, moving to lean back into his seat. Leeteuk drummed his fingers on the armrest, staring at G-Dragon thoughtfully. Something still didn’t feel right, but Suho had a point. His second in command gave him a subtle nod. Leeteuk smiled smugly, tossing his hands up slightly. “I have to agree with you Queenie, I’m definitely getting the better deal.”

G-Dragon smirked, outstretching his hand. Leeteuk grabbed it, giving him a firm handshake. Queenie clapped her hands together, a genuine smile on her face. JB let out a shaky breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. Suho and CL shared a knowing look before turning back to the two leaders.

“I’m so happy everything’s worked out,” Queenie said, moving to stand up. “Now, I believe you gentlemen and lady have earned a night of relaxation. My club is all yours to enjoy.” She turned to G-Dragon, a smirk on her face. “I believe A is waiting for you downstairs.” G-Dragon returned her smirk, running a hand through his hair. Leeteuk held his hand up to the two District leaders.

“As much as I would love to, I should get back.” He and Suho, along with their bodyguards, headed towards the door. He paused briefly, turning to look back. “Just one quick question,” he said. “Who exactly is this relative of yours?” G-Dragon smiled, a genuine, scarily normal smile.

“My baby sister.”

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funknrolll · 4 years ago

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Michael Jackson's They Don't Care About Us: The relevancy of the unmatched protest-masterpiece still actual today.

They Don't Care About Us, was perhaps the most monumental and relevant form of audiovisual protest, which force was specifically to draw the attention to social and political issues such as hate, racism, prejudice, police brutality. The form of art is cultivating an ideological allegiance with the greater social plight for minorities. With his art, Michael became the voice of the voiceless, of the oppressed, of the neglected, of the abused. Yes, Michael Jackson was THE voice.

Hi music lovers, today's topic is Michael Jackson's They Don't Care About Us the song and the music video.

It was from September 1994 to March 1995 that Michael recorded and released HIStory, his 5th studio album. The work was one of the artist's most personal artistic outputs, where music turned into a mirror reflecting Michael's deepest sorrows, fears, anger, and frustrations. It was then when Michael let his music speak louder, providing a perfect clap back to all those who questioned and speculated. The album was a double-disc of greatest hits, HIStory Begins, and new material HIStory Continues.

Speaking of They Don't Care About Us, it is the second track on HIStory Continues, following Scream and precedent to Stranger In Moscow. The song is a straightforward response to the ruthless and ubiquitous injustices perpetrated upon him and more in general upon black people by the racist forces of the white cultural hegemony. Extremely compelling is the aura of pure rage and frustration articulated in They Don't Care About Us, both in the record and in the two poignant and groundbreaking music videos (The Prison version and the clip shot in Brazil), released to accompany the track as a single.

Personally, when I began to approach Michael's music, I did not quite understand the real deep meaning and message the song was delivering. However, as I grew up, I developed interest and curiosity regarding the significance of this timeless masterpiece. Particularly the visual interpretation caught my attention. Hence, this article will entail the information I found through my research. The two videoclips released, were, and still are, wildly exhaustive pieces of art, expressly crafted to challenge our very seldom corrupt societies, people's beliefs and mindsets.

Moreover, in these short movies, the artist did not miss the chance to channel his frustrations and rage through his distinct blueprint that turned everything he did into pure gold. There is a broad range of aspects that compose the audiovisual endeavors that are worth discussing. These elements comprehend the lyrics, the human rights violation, racism, and social injustices; all these perspectives are the fulcrum of the whole work. The acute and fierce language contributed to making the artistic output more impactful.

It is now interesting to also analyze They Don't Care About Us from a Post-Colonialism theoretical standpoint. Firstly, for those not familiar with the Post-Colonialism theories, it is a study of all the effects colonialism had on cultures and societies, concerning both European countries, that brutally conquered other nations, and how the lands and populations won responded and most importantly resisted those invasions and trespasses. Furthermore, the study of Post-Colonialism as a body of theory has and is still going through three major stages. The initial one entails the first phase of awareness of the social, psychological, and cultural unjust condition of inequality and exploitation, enforced by being in a colonized state. Secondly, a struggle for ethnic, cultural, political, and economic autonomy begins. As a consequence, there will be a growing awareness of cultural overlap. Eventually, I would say that some of the post-Colonial elements are quite evident in the two music videos.

The song and the two music videos are eloquent protests against racism. Michael speaking in the first person gives a platform to all the voiceless minorities, offering an accurate and poignant depiction of their conditions of merciless oppression, that stripped minorities of their humanity, pride, and most importantly their rights. Related to the concept of racism, with a simple yet efficacious line, Michael addresses the still hugely relevant and actual issue of police abuse and brutality, which is the central theme of the Prison Version short movie. The artistic output was magistrally filmed by the genius Spike Lee, in a real prison in Queens, New York. The opening sequence shows black schoolchildren standing behind a wire fence in the snow, chanting the chorus of the song, providing a visual accompaniment to the introduction we hear on the record. As the beat kicks in, the scene displayed is quite impressive and provocative, because it employs a poignant and immaculate montage of explicit documentary footage.

The clips complementing the short film are retrieved from the footage of the Rodney King beating and subsequent LA riots and the brutal police beatings of African American people. We then witness the swell of an atomic mushroom cloud, followed swiftly by footage of a Japanese child sitting alone and crying amid a devastated Hiroshima. Alongside, we see a close-up image of an African boy face swarming with flies, then the assassination attempt on George Wallace. Subsequently, come on the screen, some pictures of the student rebellion on Tiananmen Square in China, and finally some footage from the Vietnam War. All these footages contribute to making the video so harsh to the point of getting the audience uncomfortable. In the scenes taken in the cell, Michael appears to be haunted by the ghosts of beaten people.

his film stands out for its immediacy and accuracy, yet these clips do not incite destruction nor hatred, but rather the opposite. Indeed, those footages are stressing compassion, a peaceful reaction to a hurtful and horrible situation, and political reunification. Thus, this is another reason why there is not even a trace of violence or sign incitement to hatred or aggressive reactions. Those were not merely television images, but real-life pictures of a horrid reality of human humiliation, abuse, and suffering that sadly surround us everywhere, that break into our everyday lives through television, social media and computer screens. In the video, the tension is palpable yet, the revolt is peaceful and not suppressed by the guards. However, Michael openly expresses his anger with demonstrative insolence. For instance, he sweeps tableware off, hits a guard's baton right in front of his face. Interestingly, the artist is the only prisoner who moves freely and around the dining room, demonstrating against the disregard for human rights and laws by authorities. During the whole short film, Michael tries to convince people to fight for their rights, raising the spirit of protest against oppression and humiliation.

However, in reality, prison riots never end with prisoners slamming fists against the tables or dancing on top of them and, Michael was very well aware of it. The last scene of the video shows the artist free and running up the stairs, glancing back, running away from the penitentiary in a Brazilian favela (might this be the red thread that connects the first short movie with the second video?) while his scream still lingers in the air … Leaving eventually an open question which is asked through ASL American Sign Language: "I don't know what lies ahead… Where will this spirit of struggle lead me, where will it further manifest?" This part honestly gave me chills!

The second version of They Don't Care About Us was shot in Brazil in February 1997, precisely some parts were filmed in the central district of Salvador de Bahia. The footage where Michael is wearing the iconic Olodum t-shirt and dances with Brazilian people was taken in a favela in Rio. However, for the artist, it was quite a struggle to manage to shoot the short movie in Brazil because the local authorities intended to prohibit the filming, expressing their dislike for the project, given that it would have shown the country in an unfavorable light. Yet other authorities approved the project because it would have been an influential means to draw the world's attention to the condition of poverty. Thus, the region might have benefitted from having such a big platform offered by one of the most prominent artists on earth. However, after the Brazilian government allowed to film the video for 20 days, it changed its mind abruptly and reduced, vastly, the filming period to 5 days only. The Brazilian version opens with a girl speaking in Portuguese saying: “Michael, eles nao ligam pra gente.” which means “they don’t care about us.”, then showing the whole favela with an aerial shot. Eventually, Michael gets out of a door and starts performing.

Although this version is still impactful and manages to deliver the message impeccably, I would say that it presents some fundamental differences from the so-called prison version. Indeed, even though some policemen who look stern and indifferent are part of the short movie, in the Brazilian clip, the atmosphere is quite different from the previous one. As a matter of fact, the festive whirlwind of colors, rhythms, and dances are what reminds the audience of the social meaning of the song.

Furthermore, the vivacious and colorful performance is backed by members of the local cultural and musical group: Olodum. The organization was and still is of particular importance as one of its primary purposes was to combat racism and help cultivate a sense of self-pride and affirmed identity among the Afro-Brazilian community in the region. The organization as well provides a springboard for the promotion of civil rights on behalf of all marginalized groups. Hence, it was not a mystery the reason why Michael was aligned with Olodum, to the point that he supported the organization by wearing their merchandise in his short movie. The display of solidarity was reciprocated, through the act of the collective performance of the group’s musicians who contributed with an additional layer of live percussions and vocals, over Michael’s original studio recording.

Moreover, the language as well plays a fundamental role in this creative output. Indeed, the lyrics and the whole message delivered with this piece were not exuding revenge or aggressiveness, which were typically used to fuel accusations and rage. Au contraire, the song is the manifestation of the indignation and the energy of resistance, empowering self-control and fortitude against repressions. Hence, I would say that the song does not contain a single trace of aggressiveness, and its content and energy stay perfectly within boundaries. The language and expressions employed to address the issues are particularly relevant to explain the horrid effects colonialism and post-colonialism have had on the populations affected and thus to protest against the neglect of fundamental human rights.

Furthermore, it is interesting to point out that the element of the language expresses the manifestation of spiritual endurance and disobedience against the oppressors and lying accusers immaculately and, therefore, the dualism between the artist singing in the first person and the "Us" contained in the title and refrain of the song. Although TDCAU is addressing some social and political injustices, it may as well be true that Michael has attempted to convey his frustrations and anger in this piece, turning them into a timeless audiovisual work of art. Arguably, this could as well be the reason why the artist decided to release two variants of the short movie, the prison video featuring a crude and powerful documentary and the flamboyant, colorful Brazilian clip.

Furthermore, another element related to the Post-Colonialism discourse is how the artist and more in general black people and minorities are very seldom victims of unjust and appalling stereotypes that are addressed in the line “Don’t You Black Or White Me". This brief but straightforward segment of the song could be subjected to double interpretation. On the one hand, there is Michael Jackson, a man, a human being, a son, a brother, a father, a friend, who from the day he was born was put under the magnifying lenses of the whole world, his audience and tabloids. Most of the times he was judged, wrongly, bullied I would say, to the point that he could not even enjoy his life anymore without the anxiety of being abused, ridiculed and humiliated by people who did not take a second of their lives to do their research on his works, life, and what he stood for. Therefore, this line, specifically, is how the artist expressed his frustration towards those utterly racist reactions towards him. On the other hand, Michael decided to extend this statement to a broader scale, becoming the brave advocate who gave voice to all the voiceless people who were victims of racism, prejudice, ignorance in all their nuances and degrees.

Moreover, as Michael responded to the critiques received for the straightforward and sharp lyrics during a press release for the New York Times in 1996 " The song, in fact, is about the pain of prejudice and hate and is a way to draw attention to social and political problems. I am the voice of the accused and the attacked. I am the voice of everyone. I am the skinhead, I am the Jew, I am the black man, I am the white man. I am not the one who was attacking. It is about the injustices to young people and how the system can wrongfully accuse them. I am angry and outraged that I could be so misinterpreted." He was the voice of the angry and outraged voiceless.

To conclude, They Don’t Care About Us with its first-person narration, the refrain, and the two iconic music videos, the socially and politically challenging lyrics and message, relates to the problems minorities face every day. They don’t really care about us means they, the society, privileged white people, the governments, do not care about the minorities, about the voiceless who have been abused, oppressed, robbed of their rights. They don’t really care about the people. The challenging lyrics and footages in the prison version offer us a chance to reflect on the importance of these topics. Not to mention the actuality of the song, which is remarkably accurate and relatable to the modern world and times we are living in. This artistic output is the greatest, most compelling and influential statement against every injustice perpetrated against all human mankind, and will forever be part of Michael's and the world's legacy. Therefore, the questions my reflection generated are: is this the world we want to live in? Are these the world and the society we want our children to grow up into? Is this the world without prejudice, ignorance, abuse, oppression, no equality, and equity we want for ourselves? And for the white folks like me: are we using our privilege wisely, to uplift, amplify the voices, the needs and wants of our brothers and sisters who are part of minorities and are facing some serious major struggles and discomforts? As Michael asked at the end of the short movie: “ I don’t know what lies ahead… Where will this spirit of struggle further manifest?”

Reflect deeply.

Thank you for your attention💜 Peace. G✨

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2ndblogg · 4 years ago

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Hey! Just read your hot take on novel!wangxian and I absolutely agree. I'm gonna have to say here that I believe it boils down to the fetishization of homosexual men in a lot of the fandom culture that surrounds mlm shipping, as you said it's a space for a lot of women to experiment with their desires and whatnot, but I think therein lies the breaking points between reading novel!wangxian as a good, healthy relationship vs. reading it as a very flawed and toxic one. As an LGBT person, reading the way the author dealt with their relationship made me extremely uncomfortable, it just really feels like something that is written by someone who is more invested in using her queer characters for satisfying her and her reader's own pleasure than a well-built, strong relationship between two characters. Not to take away from the novel in some other aspects, I believe that novel!wwx is a much better, much more nuanced character than what he is in cql, but when it comes to wangxian, I think the intentions are very different for each of them. To each their own, I guess, but I do find it very troubling that some people in the fandom have a really hard time admitting that novel wangxian is not even remotely healthy.

Absolutely.

And can I just say how glad it makes me to see that not everyone is praising this book for it’s lgbt representation...

But I guess that’s also why I just occasionally feel the need to scream my frustrations into the void or try to make sense of the novel.

And why I try to be understanding and accepting of people’s opinion of the novel and not take it ‘personally’ (in the sense of sitting there thinking “holy shit this is how they view ME, this is what they think of ME” etc).

I was in fandoms back when they were really a place dominated by straight (homophobic) women and realism or lgbt representation wasn’t on anyone’s mind (and the occasional dude butting in to say that’s not how sex works or bottoming is experienced was ignored or told to get out). I experienced this change to fandoms being more of a lgbt space, of people becoming aware that media can shape your views of groups of people, of people becoming aware of their fetishizing of fictional gays vs. their prejudice against real life lgbt people etc.

And tbh MXTX just writes like one of those, she writes wangxian like everyone wrote their gay relationships around 2005 and earlier; clear power imbalance, clear roles and attributes that are divided into ‘manly’ and ‘feminine’, certain physical attributes (like the female self insert character aka the bottom being pretty and slight and weaker and shorter), men/the penetrating partner can’t really be raped so anything the woman/bottom tries isn’t really ‘bad’, the male love interest is forceful and self centered but ONLY because he’s so in love and since he’s emotionally stunted he has to express that through sex, men/tops NEED sex and it’s rude/mean to deny them that, the girl/bottom isn’t THAT horny or in charge of their own sexuality but wants to please their partner and what they really get out of it is the emotional aspect, decisions need to be made for them because the dude/top just knows better, the girl/bottom is childish and flirty and the guy/top suffers through it until he finally snaps and shows the girl/bottom who'sboss etc etc. (honestly homophobia and misogyny is so tightly knit in this kind of fiction, if it wasn’t so frustrating it would be very interesting).

Tbh I disagree with novel!wwx being more nuanced (despite a lot of ppl whose opinions I really respect also feeling this way), because I simply cannot seperate him from the wangxian relationship. All I see are tropes and stereotypes applied to make him ‘work’ in the context of the wangxian relationship instead of an actual personality...

To me, in CQL WWX is clearly the main character and you love his interactions with LWJ and want more of them and value them, wheras in the novel most of the time WWX plays second fiddle even when a scene should technically be about him and LWJ’s presence is incredibly suffocating, because he’s always being controlling or at the very least influencing WWX.

I also don’t feel like WWX has much of a character arc/growth. We’re essentially told he had one but the only thing that really actually changes is him hating himself a bit more and letting LWJ smash..., and I guess: he’s less independent than ever, he’s more isolated that ever...

I’ve called novel!wangxian a relationship between an abuser and his victim, because you can find evidence of that in the text. Not because I think the author wanted to portray an unhealthy gay relationship. Like you said, she was fetishizing and wrote for a similar crowd. But to me that ‘realization’ helped...I still don’t see how people can call it a masterpiece but I can at least understand hyping something you like up...

And like, badly written gay relationship or not; gay/straight,man/women, I see how people can find it hot. Exploring your sexuality through fictional characters isn’t necessarily a strictly straight girl phenomena. I probably have read fic that was exactly like this, I can’t judge anyone for it. But no one prints out the last PWP they read and goes, “this is ideal lgbt representation and nothing will ever be this good, the fact that it includes rape makes it so realistic” like????

(Is that part or an effect of the woke and purety culture? you can’t say ‘i like this book but it has flaws’ or ‘i’ve enjoyed this but it’s not up the feminism or lgbt acceptance that i preach/live’ so you have to pretend it’s flawless?)

And like, I do think novel!wangxian is a nightmare when it comes to lgbt representation and I do believe this is largely due to a cishet woman writing about gay men and fetishizing them (the fact that a lot of peoples arguments why novel!wangxian ‘is better’ boils down to ‘there’s kissing and sex’ is also pretty telling). And I am frightend and worried by some peoples response to it.

But is it really fair to see it as just that? It’s a problem sure, but that same thing happens in straight media (which I am admittedly not well versed in). Stephanie Meyer didn’t set out to write Edward Cullen to be a creep and non of the teenage girls that went crazy over him viewed it as such...Reylo fans (aside from some of them proclaiming Finn to be the real villain and saying it’s racist and misogynistic to not find Kylo Ren hot) found a way to view him threatening her as romantic and sexy, Loki fans that didn’t ship him with Thor usually fell into the camp of “he would be a perfect boyfriend” or “what if this OFC was his slave and he raped her everyday <3″... like ignoring/glorifying/romanticizing behaviours or exploring what kinks you might have through the safety of fictional characters and fictional settings isn’t JUST happening when it comes to ‘the gays’...

And not just specifically in fandom spaces either, a lot of ‘romantic’ movies include inappropriate touching, the boy/guy knowing better than the girl what she wants etc. And I absolutely do believe that that��s something that normalized these things for a lot of young girls and guys (I don’t want to get into this too much, I’ve really seen a change in the past few years, but before that it was pretty common for young boys to believe they need to keep pursuing and pressuring a girl that has said no, girls truly thought boys could die of blue balls, girls thought it was their duty as good girlfriends to let their boyfriends fuck them even when they weren’t in the mood, that they couldn’t talk about what they want in bed or what they don’t find enjoyable because ‘sex is for boys and girls get a relationship in exchange’ etc.).

And in much the same way movies have only relatively recently begun being called out for that, it’s also still pretty recently that they’re being called out for having their one queer coded character be a pedophile and a murder or whatever...Like, society as a whole becoming aware of these issues.

But do authors that publish their work with a specific target audience in mind have a responsibility to think about the effect it might have on them? (And I can already hear loud screams of ‘no way, it’s not your fault if your audience isn’t smart enough to understand that this bad thing is bad’, but I actually do believe in a way they do. That doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t write whatever you want, just maybe take a look at HOW you bring your point across. (We do KNOW people are influenced by what propaganda they’re consistantly fed. I mean, you wouldn’t write a pro-drugs childrens book...) )

What if the author isn’t aware of their bias and prejudices? Or their target audience isn’t their actual audience?

And do we, society and media, judge female and male authors differently when it comes to romance and sex in fiction? (The answer is yes btw) But also, where do we draw the line at calling something ‘badly written’ and calling it toxic? Can it be both? As I’ve said before, a lot of people claim that only the physical intimacy scenes of novel!wangxian are bad, because they’re badly written and OOC, some say the book as amazingly written and only the wangxian relationship is bad because the author doesn’t know how to write gay men. In my ‘hot take’ I essentially said that’s not necessarily bad writing so much as it’s simply an (okay, unintentional) toxic relationship. And would this relationship still come across as toxic (or badly written, whichever you want) if we didn’t know the author to be a cishet woman? Or if a gay man had written it? (my personal, eloquent answer for this is: yes, but differently.)

Which was really all just a rambly way to get to my point of: it’s not just fetishizing of gay men, it’s also the homophobia and self-inserting in a safe situation.

You can literally replace WWX in the novel with a female character and it wouldn’t change a thing. The author takes such an effort into building up this power imbalance in every aspect of their life that if WWX were a heroine nothing would change in this (sexist/ancient society) setting.

(And clearly this is something that appeals to people if you look at the amount of female!WWX fics...)

Not even the sex scenes. There are maybe two allusions in all of them combined that WWX might also have a dick but like, you can’t be sure and it sure as hell doesn’t need stimulation.

(and again, that could be written as a kink...but it’s just not.)

CQL is a gay love story. MDZS at it’s core is none of that.

But I also very much agree with your ‘to each their own’, like here I am criticizing and trying to find explanations and whatever, but at the end of the day it doesn’t matter why someone might like (or write) a book like this, I vastly prefer CQL!wangxian but people have their own reasons for not doing so.

The ‘problem’ really only lies in, as you said, people not being able to accept that it’s not a healthy relationship. Or claiming it to be perfect lgbt rep.

And because my brain can’t shut up today:

I also can’t stop thinking that the way some people ‘glorify’ the book as due to their age and ‘inexperience’.

When I was a pretty young kid and got into fanfiction, there was nothing but completely OOC!whump to be found in the first two fandoms I was in. And I loved it. It was YEARS later that I thought I might like to read something with the characters being...in character. What I’m trying to say, in different stages and phases of your life you might enjoy different things, for different reasons...and obviously, in that moment, you won’t think about ‘what appeals to me here/should this appeal to me/etc’.

I don’t mean inexperience as ‘sexual inexperience’ here, though of course that could be part of it, but also like, inexperience with this genre (is this the first book like this you read, or did you just read 50 in a row that all had the same unhealthy vibes?), with lgbt people and issues (do you know any lgbt people or is your only image of them either the cute boy you can’t have and don’t want to see with another girl or grown men in full kink gear in front of children during CSD? and also: do you think ‘i like this’ and that’s the end of it or do you notice how many people idolize this objectively unhealthy relationship and won’t allow critique on it...)

I...just wanted to say thanks really.

I just can’t stop rambling apparently and I know I mostly just repeated what you said or what I already said but in longer... I just really do feel very strongly about novel!wangxian and the perception of them and have actually at times felt very personally...worried/affected, by people’s acceptance and love of them and I just... have to try and make sense of it...

#i'll be honest rambling like this is very therapeutic and I'm glad some of you read the last one and send asks and agreed #and it's why i'll (try to) put this in the tags too...i like discussions but seeing ppl NOT going 'it's true love/perfect rep' love that #mdzs #mdzs meta #mxtx critical #i guess

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blackswaneuroparedux · 4 years ago

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Treat Your S(h)elf: Imperial Boredom: Monotony and the British Empire by Jeffrey A. Auerbach (2018)

The British Empire has had a huge impact on the world in which we live. A brief look at an atlas from before World War One will show over hundred colonies that were then part of the Empire but now are part of or wholly sovereign states. Within these states much remains of the commercial, industrial, legal, political and cultural apparatus set up by the British. In many former colonial areas, political issues remain to be solved that had their genesis during the British era.

The legacy of the British has been varied and complex but in recent years much attention has been on making value judgements about whether the Empire was a good or bad thing. Of course the British Empire was built on the use of and the continual threat of state violence and there were appalling examples of the use of force. As well as the slave trade, there was the Amritsar Massacre in 1919, the 1831 Jamaican Christmas Uprising, the Boer War concentration camps (1899-1902) and the bloody response to the Indian Mutiny of 1857. However, we must not just focus on these events but examine the Empire in all of its complexities.

In the current moment of our times, it would seem that as a nation we are more concerned about beating ourselves up and making the nation feel guilty than understanding how and why the British came to exist, and setting the growth of the British Empire into historical context to be wise about the good, the bad, and the ugly. History has to be scrupulously honest if it’s not to fall prey to propaganda on either side of the extreme political spectrum.

Truth be told I find these questions about the British Empire being good or bad either boring or unhelpful. It doesn’t really bring us closer to the complexity and the reality of what the British Empire was and how it was really run and experienced by everyone.

For myself personally the British Empire was part of the fabric of our family history. The Far East, the Middle East and Africa figured prominently and at the centre of which - the jewel in the crown so to speak - was India. In my wider family clan I’ve come to learn about - through handed down family tales, personal diaries, private papers, and photos etc - the diverse experiences of what certain eccentric characters got up to and they ranged from missionaries in India and Africa to military men strewn across the Empire, from titans of commerce in the Far East to tea farmers in East Africa, from senior colonial civil servants in Delhi to soldier-spies on the North West Frontier (now northern Pakistan).

My own experience of being raised in India, Pakistan as well as parts of the Far East was an adventure before being carted off to boarding school back in Britain and then fortunate in later life to be able to travel forth to these memorable childhood places because of the nature of my work. Having learned the local languages and respectful of customs I have always loved to travel and explore deeper into these profound non-Western cultures. Despite the shadow of the empire of the past I am always received with such down to earth kindness and we share a good laugh. So I always assumed that the British Empire played a central role in the life of Britain has it had in our family history just because it was there. But historians are more concerned with much more interesting questions that challenge our assumptions.

So when I was at university it was a great surprise to me to first read a fascinating history of the British Empire by Bernard Porter called ‘The Absent Minded Imperialists: Empire, Society and Culture in Britain’ (2004). Porter was, in his own words, “mainly a response to certain scholars (and some others) who, I felt, had hitherto simplified and exaggerated the impact of ‘imperialism’ on Britain in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, after years in which, except by empire specialists like myself, it had been rather ignored and underplayed. […] the main argument of the book was this: that the ordinary Briton’s relationship to the Empire in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was complex and ambivalent, less soaked in or affected by imperialism than these other scholars claimed – to the extent that many English people, at any rate, possibly even a majority, were almost entirely ignorant of it for most of the nineteenth century.” It became a controversial book but a welcome one because it was well researched and no doubt made some imperial historians choke on their tea dipped biscuits (and that’s not even counting the historically illiterate post-colonial studies crowd in their English faculties who often got their knickers in a twist).

Years later I read another fascinating collection of scholarly chapters by different historians called ‘Anxieties, Fears, and Panic in Colonial Settings: Empires on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown’ (2016) edited Harald Fischer-Tiné which challenged a rosy vision of Britain’s imperial past by tracing British imperial emotions: the feelings of fear, anxiety, and panic that gripped many Britons as they moved to foreign lands. To be fair both Robert Peckham’s Empires of Panic: Epidemics and Colonial Anxieties (2015) got there before him but Tiné’s history set the trend for others to follow such as Marc Condos’s The Insecurity State: Punjab and the Making of Colonial Power in British India (2018) and Kim Wagner’s Amritsar 1919: An Empire of Fear and the Making of a Massacre (2019).

They all set out their stall by highlighting the sense of vulnerability felt by the British in the colonies. Fisher-Tiné’s edited book in particular highlights the pervasiveness of feelings of fear, anxiety, and panic in many colonial sites. He acknowledges that: “the history of colonial empires has been shaped to a considerable extent by negative emotions such as anxiety, fear and embarrassment, as well as by the regular occurrence of panics.”

The book suggests that these excessive emotional states were triggered by three main causes. First, the European population in British India was heavily dependent on Indian servants and subordinates who might retaliate against unfair masters or whose access to European dwellings could be used by malevolent others to poison the white elite. Second, anxieties about the assumed toxic effects of the Indian climate fuelled also poisoning panics. Diseases such as malaria and cholera were considered to be the ultimate outcome of an “atmospheric poison”. Third, Indian therapeutics and the system of medicine were also identified as a potential cause of poisoning European communities. These poisoning panics only helped reinforce the racial categorisations of Indians, the moral supremacy of the white population, and the legitimacy of colonial rule. Overall the book expanded the understanding of how a sense of fragility rather than strength shaped colonial policies.

Now comes another noteworthy book which again sound a little quirky but is no less meticulous in its research and judicious in its observations. Many books about the British Empire focus on what happened; this book concentrates on how people felt. When I was first given it I was predisposed to be negative because here was a book about ‘feelings’ - the current disease of our decaying western culture. But I was pleasantly surprised.

Was the British Empire boring? So asks Jeffrey Auerbach in his irreverent tome, ‘Imperial Boredom: Monotony and the British Empire’ (2018).

It’s an unexpected question, largely because imperial culture was so conspicuously saturated with a sense of adventure. The exploits of explorers, soldiers and proconsuls – dramatised in Boys’ Own-style narratives – captured the imagination of contemporaries and coloured views of Empire for a long time after its end. Even latter-day historians committed to Marxist or postcolonial critiques of Empire tend to assume that the imperialists themselves mostly had a good time. Along with material opportunities for upward mobility, Empire offered what the Pan-Africanist W.E.B. DuBois called ‘the wages of whiteness’ – the psychological satisfactions of membership in a privileged caste – and an escape from the tedium of everyday life in a crowded, urbanised, ever less picturesque Britain.

The British Empire has been firmly tied to myth, adventure, and victory. For many Britons, “the empire was the mythic landscape of romance and adventure. It was that quarter of the globe that was coloured and included darkest Africa and the mysterious East.” Cultural artifacts such as music, films, cigarette cards, and fiction have long constructed and reflected this rosy vision of the empire as a place of adventure and excitement.

Against this widely held view of the empire, As Auerbach argues here, however, the idea of Empire-as-adventure-story is a misleading one. For contemporaries, the promise of exotic thrills in distant lands built up expectations which inevitably collided with reality.

In a well-researched and enjoyable book, the author argues “that despite the many and famous tales of glory and adventure, a significant and overlooked feature of the nineteenth-century British imperial experience was boredom and disappointment.” In other words, instead of focusing on the exploits of imperial luminaries such as Walter Raleigh, James Cook, Robert Clive, David Livingstone, Cecil Rhodes and others, Auerbach says pay attention to the moments when many travellers, colonial officers, governors, soldiers, and settlers who were gripped by an intense sense of boredom in India, Australia, and southern Africa.

For historians, the challenge is to look past the artifice of texts which conceal and compensate for long stretches of boredom to unravel the truth. Turning away from published memoirs and famous images, therefore, Auerbach trains his eye on the rough drafts of imperial culture: letters, diaries, drawings. He finds that Britons’ quests for novelty, variety and sensory delight in the embrace of 19th-century Empire very often ended in tears. Indeed Auerbach identifies an overwhelming emotion that filled the psyche of many Britons as they moved to new lands: imperial boredom.

Precision in language and terminology is essential and Auerbach begins by setting out what he means by boredom. Adopting Patricia Meyer Spacks’ approach, he points out that the term first came into use in the mid-18th century. Auerbach identifies then the feeling as a “modern construct” closely associated with the mid-18th century where the spread of industrial capitalism and the Enlightenment emphasis on individual rights and happiness that the concept came to the fore. This does not mean that nobody previously suffered from boredom, but that, with the Enlightenment’s emphasis on the individual, this was when the feeling first became conceptualised. Like Spacks, he distinguishes boredom from 19th-century ‘ennui’ or existential world-weariness and also from monotony, which has a much longer history. Whilst a monotonous activity or experience may generate a feeling of boredom, it will not necessarily do so. The two terms must, therefore, not be equated.

Significantly, in a footnote, Auerbach cites a passage from 19th Century English satirical novelist, Fanny Burney, in which an individual is described as ‘monotonous and tiresome’ but, as he emphasises, ‘not boring’. To prevent confusion, the term ‘boring’ is best avoided when describing an activity or experience because this is to beg the question as to whether it does in fact generate feelings of boredom in a particular person.

How then should this state of mind be assessed and what should be seen as the symptoms of imperial boredom? As Auerbach acknowledges, boredom ‘is not a simple emotion, but rather a complex constellation of reactions’. Building on that approach, he says ‘imperial boredom’ reflected ‘a sense of dissatisfaction and disenchantment with the immediate and the particular, and at times with the enterprise of empire more broadly’. If this tends to mix cause and effect, the idea of dissatisfaction and disenchantment essentially mirrors Spacks’ definition of the symptoms of boredom, namely, ‘the incapacity to engage fully: with people, with action, with one’s own ideas’. ‘Imperial boredom’, therefore, was more than a fleeting moment of irritation with a particular situation or person and reflected a mind-set that derived from, and in turn, further contributed to, a sense of disillusionment with the overall project.

It stemmed, so Auerbach argues, from the marked contrast between how empire was represented and how it turned out to be, between ‘the fantasy and the reality’. ‘Empire was constructed as a place of adventure, excitement and picturesque beauty’ but too often lacked these features. Nowhere is this better described than in George Orwell’s Burmese Days, in which the promising young John Flory has become ‘yellow, thin, drunken almost middle-aged’. Beginning with this illustration, Auerbach argues that historians have too often overlooked this essential aspect of empire and sets out to discover the extent to which it was characteristic of what Flory called the ‘Pox Britannica’ more generally.

During the 17th century the British Empire sustained itself on the story that the colonial experience was both righteous and unbelievably exciting. Sea voyages were difficult, and when one eventually did reach landfall there was a good chance of violence, but the exotic foreign cultures, the landscapes, and the wildlife made the trip worthwhile. The British colonialist was meant to be swashbuckling. Advertisements for even the most banal household goods offered colourful and robust propaganda for life in the colonies. Travelogues and illustrated accounts of colonial exploration were wildly lucrative for London publishing houses. All of this attracted a crowd of young Brits eager to escape the drudgery of life in the metropole.

By the 19th century, expectations were catching up. As Auerbach makes it clear, from the beginning, the sense of boredom experienced by many Britons in new colonial settings was much more profound during the nineteenth century. Indeed, the latter was marked by a series of bewildering social, cultural, and technological changes that stripped the empire of its sense of novelty. The development of new means of transport such as steamships, the rise of tourism, and the proliferation of guidebooks jeopardised the sense of risk, newness, enthusiasm that had long been associated with the British imperial experience. Consequently, while “the early empire may have been about wonder and marvel, the nineteenth century was far less exciting and satisfying project.

Auerbach spent 20 years gathering evidence spanning the late 18th century to the turn of the 20th, which records feelings of being bored, miserable and deflated. It’s a captivating history of imperial tedium drawn from memoirs, diaries, private letters and official correspondence. In “reading against the grain”, as Auerbach puts it, he has focused on recorded events normally skimmed over by historians, precisely for being boring – multiple entries repeated over and over again about the weather, train times, shipping forecasts, deliveries, lists and marching; or about nothing ever happening.

In five thematic chapters, “Voyages”, Landscapes,” Governors,” Soldiers”, and “Settlers,” Auerbach shines new light on the experience of traversing, viewing, governing, defending and settling the empire from the mid-eighteenth century to the early twentieth century. The monotonous nature of the sea voyage, dreary and uninteresting imperial lands, daily routine, depressingly dull dispatches, mind-numbing meetings are some of the sources of an utter sense of imperial boredom.

Whilst the first chapter, Voyages, may be the logical starting-point, it presents particular problems. They may have been monotonous, but it is unlikely that they would have engendered feelings of disenchantment and disillusion at the outset of an empire life or career. Auerbach begins with the somewhat surprising assertion that ‘not until the first half of the 19th century did long-distance ocean travel become truly monotonous’, arguing that this was because, until then, the weather had been ‘a source of danger and discomfort’ whereas, by the mid-19th century, ‘it was barely worth mentioning’. Leaving aside the obvious difficulties with that approach – many 19th-century travellers, assuming they survived, described enduring terrifying typhoons in the Indian Ocean and South China Sea – voyages certainly could be monotonous, particularly, when steam replaced sail.

However, his assertion that this ‘helped to produce feelings of boredom that had never been felt before’ is more questionable. For example, whilst Sir Edmund Fremantle (1836–1929) wrote in his memoirs that, although the sea passages were ‘monotonous’, ‘it never occurred to [him] to be bored’, Auerbach suggests that, ‘in several places his memories [sic] belie his claims’, in that they refer to the ‘the monotony’ of various experiences, including cruising out of harbour under steam rather than under sail, which ‘always possessed some interest’. But, this not only contradicts what Fremantle wrote but also equates boredom with monotony and, thus, deprives it of any proper meaning.

Similarly, because the Royal Naval Surgeon, Edward Cree (1814–1901) recorded his passing the time ‘reading, drawing, walking on deck, eating drinking and sleeping’, Auerbach concludes that ‘almost every leg of his 1839 journey to the East was boring or disappointing’. However, he omits the opening words of this journal entry which reads, ‘making but slow progress towards China. Weather intolerably hot … The time passes pleasantly enough on board’, which suggests he was certainly not bored. Much of this chapter is not concerned with monotony but with how ‘dreadful’ sea voyages could be, particularly, for travellers to Australia, most of all transported convicts, who, as he shows, had to endure the most brutal conditions. But they had no expectations of empire and this seems to add little to the understanding of imperial boredom.

It may well be that, because voyages were so unpleasant, travellers became all the more expectant and thus disappointed, when, on arriving, they found, as Auerbach argues in the next chapter, that much of the landscape was dreary and uninteresting. Moreover, many could not decide whether they were in search of a landscape that was picturesque and exotic or ‘normalised’ by reproducing English architecture, gardens and surroundings. This dichotomy generated further disenchantment.

If Auerbach dwells too long on obscure painters who often had little success in making these imperial landscapes picturesque, there is no doubt that many of them were monotonous, not least the vast tracts of Australian out- back. Consequently, whilst ‘the early empire may have been about wonder and marvel, the 19th century was a far less exciting and satisfying project’ and this contributed to feelings of boredom.

In the chapter, ‘Governors’, Auerbach essentially covers the administration of the empire. Here, there was also a lot of monotony, although Auerbach wavers between whether this was caused by having too much or too little work to do. Either way, it leads to the assertion that ‘throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, British imperial administrators at all levels were bored by their experience, serving king or queen and country’. However, this is qualified in the next paragraph, in which he cites the Marquess of Hastings, who served in India in the early 1800s, and Lord Curzon, who served as Viceroy at the end of the century, neither of whom, he says, suffered from boredom. It was ‘during the middle decades, that imperial service was far less stimulating’ but he does not explain why it should have been limited to this particular phase.

Indeed, in terms of the staggering quantity of paper generated by the ICS, the problem stretched back to the early 18th century. Records were copied and recopied, and months were spent waiting on instruction from London. The few encounters with colonised subjects came in the form of long, drawn-out formal events. Lord Lytton as Viceroy of India between 1876-1880 was required to bow 1230 times during one particularly ceremonial reception with the Viceroy.

Whilst it is ultimately fruitless to exchange examples of officials who did and did not find government service boring, some of those chosen by Auerbach are not convincing. James Pope Hennessy, for example, the eccentric Irishman who delighted in antagonising the colonials and endearing himself to the indigenous people with his unconventional views on racial equality, certainly found the European life-style monotonous but, as a result, made sure he kept ceaselessly active. In the words of his biographer, ‘the chief impression [he] made on British and Orientals alike was one of superlative vitality. “He would do better”, wrote Sir Harry Parkes “if he had less life”’, Coming from Parkes, that arch- imperialist, who allegedly died from over-work and could never have been bored, the comment is telling.

While idleness certainly contributed to boredom, it was often the labour of maintaining colonial control that proved to be the most dull. Increasingly professionalised, the management of the colonies became characterised by strict report-making, bookkeeping and low-stakes decision-making related to staff. Whilst these officials may have become disenchanted, it is unclear what sort of mind-set they had when they started out: according to Auerbach, ‘they may well have entered imperial service out of a sense of duty, or perhaps looking forward to a colonial sinecure that offered status and adventure as well as a generous salary, but instead found themselves inundated by a volume of paperwork and official obligations that they had never anticipated, and which they found to be, quite frankly boring’. As a result, they were ‘eager to escape the tedium of the empire they had built’.

Whilst this suggests that, as a result, they threw up their empire careers, the example of Sir Frank Swettenham does not seem to fit the picture. He may have found life from time to time ‘extraordinarily dull’, but he continued as a government official in the Malay States for thirty years, before retiring in 1901. His belief in the imperial cause seems to have overcome the dullness and trumped any possible disenchantment.

In the chapter entitled, Soldiers, Auerbach concedes that ‘the link between military service and boredom can be traced at least to the mid-eighteenth century’. However, he argues, what was different in the 19th century was that boredom was no longer simply ‘incidental or ‘peripheral;’ it was ‘omnipresent’ and this was ‘a function of unmet expectations’, namely, the unsatisfied thirst for action and bloody combat as the ‘small wars’ of the Victorian age became shorter and fewer. However, citing Maeland and Brunstad’s Enduring Military Boredom, he concedes that this omnipresent boredom is a ‘condition that persists to the present day, especially among enlisted men’. This, therefore, divests it of any imperial character and suggests that it was, and remains a feature of modern military service.

Nonetheless, it would have been interesting to know how this boredom affected the performance of the military in the context of empire. Certainly, it gave rise to some of its more unsavoury aspects, with drunken soldiers brawling and beating up the locals and spending much of their time in the local brothels.

According to Richard Holmes, by 1899, there was ‘a real crisis’ in the infection rates of venereal disease of British soldiers in the Indian Army: ‘for every genteel bungalow on the cantonment … there were a dozen young men, denizens of a wholly different world, crossing the cultural divide every night’. Here was imperial boredom in the raw and urgent measures had to be taken to abate its consequences.

Although the final chapter is entitled ‘Settlers’, it encompasses a much broader category of imperial agents, including women, who until this point have been little- mentioned, and, in particular, women in India ‘most of whom went there in their early twenties to work (or to accompany their husbands who were working) and then typically left by the time they reached their fifties to retire in Britain’. It is unclear why these women and, indeed the whole topic of women in empire, should be subsumed under this chapter heading, given their importance in the empire project and the attention given to them in post-colonial scholarship.

In recent scholarship, empire white women have been frequently misrepresented and lampooned in the literature, including the novels of E. M. Forster, George Orwell, and Paul Scott and all too often reincarnated as representing the worst side of the ruling group – its racism, petty snobbishness and pervading aura of superiority and shown as shallow, self-centred and pre-occupied with maintaining the hierarchy of their narrow social worlds. They have invariably been portrayed as both bored and boring.

The wives of these officials were encouraged to run their households in a similar way, managing a large domestic staff and keeping a meticulous watch on financial expenditures. Socially, they were faced with constant garden parties and dinners with whatever small group of colonial families lived nearby. It’s difficult to imagine just how dull the existence of these administrators must have been, yet in reading these colonial accounts, the temporality and the totalising effects of boredom feel undeniably similar to the way that we describe the monotony of work today.

Auerbach effectively reiterates the trope as a clichéd illustration of a female, reclining aimlessly on a chaise longue, conjuring up the familiar image of ‘the same women [who] met day after day to eat the same meals and exchange the same banal pleasantries’ and concluding that ‘it was not only in India that women were bored, which suggests that the phenomenon was not a localised one, but a broader imperial one’.

Of course many western women did find life in empire monotonous and suffered from boredom, if not depression, and no doubt many were insufferable, as were their husbands, but there is an alternative image and the analysis is so generalised that their contribution is, once again, in danger of being dismissed out of hand.

A more nuanced approach would have examined ways in which women overcame their boredom by pursuing activities in which they were anything but bored, including, most obviously, the missions, a category which, despite its importance, does not feature, save for one cursory comment to the effect that, ‘even missionary women, whose sense of purpose presumably kept them inspired, could find themselves bored’. The example given is that of Elizabeth Lees Price, who, at one point during her eventful life, had to help run three schools for 30,000 pupils. But, just because her diary recorded ‘with increasing frequency’ the comment ‘nothing has happened’, it seems a stretch to infer, as Auerbach does, that ‘not even missionary work was enough to stave off the boredom that afflicted women all across the empire’.

For Auerbach, recuperating boredom means reframing the experience of empire as one of failure and disappointment. In the context of colonial scholarship, which tends to focus on the violence of colonialism and the myth-making that went along with it, Auerbach’s book is rather counter-intuitive. He drains the power of these myths, looking instead at the accounts of those responsible for building empire from the ground up: “What if they were not heroes or villains, builders or destroyers,” he writes, “but merely unexceptional men and women, young and old, rich and poor, struggling, often without success, to find happiness and economic security in an increasingly alienating world?” The agents of colonialism struggled to find any semblance of agency in the work that they were doing. Imperial time stretched out, deadened over decades of appointment in far off islands and desert outposts: a sort of watered down version of Hannah Arendt’s “banality of evil” in paradise.

Whilst Auerbach demonstrates that much of empire life was monotonous, to my mind, he is too quick to infer that this monotony necessarily gave rise to feelings of ‘imperial boredom’, properly so-called. He also too easily assumes that, where people were bored, this could only operate in a negative way and, whilst he may be right in concluding that, ultimately, ‘the British were, quite simply bored by their empire’, he fails to draw the evidence together to explore what impact imperial boredom had on the development of empire, for better or worse, during the long 19th century.

If not quite an invention of the 19th century, boredom was a particular preoccupation of the period: the product of new assumptions about the separation of work and leisure and a prominent theme of fin-de-siècle literature. Less clear is whether Auerbach is right to treat boredom separately from other emotional states – anxiety, loneliness, anger, fear – which afflicted the imperialist psyche. After all, a long literary tradition – from Conrad to Maugham, Orwell, Lessing and Greene – describes precisely how those varied shades of neurosis blended into one another.

Besides, a more capacious history of discontent and Empire might help to connect the frustrations of the imperialist experience to the suffering of imperial subjects. When, for instance, did boredom turn to aggression and violence? One danger of Auerbach’s approach in Imperial Boredom is to portray an enervated and under-stimulated, yet still extraordinarily powerful, elite as more or less passive.

As imperial rivalry intensified towards the end of the century, so did the quest for new ways of staving off boredom, not only for men in the British Empire but also for those in the other European empires, and war was one of the most obvious solutions.

As other imperial historians have argued, what Europeans were seeking was everything the nineteenth century, in its drawn-out tedium, had denied them. War as Cambridge historian Christopher Clark has argued, “was going to empower them and restore a sense of agency to their limbs and lives.” Auerbach refers to what Clark called ‘the pleasure culture of war’, citing the example of Adrian de Wiart who, serving in the Boer War, knew ‘once and for all, that war was in my blood. I was determined to fight and I didn’t mind who or what’. But he does not explore the consequences of this mood further, other than to say that these adventurers also ‘ended up bored … and disillusioned’. But, the implications were, arguably, much more far-reaching.

Even if it was not directly causative, this mood was ‘permissive’ of the more direct causes and certainly formed part of the background against which Europe went to war in 1914. It may be thought that it did so in a fit of imperial boredom.

I admire the audacity of Auerbach’s writing and as a revisionist piece of history it has the dash and dare of British imperialism and colonialism. But after reading the book I came away thinking that sweeping statements such as that the empire developed “in a fit of boredom” are a tad unconvincing.

Although he spent about 20 years collecting materials, Auerbach seems not to have visited Africa or India during his research. Had he done so, I doubt if he would all too easily accepted that colonial accounts of being bored represented the full experience. Absent are deeper discussions of how expressions of being bored are linked to racism, arrogance and the need to assert power in exotic, challenging and unstable environments. Emotional detachment, disdain and a demand to be entertained were also part of a well-rehearsed repertoire of domination.

But where Auerbach does succeed is in admirably capturing the texture of everyday imperialist life as few historians have. Most of these examples are compellingly relevant and illustrative of some of the colonial circumstances that drove Britons mad with boredom, challenging one of the enduring myths about the British Empire as a site of exciting adventure.

If you are a lover of histories of white imperial rulers and thumbnail portraits, this book is for you. It’s full of excellent quotes. Lord Lytton, for example, fourth choice to be governor-general of India in 1875 (and appalled by the prospect), later summed up the British Raj as “a despotism of office-boxes tempered by the occasional loss of keys”. It was certainly the case that propaganda about empire and the populist books written about it to make money created false expectations, leading to bitter disillusionment. Nostalgists for the age of pith helmets and pukka sahibs will find little comfort here.

In mining the gap between public bombast and private disillusionment, Auerbach demonstrates that – even for its most privileged beneficiaries – Empire was almost never a place where fantasy became reality. I would suggest that rather than the British Empire being mostly boring, more accurate would be David Livingstone’s verdict on exploratory travel while battling dysentery: “it’s not all fun you know.”

The concept of imperial boredom provides a novel and illuminating lens through which to examine the mind-set of men and women working and living in empire, how it was that, despite the crushing monotony, so many persisted in the endeavour and what this tells us about the empire project more generally. There are all states of mind familiar to historians of empire (in the lives of their subjects, of course). It has long been argued that strategies to relieve moments of white boredom in the empire included cheating and adultery, husband hunting, trophy wife hunting, massive consumption of alcohol, gambling, copious diary and letter writing, taxidermy, berating the servants, prostitution, bird-watching, game hunting, high tea on the verandah, fine pearls and ball gowns, all were par for course in the every day lives for those bored British colonisers.

Auerbach’s book reminds me of a not so nice female character bemoans James Fox’s scandalous but true to life colonial novel White Mischief (1982), as she looked out over the Rift Valley in 1940s colonial Kenya, she declares, “Oh God! Not another fucking beautiful day.”

An earnest post-colonialist studies reader might might feel triggered by such a flippant remark as evidence of all that was wrong with the imperial project but at heart it’s a pitiful lament disguised as boredom at the gilded cage the British built for themselves to capture the enchantment and disenchantment of every day life in the British Empire.

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