#it's never explicitly SAID that Amy is the judge but she is in my mind

[innytoes]

Foster Care AUs plural? 👀

Lol I feel bad because that was totally bait, but what really happened is my word doc crashed and I had to give the 'autosave' document a different name than the original so I just added a random letter.

I'm not writing the second foster care au idea I had I am NOT

Have some Julie and the himbo shenanigans. Reggie just came back from court with Ray, where his dad's parental rights were dissolved because he's and Evil Dickbag Who Hit His Kid.

Behind him, Ray hung up his coat and looked over to the other guys, who were hovering. “You boys staying for dinner?” he asked. “Uuum,” the guys said, in various pitches, a sure sign they were Up To Something. Reggie pulled back and saw several backpacks dotted around the place. “Julie said we could sleep over,” Luke said in a rush. Julie, who was half-hidden behind Alex, went wide-eyed at being thrown under the bus. “We were going to ease him into it,” she hissed. Reggie, who knew Ray was a complete pushover when it came to them having friends over anyway, looked at him with big sad eyes.

Ask me about my WIP documents

[procrastinatingsab]

Chapter 2 of Trapped is up! please let me know what you think ;3

Summary: A woman disappears. She shows up two days after her husband reports her missing, gives no explanation of what happened and takes her own life the next day. Is she the only victim? Is it really suicide? And what happened when she went missing? Bright and the team investigate the mystery, and Malcolm finds himself in danger yet again. Will he come out unscathed?

AO3

Read Below.

Additional Tags: Implied/Referenced Suicide, PTSD, Claustrophobia, Panic Attack, Kidnapping, Implied Brightwell

note: This chapter has mentions of suicide, nothing is explicitly described, but please be warned. Note: I am sorry in advance if any of my medical knowledge or drugs is unrealistic. I just had an idea and I am rolling with it.

Chapter Two: Edrisa Brings in a Case

It was a good day. He navigated the streets of New York City with ease. His footsteps were happy, bouncy even. And why wouldn’t they be? There is a Case Afterall!

And nothing makes him happier. It’s not like he enjoys murders.

No.

He just likes to catch killers, bring them to justice. He wants to protect his family and his community. He's told John Watkins that already. He also admits that it keeps his mind off things. Keeps things at bay. It's also a good challenge, a euphoric experience. Almost like ecstasy. That all he admits.

But what he fails to admit is that he feels it's his personal mission to atone for what Dr. Martin Whitly has done. The pain he has imposed on the world. The wounds he inflicted. Wounds that did not only affect the victims and their families but also his mother, his sister, and himself. Wounds that cannot heal. Wounds that continue to bleed twenty years later.

No.

He does not admit any of this. Because this thought redeems him, makes him a good person. Like some good Samaritan who saw the world was suffering and decided to help. But he knows he's none of that. "We are the same." He is not a good person. He's just to blame for what his father did. He is not any better. He is broken.

Yes.

He's serving his penance. Atoning for those sins, he somehow feels responsible for. And even though he can't seem to close the old wounds, he was at least sparing others the all-knowing pain. That’s why he loved his job at the FBI. This is why he loves working for the NYPD.

Today was a different case, though. It wasn't Gil who called him, like usual, but Edrisa. He could feel her excitement radiating from the text. Or rather a string of texts. Edrisa was the type of person to shoot 10 texts to get through one idea. Blurbs of text came to his phone as he was sipping his morning coffee.

Bright!!!

You need to see this!

I need to talk to you.

It’s about a case.

Like a very cool one!  

ASAP.

Really! It’s a good one!

He was out of the house as soon as he read the word case. Malcolm liked Edrisa. He could always be himself with her. She doesn’t judge him or give him creepy glances when he’s fascinated by murder. She's actually into the same things he likes. They share the same fascination for science and anatomy. He’s grateful for his team in the NYPD, more so now that he feels accepted by them. However, Edrisa was the first to accept him right away, and for that, he will always be grateful. After years of being considered a freak, bullied, harassed, and looked down upon, bright couldn't shake the amount of relief he felt about being so fully accepted and so fast. Even when she knew who he was, what his father was.

He reached her office, and through the glass window, he saw her frantically typing on her computer. Her eyebrows were creased, and she was deep into whatever was on the screen that she startled when he opened the door.

"Bright!" she exclaimed, "what took you so long! Come…come in quickly."

She was hopping on her legs, and in her hurried pace, she managed to hit her funny bony. "Aow Aow Awo,” she repeated and muttered, “why does it always hurt that much.”

Malcolm smiled. It was a quiet and rueful smile, the only smile he ever gives. She doesn't remember ever seeing him truly smile.

“ Hello Edrisa,” he looked at his watch, “I had to walk here. Your texts said you have a case?”

“ Yes, yes, YES," she said with a pointed finger up in the air while navigating back to her desk, and he followed to sit at the chair there. "Okay, so it's not really a case per se,” she said and saw his shoulders drop. “Wait, I mean it is, I really think it is. But when I spoke to Gil, he did not see it.”

He frowned, "Why would, Gil ..."

“haah! Because the victim wasn’t killed.”

His frown deepened, but it wasn't an impatient frown. It was leaning more towards perplexed, thoughtful, and definitely not judgmental. She looked at him for a second.

"No, no, no. Let me explain. Let’s start from the beginning, shall we?” she pushed the rims of her glasses to her nose and started.

"So yesterday was a normal day. All cool. Daily work, nothing out of the ordinary, really. I was working with a poor Jane doe but then. Oh, by the way, did you know that when the lungs are submerged in water for so long, they kind of… oh, Sorry, sorry, of course, you do! Where was I? I got carried away,” she smiled sheepishly. Malcolm smiled back. He knows how Edrisa gets carried away, he does so himself more often than ever, so he's not one to judge. On regular days they can both start talking and jumping from topic to topic that by the end of the conversation, they would have discussed ten different things and forgot what the initial topic was even about. Today was different though, this was not an idle chat. They were discussing a case, and so he curbed his itch to ask about Jane Doe and silently let her continue her narrative.

“Back to our story,” she continued, “ So, I get a call from a colleague of mine, Dr. Mathew Brown, he was working with a victim…um, a Mrs. Lori Stewart. Poor soul took her own life. Husband found her in the bathtub, having slit both her wrists." She hung her head low for a few seconds in dismay, and her voice was less enthusiastic, more apologetic, "She left behind a two-year-old. The husband was devastated."

He lowered his head in turn. One would assume that after so much death surrounding them, that it will get easier. It never does.

“So, Mathew, he um... wanted my opinion on her. He thinks it might not be as simple as it looks.”

In reply to his arched eyebrows, she continued, " Lori went missing a couple of days before the accident. Her husband filed a missing person's report forty-eight hours after she disappeared. He insisted that something terrible must have happened to her because Lori rarely left the house. Never without letting him know. Never without lily, their daughter. He was frantic, according to the reports here,” she moved the monitor on her desk a bit to show Bright the police report.

“However, she turned up two days later, completely unscathed, gave no explanation to where she was. Said she just wanted time off. So, the investigation was closed.”

Malcolm’s hand moved to his face stroking his chin. Edrisa knew he was processing the information, thinking of the hidden angles, something he always does, so she let him be.

“She was not restrained?” his head jerked towards her.

"No. There were no marks anywhere to indicate she has been restrained or held captive. Her clothes were in pristine condition. In all outward appearances, she looked fine. The police ran the S.A.K, and the results came back negative. Apart from her apparent silence, there was really nothing to do.”

Malcolm eyed her, and his lips curled playfully, " but that's not all. Right Edrisa? Tell me what is missing. What did you find out!”

She smiled, not at all flustered by his sassiness. He was not the best profiler she knows for nothing.

“That’s what Mathew contacted me about. He found a very carefully hidden needle entry point. She has been dosed with something. So, when checking her tox screen, he found some anomalies. Lori had a history with depression, recently she suffered from postpartum depression and was still on mood stabilizers, among many others. The bloodwork that was taken back when she came home, and that after her death gave perplexing results. Supposedly, she left her medicine at home, so her blood shouldn’t have any traces of the drugs. Yet the levels in the report indicate that there were drugs in her system. The person-in-charge back at the time did not notice. The total concentration was within limits and in line with what's expected, given her medication list. However, if you look closely at the chemical's concentrations, you can see some of the peaks belong to model drugs that mimic the behavior of a conventional drug. It is very easy to miss if you are not looking for it."

“So, she was given another cocktail of drugs in different concentrations such that the overall concentration was within the limits? That way if you are not directly looking for it, you might miss it. Fascinating! Any idea what could those drugs induce?”

She shook her head, “Unfortunately, by this time, the drugs were flushed out of her system and also mixed in with her normal pills so further tests could not run accurately. She was missing for four days, two before Mr. Stewart was able to file a report. According to Mathew, if she was dosed, she must have been dosed on the first day. That's roughly six days ago, so it is not easy. But we know an excellent forensic chemist. We sent her the sample. Amy Garcia will figure it out, she’s the best!”

Malcolm gnawed at his lips. Something was missing. The case sure was a mystery, but he has nothing to work with for a profile. No pattern. Just a suspected foul play that might have led a poor woman to lose her life. Nothing concrete. He understood why Gil did not see a case yet.

“Edrisa,” he started but was interrupted.

"Okay, now you know the specifics. umm, you also know that I um kind of follow lots of real crime blogs?" her voice continued to drop as if she was ashamed of her hobby and expected the usual judgemental looks she normally received. He said nothing, just looked at her expectantly, and waited.

“ Lori Stewart was not the only case. In fact, this is the third case this month alone!”

That’s it. she hit the jackpot.

He shifted in his chair and looked back up at her, his blue eyes shining with radiant excitement.

She liked how excited he usually gets, and a deep sense of pride invaded her. She had to admit he had pretty eyes. The type anyone can get lost into. And they got all the much prettier when they gleamed this way. Edrisa liked Bright. No. Not in that sort anyway. Malcolm bright was not her crush, despite how she always makes it seem. He is a friend. If anything, she just loves his brain and is fascinated by it. However, that does not mean she can't appreciate art, and his eyes were art.

“The reason why the two cases passed under the police’s radar was that the victims were not reported missing. Here..” she passed him a file with two names and some information.

“A college Freshman, Alex Sanders, and Patricia Young, she is an artist. Here is all the information that I found. I will also let you know when Amy gets back to me about the drug."

“Thank YOU, Edrisa," he said with excitement while hopping off his chair. He steadied his clothes, "I will start on a profile right away. But I will need more information."

She smiled playfully, “You could probably ask Detective Powel. I am sure she will be happy to help.”

He did not seem to hear her because he offered no comment, but she could see his cheeks flush a little. He waved her goodbye and rushed out.

Edrisa eased in her chair. She already felt better. Whoever was behind the death of those people, and behind orphaning a two-year-old will not get away with this.

Edrisa tensed while she sat in that metal armchair. She was terrified beyond measure. Her wrists were tied to the arms of the chair using duct tape. Her ankles were tied together as well. She felt a searing pain in her limbs like fire every time she struggled against them. Edrisa knew that they won’t give away, they were wrapped at least five times, but that did not stop her. She could feel her heartbeat in her ears, and she was struggling to breathe. The duct tape gagging her made matters even worse.

She sat in that chair like some damsel in distress, she couldn't even lift her glasses up when they kept slipping off the bridge of her nose. Not like she loved what she saw, but she has to be able to see.  A wave of helplessness crushed her even more, her heartbeat beat even faster. I am a damsel in distress, and by the looks of it, I am not going to be leaving this place alive.

She could not have imagined that she would ever be in such a position. Sure, she had a gun pointed at her once before, and she did not imagine that as well.

No, but no, this was different. This was hopeless. This was futile.

She looked at Bright, a few feet away, and her eyes welled with tears again. She was astonished that tears kept coming. They kept pouring down her face unchecked, and she let them. This was all her fault; she should never have gotten involved in that case. She should never have sent bright those texts.

[ahouseoflies]

The Best Films of 2019, Part V

(Sorry for the long wait.)  GOOD MOVIES

43. Luce (Julius Onah)- For every subtle, graceful moment, there's a spelled-out, maladroit moment, but this movie has a lot on its mind regarding race. Naomi Watts is great as a mother whose unwavering support of her son is as admirable as it is foolish, and Octavia Spencer plays a very real type that I hadn't seen in a movie, a teacher who uses her students to validate her own worldview. The film takes a long time to judge its characters, to the point that the title character could have done none of the things he's accused of (unlikely), some of the things he's accused of (likely), or all of the things he's accused of (unlikely). The dialogue is sometimes theatrical, but thankfully, so is the ambiguity. 42. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (Marielle Heller)- I appreciated the deft touch of Marielle Heller--stuff works in this movie that would look silly on the page--but I wasn't fully connecting. That is, until Chris Cooper got a tear lodged in the corner of his eye and said: "It's not fair. I was just starting to figure out how to live my life." That achieved what it was supposed to achieve. 41. Little Women (Greta Gerwig)- Gerwig takes chances with the structure, and it takes a long time for that gambit to pay off. Once it does though, such as when Jo comes downstairs to see a hearty Beth, which is only there to contrast Jo coming downstairs minutes later to an empty kitchen without Beth, the reinvention pays dividends. I liked whenever the film was winking at the audience, showing its own strings, but that first half was a lot of "Amy, you're Amy, right? And the audience can tell us apart, right, Amy?" The Chalamet-Pugh scenes, to use a phrase that a Sacramentonian like Gerwig might approve of, just hit different. Especially in the scene that most directly addresses Alcott's division between obligation and personal responsibility, their chemistry crackles. Can someone please cast those two as reporters stepping over each other while trying to crack the same scoop? Please? 40. Dark Waters (Todd Haynes)- In the Todd Haynes filmography, this is an effective if weird entry: He makes the procedural, research-based parts of a legal thriller exciting while the actual courtroom stuff falls flat. And it's a strange challenge for a director with such a sumptuous eye for design to capture the flat textures of Cincinnati office space or the sacky suits of a guy who is consumed by a case. That being said, the film is a work of conscience and compassion. It's no small feat to call out DuPont by name over a hundred times. The first half moves nimbly. When it works, such as the creative montage that explains Teflon to the audience, it resists the crutches of its genre. But the story suffers from having to compress so many years in the second half. Those broad strokes affect both the supporting performances--only Tim Robbins is able to sell his character's change of heart in limited screen time--and tone. Sometimes the "None of this matters" scenes are right next to the "Maybe I've made a difference" scenes, and it's jarring. 39. One Child Nation (Nanfu Wang)- It's a cool trick for something so handmade and personal to also stand in as a story of a country. And it's as affecting as you would imagine images of discarded fetuses would be. If I sound dismissive though, it's because I don't know quite to do with this. China...sucks? 38. Ford v. Ferrari (James Mangold)- Hard to argue with the craftsmanship of a film that cares so much about its structure on a scene-by-scene level. Ford v. Ferrari is two-and-a-half hours (four hours on TNT every Sunday forever), but, if anything, the forty minutes dedicated to Le Mans could be longer. Josh Lucas nearly tanks the thing with his smugness, but the other performances are fun. My take on why the film is a guide for being a Republican is still charging.

37. Us (Jordan Peele)- Us made $70 million in its opening weekend, which is a lot for a David Lynch movie. It's amazing that a film this artsty and accusatory toward its audience (Us=U.S.) is immensely popular. The imagery of Us is arresting (and so so funny). Within the first two shots, you know you're in good hands, and my Tumblr feed is going to be full of, say, Elisabeth Moss, whose expressions are the best effect in movies, giving herself a smile with scissors. Scissors that always create a division in their "tethered" subject, that are handled by Freddy Krueger gloves that are clearly an influence on Jordan Peele, that make construction paper cut-outs that mirror the bougie family decal on the back of the Wilson Family's station wagon. This device is a thought-out visual component. But Us is all too often a subtext in search of a text. When we really start to unpack the shadow people, they might not even make literal sense. I say this as I plan a second viewing that the movie deserves. On one hand, I admire Peele's search for a metaphor for political division or homelessness or late capitalism. On the other hand, a metaphor for everything is a metaphor for nothing. 36. Richard Jewell (Clint Eastwood)- Like most Eastwood directorial efforts, things are a little too neat and fixed in the setup: This character saying something a bit too on-the-nose and biographical, those characters probably not being in the same place at the same time. And the female characters, especially Olivia Wilde's rapacious, promiscuous Kathy, would have felt out of place thirty years ago, let alone now. There's barely anything on the page for her, and, to be honest, I don't think she does much with what she was given. Once the film settles into what it's actually about though, the drama is graceful and potent. The attorney-client relationship is specific and interesting, and in a less loaded year, Paul Walter Hauser and Sam Rockwell would be clearing their mantles. Hauser, in particular, is great, free of any of the vanity that might go into making Jewell more perceptive or self-aware. 35. The Peanut Butter Falcon (Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz)- Derivative of even something like Mud from a few years ago, poisoned by an abrupt ending, but ultimately sweet as hell. Shia and Dakota play off each other with Movie Star fireworks, so the film kicks into a different gear when they're together. The scene in which LaBoeuf stands at the Salt Water Redneck's screen door is a heartbreaker. 34. Pain and Glory (Pedro Almodovar)- A little less formally inventive than I was expecting, Pain and Glory is mostly good and sometimes great, especially in the heartbreaking Federico sequence. In another mother-son story, one that brings up the word "autofiction" without prompting, Banderas is even styled to look like Almodovar. This might be his first "old man" role, and he wears it well. 33. Where’s My Roy Cohn? (Matt Trynauer)- The Donald Trump section, the one that all of Cohn's situational morality and empty power-grubbing had been leading to all along, is illuminating because it goes deep into specific deals. (And because the relationship is recent enough for the interview subjects to have first-hand knowledge.) I wish that Trynauer had slowed down that much elsewhere--especially to get to the bottom of the frog collection. But if the object is to get you to go, "What an asshole," then mission accomplished. 32. The Lighthouse (Robert Eggers)- Eggers lays the doubling on pretty thick in the last half-hour, but he goes to great lengths to make this like nothing you've ever seen or heard before otherwise. He's a filmmaker who cares deeply about the composed image on a shot by shot and possibly a frame by frame level. The Lighthouse was less thematically rich than its predecessor, but I'm pretty sure I felt as confined and unnerved (and as tickled by the salty dialogue) as I was supposed to. 31. Amazing Grace (Sydney Pollack and Alan Elliot)- Amazing Grace is one of the best reviewed movies of the year, in part because no one is going to say that listening to Aretha Franklin sing is a bad experience. It's not. But she's stationary as a performer, and I would be lying if I said that the movie didn't get tedious. In its best moments though, one of which is Aretha's dad wiping sweat off her face while she ignores him and plays the piano, it's high, high art. 30. The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley (Alex Gibney)- A typically solid Gibney effort: never boring, articulate in its aims, poised to expose fraud for the public good. The film builds quite a bit of momentum as it gauges Elizabeth Holmes on the scale of American showmanship and Silicon Valley's fake-it-till-you-make-it ethos, and its strangest moments are its best. (See: The C.E.O. and C.O.O. giddily jumping on a bounce house because one of their two hundred tests got approved by the FDA.) I like that no one explicitly comments on Holmes's looks, using words like "captivating" or "presence" instead, letting her undue influence on men hang over the proceedings the same way it did in real life. There's a lot left unsaid about how she might have been held back but then pushed forward, underestimated until she was overestimated, because of the lack of women in her field. At the same time, the film repeats itself and ties itself into knots by insisting that Holmes is a complicated figure. She's a person so driven by a desire for greatness that she can't listen to reason or admit defeat. Are we sure that's revolutionary or unique? 29. Dragged Across Concrete (S. Craig Zahler)- A) All of S. Craig Zahler's movies are above average in execution and downright special in aspiration. B) All of S. Craig Zahler's movies are too long. C) If S. Craig Zahler's movies were not long, they would not be special.The guy keeps introducing characters and threads, but each one is interesting, and I keep rolling with him. (Until the Jennifer Carpenter subplot, which is ten minutes of emotional manipulation.) That same critical tangle extends to the idea of whether or not this movie endorses the racism that it depicts. I thought it did until I didn't, and maybe that wishy-washiness--dingy, dingy wishy-washiness--is what I'm supposed to feel. 28. Honey Boy (Alma Har’el)- Honey Boy isn't much of a movie, but it is an exorcism. Especially in the Lucas Hedges rehab arc that we've seen a million times, the story is thin. The film's reason to exist is emotional catharsis though, and it has that in spades. It's worth seeing for the traumatic three-way phone conversation alone. Hedges banks another good performance in what is basically a Shia impression: falsely gruff voice, t-shirt collar in mouth, crew socks peeking out of combat boots. But what LaBoeuf himself is doing is a force of nature. His performance in American Honey was my previous favorite, and he taps into the inverse of that charisma here: seductive in the former, repellent in Honey Boy. Most people can play insecure motormouths, and most people can evince pain. But to play a person who talks non-stop as a coping mechanism for pain, and getting across to the viewer that even the character knows he's not good at such a thing? Those are some shades of gray.

27. Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino)- Tarantino's best film, Inglourious Basterds, is gauged for maximum suspense and audience involvement. This one, which is one of his worst on this first viewing for me, is made entirely for himself. I appreciate that artistically, but the film never stops--especially in the clunkily paced middle--indulging itself. Oh, I get it: It's a film about growing older and dealing with possible obsolescence, but the nuts-and-bolts storytelling is too digressive for me. That dilly-dallying is the point, of course, as the film attempts to hang on to a dying moment, luxuriating in its painstakingly recreated setting and hanging out with men's men played by actors who are at their absolute peak of Movie Stardom. It's a Tarantino film, so it's not without its sublime pleasures. Hell, I'll go back just for that montage of the neon signs turning on. 26. Her Smell (Alex Ross Perry)- Grating in a way that Alex Ross Perry's films have not been before and redemptive in a way that his films have not been before. Over the course of five mammoth real-time scenes--Perry cites Steve Jobs as a structural influence--the viewer is dragged through scuzzy, abusive ugliness right to the authentic final line. It's a rewarding experience that I never want to experience again. More than anything else, the film is an additional exhibit in the case that Elisabeth Moss can do anything. She shined in Perry's Listen Up Philip and gets a similar long zoom here to showcase ten emotions at once. She plays the part of Becky Something like a glass on the edge of a table: that delicate and precarious, useful but with the potential for harm. She screams, she cries, she sings, she plays guitar, she plays piano, and she could probably float if the screenplay really required it. 25. Transit (Christian Petzold)- The only thing I knew about Transit going in was that it took place in an indeterminate time period. And that one studied aspect of the film, the ideological rootlessness of the fascists responded to with a papers-focused isolation, is what powers everything. Manohla Dargis aptly called it "temporal dissonance," and it adds real teeth to the film's allegory. The second half becomes more contemplative and less literal though, and I think it's less urgent as a result. I didn't know quite where Petzold wanted me to go in the final moments. But the stateless throng of people waiting for their number to be called at a consulate? I know what that is supposed to make me think about. 24. Mary Magdalene (Garth Davis)- I didn't like Garth Davis's last film, Lion, because the protagonist seemed listless and dumb and weak. Turns out, Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene are upgrades. There's a feminist bent to the proceedings, thanks to its two female screenwriters and a focus on the agency needed for a woman in 33 to spurn marriage and family to follow a whispery firebrand. Phoenix's performance is uneven, but, especially when he passes out bringing Lazarus back to life, he does a great job of showing how exhausting it must have been to transcend this world. The film kind of comes across as a greatest hits of Jesus, but so do the Gospels. 23. Sword of Trust (Lynn Shelton)- Sword of Trust, as thin and bite-sized as it is, carefully parcels out backstory and deepens as it goes. Without really forcing the issue--Lynn Shelton never does--it becomes a timely and witty story about the consequences of a society relativist enough to give consideration to even the most absurd viewpoints. Toby Huss as Hogjaws is a Best Supporting Actor nominee for me, and I am not kidding at all.

[canaryatlaw]

alright, so all around today was pretty good! I woke up feeling sooooooo much more refreshed than I have in a LONG time, so that was a very good feeling, I definitely slept quite well. But I woke up to my alarm at 10:55, got ready, and ended up running out the door to catch the bus so I didn’t have to wait 15 minutes for the next one. Made it to the DV courthouse, and pretty quickly got put on a case that they had done the paperwork for during the morning shift but didn’t get to go to court, so they just wanted me to accompany them to court. they ask me to do that a lot because I’m experienced in giving the court talk and helping them understand things and such. So I did all that, and we headed up around 1:30, and strangely ended up waiting almost an hour for our case to get called. there were a few cases that needed a spanish interpreter so they’ll generally prioritize those, but there were other ones that came in afterwards who got called before us, which I didn’t understand. But eventually we got called, and unfortunately the emergency order got denied because they kind of fell into a legal blindspot- most of the threats her ex-boyfriend was making were aimed at her fiance, who can be a protected party on her order, but he can’t bring his own order because he doesn’t have the required domestic relationship to do so (to petition for a no-contact DV order you need a domestic relationship, either a household member or romantic/former romantic relationship). So they were understandably kind of bummed out, and I always get a bit indignant when that happens to what was a fairly solid case. they have a parentage case going on though so the order will get transferred to that judge, which should be good because some of the threats were aimed at their daughter as well, and judges always take that stuff seriously. So I go back downstairs, it’s kind of late at this point so I didn't think I’d get another case, but my supervisor asked me to do a follow up phone interview for them with a woman who got an order last week but has since had a few incidents with the respondent. This isn’t a normal duty or anything I’ve done for them before, but I guess they figured I’ve been around long enough I could handle this, and I did plenty of this stuff at OPG so it was no biggie. So I called her, it was a really bad custody case over a little two year old boy, and they’ve had all sorts of issues about visitation and the father just being straight up abusive. I really felt bad for them because she was saying how her son acts so traumatized when he comes back from his father’s house, he gets scared if anyone touches his mom, he flinches like someone is gonna hit him while she changes his diaper (which I found particularly concerning because it could definitely be a red flag for potential sexual abuse, but I never want to plant that seed in a parents mind because I know what kind of trauma that could cause them). so I told them child welfare was really my main passion, and I know how unhelpful the cops and the courts can be in this type of situation. and the dad was constantly leaving the son with his mother, who has a prior indicated DCFS report, which means she’s not supposed to be around children period, so I urged them to call DCFS about that (they had done so previously but no action had been taken). But yeah, I wrote down all their stuff and then briefed my supervisor on it, and headed out around 4:20. I was like, hardcore craving pizza, and when I got off the train heading to school I realized I left my lunchbox at the courthouse, so now I needed to get food anyway. I hung out in the CFLA office for a bit, then on a recommendation from one of the girls in there I walked a few blocks over to this like food court style place with a bunch of different places which looked super cool and I’ll definitely have to go back and try more of them, and got some “detroit style pizza” which I really didn’t know what entailed, but it was actually really good! I liked it a lot. So I went back to school and ate that, then headed up to class. We had a guest speaker for most of the class period, she’s an adoption attorney who specializes in transracial adoptions which we were talking about last week, so she kind of presented on the topic and what the issues are in the system with it, and it was super interesting. I asked her at the end what some ways the child welfare system could improve support for kids in transracial placements, and she said better education for foster parents could be very helpful, and also repealing some laws that explicitly ban race matching, because there are gonna be some cases (not most, but some) where it’s gonna be in everyone’s best interest for the child to end up with a family of their own race. So yeah, it was really interesting. After she left we just ran through the cases quickly, and then we were done. Got home and watched designated survivor, which continues to make me so jealous Tom Kirkman is not our president, because he's just so fucking good and literally everything Trump is not. He is courageous and moral, and refuses to back down when he knows he’s doing the right thing- every single week I end up in awe of how great of a president he is and so wish that we had him instead (sigh). After that I watched Brooklyn 99, which was SO good omg, of course the HalloVeen episodes are always great, but of course this one was even better because (spoiler) JAKE PROPOSED TO AMY AND SHE SAID YES!!!!! Ahhh, I was so so happy, their relationship is legit one of the healthiest ones portrayed on television, they treat each other so well and deal with problems in the best way possible, so I’m very happy for them. After that I watched a little Jimmy Kimmel while I finished up reading some internet stuff before getting ready for bed, and that’s about it. I’m very pleased that the Yankees own again tonight and are now in the lead in their series, just one win away from the pennant!!! so exciting. The Cubs pulled out a victory too (the score was 3-2) which means they stay alive for now, but the Dodgers are still up two games on them, so we’ll have to see how that plays out. I want both teams to win individually, but I also really don't want a Cubs/Yankees world series for obvious reasons. Okay, that’s about it. Signing off for now. Goodnight ideas. Sleep well.

[roidespd-blog]

Chapter Twenty-Seven : QUEER & RACE

If you recall yesterday’s article on the Equality Act (June 26th), the Gay Liberation Movement and it subsequent attempts at protecting Queer people under the Law took a page at the Civil Rights Movement that culminated (but did not end) with the signature of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The fight of minorities have always mirrored one another through the last century of our History but today, we’re exploring how race is being handled inside the Queer community. And since I’m a white cis man, I’m perfectly qualified for the job.

A WHITE MAN EXPLAINS RACISM

Fuck no. 1. You’re perfectly aware of what racism is 2. I ain’t whitesplaining this situation 3. Next.

RAINBOW IS NOT THE ONLY COLOR

In the United States, Queer Black People had the hard challenge to face two major fights in the 1960s (three for Queer women of color) : Right to exist as a black person and right to proclaim their Queer identity without serious consequences. The New York Times published an article on June 22, 2019 called ‘Queer People of Color Led the L.G.B.T.Q Charge, but were denied the reward”. Very instructive if you have a second. In this article, it is stated that the same thing happened to Transgender people, Drag Queens, Blacks and Hispanics during this period of time “(They) played outsized roles during many of the earliest milestones of the Gay Rights Movement (but) have been denied many of the benefits of the revolution they sparked”.

As a matter of fact, many of the first major push backs at the Police and the Law were led Queer people of Color. Logical when you think of how badly black people were treating in America since… always. If on top of that, you throw homophobic attacks for being a transvestite or a homo, well someone might snap for good. As the article states “the LGBTQ community owes a huge debt of gratitude to the ones who really didn’t have that much of a choice, who were out there taking the beatings and taking the verbal abuse”. Basically Trans women of color. Didn’t you hear, Marsha P. Johnson threw the first brick at Stonewall ? Well, more on that later (PLOT TWIST : She probably didn’t).

You can’t deny all the good and sacrifices Marsha achieved during her short lifetime though. An outspoken advocate for gay rights and founding member of the Gay Liberation Front, she was known as “the mayor of Christopher Street” (location of the Stonewall Inn). Marsha was a black individual. Many of them were. Without the hardship and strength that they accumulated in a country where they were never considered equal and couldn’t hide their identity — because think about it, you may have the possibility to pass as straight, but you can’t pretend to be white, we wouldn’t be where we are today.

And what do we have today ? A total ignorance of the pain and struggles are our brothers and sisters of color.

DOUBLE STANDARDS

Queer individuals of color may find themselves in a double minority, in which they are neither fully accepted nor understood by (mainly) white Queer communities nor their own ethnic group.

If you are an Arab person (especially if you are Muslim), religious backgrounds and crowd mentality are clear obstacles to your own acceptance of Queer Identity. Meanwhile, you’ll have a hard time finding people to relate to as you will inevitably be consider a sex object by the community (more on that later).

Some Asian family traditions will hold you back to marry the person you love. One study found that 90% of Asian and Pacific Islanders (APIs) who self-identified as Queer thought homophobia and transphobia to be an issue in the later API community. Amy Sueyoshi, an Historian specializing in sexuality, gender and race, said : “Voices from the queer left, though opposed to homophobia in cultural nationalism, have picked up the protest against the feminization of Asian American men in the gay community. While coming from drastically different perspectives, both groups find common ground in supporting a phallocentric standard of Asian American Male sexuality”. And on the Queer side, people of Asian descent are mostly ignored (more on that later).

Gay Latino Men report experiencing Ostracism from their friends and families as they are not considered truly “men”. Latina lesbians are considered traitors who have forsaken their roots (they are perceived as “Malinche” figures corrupted by foreign influences who contribute to the genocide of their people). More than in any other community, rigid gender roles, patriarchy and religion give a sexuality judged ‘abnormal’ and hard to accept. Queer communities, meanwhile, created a toxic environment for Gay Latinos and Latinas (more. on. that. later)

In Black communities, homophobic attitudes are mainly the reason why there’s a disproportionately high incidence of HIV/AIDS amongst African Americans (that and poverty). Those overtly homophobic standards in that community gave way to a subculture called being on the “Down-Low”, in which black men who usually identity as heterosexual have sex with men without anyone else knowing shit about it. In many cases, those sexual acts are unprotected and create a space of danger for the individual and their future sexual partners (male and female). Finally, in the Queer community… Well, you get my drift (more on that right now).

Do you need to talk about Trans people of color ? Really ? Don’t you know that by now ? Have you ever considered what they were going through ?

This creates multiples minority stress inside one individual, with consequences of internalized homophobia and poor mental and physical self-care (drugs, alcohol, sexual risks, suicide).

SEXUAL RACISM

Sexual Racial Preference is the individual’s sexual preference of specific races. Is is an inclination towards potential sexual or romantic partners on the basis of perceived racial identity. In a way, it all depends on your point of view. There’s the blind point of view where we present this situation as a matter of preference and there’s the “put your fucking glasses on” point of view of we need to characterize this as racism. It’s been going on for hundreds of years, especially with the world’s dark past with slavery. In the last ten years, online dating has overtaken previously methods of meeting potential partners. The number of dating sites (gay, straight, bi, etc) has spiked to a uncountable level. Some are even created especially for an ethnic background OR for people in search of a different ethnic background. Along with this, there has been a rise of online sexual racism. Racial discrimination is everywhere. ESPECIALLY in Queer dating apps.

Take the case of Asian men. In other gay men’s minds, they are being represented as feminine and desexualized. The term “undersexed” has been used. Without even mentioning the stereotyping of size for an Asian male, gay pornography often depicts Asian men as submissive to the pleasures of white men. The way Asian men have been treated in the Queer community is close to “symbolic castration” according to Gilbert Caluya. Gay Asian Men experience constant racism on dating apps, where it is common for profiles to state “NO ASIANS” or “NO FATS, NO FEMMES, NO ASIANS” (the holy trinity of what Asian Men are represented as). They are being “relegated to the bottom of the attractiveness spectrum”, reflecting the position of the Asian individual in the world (and as always, with WHITE MALE on top). And if somehow, a Gay White man will get an interest in an Gay Asian man, it’s often part of a fetish or sexual racial preference based only on appearance and race. The objectification of someone’s race is in no way better than pushing that someone away because of this race. Those “rice queen” need to stop taken Asian people for objects to play with and then throw away. Same thing for Asian women in the Queer community. They are not deemed “Gay enough” due to their traditional Asian descent and at the same time, “passive but exotic”, mirroring the way Straight white males view Asian women.

Do you think it’s better with other ethnicities ? Sure, keep dreaming. Where Asian men are desexualized, Black men and women, cis and trans, are overtly sexualized, on top of the deepest form of racism born out of centuries of slavery and fear. As I said, the rise of the two movements made life twice as difficult for Queer Black folks. John Wilder said “Now that it is becoming unfashionable to discriminate against N*****, discrimination against homosexuals will be on the increase”. Furthermore, Keith Boykin said “the dirty little secret about the homosexual population is that white gay people are just as racist as white straight people”. It’s a truth that you can see everyday in our community. It has been predominantly led by white people for white people. Just as what ? The rest of the world. So if Black people are rejected as individuals by their Black communities and by the Queer community, what’s left for them ? Yes, I digress from the sexual stereotyping I was supposed to talk about. Here it goes. Those discriminations are reflected into their sexuality in constant judgement from all parts of both communities. For example, Black men who have a sexual preference for White men are accused to suffer from “insidious legacy of white racism”. They are also rejected by other Black Gay men opposed to interracial relationships with White folks, as it is a sign of lack of roots into their enslaved history and a oblivious blind eye to racism. Otherwise, Black Gay Men are supposed to be “tops” with enormous dongs (something that is explicitly demanded by dating apps users of all races) who are “urban”, “ruff” and gonna treat them like “lil’ bitches”. Some White men unofficially think that being sexually attracted to Black people automatically proves the lack of racism in them. But if you are only fucking and dating Black people, you have a sexual racial preference and… you racist.

And did you know that Trans Black Women are four times as likely to be sexually attacked, raped or murdered than the rest of the Queer population ? Uh ?

Have you noticed that in America, there’s a lot of Gay Latino bars and nightclubs, not so much Asian or Black gay clubs ? Do you think it’s because Latinos are better club dancers ? You racist fuck. No, it’s because Queer hispanics and Latinos have one of the greatest level of discriminations, both within and outside the Queer community, prompting the creation of the first Latino gay bar in San Francisco in 1979. Many more will follow.

I had a harder times finding specific prejudices against Latinos and Latinas inside the Queer community than for others, I’ll admit. Then I remembered that I just needed to search inside of my own prejudices, those that came with growing up inside the system. The first thing that comes to mind is big butts. Latino Men are targeted for the specific proportions of their bodies, especially if they are bottoms. Who doesn’t like a big ass ? They’re trendy. What else ? What else ? What else ? Well, just like any other races, your shade is uber important. I mean, are you darker skinned ? light skinned so you can almost pass as white ? Are the physical traits on your face obviously Mexican ? Spanish ? Brazilian ?

Arab men faces another type of stereotypes : the THUG.

Here’s the situation : you’re a young white bottom with a really big urge of being mistreated by someone with a bad attitude. White boys don’t scare you, it doesn’t turn you on. Latinos ? why not but it’s gonna be enough ? A Black man ? Well it could hurt (because big dicks, right ?). So you turn your attention to Arabs. They wear street clothes, sneakers that you can worship. They will insult you, spit on you, fuck you like the whore that you are. Maybe even in a basement ! And with some of his thug friends ! You’ll end up cover in spits and jizz, the rose bud blooming like never before. Who said Arab men were all thugs ? What makes you think every time you objectify a Arab sex partner, it’s gonna end up like this ? Wouldn’t it be… SATAN ? (that was a SNL reference) Nop, it’s Society.

Gay Arab women are non existent, Asian-Indians of all sexes as well, Native Americans don’t even mention it !

And don’t think that ethnic minorities are totally off the hook on this one. The fascination of some for white partners are just as racist as the rest of those examples.

In BBC Three’s documentary Series Queer Britain, specifically episode 4 called “Preference or Prejudice”, the host skypes the author of the book “True confessions of a Patato Queen” (apparently, it’s Asian male who are only attracted to White men). When asked why is he only attracted to those, he responded : “I believe the white race is a superior one and I love being with a white guy primarily because of that and also because he’s got a powerful big cock that I love. Once you go whish (white), nothing else seems rigsh (right) ! (laugh)” Staggering. But who made him think that ? Could it beeeee…. ?

VICTIMS OF OUR SOCIETY’S PREJUDICES

At last year’s Paris Pride, a collective called Qitoko called for an assembly of Queer and Trans people of color (I don’t know why Trans is not part of the Queer but whatever) to go up front of the march, part of the “Cortège de Tête de la Pride — Stop au Pinkwashing!”. It is a reflection on the way Queer people in general are not properly considering Queer people of color inside the community, very much the way Society has never viewed people of color at an equal level as white are.

The article I found on Irrecuperables goes on to talk about the country’s politics, lack of support, the act of parking different races together, pushing minorities to the outer limits of the Capitol. They also speak about feeling and being “indesirable” as part of the march.

What this recent example shows, as it is something I’ve said a few times already in previous articles, is that Queer people are making the same mistakes as the rest of the world always had. For an outside perspective, it seems like the Queer community is super inclusive and ultra liberal. I tend to disagree with that. As we were all raised in the same heteronormative white society, we have, in our DNA, the same principles of white superiority and race hierarchy that History and the way that we live today openly shows us just that. The fact that you are Queer doesn’t change that fact or erase those mistakes from your beings. Off course, I’m not saying we are ALL racist. Off course not. But it’s time, as a society, to recognize our prejudices and take ownership of our errors. The same goes for the Queer community. Why does a Black Lesbian have to feel so abandoned in a Lesbian bar ? Why does she think that she have to straighten her hair and act less masculine in case girls get scared of her attitude ? Can’t you just look and appreciate the person for who he/she/they is, regardless of the stereotypes life force-fed you ? It doesn’t take much to step back, reflect and correct. You mostly need to silence your ego. Silence that bitch now.

It is extremely problematic to use racialized desire as personal preference as “it constructs ‘preference’ and identity categories as equitable, which ignores the fact that Queer men and women do not choose their Racial identity”. This also reduces Queer men and women into a category of an object or ‘kink’ that can be adopted or cast aside at will. In France, we’ve let people in our country in waves, as someone reminded me not so long ago. Then, we parked them, used them and now are just plainly ignoring their sufferings. We, as Queer people, have to do better than that. We can’t go from victims to executioners and not even blink on it. I’ve barely scratched the surface of the Race problem inside our community. And honestly, it took me long ass time to come up with something to say, as I didn’t feel like I could legitimately talk about it. Well, I did because it’s just as important as the rest of this month’s projects.

Stop hiding behind “preferences” and “white blindness”. Document yourself, talk to people. Make a change. Be inclusive all the way.

Check yourself before you wreck ourselves.

[thelightningawardsofficial]

Review | Weapon or Game: The Comeback

Judged by Amy (daedaliaaan)

Category: I'm Not A Mary Sue

[ Author: JanaTale ]

Title (2/5): The title of your book is rather simple, but I fail to see its correlation with the plot. Especially since the summary doesn't exactly give both direct or indirect clues regarding the plot relates to a 'Weapon'. I also fail to see what part of the story refers to 'The Comeback', considering that this is the first book where the whole plot is being introduced from this point. When I first stumbled upon your book, 'The Comeback' gave me the idea that there has been a great story previous to this book and this is a continuation of sorts. This initial confusion leads me to suggest that naming a book 'The Comeback' might me bore suitable for a sequel rather than the first of a trilogy.

Summary (5/10): First, I will assess your use of language within the summary. There are noticeable mistakes in punctuation, especially in the use of commas. You have the habit of adding commas before the word 'and' in sentences that are not listing objects or have the need to link two independent clauses together. The sentence 'Jane Wolf is a student at Royal Academy, and was never like the other girls at her school' is as example for an unnecessary use of a comma before 'and'. This can easily be a single sentence without the comma and would sound better and have a more clear meaning. 'David, and Joe' can simply be 'David and Joe'. There are other multiple unnecessary usage of commas that I suggest you take another look at and review the punctuation mistakes. Aside punctuation mistakes, there are a few inconsistencies of past and present tenses. The mistakes are very few to the point that it could go unnoticed by average readers, however it is always good to have a consistent use of tense when writing to avoid confusion.

There is also a lack of variety in sentences – most of your sentences are very long when it could be broken down into separate sentences. This is also mostly due to the excessive use of commas within your sentences. I do think that having long sentences does create a certain professional feel to it which a lot of writers tends to want to put into their summary, but in this case, a variety of sentences would actually be able to create more intrigue for readers. Shorter sentences can be used to create a sense of mystery and suspense which can help build a sense of curiosity for your readers.

The last assessment will be the content of your summary. Your summary follows a nice structure of the intro-body-outro of the entirety of your plot. I think your plot has been nicely explained in your summary without spoiling too much of it. I don't have much to say about the content of your summary, honestly. Overall, it's very important for the summary to be well written because it is what gives the readers the first impression of your story. A summary with good content but poorly written in terms of structure can discourage readers from viewing your story.

Plot (10/25): I will be honest with you – your plot doesn't strike me as intriguing. When I read your summary beforehand, I was slightly interested with how the story will occur, but upon reading the next few chapters I was slightly disappointed. There were certain parts in many chapters that were quite predictable – such as Xavier's sudden attraction to Jane which contradicts his purpose of watching her and Jane's defeat when she was playing for Royal Academy – which made the story less interesting in terms of building the feeling of anticipation of what comes next for the readers.

I wasn't able to quite grasp the core plot of the story being Jane and her relation to soccer because of the multiple romantic aspects that were consistently evident in almost every single chapter. I do understand that romance is a big part of your story, but I have to say diving into more and more chapters made me lose touch with what really is going on. The romance was pushed in quite early into the story with no in-depth conflicts before it. It seemed too sudden for me to read how Gazel, Torch and Xavier instantly took a liking to her so early on into the story. I personally felt that you had emphasized more towards the romance rather than other external conflicts which made the story less engrossing, because a good romance must be built upon several other external conflicts for it to make sense.

Characterization (7/20): Jane Wolf is a good character in theory (when based on the book's summary) but the written portrayal of her character was not as good as I expected. Throughout reading the chapters, Jane felt a little bland. She is written as the typical general female protagonist – the general kindness and beauty that attracts many guys to her – similar to a Mary Sue. She doesn't seem to have a strong conviction as she claims to be, as shown in how she is said to reject being in teams due to her obsession over perfecting her soccer skills yet joins a team the second she is invited. Her obsession over her soccer skills wasn't clearly shown in the story despite being mentioned in the summary.

Also, seeing that Gazel and Torch are one of the most written about characters in the story, I noticed how their characters were not portrayed as much except for their rivalry in both soccer and their love for Jane. The way these two characters were written seems to me as if their characterization was made to support the protagonist's story by changing their original personality into something slightly foreign.

Grammar and Writing Style (6/15): As an author, it is very important to pay careful attention to grammar and writing style. Any story plot can become something amazing and worth reading, but without the ability to present it well though words, readers wouldn't be able to understand the story entirely. I have noticed that you have the tendency to pile a lot of sentences into a long paragraphs rather than breaking them apart into small paragraphs that will help ease the reading process. Dialogues are combined into one paragraph that makes it difficult to separate the context of the dialogue with the occurring scene. It is highly recommended for dialogues to be separated using a new line or new paragraph so it can identify the different speakers. If multiple dialogues are being performed by one speaker, then it is alright to make it into a single, long paragraph.

One grammatical error that you have consistently made throughout the whole book is the use of your and you're. This is a mistake often made by many authors, native and non-native English speakers, but it is important to note its difference because each word holds a significant meaning. You tend to use your to say you are, instead of using you're. Do keep in mind that the word your is used to show possession of an object by someone (for instance, your cake, meaning you own the cake), while you're is simply short for you are (for instance, you're welcome or you're beautiful). Aside this certain grammatical error, please take care with your spellings. I have spotted many misspellings in many chapters such as the word 'whole' written as 'hole', and 'venom' as 'venim'. These misspellings disrupts the flow of the story and may confuse readers, as some words when misspelled can mean a whole different thing and may change the context of a sentence.

My next point will be your writing style. In your writing, you still tend to 'tell' rather than 'show'. A good author must be able to maintain a good amount of 'telling' a story as well as 'showing' a story. Both are different in terms of how it is presented in one's writing style, but too much of one can lead a story into becoming too confusing to understand or too predictable and lacking intrigue. I suggest you improve on your ability to show what is happening rather than telling it as it can help improve your story to make it seem more interesting and captivating for readers. This can be done by describing certain places and scenes using various adjectives and verbs to explain the vibe or what is happening, rather than explicitly stating where they are. Using a first person narrative is good to present the story in a more personal way, however too much shifts in POVs can become excessive to the point that it becomes confusing to keep up with and distracting since a single occurrence will be shown in various different ways. All comments aside, I do admire and appreciate the hard work and effort you have put into completing this story! You are full of ideas, and I encourage you to continue writing and thus develop and improve your style.

Originality (5/10): This concept has often been used in many of this fandom's fanfictions – where the main female protagonist is sort of ostracized by a majority of people of her school due to her love for soccer save for her best friends. The idea of being in a love triangle with the rivalling characters is also a famous trope amongst many stories, so I can't say that your story plot is original. However, I do like the idea of her obsession with perfecting herself before joining a soccer team which is unlike many that I've read. That specific part is rather refreshing to read.

Feels Factor (5/15): Due to the writing style of your story, unfortunately it became difficult for me to immerse myself with the flow of the story and empathize with the plot. There were certain parts of the story that managed to gain my interest for short moments. I believe that you can further improve your storytelling ability with more practice and care, so do keep up the hard work!

🅞🅒 🅡🅔🅥🅘🅔🅦 -> [ ➐.➎/➊➎]

Name (5/5): Jane Wolf is a simple and memorable name that isn’t repeated by the canon character’s dub name while still sounding plausible as a name of an Inazuma Eleven character.

Appearance (5/8): There’s not much description of Jane’s appearance throughout the story, so it is quite difficult to imagine how she looks. It leads me to believe that her uniqueness comes from her personality rather than her looks, which is far more interesting than having a special physical feature.

Personality (5/10): As I said in my review of the overall book, Jane World strikes me as a good character in theory. But reading further into each chapter, Jane reveals herself as quite the fickle character, often her actions seemingly contradicting with what she claims to be. Although this may be due to a lack of descriptive characterization of Jane throughout the story. For example, her being a perfectionist and obsession over soccer skills is something she claims to be but isn’t highlighted in her thoughts, speech and action, seemingly easily persuaded to act otherwise by other characters. Jane would need to express more conviction she claims to have and avoid the risk of becoming a Mary-Sue. But she does display determination in honing her soccer skills, translated in her confidence in determining what her goals are.

Strength and Weaknesses (7/12): Jane’s strength and weakness lies in her being emotionally-driven. She fuels herself on her frustration and pride as a soccer player to drive her will to win, but she is easily swayed into romance upon meeting  Gazel and Torch. I find it odd how friendly but distanced she can be with other characters but upon first meeting, is on the way to being head over heels for Gazel and Torch. Although she has a strong drive and commitment to improve and reach her goal, it is not often portrayed in the story. I do hope you portray more of her strong side in regards to soccer, highlighting her need for perfection and stubbornness to win.

Interaction with Canon (6/10): The book follows several canon events, inclusive of Jane’s presence as well. Admittedly, I had slight trouble recognizing whether an event in the book matched a specific arc in the anime plot. Jane’s role in the plot doesn’t hinder the canon flow of the story, merely inserting herself as one of the driving forces of the plot, although there were certain parts where the overlap was confusing and unclear for me to follow along and determine whether it had changed the canon plot or not.

Relationships with Canon Characters (3/5): While Jane interacts with many canon characters, her relationships are the most prominent with Gazel, Torch and Xavier. Their dynamic reflects that of the typical love square, in which Jane becomes additional fuel to Gazel and Torch’s rivalry, with the addition of Xavier which adds further tension between the three boys, while she herself struggles to choose one of them. Each of the boys’ interaction with Jane often changes their entire behaviour to one that works in Jane’s favor and leads Jane to lose her sense of conviction when it comes to them. The story then loses track of its focus on Jane’s self-discovery in soccer and becomes a Mary-Sue romance story. They all become dependent on each other in their interaction. I would like to see more of Jane in a way that develops her character by herself through soccer asides the drama of romance, so keep up the writing!

[Raw] 40/100 + 25/50 [Scaled] 33.75/100 + 7.5/15 [Total] 41.25%

Banner by -artxyuki

[daigeorge]

New Paths in Irish Inheritance Poetry: Siobhán Campbell and Stephen Sexton

Back in March I had the pleasure of saying a few words at the launch of Siobhán Campbell’s new collection, Heat Signature. It was the idea of Seren’s poetry editor, Amy Wack, who matched us up on the grounds that Siobhán and I were kindred spirits, which I took to mean, roughly, that we were both poets trying to write about cultural inheritance in 2017, with a healthy degree of scepticism about how that type of writing so often turns out. Among other things, it offered a rare chance to talk about a Seren poet in the public round, without the anxieties about soft-pedalling a stablemate or biting the hand that feeds that would loom if I were commissioned to write a review. (For these reasons, I prefer not to write about Seren poets, which unfortunately means I increasingly don’t write about contemporary Welsh poetry at all. But that’s another debate, for another day.) Campbell’s a top-drawer poet, and one who should be more widely celebrated. With any luck Heat Signature – her second collection for Seren and fourth overall – should change that.    

Above all, I admire how Campbell handles the weight of history in her poetry – the social history of a particular community, but also that swirling brew of anecdote and myth that makes up an individual’s or a family’s history. These are hardly new topics for post-Heaney poetry, but nor are they topics I can easily see my way around – the trick is to find the new and probing angle on them, and I think that Campbell does this very well. There’s a poem early on in Heat Signature that explicitly announces how her project emerges from Heaney’s classic brand of Irish inheritance poetry, but also how it resists that idiom like the work of Carson, Muldoon and McGuckian before her. The title of ‘Weeding’ recalls Heaney’s none-more-famous ‘Digging’, though in place of that great, over-anthologised call to verse Campbell gives us an altogether more modern, and less stable, celebration of ‘seeing things anew, filthy / with possibility’.

There seems to me to be an instructive switch between the durable and solid potato (or poetry) crop of ‘Digging’, and the essentially purifying, negative harvest of ‘Weeding’: it’s about getting rid of the calcified and complacent tropes that we too readily rely upon and build into monuments. Heat Signature is a collection for busting myths, though its method is always exploratory, ambivalent, imagistic, never tubthumping or didactic. In ‘Piebald’, horses turn into an objective correlative for an older, mythical nation, ‘where mis-remembrance is a dream to nourish, / where promise can out-run irony’, and ‘a quiver of legends misted into song’.

Campbell always urges the opposite of these values. She asks us to remember properly, but also to move beyond remembrance, to imagine alternatives and futures. The promise that we glimpse in her poetry goes hand in hand with the quickness of her irony. ‘Concentration’, which opens the second section of Heat Signature, spells out the dividend of this rigorous, attentive approach. It’s a poem that’s ostensibly about – not to put too fine a point on it – the speaker’s grandaunt squatting over a potty and peeing late at night. But what could be a hollow, mean-spirited poem, revelling self-indulgently in the ugliness and indignity of life, turns out to be anything but. The last stanza passionately articulates the moral purpose behind Campbell’s work:

 When things attract our deep attention

they give back out the stare that we put in.

We know this is commitment of relation.

And though it seems innocent to say,

it is a form of love.

  That’s what Heat Signature asks us to do, time and again: to pledge our ‘deep attention’, to make a ‘commitment of relation’ between the difficult and the beautiful in our lives, and to find there ‘a form of love’.

                                                     *

 Round about the time that I was immersed in Campbell’s work, the results of the National Poetry Competition were announced. Granted, in all my time writing poetry I’ve never won so much as a raffle, but I hope it’s not just sour grapes that make me feel jaded about the prospect of reading competition-winning verse. It’s not even that I mind competitions per se, or look down on people for entering them (mazel tov); I’ve just got to the point where I don’t expect them to turf up anything that stops me in my tracks. Generally speaking, I assume poems triumph in competitions because they satisfy a consensus between the judges, which naturally leads to a bias against poems that are divisive, experimental or strange – you’ve heard the argument before. Anyway, I mention all of this just to hint at some of the obstacles standing in the way of Stephen Sexton, who had the gumption not only to win the NPC this year, but to do it with a poem so good that it made me consider giving up writing poetry altogether. It was tantalisingly close in intention to the type of poem that I might try to write, but executed in a way that felt beamed in from another planet.

‘The Curfew’ is a poem of inheritance about the speaker’s grandfather, a miner of ‘legendary’ kindness possessed of a surreal turn of phrase. His lovably Ringo-like aphorisms are delicious in themselves (‘If you can’t count your onions, what can you count’) but Sexton complicates and lifts them brilliantly. First, he undercuts anything that could get too loquacious or cute with a recurring caveat, apparently toneless but deeply equivocal: ‘He said a lot of things.’ I love the layers of irony in this sentence, which is at one level a cliché colluding in the norms of a more reticent community, one that would discredit the grandfather’s lovely, glinting verbal gems by reducing them to faceless ‘things’. Then there’s the hint of unreliability it introduces, ‘he says a lot of things’ being an innuendo one makes of a liar, a panderer or a teller of tall tales. But who’s being unreliable in the following lines?

 The memorial fountain says nothing

of the weeks before the rescue failed

  but mentions God which, as my grandfather

used to say, is just the name of the plateau

  you view the consequences of your living from.

  This subversive conception of God sounds like it could come from the speaker as much as his grandfather, perhaps more so – when the next sentence fudges it (‘Or something like that’) we’re not sure if it’s due to a failure of memory or a liberty of paraphrase. By this point in the poem we don’t even know the pivotal biographical fact that grandpa and his colleagues were caught up in a mining disaster; the memorial fountain is the first solid hint of tragedy, after the unstable, figurative exaggerations that foreshadow it:

 … when no more than the thought of the pink crumple

of his infant daughter’s body came to mind

  a glow would swell in the pit, the men

would mayhem bauxite by the light

  his tenderness emitted.

  An explosion is suggested, but so far it’s only one of ‘tenderness’. When the literal ‘mayhem’ finally arrives, it’s reported with a deadpan seriousness that it’s hard to place – or hard to take – amidst all the emollient blarney: ‘One by one eleven miners starved to death.’

 The speaker can’t figure out the right way of paying tribute to his grandfather’s personality, or of honouring that tragedy down the pit. Those are the twin anxieties haunting the poem, and they place it in a vein of post-inheritance poetry we might date to Don Paterson’s first collection, Nil Nil. (I’ve alluded to this book, and what it represents, a good half dozen times in public down the years, at least. For good reason, I hope.) My first collection has a poem in it about a mining grandfather, ‘Seven Rounds With Bill’s Ghost’, another tribute to a man of tenderness and grit, this one an amateur boxer. I’ve written about that poem elsewhere, but ‘The Curfew’ made me see it in a new, less forgiving light. Paterson broke new ground by peeling away the piety of your average inheritance lyric to expose the feelings of distance, anger and alienation that fester beneath the surface of any class-conscious tribute to an ancestor. (Not by coincidence, the diction of that average inheritance mode ripples through ‘The Curfew’, as one of its many fluctuating voices: ‘my grandfather used to say’; ‘Among the other miners he was legendary’, ‘It would have pleased his handsome shoulders’, etc. There’s something so coercive about that past subjunctive mood – something that deserves to be parodied.)

 For thirty-odd years, then, there’s been a fairly rigid dialectic in play between the earnest, affectionate, old-school inheritance lyric on one hand, and the streetwise, complicated post-inheritance poetry of Paterson et al on the other. That dialectic has led to some good poetry, a little great poetry, and plenty of not-so-great poetry, but I worry that it’s become a rigid structure in itself. The very rebels who would reinvigorate the project of writing about family history and class by exhibiting their anxieties about that project – well, they too are now writing in an established mode, carrying on an angry dance whose moves we know. (If it isn’t clear yet, I include myself entirely in this camp.) The great sadness of post-inheritance poetry, I think, has been its narrowing of the window for legitimate affection. If you say that your grandfather was legendary among his peers or had a wonderful tenderness, you sound complacent and naff, and maybe that’s because there is something inherently complacent and naff about believing those things (what was he, a saint?). But then what do we do with all that persistent, unfashionable affection we might still feel for our grandparents? Ignore it and write about something else altogether?

 That would be one way out of the dialectic. But it seems to me that Sexton has found an alternative means to escape, and one that might be more appealing to those of us who, try as we might, can’t seem to escape this topic. By tapping into the anarchic spirit of the grandfather’s language, Sexton unleashes a menagerie of fantastic animals that somehow honour him while at the same time liberating the poem’s logic from the confines of linear, retrospective narrative. And because the poem licenses so many dissonant voices, it allows for an unlikely harmony to emerge between the voice of the speaker and the grandfather: ‘He grew wise and weary as an albatross / and left for that great kingdom of nevertheless.’

  This is poetry that has its cake and eats it in the most exquisite way: a whip-smart and undeceived pastiche that finds a way to admit the genuine play and articulacy of that beloved voice. Small wonder, then, that in the last line the speaker can vow with a straight face, ‘I understand him’. If Sexton keeps this up, his first collection is going to be a thing of magic. In the meantime, I’m off to rethink everything again.