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lenawin4 · 4 years ago

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an offer you can’t refuse

HOW WE DOIN ELLICK FANS?

I had this fic in my drafts halfway done, but after I watched that promo, I finished it in like, two hours. hope y’all enjoy. (also, may or may not contribute to the wave of 18x05/18x06 speculation fics. EXCITED)

summary:

“It’ll be fun,” Nick said on Day Four, then looked at them incredulously. “What? You’ve never taken down the mafia before?” ft. the whole gang, some blink-and-you’ll-miss-it mentions of Tiva, and prank wars.

Or: Nick’s jealous, Ellie’s clueless, and the team dismantles a crime family.

rating: gen, k+

length: 3.4k

genres: fluff, minor angst, romance

read on ffn | ao3

So Ellie’s in her corner of the bullpen, and Nick can’t stop looking at her. That’s how it all starts.

She’s wearing one of her cashmere sweaters, and they’ve been working this case for so long that her outfit is three days old. The bags under her eyes can’t be hidden by makeup and the curls in her hair have started to flatten. She has that crease in between her eyebrows that warns him not to bother her with a stupid joke, but that’s never stopped him before.

Ellie’s phone rings, so he freezes in the middle of sauntering over to her, halfway through the bullpen. It’s magic: her eyes widen slightly; the crease disappears; a slow smile spreads, then a grin.

The corners of his mouth start to slip upward, but he fights it down because McGee is at his desk. He’s talking to the local PDs, spelling out one of the long Italian names they’re trying to pin on something, and Tim is eyeing him like a hawk.

“Mark?” Ellie shouts into the phone.

Who?

“Gimme a sec,” Ellie points to her phone and mouths, I have to take this, sorry, and Nick is left gaping at the back of her head as she runs to the break room.

That happens on Day Six. A recap:

Dead sailor in a drive-by shooting in Bethesda. Grab your gear.

There was cocaine underneath the bed and piles of cash in the closet in the sailor’s apartment.

McGee traced a bank account in the Caymans to a Joey DiGiorno, as in, It’s-not-delivery-it’s-DiGiorno’s.

“Do you think he has a cousin named Domino’s?” Ellie asked; and —

For the fifth time this month, Nick realizes that he’s in love with Ellie Bishop.

Joey does not have a cousin, but he does have a criminal record and an uncle who happens to be the DC/Virginia/Maryland leader of the DiGiorno Family.

“Wow, two states and the capital city,” said McGee. “Impressive.”

On top of Nick’s To Do List - Get Gibbs everything on this guy: records, cars, girlfriends, other nieces and nephews, etc., etc.

“It’ll be fun,” Nick said on Day Four, then looked at them incredulously. “What? You've never taken down the mafia before?”

McGee follows the money to a nightclub in DC (“Do they serve pizza?”; “Nick, please.”), but there’s no way to know when or how the drugs are smuggled into the building, which can only mean one thing: stakeout time.

Stakeouts are the worst. Stakeouts mean unlimited time in a confined place with nothing better to do, the uncomfortable silence of Nick and his thoughts and the little place in his head that teeters between sixteen different names and a glass jar of lake water that hides on the shelf of his apartment.

Right now, a stakeout is the best thing that could ever happen to him.

So, Mark. He can’t exactly Boyle his way into this, not after Bishop nearly chewed his head off because he cancelled her date.

It’s not helping that Bishop keeps smiling at her phone every two hours, and semi-aggressively types out a text in all caps and extra exclamation marks. (He watches the way her fingers move. He knows those are exclamation marks. Like, at least ten of them.)

“Didn’t know dates liked it when you yelled at them all the time.”

“What?” Ellie says, not looking up from her phone.

He puts his feet up on the desk a little too harshly. Ellie wrinkles her nose.

“What could possibly be more important than this very, very interesting stakeout right now? Don’t you see there’s a hooker in front of the club and it’s barely noon? We should report it to Gibbs.”

There’s that sarcastic laugh that’s reserved for him, a quip about not being able to afford her, then back to the invisible Mark he’s heard nothing about.

To: ninja lady, 11:59

hey on a stakeout w El. what should i do

To: big wuss, 12:05

prank war. worked for us.

To: ninja lady, 12:06

i’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not

He tells her he’s buying fast food and chips a few blocks away. He asks the cashier for an extra paper bag and places a spring-loaded glitter bomb from the Dollar Tree at the bottom.

To: ninja lady, 14:05

success

To: big wuss, 14:07

ha! watch your six. revenge is tasty, no?

To: ninja lady, 14:09

i think you mean vengeance is sweet, but check with your husband

Nick returns from a bathroom break and peers left and right. Nothing in the room has changed: Ellie is still finishing the bag of fries. Her head is turned towards the window, and she’s glancing at her phone every few seconds. Maybe that’s an exaggeration, but he sort of doesn’t care. His chair hasn’t moved from the computer desk, and there are no booby traps outside the bathroom door or in the hallway.

Okay. The coast is clear.

“Hey, maybe you should check your face one more time, I think you still have glitter — ”

Splat.

His chair explodes in a tidal wave of green and red paint, splattering all over his jeans — gross, it feels so cold — and his leather jacket.

When he looks up, Ellie’s beaming at him from behind her phone, fry stuck in her mouth like a cigarette, green paint smeared across her cheek like evidence. Mercilessly, she sends the video to McGee, Kasie, and Tony.

To: big wuss, 17:25

I’m disappointed.

To: ninja lady, 17:29

yeah, yeah, laugh all you want

this sucks

To: big wuss, 17:30

Not just the stakeout, I presume?

To: ninja lady, 17:32

who the hell is Mark

she keeps texting him

it’s distracting me

To: ninja lady, 17:35

you know, from work

To: big wuss, 17:40

Oh, Nicholas.

(Across the Atlantic, in a small apartment in Paris, a married couple compares recent messages.

Ziva clicks her tongue. “I think he might be a bigger wuss than you, Tony.”

“I had better pranks than this guy, okay, at least give me that.”)

There’s a crowd of seamen lounging around the club. Their voices send pinpricks into his brain, and he can smell the alcohol from the second floor of this building. The bouts of laughter and shouts are interrupted by crunching. Next to him, the foul smell of artificial cheese surrounds Eleanor Bishop. Her fingers are coated with orange dust. Her eyes are laser-focused on the group of men, arms around each other, starting to sing the first bars of “Piano Man”. She licks her lips, and a bit of orange dust is left over at the edge of her mouth. She brings her fingers to her lips to lick them clean.

Nick’s mouth is suddenly dry.

Okay, okay, he needs to focus. Focus. It’ll be easy.

When he finally turns away, the hooker is grabbing one of the men by his tie, who tries to pull away. He rolls his eyes, but before Nick can say, “Playing hard to get, are we?”, the sailor is handing her a thick wad of cash. It’s exchanged for something thickly wrapped in saran plastic wrap, and he jolts out of his seat.

“It was the hooker!”

Nick did not know running that quickly in high heels was possible.

Ellie’s phone dings three times past his limit on the way to the interrogation room. The sound grates against his ears and his eyes can’t roll further up his socket. She doesn’t even notice.

They’re behind the glass, waiting for McGee to question her, when Gibbs walks in. He takes one look at the green paint on Ellie’s cheek and sees the same paint on Nick’s jeans.

Before Ellie can try to explain, Nick announces, “Gibbs, I told Ellie to call you about the hooker hours ago and she didn’t listen to me!”

“That is not true!”

“Yes, it is!”

“Wait, so we’re just going to give up?” Ellie’s hair is still slightly frazzled from tackling the suspect down, strands loose on her forehead and around her ears. She ran up and down four flights of stairs to catch her, but they’ve been given an order to push the case to another day with another lead. “What about Sugar Honey?”

“We can’t catch anyone higher up the food chain if she doesn’t consent to wearing a wire.”

“So sneak one on her!” The Director raises his eyebrows.

“Bishop.” She snaps around, eagerly awaiting Gibbs’s cowboy orders. “Go home. Get some sleep.”

“What? I can’t believe you’re actually agreeing with this.”

“Ellie,” Nick says, coming to her supposed rescue. There’s a flicker of hope in her eyes, and he hesitates to kill it. But he has to. He stands up, and immediately yelps and whines. Guiltily, he savors the look of concern she gives him. “Actually, could you drive me home? I think I twisted my ankle when we were chasing down Sugar Honey.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Ellie pouts. It maybe makes his stomach flutter, which is stupid, because Nick doesn’t feel things like that.

“You know me. Stoic face and all. I could get stabbed and none of you would know.”

“You know, that’s not a good thing.” She grabs his car keys from his jacket and puts his arm around her shoulders.

Bishop throws a stern look to the Director and Gibbs. Their bosses look half-confused, half-amused; Nick avoids Gibbs’s knowing look. “Fine. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She walks him to his car. He feels warm and lonely all at once, because her phone rings two more times.

Nick plops down on the passenger seat, and Ellie wrenches the car into ignition, and says with no small amount of strife, “I know you’re lying and I’m either taking you to your apartment or back to the club. Your choice.”

Um. “Hey, let’s not do anything dangerously impulsive here.”

“Me? Impulsive? What about you?”

“What? When have I ever done anything dangerous or impulsive?”

“You stole a truck and totaled it when you were chasing down a suspect last month. Gibbs was already waiting on another block to cut him off.”

“Well, at least I didn’t get hurt.”

“You had a concussion and I had to wake you up every hour that night.”

They’re already out of the Navy Yard, almost ten over the speed limit, and going in the opposite direction of his apartment.

“Okay, I’m sorry I lied about my ankle. But Bishop.” He’s not sure how to say it, so what leaves his mouth is a sound of frustration. “You can’t dismantle the mafia with just this one case. These things take time. One Sugar Honey confession was the best we could do today. And that’s okay. But we’ll catch another one tomorrow, or maybe next week, and the week after that.”

The car slows down; Ellie’s pout becomes more pronounced. The sudden U-turn makes him clutch at the dashboard and pray for his life.

“Fine,” Ellie says. “But — ”

“Tomorrow, I will help you possibly arrest a drug dealer, that will lead us to the drug supplier, that will lead us to the boss.”

She nods, hands tightly holding the steering wheel. There’s glitter in her hair and streaks of paint on her jeans. They’ve barely slept in the past two days, driving each other insane.

“I can take the couch for a few hours and then we’ll be on our way. We both need to rest.”

Ellie doesn’t reply.

“If you don’t crash at my place, I’ll call Gibbs and tell him you’re going back to the club.”

Ellie protests for the rest of the car ride, but Nick doesn’t budge an inch.

The stakeout resumes peacefully. Gibbs and Vance were right: the dealers are spooked and no deals occur for the next week.

Bishop doesn’t spend every single moment on her phone, so at least there’s that. He can’t deny the twinge of longing every time he sees her eyes brighten at the sound of another text.

Still, even that is nothing compared to the ache he feels when she yawns and rubs her eyes. It’s the type of case that makes her want to prove herself, to risk everything to accomplish her ambitions, to run after something without a thought of the consequences. He knows the feeling. He has that feeling every time a kid is involved.

So he triples the bags of junk food on the floor of the moldy apartment. He lets her rest a little more when it’s his watch. She curls up in the blanket she stole from his apartment and sighs in her sleep.

They’re both exhausted, so their prank war grinds to a halt. Nick’s exasperated, and he doesn’t reply to any of Ziva’s requests for updates. Ellie’s smile is something admirably distracting and infuriating, especially when it’s not directed to him.

Here’s the thing, though: Nick can’t imagine when Ellie had time to go on a date with a Mark that he’s never met or heard of in the past few weeks. Before Operation Take DiGiorno’s to Prison, they had back-to-back murders that took a total of two weeks out of their lives. Before those, Nick went to pilates with her for three consecutive weekends. So whoever this Mark is, might be special to her. Someone she wants to keep to herself. Someone she wants to talk to all day, someone she wants to smile and laugh with, someone she wants to be with. It’s that simple.

It’s just not Nick.

The seaman in Interrogation still isn’t talking, but at least there’s something in the cocaine.

“Local PD’s been digging up everything they can about the drug ring for months, and this little sample here matches their signature packaging and purity. But I’m telling you, whoever hired their chemists needs to do a better job, cause this stuff ain’t pure at all.”

“Can we connect it to Joey or the uncle?”

“I’m so glad you asked. We, in fact, do have a way to arrest them, thanks to Kasie — ”

“Don’t talk about yourself in the third person.”

“Okay, someone’s grumpy! DiGiorno’s olive oil company bought bulk chemicals, which are being delivered to this address. We’ve got dimethyl sulfoxide, tetrahydrofuran — ”

“English, Kasie.”

“Coke. They’re making coke. Trust me, those materials are not extra virgin.”

He grunts out a thanks and swirls around, ready to leave.

“Woooaaahhh there, son.” Kasie holds her hands out in front of her to tame him. “What’s going on with you, Nicholas?”

“What? Nothing!”

“Okay. Then I guess it has nothing to do with you and your feelings.”

“What? Nothing’s up with Bishop and me!”

“I didn’t say anything about Bishop.”

“Okay,” Nick chuckles, searching for an exit route that may or may not involve rolling past Kasie in a very ninja-like manner before booking it out of the building. “You said something, I said something, now we’re both confused, and I gotta go now, bye!”

McGee’s hawk eyes peer at him when Bishop retreats to the break room again. It makes Nick squirm in his seat and try to pry his gaze away from her empty desk.

“Is something going on between you and Bishop?”

“Uh, no, why, did she say something?” He crosses his arms to quell the sound of his heart.

McGee scoffs. “I mean. You guys have barely talked since you came back from the stakeout.”

“Well. I don’t need to talk to her. All the time.”

“But you do.”

Nick makes a face. Bishop strolls back into the bullpen, carefree and light, and he shuts his mouth.

“What do we got?” Gibbs says, and McGee has no choice but to brush this under the rug.

It’s Day Ten, more accurately Night Ten, and they’re sitting in the car, driving to the warehouse where they’ll arrest Joey and his uncle. She’s wearing a vest and he has the urge to clean his gun before a shootout. But they’ll be fine.

He glances at her tied-up hair and the clench of her jaw. His hands tighten on the steering wheel, because he wants to hold her face in his hands and tangle his fingers in her hair. He wants to tell her something he can barely admit to himself.

She says nothing. The phone doesn’t ring. He keeps driving.

He forgets she has a vest on. He forgets everything, really, when he sees Ellie go down in the middle of the raid, and Joey starts running away. Gibbs yells at him to call an ambulance before he and McGee chase after the idiot who shot his partner.

Nick scrambles to her side, vision blurring, and he has more trouble breathing than she does when he reaches her. “Bishop, El, you’re gonna be okay, alright?”

Ellie groans as he slices her vest open. The bullet clatters off the Kevlar.

“Nick,” Ellie’s saying. “Nick, I’m fine.” His hands hover, barely brushing over her arms, neck, head — I have to check for concussion — and it does nothing to reassure him, until her hands fold into his. “Nick.”

She looks at him, mouth parted, cheeks flushed. Her ribs are probably bruised, if not broken. Her hands are the only source of stability; every other part of him is shaking.

“You’re alright.”

Ellie breathes out a heavy sigh; it shakes like his legs quiver, and he has to kneel next to her. “I’m alright.”

Along with the DEA, they confiscate every last bit of cocaine from the warehouse, effectively crippling the crime family’s major source of money. Joey rats on every aspect of his uncle’s business for a shorter sentence. As the EMTs are wrapping her ribs up, Nick holds his hand up for Ellie to slap and says, “We took DiGiorno’s to prison!”

He offers her his arm and a ride home. She graciously accepts, and the smile is his, again, for now.

But he can’t not say anything now. She almost — she almost. There’s nothing else to say about that.

So Nick says, “So, you’re going home to Mark today? You got a hot date?”

He’ll get over that lump in his throat, that spike in his pulse eventually. She’s alive, and he’ll be fine.

He doesn’t expect her to start laughing, only to be interrupted by a wince and a tender hand on her left side. “Nick, who do you think Mark is?”

“Uh.” There’s a dark hole of miscalculation, the feeling of falling down the cliff of Being Wrong. “Your hot new date you kept texting over the past, like, five days?”

Nick rolls his eyes. “Stop laughing, you’ll make your ribs worse.”

“It’s — ” Ellie takes a deep breath and pulls out her phone. She scrolls, and Nick’s about to say something about not wanting to read her love letters to Mark when:

Auntie Ellie, thanks for my birthday gifts! I miss you so much.

The voice can’t be older than five, with a light stammer and a lisp. Nick takes his eyes off the road to gape at a boy with two missing front teeth, and his heart both soars and sinks. Someone honks behind them, and he steps on the gas pedal, startled that he’s stopped at a green light.

“Well.”

“He turned four last week, and my brother’s been letting him call or text me videos every day. They’re stuck in Oklahoma and they miss me.” He can hear her shrug, the fabric of her jacket rustling against the car’s leather seat, but he keeps his eyes on the road. “I haven’t been home in almost two years.”

“I’m sorry.” It punctuates the silence that follows, leaving them both speechless, wondering, wishing.

“Were you jealous?” Ellie whispers.

“Yes.” He can’t stop himself. Not anymore. Nick floors the brake and looks at his passenger’s seat, red light shining on her, everything else dark and unimaginably lonely. “Yes.”

Ellie nods, then smiles. “Okay.”

They arrive the next morning together. McGee smirks at his phone. Kasie’s eyes switch between them, back and forth, before she raises an eyebrow and glares at Nick, threatening and protective. Gibbs says nothing. Nick smiles the whole morning, because he still tastes her lipstick on his teeth and feels her hair in his fingers.

To: big wuss, 10:20

Congratulations. You aren’t a bigger wuss than Tony.

To: ninja lady, 10:25

ha. thanks

for everything, i mean, i guess.

To: big wuss, 10:26

You’re very welcome, Nicholas.

fin.

#ellick #ellick fanfiction #ncis #ncis fanfiction #a very small bit of tiva #just enough to satisfy my own needs

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qm-vox · 4 years ago

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Updates Ride Again

Been awhile since I posted an update here on that Lancer 3pp project, eh? Luckily the team is still getting along grea-

(MOI NIMUE, DFG LUST, & MO & S RASPUTIN. Art credit goes to the incomparable Moid)

Ikiryo, Psybomb, & I have continued to edit and tweak our manufacturers to ensure that once 3pp licensing is online they’re as good as they can possibly be. Alongside this we’ve been ordering art ahead of time, working on flavor sections to help incorporate our manufacturers into the world of your game, and the incomparable Ikiryo’s been busily creating new NPCs with which to challenge your players! Major updates in terms of balance and flavor will be upcoming for all three manufacturers Soon(tm) in response to feedback from Lancer’s discord, so keep an eye out.

If you want updates faster than whenever I have enough will to live to post them, check out Iki’s Twitter. Otherwise, it’s been awhile since we did one of these updates so let’s hit ya with the Land of Full & Complete Context:

What Is Lancer?

Lancer is a ‘mud-and-lasers’ RPG following mechanized cavalry pilots in the far future. Old Humanity, the cultures we know today, suffered a terrible Fall, and the children of New Humanity have spread through the stars to ensure that they can never destroy themselves again, and in the hopes of building a more just world. Along the way we’ve had some mighty triumphs, some horrific mistakes (nothing like re-inventing capitalism am I right), and have grown to contend with the birth of artificial intelligence - which is more alien than we could have ever dreamed of. Your pilots might work for Union; as Liberators executing slavers and tyrants to build a better world from their bones, as members of the Navy defending the weak, as UIB agents up against alien horrors from worlds we know not. Perhaps you swear your service to vast corpro-states, looking for the beautiful and true things at the heart of their cancerous search for profit and empire, or maybe you’re a mercenary from the Long Rim, just trying to die another day. Whoever you are, you have been granted a unique relationship to violence in the form of a mech, and must now decide what that means in your life.

Lancer is produced and published by Massif Press ( @orbitaldropkick) and its player-facing rules are available for free on their store. Our project is third-party; not in any way affiliated with Massif Press, but made to be compatible with their excellent system and slot into its setting.

Our project introduces three mech manufacturers with their own goals and needs. They are...

Downfall Group (by Psybomb)

(DFG GLUTTONY. Art credit goes to Domochevsky)

“What happens when you make a promise to someone who doesn’t want you to keep it?” Like the other two corporations here, DOWNFALL Group did not start out looking for a fight. They just found one. In this case, their mission led them to figure out that what they were meant to do was at odds with what they should, and the final decision was probably not what their bosses intended. Still, when your avowed enemies control nearly everything, including you if they found out, you have to get creative with your solutions.

An intelligence agency that’s gone rogue from the corpro-state that founded it, DFG’s pattern-groups utilize stolen technology in their fight to sabotage the rise of interstellar capitalism. They could be a rebellion’s best friend, the backers of suspiciously armed pirates and, now and again, even an army unto themselves.

Magnum Opus Interstellar (by Ikiryo)

(MOI SOLOMON. Art credit goes to Moid.)

Magnum Opus Interstellar are voyagers among the stars, seeking to map the routes across the depths of space. Magnum Opus tends to dislike personal conflict, as it interferes with business and exploration; but the Aun attack on the Cornucopia blink gate has left them shaken and reeling. Shocked out of neutrality, they are now gearing up for war with frames that tear the firmament asunder and demonstrate that a lack of interest in war was a dramatic difference to a lack of capability.

An ancient and respectable, if small, corpro-state, Magnum Opus Interstellar used to manufacture mechs as a luxury good on the side for the sorts of people who make war into a game. Now awakened to a terrible wrath they have not yet known, their corporate techno-sorcerers ride to war with the codes of summoning at their fingertips. Their work has been undone; worlds will burn for this. And, of course, rich boys making a game out of war still buy what they’re selling.

Marley, Oz, and Silver Lending And Consultations (by Vox/Yours Truly)

(MO & S FRANKENSTEIN. Art credit goes to Domochevsky, as does credit for the INSPIRED addition of the vending machine).

Smith-Shimano Corpro offers unparalleled quality, custom-tailored to each unique customer, with service plans that can’t be beat. Marley, Oz, and Silver are the other end of the market; whatever they make, they make it at the absolute lowest price point possible and at the highest quality they can provide you for that price. Having trouble getting your revolution off the ground? Dreams of glory as a mechanized gladiator doomed by your pocketbooks? Sick and tired of fancier frames jamming up or shutting down? Come see Marley, Oz, and Silver - it’s for a good cause.

MO & S are very small. They have no money. You can imagine the kind of stress they are under. It’s not that they like being arms dealers; it’s that being arms dealers funds them helping the real people that are in front of them here and now. Thankfully, between the Ungrateful conflicts, partisans in the Dawnline Shore, and other hotspots flaring up in the Galaxy, they’ve found some markets that don’t hurt their conscience. Need a war machine but all you have is a junkyard full of retired school buses? Call Marley, Oz, and Silver.

Questions, comments, and feedback are more than welcome! Keep an eye on this post for the announcement of those major changes I alluded to, and because I have terminal writing disease & will probably slap some fiction on it in a reblog.

Catch ya on the front lines, friends.

#lancer rpg #marley oz & silver #downfall group #magnum opus interstellar #3pp publishing #feedback welcome

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cassatine · 5 years ago

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Chapter Three finally! Although I toyed with the idea of doing one post for the whole chapter I decided not to in the end, because it’s turning into a monster but also because it’s just easier for me to go over bits of interest one by one.

After Padmé’s Tatooine Plan, it’s back to regular Naboo fuckery for a bit, and Chapter Three brings a rather generous helping - in fact I went excUSE mE in record time, because we get into election results, and of course it’s an occasion to remind us the Naboo Do Democracy Best before anything else:

Theed was the last region of the planet to vote, and once time zones were taken into account, they were always finished by noon. The Naboo had more than mastered efficient democracy. (Queen’s Shadow, Chapter Three)

I swear I’m like ‘maybe I should tone it down’ and then the book throws “the Naboo had more than mastered efficient democracy”, which is one of these things I’d love if only I was supposed to take it as bias from Eirtaé, handmaiden and Naboo POV, rather than as a statement of fact. Also it’s the kind of thing that should have been fixed at editing - and I don’t mean fixed to conform to my take on Padmé and Naboo, but to EKJ’s, because I very much doubt she wanted Eirtaé to sound like a sanctimonious ass here. More than mastered efficient democracy? Come the fuck on, even if Naboo actually was a democracy that’d just be grating, and it doesn’t have to be - Eirtaé can think her planet’s system efficient without sounding like she’s quoting from some propaganda-filled guidebook.

But also, since apparently I’ll die on that hill, Naboo’s still not a democracy. Yes, Naboo monarchs are elected. They have a constitution that at the very least limits monarchs’ terms, in length and number, although it’s unclear how much latitude they have to modify the constitution. The Royal Advisory Council’s role seems limited to, well, advising, but there is a legislative assembly made up of elected local representatives that we don’t know much about yet. So the Naboo government does have some features in common with contemporary representative democracies - short of term limits, monarchs’ powers don’t seem much limited, however, and ideologically what they do is rule by the wise. The notion that children have a sort of pure wisdom that makes them more qualified to lead isn’t a 1:1 for Plato’s philosopher-kings, maybe, but the fundamental idea remains that exceptionally wise people should be in charge; and lbr that’s about as anti-democratic as you get. Ironically enough, Padmé’s pretty quick to shut down Anakin when he himself suggests someone wise should make people agree in AOTC, with seemingly little awareness that it’s literally been her job description for four years. Then again, it doesn’t seem like political philosophy in the GFFA ever got to the difference between elective and democratic.

I swear I will get to the election results someday, but I wanted to go back to another, previous passage:

The gears of democracy were well oiled, and centuries of tradition made the biennial event run smoothly, even with the inclusion of Gungan voters for only the second time in the planet’s history. Though few of them chose to vote, Padmé knew her efforts to include them were appreciated because Boss Nass had told her as much. Loudly. (Queen’s Shadow, Chapter One)

*cracks hands* AND NOW THE GUNGAN SITUATION. And more specifically, Padmé’s answer to it once they turned out instrumental to saving her own people, ie “her efforts to include them”, ie giving Gungans voting rights. I was a little too brain-stuck on Lucas’ garbage colonial fantasy from the TPM commentary when I first went over that passage (see Chapter One notes), but I’ve thought some more about the voting thing, and since my conclusion is that it’s one of these things that’s supposed to sound good - and to make Padmé, who made it happen, look good - but that kinda breaks down if you think about it, now’s as good a time as ever to go over the details.

Going back to the situation in TPM, the thing is that Naboo and Gungans are basically separate societies, each with their own government. We’ve touched upon the Naboo, but the Gungan have a High Council, presided by Boss Nass - unlike the Naboo, however, the Gungans do not have space-travel capacities, and since they live separately, it means only one of them has representation at the level of the Galactic Republic. That’s the underlying problem of the Gungan Situation, not whether they get voting rights within the Naboo government.

In fact, depending on how you look at it, the voting rights are skeevy - again, the Gungans have their own government. The Naboos don’t have a say in choosing Gungan Bosses, whatever the process for that, which leaves us with the question of, should the Gungan vote in Naboo election, actually? Or, put differently - if they vote, they acknowledge that the Naboo monarch’s authority extends to them, because the social contract goes both ways; they become a part of the Naboo polity, rather than remain a separate one. Which is what they are in TPM, and I don’t really see why they shouldn’t want to remain one. After Padmé’s speech and the Battle of Naboo they’re in a pretty good position to ask exactly that, but also to be that on equal standing with the Naboo. To make something like that work you’d need planetary joint institutions, because there will be aspects of local planetary policies of concern to both groups, a legal framework to work out for cases with shared jurisdiction between Naboo and Gungans - basically a bunch of common institutions to smooth things out wherever and whenever there’s the need at the local (planetary) level because of different ways to do things - they actually have it pretty easy, compared to Earth. And finally, representation in the Galactic Republic would be shared; that one’s kinda tricky, because Naboo’s seat in the Senate is for the Chommell Sector - if I remember well some Core planets have their own seats but most seats stand for a conglomerate of planets, Sector or otherwise - also some corporations have seats, which is probably Elon Musk’s wet dream since money can’t buy that yet. AnyWAY, the equivalent of regional capital gets a seat, and everyone else gets Junior Representative, standing for a planet or a specific cultural group.

Which is what the Gungans get! Jar Jar Binks as Junior Representative. In the hypothetical scenario outlined above, that could work within a rotation system to ensure fair representation for both Gungans and Naboos within the system as it exists - one group gets a Senator, the other a Junior Representative and every so often they switch. I mean, the Naboo are supposed to care about democracy, and the GFFA only knows representative democracy, so you’d think they care about representation and fair systems and the like.

Buuut this all a hypothetical scenario, since the Gungans vote in the Naboo election! And thus surrendered their sovereignty because Padmé handing voting rights sounds like she cares a lot about democracy so she used her queenly powers to make some more of it happen. That’s some prime fuckery, right there.

Now, unsurprisingly, we don’t have a lot on specifics on what exactly Padmé did with her queenly powers wrt the Gungan Situation, but the voting rights do imply the Gungans are now her citizens - and there is, I suppose, an argument to make for that scenario, which is that the Naboo are the ones with Republic-level representation, and if you reform their government to ensure that constitutionally it ensures equal participation and representation for the Gungans within it, specific provisions to protect their culture, semi-autonomy as a previously independent polity, etc etc this be the best of all possible worlds… we can come up with something pretty similar to the first hypothetical scenario I went over; instead of preserving the two polities and building a bridge between them, you’d merge them, with a mind to preserve their specificities. Might sound like splitting hairs, but policy and organization-wise the differences aren’t small. For example, the bridging of different legal frameworks would be done differently - you can create a legal body expected to rule over cases implying two different legal systems, which comes down to a system built in great part on precedents but also that treats each case on its own, which does sound complicated, but go retooling a legal framework so it accounts for both Naboo and Gungan systems without privileging either and tell me which is option is actually easier. As far the basic, easier-to-figure-out stuff goes, you’d have a Royal Advisory Council constituted of Gungans and Naboo, in equal numbers or proportional to the overall population, or with double representatives for each post since they’re kind of like ministries, with known posts centering on urban planning and The Arts; the local representatives of the legislative assembly would number both Naboo and Gungans, and again you’d have to chose between different modes of representation: do you have Naboo and Gungan regions, or does each region have a representative that could be Naboo or Gungan, maybe with some constitutional provisions in place to ensure everyone gets their turn? And of course, the office of monarch would also be open to both, again with some provisions to ensure everyone gets their turn, same for the office of Senator.

Alas, nothing points to that. For now there’s literally nothing to tell me the Gungans get to participate into Naboo politics beyond voting - all the candidates and the people they’ll replace that have been mentioned so far are humans, and the bigger hints to tractations between Naboo and Gungans was a quick mention of treaties in the context of environmental conservation, mainly to make a point that the Naboo cared about the environment before those treaties anyway. Just like the voting thing, the only reason it’s even mentioned is to have yet another ‘Isn’t Naboo/Padmé Great’ moment.

I should reserve judgment, because more info might be revealed, but if the narrative makes a point to tell me Padmé gave voting rights to the Gungans, then I think it could also make a point of telling me whether that’s all they get - and that wouldn’t take an organizational chart. It wouldn’t even take actual Gungans. It could take as little as two words, not even kidding on that one: “centuries of tradition made the biennial event run smoothly, even with the inclusion of Gungan voters and candidates for only the second time”, there you go.

I wouldn’t even insist that much to be given something substantial to know for sure the Gungan Situation isn’t just a new kind of fucked up post-TPM if the novel didn’t read like an attempt at a panegyric. Admittedly I wasn’t the target audience in the first place, since I’m rather attached to Naboo fuckery for thematic reasons. I don’t exactly expect brilliant political commentary from Star Wars novels either, and this one is YA coming-of-age, the politics an aesthetic more than anything with actual substance. But like, there’s a wide range between brilliant political commentary and accidentally robbing the Gungans of sovereignty because you thought Padmé handing out voting rights has good democratic vibes.

Previous notes: Chapter 1 / Chapter 2.a / Chapter 2.b

#i bothered with the italics in doc but i shouldn't have #le sigh #star wars #meta #queen's shadow #naboo #legacies pinboard

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chavire · 4 years ago

Photo

We answered a few questions about the band during quarantine, for the spanish fanzine Face The Lie. As we were pretty excited about the questions and thought it could have some interest, here it is in its english version.

(photo : Manon Monjaret)

Hi guys! How are you doing? Before starting maybe we should put ourselves in a situation. Who are Chaviré? In which other bands do you play or have you played? What motivates you to tour, make songs?

Hi, thank you for giving us some space to talk about CHAVIRÉ and what we put behind this band. As a presentation, we could say that the band started at the end of 2013 and that we played our first shows at the end of the next year, in 2014. We previously played — or still play — in A.S.T.R.O., COLD HEART DAYS, DÉDALE, GHOST FRIENDS, HOMESICK and WATERTANK to name some of our other bands. We started to play together as some friends, convinced by our love for the same songs and the desire to bind them with some politics we felt connected with. Six years later, it is still those three main reasons that hold us together, writing songs and play them live.

Last summer you released your new album, titled Maintenant Que Les Flammes Sont Partout ("now that flames are everywhere"). What did you wanted to express with this title? And what can you tell us about this album?

We tried to give this record a title that would be the testimony of the era that surrounded its creation. We think it's pretty clear for everyone who looked at the world around us that we couldn't possibly spend three months without seeing the people from a country rising up against their leaders and taking the streets against them. We wanted to dedicate the album to those involved in the increase of those flames all around the world and sing for their constant multiplication.

The lyrics of this album seem to me a bit more convoluted than those of your previous albums, you have to give them more readings to understand them. Did you wanted to change your way of composing the lyrics or was it an involuntary evolution?

As usual, our lyrics are very influenced by the books and authors that go with the writing process. You are right saying that maybe it is a bit different from the previous records. We always said that the lyrics were very influenced by some texts and that we stole a lot to put it in our songs. This time it's still the case but we tried to give some more space to poetry and theater. As time goes by, we were a bit scared to look like those anarchist bands that repeat slogans song after song... We are glad to hear that you noticed this change of things, it is obvious to say that there is politics everywhere but it is better to show it, by using an unexpected extract of a anthropologic book or some lines from a poem. For the first time with this record, we tried to quote most of the references so maybe it will give some ideas and things to dig in.

What is the story or background behind "Alice, 1977"?

Radio Alice is an Italian radio from the end of the 1970s located in Bologna. It's closely linked with the italian autonomous movement from the same era and more precisely the A/Traverso collective. The quotation «Le pouvoir n'est pas seulement là où se prennent des décisions horribles, mais partout où le discours enlève le corps, la rage, le hurlement, le geste de vivre» comes directly from an A/Traverso leaflet. Overall, the song was written in opposition with some of the quirks of the communities that surround us, where it is more valuable to look radical, rather than actively trying to change the world. At some point in the italian movement, there was this turning point where it didn't make sense for some of them to claim their worker identity, their women identity, mostly because all of these categories were those of the power, of this world, and these communities wanted to split up with this world and its categories.

With “Alice, 1977”, the idea was to put this era to the attention of people who perhaps don't know it, allowing them to find some inspiration in it. Most of the questions we're passing through are obviously not new, and it was in our opinion a political sequence where these questions found some interesting treatment.

What does CHAVIRÉ mean?

It could be translated in english as “capsized”, it refers to the moment right after a boat has overturned. We won't lie, this name is at first the result of a joke, more or less.

One of the things that surprised me in a good way when I first knew about you was that you didn't have Facebook, but instead you have a Tumblr page with, in addition to information about the band, a lot of political texts. Do you just don’t care about Facebook and those networks? Why did you chose Tumblr?

We “chose” to make a Tumblr page at first because it seemed to be the easiest thing to put something a bit more “personal” than just a Bandcamp page. Moreover we were so unable to manage a website by ourselves, and none of our close friends seemed able to build one that we could manage easily... In fact, the way we decided to be visible on the Internet has been very determined by our poor capacities and the fact that we decided, since the beginning of the band, that we preferred to make us visible only when we had something to say rather than just be here to be here — it is pointless to try to tackle professional rock bands in this game, doesn't it? And yet, we recently created an instagram account... We also wanted to upset some diehards from the other side!

What do you think of the term emocore? For you, when does a group cross the hardcore barrier to enter emocore? Is it a matter of lyrics, sound, attitude,...?

Well, it's just a subgenre doesn't it? The barrier is just crossed when the one who makes the poster decides to call a band this way. It has been historically a way to gather bands that were playing at the same time from the same area (for the Revolution Summer it basically works like this), but at some point, it is a way to play punk music.

It was said about you that you take music too seriously, belittling those who play only for having a good time without sending a message. Don't you conceive how someone can do it or is it simply not your thing? Do you have friend bands like that?

Well, if music obviously contains a game aspect — who would deny it? —, we would rather play it with smart people. It's not about any kind of content or attitude, it is mostly about having the feeling that we share more with some bands than some chords or shirts. We are still sorry for those who felt judged by us, we couldn't fill the lack of interest they seem to have for themselves, and at some point we still can't understand why they needed our approval so much.

Do you conceive a hardcore scene without politicizing? And a DIY without a political background?

We have to be careful with this sentence that repeats to anyone who would listen that “personal is political”: the recent history proved us that it led us to believe that we just had to buy at organic stores and not to say swear words to become a potential ally for an ongoing revolution, to simplify. But music contains this interesting idea that it can't be undone from its whole production process: its material production obviously (from gear to electricity), but mostly because its production is tied in a network (people who play, who release, who book to make it easy), under technical and aesthetically pleasing considerations (how do we want to sound? do we play well enough? does the interpretation fit to the idea?). At some point, the choices and the answers to those questions imply to get you into some positions that translate political views about the world. Depending on how they fit with others, it can create friendships and even “scenes”. In order to answer your initial question, we could say that obviously we do conceive a scene without politicizing (but it is even more than that, we'd rather say “with views about the world that are radically different from ours”), the question consequently becomes “do we have something to share together then?” and it is immediately easier to answer.

In Maintenant Que Les Flammes Sont Partout you included a song about May 68, something that lately interests me a lot. How influential is this and the situationist movement today?

There is a very tenuous link between the uprising of May 68 in French universities and the Situationist International, as you may already know it. It is hard to fully understand why, but a part of this relation seems a bit forgotten today in the official history, one of the main reason is to be found in the fact that Situationists refused to be represented as leaders, as opposed to some figures at this time. Fortunately, Kristin Ross relates this incomplete story in her fascinating book May '68 and Its Afterlives, talking about how this political sequence has been erased and captured by the freshly reshaped neoliberalism to present it as a liberal and individual revolution. As we already said for the autonomous movement that took place in Italy during the second part of the '70s, these moments are very inspiring and rich in lessons. They refer to insurrectionary times when the power could really be overthrown.

In the case of the Situationist International, it's important to understand that since the late '50s the group theorized and wrote about the reconfigurations of the post-war capitalism, and the advent of the consumer society which really arose at this moment. It was a moment of radical artistic avant-gardes: Antonin Artaud just died ten years before, the surrealist and lettrist movements were still recent experiences for the situationists, the Beat Generation was experiencing overseas and this artistic emulation gave them paths to explore and to renew the forms of art without separating it from the revolutionary horizon.

With these months that have passed since the appearance of the Mouvement des gilets jaunes, what balance do you make of it?

We lived something that could be considered as the most unsettling political event of the decade or even more, with the appearance of this gilets jaunes movement last year. Still today, it is hard to gauge the political and existential impact created by the outbreak of these yellow vests on some roundabouts in the November dawn. We're not overplaying it by saying that they helped to re-draw the lines of the political division, in that they opposed the revolutionary action to the revolutionary posture and bliss, and proved us that revolution was a question of desire instead of a rational one. For a part, they were people that never took part in radical politics as we can understand it, that never attended a demonstration or organized a strike, etc. In some areas they created what could be considered as communes, existing as a community in a world — this unbearable fiction — that had always made them existing as individuals.

It seems that in the whole world people are waking up and taking back the streets seriously. Either in Chile, Venezuela, or in France itself. Have we reached the maximum pressure point for people to explode?

We took so long answering this interview that in the meantime Lebanon went up in flames too, and while most of these countries were facing some major representation crisis with the whole institutional politics, a virus sent us back in our respective homes as separated individuals. We're insisting on the concept of “individual” because it's fundamental to understand that this category is a pretty recent one that has emerged with the modern definition of “society”. It's very clear now that both the “individual” and the “society” have emerged in order to defeat communities that were an ungovernable model for the powers, or at least less easily governable in that they were indivisible entities. We have to consider the return of this hypothesis after two hundred years of capitalism, the need of community (this is basically what communism is all about) comes back to the point, by every means, and the people go out, fight the police, and take the streets.

I read that in your first concerts you distributed sheets with the lyrics and explanations. Do you keep doing it? What was the reason, make clear parts that were open to various interpretations, expand information on the subject or try to make people really listen to what you have to say?

We distributed our lyrics for quite a long time, but to be honest we haven't done it for a while. This move was influenced by some bands before us, mostly from this first french emo wave with band that used to do so. The idea was to put the lyrics right in front of the audience, as something we could claimed but also as a starting point to talk about. One of the reason that led us to stop was also the idea that there are other ways to “talk”: gesture, music and intensity that can become languages when we start to take them seriously and make a good use of it, they can convey things that words sometimes cannot.

Do you read / do fanzines? What importance do you give them in the hardcore / anarchist scene? Lately I have heard more than one person saying that it isn’t coherent to continue to make fanzines on paper and contributing to the environmental impact having such powerful networks which reach as many people as the Internet. What do you think of this?

Some of us used to write fanzines back in the days, and we also have to recognize that after have been serious fanzine-readers we're less curious these days. Because of it, we are tempted to say that there are less issues than a few years ago, which is probably wrong and mostly influenced by the fact that we don't really dig in. We talked above of this idea of “network”, and fanzines do participate from this idea that autonomy should be earned everywhere it is possible. At some point, we could say that there is victory everytime a fanzine can bypass the traditional plan established by the music industry.

About the fact that 200 printed zines could possibly contribute to the environmental impact, well... maybe some people should try to think about how “green” their online datas are, in fact it really is a stupid accusation. Once again it mostly lies on the idea that politics is an affair of separated individuals doing their own parts more or less, which is the one of the lies of the liberalism. We can continue to pee while taking a shower and turning the lights off when leaving a room, it's pointless if we don't take seriously the idea of overthrowing economy and industries.

Related to the previous question, what is your opinion of the Internet? Does it make us better or worse?

Do you really think that four guys who have a hell of a job creating a Tumblr page could have any useful opinion on this internet thing?

A few days ago a friend told me that if one day I go to France I must go to Nantes, because it is the best city in the state. What happens in Nantes to have earned such fame? Is it really that cool? Because one of the things that you talk about on your album Interstices is about the feeling of apathy generated by living in a gentrified and clonic city, isn't it? What good things happen in your city?

With Interstices, we wanted to summarize what creates this unified feeling from one metropolis to another, from almost every gentrified city center. This is the fascinating thing with the metropolis paradox: on this captured-by-control-dispositives territory, there are at the same time desertion acts and zones that try to re-think autonomy and rooms of manoeuvre. What makes Nantes pretty specific at some point is this relation between the city center and its countryside. In fact we can't fully understand what makes this city special without talking of the well-known ZAD of Notre-Dame-Des-Landes right? Everybody knows it for the resistance against the airport that was supposed to be built there (and that will never be) but the thing is that the ZAD was, and still is, a territory fighting for its material autonomy, which tries to bind metropolitan resistances with the experience of building a form-of-life from the community: an attempt to build a commune for real.

Three of us have lived in Nantes for almost ten years now. Is the city really hype these days? It is hard to tell in our cases, we're living there and cannot really take this stance to measure the impact from elsewhere. Let's just say that this is a city with many secret stories, artistic and political ones, and since we're living in Nantes we felt connected to some of them and tried to take part of. I guess this is what holds us here. In concrete terms, we could talk about La Dérive which is a bar and a community canteen we're involved in. It's a place where you can drink, eat, attend a book presentation or a movie or just come to play chess with a friend. There are places like Les Ateliers de Bitche where you can attend nice shows, and La Commune de Dalby Football Club to play football on Sunday afternoon with some friends.

In your Tumblr you include a very interesting text about the pros and cons of the free price. It attracts me a lot, because besides allowing anyone to feel excluded based on their economy, it empowers you in the process and makes you abandon the role of passive consumer, but I share the opinion that if it becomes institutionalized and becomes something systematic it can lose the critical and anti-capitalist background. Have you set or have you considered putting your albums and merch at free price?

When we first read this text about donation in Maximum Cuvette (a french zine from Grenoble), we thought it was smart enough to practically ask the question of the economy inside a microcosm that tends to get rid of it, to examine the institutional process always contained in economy and at the same time how this “name your price” thing could bypass the rigidity always contained in standard economy. You're absolutely right and the text says so, at some point donations can feed the illusion that we got rid of the economy which is obviously a lie, it is just an attempt to manage with its rigidity but under a re-institutionalized form: this is never enough and it is important to be aware that donations are just a way to make the best of the situation.

Since we started CHAVIRÉ, our merch as always been on donation. It was at first the easiest way to manage with selling merch to us. We talk about it together from time to time, we sometimes evoke the idea to sell merch at a flexible-fixed-price, like “a record costs 10€, if you really can't afford it, well, less is fine too”. For now we keep it this way, also because it became a kind of a habit, but to be honest this donation thing is so ritualized around us that it often works as a disguised fixed price, and does not really empowers anyone at the merch table because almost everyone there can afford what you sale. To be honest, we're more and more lax with our whole merch stuff and barely see the point in having five different shirt models and buttons and patches and so on mostly because we're not really into it anymore...

Many times I feel frustrated in some way by trying to explain the operation and ethics of DIY to people who are not involved in it. How would you explain this?

Well, we would point at the fact that the ethics behind the whole DIY thing in punk community is mostly based on the increase of a practical autonomy. This is mostly about what DIY should be all about, the growth of a network that could exist by itself, for itself without depending on any power or institution. This idea of a proper existence is important, because it implies some requirements with ourselves trying to build something that is not just an “alternative”, a counter-model based on a mirror effect from the cultural institutions, because this just reinforces the legitimacy of it, putting us back to the margins. When this is said, we didn't say much, but let's keep in mind that the operation led by DIY is one of the many attempts where autonomy is experienced (we talked about the ZAD and the late '70s Italy already, there are many examples). These autonomous experiences can be sometimes hard to translate with words, most of the time they are understood when they're lived, when they overtake the words to become perceptible, incarnate. In fact, the words can't describe the mixed feelings of joy, mutual requirement, friendship of these autonomous attempts that hold people together, how can it be explained as something else than the promise of a fast-track life?

You have made some very cool ripoffs of Orchid, Embrace, Portraits Of Past, ... for stickers and merch. Do you have any more in mind?

Let's say we have already done way too much of them for just one band. So everyone knows that we have great tastes and that we're not too bad at Photoshop (s/o to our best ripoff that you did not mentioned which was a Chanel one), but it has to stop now!

In addition your flyers, covers, "logos" like the (A) made of flowers are very worked up and for me they have very good taste. Do you take care of this or do you entrust it to friends? Which graphic artists inspire you the most?

For sure this whole artwork thing is something that matters to us, we wouldn't deny it. But it is pretty clear that it has evolved a lot since the moment we started the band from things more “traditional” — not to say expected, such as the combo of typewriter font and linocut drawings which is the perfect example — to more personal artwork: since the last record, the Atelier McClane duo took care of the whole graphic thing to tie the images with the sound and the words. Some of us have an interest in visual arts and we have friends who consider that any revolutionary act will need to find its own form, which implies to think about its graphic one. Let's just mention the work of the Atelier McClane obviously but the Capital Taboulé collective from Rennes too, the Super Terrain collective from Nantes, Bonjour Grisaille and the Atelier Summercity from Brest, Marine Le Thellec from Marseille to talk about our friends and favourite ones. We couldn't end this list without also mentioning Hugues Pzzl who made the artwork of Interstices and our split with BASTOS, and who contributed a lot to renew the visual forms of the punk scene in France — a renewal that was so much needed.

Which situations, books, movies, people, actions, bands have inspired you the most, both to do things with Chaviré and to do things on your personal life?

This is always a touchy question, fortunately we left as much references as possible in the whole interview that could be used as a part of the answer. And obviously we'll be happy to develop if anyone wants to know more, our mailbox is always open!

What are you most keen on to lately? What do you like to do in your free time? What frees you from everyday boredom?

Since we are, as a large part of the world population, currently cloistered home while answering this interview, we have plenty of this free time you're talking about. Here in France, it's been a month of quarantine and we mostly spent it separated from each other but with friends and families. We tried to take advantage of the situation writing new songs, sharing playlists and movie recommendations, keeping in touch together. We don't know when the zine will be out but this moment is very decisive and we have to be really attentive, in order to act as soon as it will be possible. A few weeks ago, an absolutely incredible text entitled “Monologue du virus” has been published in the French media Lundi Matin and has since been translated in various languages (https://lundi.am/What-the-virus-said). Recently we also discovered the Leftove.rs archives (https://leftove.rs) which is an incredible database about autonomy with many leaflets, zines and books from pretty much everywhere around the world.

Future plans?

Improving dad skills.

Doing more muay thai.

Getting degrees.

So far, thank you very much for the patience of answering all this! Anything else to add? See you, hugs!

Thanks again for sending this absolutely fascinating interview, which is hands down one of the most interesting we've ever answered to. Hope we've been precise enough, feel free to write us if it's not the case in these troubled times.

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vroenis · 5 years ago

Text

Mood Dependence

The first tag I drop on the entry is of-course Kentucky Route Zero.

I forget whether I’ve talked about this before so here we are talking about it again some more. While I was playing KRZ and occasionally posting about it on social media, among others, two particular friends responded to me about it and we engaged, having some good discussions on and off. I suggested that playing the game might be highly mood dependent, but that for me engaging in most art is mood dependent, the only thing that varies is to what degree. If I was still more of a wanker, I might suggest that the more artsy-fartsy a product is, the more mood dependent it is but that’s not the case. I very much have to be in the right frame of mind to engage with Marvel or Bravest Warriors as much as Gaspar Noé, it really does depend on the individual and what mood they’re most frequently in or find themselves in at the time.

I find it affects more than the consumption of and engagement with art, tho. I don’t know if it’s a bipolar thing or a human thing and I say that a lot; it affects my ability to write, create, engage with people - enact actions in the world. The only thing I have to brute-force my way thru is of-course my employment which raises particularly interesting capitalistic questions of societal structure. I’m not entirely here to smash the establishment tho - there are times where discipline is useful; on a base level, discipline and the ability to overcome how we feel assists us with survival and sure it’s disgusting to apply that to the nth degree entirely in the ultimate capitalist sense, but again on a base level, being able to hold down a job in an of itself isn’t necessarily evil. Before we go Burning Down The Corporations, I need to make careful distinctions between my mental states and my physical states, as a first example. Minds and bodies are complex systems and understanding them is my responsibility.

Nevertheless I can never stray too far from my iconoclastic nature and Art-capital-A is one of my most primary motivators. There is definitely plenty wrong in the world at large we have created over generations and the societal structures therein regarding how we understand people and psychology and I’m fairly certain we will never address it to our ultimate destruction, that is fairly observable, mundane, and an immense tragedy for literally billions of people who will luck out in the birth lottery or have already done so. Art is the only thing that from a pragmatic perspective is both meaningless and unnecessary and so becomes the most essential and important thing for humanity. We must inject the most meaning and emotion into it possible. It becomes charged with the most powerful intangible things we have; our emotions. This is why bad art must be celebrated and documented. Anger, frustration, humour is just as valuable as everything we think is noble.

It’s also why the struggle to create is very real and perhaps one of the greatest challenges. It’s probably why I pushed myself to write today. Usually I’m cautious about pushing myself to produce, and I want to again be very careful with the language I use being so capitalist, even if only by stating it. It’s hazardous discussing everything in terms of product - I know I mentioned in a previous entry and Capitalism tries to convince you that everything you create is a product and it has no value unless someone is buying it, so a reminder to myself and to you that it’s not what’s happening here. I could frame it as exercise, and I’m now thinking (typing? lol) aloud in that an exercise is effectively an investment - a preparation for ability, capability for the future and again it all sounds quite capitalist, doesn’t it? Do we always do things only with the hope of some kind of profit? A return on investment? Do we evaluate everything only if and when there is a return, at the valuation point, like a board game about speculative stocks? If the board game never concludes because of an unforeseen interruption, do we not name a winner and so the game and the stocks - the product and our labour - never had any value?

Do I write this to answer these questions, or only to ask them, and which has value?

All the philosophy majors will have a lot of angles on what has value or whether there’s any point to value at all as a frame which is great. Value as a phenomena is a whole Thing - we can discuss whether or not I have any intent to create or suggest Value capital V (that’s getting annoying, I know, so that will be the last time) but that will be fairly pointless.

(I made that; you can steal it).

Over the last few entries, I’ve not directly talked about the one monumental current event that’s dominated the attention of world at large. If you note the dates on these entries and you’re visiting from the future, you may have to look up what was happening around now if I haven’t mentioned it explicitly anywhere as I likely won’t. There was one vague reference to it in the Kaossilator post which is as close as I care to get. There are so many other things happening in our lives (J and mine) that I’d say were interruptions, but they’re not really - they’re just life, but they’re the daily challenges that make creating difficult.

It means coming here and writing weekly or bi-weekly, as is my intention, is a challenge. It means turning on all my gear and working on music is a huge challenge. It means watching films and sometimes even YouTube is a challenge. A lot of it it energy dependent, heaps of it is naturally time dependent, but for me a significant portion is mood dependent and my understanding of that is it’s more dimensional than just not feeling like it.

Over dinner a while ago, our family were discussing films released in 2019 and which was my favourite and honestly I think I got around to seeing one. I think the next most recent film I saw in the last 12 months was Hereditary which I enjoyed most, so if I see a film within 24 months of its release these days, I’m doing well. Mostly this is due to time and opportunity, but it’s mostly due to mood; I just don’t want to watch most films, even ones I’m interested in seeing and want to watch.

Our hosts also asked us what we thought of the place as they’d just recently moved in and were still in the process of moving things around and my perspective was and is that I like subtle - and often not so subtle suggestions of separations of space for application. When I read, I read in specific places. When I create music, I only do it in the studio, tho there are exceptions when I take one or two smaller pieces of gear out of the room as that’s a ton of fun for a refreshing change. When I play games, it’s on the consoles down at the television, the same goes for when I watch films or shows - we don’t have more than one room with TVs in them, and while J can and does watch shows on her iPad in bed, it’s not something I can do. For me, I want a dedicated space in which I focus on film to engage with it.

This applies to the times when I create and engage with art, too, and I’ve mentioned before that there are even times when I do and don’t listen to certain albums or pieces of music. In this post-KRZ life I’m in, (need to change the name of this journal to Art Worth Dying For: or Life Post-Kentucky Route Zero), I’m trying to write these longer posts every Friday night after work, but it’s turning out to be either Saturday during the day, Saturday evening or on the Sunday. During the week I try to add something shorter, but I do want to maintain some semblance of regular discipline because writing is good for me, in particular in lieu of ceasing other online activities. I’ve found that engagement in general is low on other platforms, and while it does occur rarely and at a moderate level, it isn’t regular enough for my liking. Like many, I’ve taken a somewhat passive role on Instagram where the Stories are utilised to post temporary activity and engagement is higher, and on Facebook I respond to posts in the Akai Force group where necessary but only when relevant which isn’t often.

I’d rather come here and write endlessly and be orderly, in short and long-format text, and as expressed in my Instagram stories; even post images in a more static format that invites slower digestion and contemplation with a view to better interpolation of text and context of that text in relation to the images.

It doesn’t matter that I don’t have an audience here, what matters is that I like the form and format and that it feels right for my expression. It allows me to inject value into it, so I guess it’s good product then; even if no-one is buying. Good ol’ capitalism. I don’t know if writing discipline will lead to music discipline, that’s certainly not one of the aspirations I maintain - if it’s a side-effect, it’s welcome. Nevertheless, there’s a charm in writing publicly and being able to come back, re-read my thoughts and reflect on what comes out when I plug directly into what’s going on and let some of the previous week spill out, delineated in text and a few images - these tiny snapshots of what life is like for me. I feel like it’s valuable, insightful even if just for me, for what my life is becoming, the Art that is shaping it along with the events I’m experiencing - am subject to. That’s ominous, as it should be. It should be for us all. We are subject to Art.

#Kentucky Route Zero #Video Games #chrono #2020 #Mood Dependence #Capitalism #Perception of Value #Creating #Creativity #Steal This Art #Social Media #Writing About Writing #Consuming Art

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violetsmoak · 5 years ago

Text

Philtatos [3/?]

https://archiveofourown.org/works/20101543/chapters/47654632

Blanket Disclaimer

Summary: During a patrol where Red Hood and Red Robin cross paths, Jason is infected with the blood of the Eros, the ancient God of Love, who informs them that they must track down his missing bow and arrows, or Jason will go slowly mad with an obsessive desire–for Tim. Though overwhelmed by the sudden attention being paid to him, Tim sets to work trying to solve the case, before Jason succumbs to madness. In the meantime, Jason discovers that there’s more than godlike powers at work here, as well as a legacy that reaches back through the sands of time.

Rating: PG-13 (rating may change later)

Beta Reader: None at the moment.

JayTimBingo Prompts This Chapter: # fate #gods in disguise #reincarnation #secrets #titans #wings

First Chapter

________________________________________________________________

As a general rule, Tim avoids going to Batburger when in uniform; it feels as if he’s endorsing a company that capitalizes on cape and rogue identities, and which he knows for a fact treats their employees like chattel.

But apparently mythological gods of love have insane metabolic needs.

He makes a mental note to ask Bart to send some of those special high-calorie protein bars he eats. There’s no way Tim intends to spend valuable time playing delivery boy if Jason’s in trouble.

He frowns at the thought, causing the girl at the takeout counter to step back nervously.

Jason was his usual charming self tonight. But it was a bit off.

The older vigilante, never the paragon of patience and gratitude, was on a hair-trigger tonight. Under normal circumstances, there’s more verbal sparring between them before Jason things get physical. Even then, their altercations are usually because some villain is trying to pit them against each other.

Or he really was just pissed off I was following him.

But Tim can’t help thinking that’s not it. The whole thing has been nagging him since the night before, drowning out what would normally be frustration and hurt after his encounter with the Red Hood. There’s no time to be hurt when there’s a problem to solve.

Tim accepts his order, and after ensuring it’s triple-bagged, tips the girl at the counter for her time before taking off. Swinging across the rooftops of Gotham carrying ten times more than he ever buys for himself is too awkward, so he ends up jumping on the roof of a passing bus and riding it toward the old theater district.

His eyes automatically flick to the passing buildings, wondering if his progression away from Jason’s part of town is being watched from up top.

Or if he should be ducking an impending sniper shot.

Jason’s words echo on repeat in his mind, needling deeper each time. It shouldn’t sting as much as it does, but they were just getting to a good place in terms of trust.

“If I need help, I’ll ask. And chances are, I won’t be asking you.”

“So much for that,” Tim mutters to himself as he prepares to disembark from his ride.

Upon arriving back at the Nest, he skips changing out of his gear and heads straight for the subbasement. The containment unit there was build with Poison Ivy and Scarecrow related emergencies in mind, but it’s come in handy since he acquired an Olympian roommate of sorts.

Normal protocol after a twenty-four-hour observation period would be to send Eros off to a prison for metahumans, but Tim is wary about giving up custody of him any time soon. The potential danger to Jason aside, he’ll need to get his hands on a good deal of null technology and fortified transportation just to move the guy without setting off his powers.

That memory induces a shudder; it’s been a day, and he’s still tasting pomegranate.

Tim doesn’t wish that on anyone. And if that lack of control seizes Jason, forcing him to throw himself at Tim like a ravenous dog?

A visceral swirl of nausea settles in Tim’s gut. Jason’s always had strong ideas on consent, even before his death. It’s one of the few things that didn’t change following his resurrection. If Jason becomes the very thing he’s been fighting his whole life, Tim worries he’ll break for real this time, and in a manner very different than when he first broke The Rule.

Tim isn’t going to let that happen, even if that means working with an entitled godling that’s already become more trouble than he’s worth.

It was hard enough just getting him here, the guy’s way heavier than he looks…

He wonders if it’s the wings, if their mass is still discernible even when they are out of the visual spectrum, and how strong they’d have to be to carry something person-sized. They probably aren’t like a birds’ appendages, and Eros is clearly not hollow-boned, so either they’re extremely well-muscled or of some metaphysical material construct that—

“Hey! Are you going to feed me at some point, darlin’? Or is part of your brand of hospitality enforced starvation?”

Tim jolts back to present from his drifting thoughts and glances across the open space of the Nest toward the containment unit. It’s a hundred square feet of bulletproof glass and filtered air designed by S.T.A.R Labs specifically to counteract the abilities of metas and other enhanced humans.

Eros lounges on his cot, wings out and examining the feathers with his lips pressed together. He’s been annoyed with Tim since waking up in the in custody, though Tim thinks he’s more upset about the whole being knocked-out thing. There’s some kind of telenovela playing in the background.

He wasn’t sure how long he was going to have his guest, so while Eros was still unconscious, Tim hooked up a television screen inside, and brought several books and a mp3 player. He also brought every piece of art from his apartment upstairs and crammed it inside the unit. Eros’ abilities may not have affected Tim when he put him in there (this time), covered as he was, but as those powers grow beyond his control, he’s going to want to siphon it off however he can.

Eros finally looks up at Tim, narrowing his eyes. “For your sake, I hope you got the fries Jokerized. And your channel selection sucks. What kid your age doesn’t have at least one Adult channel?”

“The kind that finds them gross and exploitative.” Tim makes a face as he pushes back his cowl, though he keeps his domino on.

And who has two full-time jobs that make sitting down to watch anything like that pretty much impossible.

He can’t remember the last time he went on a date or did anything nearing the realms of sexual. Normally he just sees to his needs in the shower and that’s that, since there’s no time for much else. He’s even gotten in the habit of not taking more than five minutes so he can do other things. What’s the point of taking longer if there’s no one there with him?

Eros is watching him with a cruel twist to his lips, and Tim’s ears warm. He has a flash of worry that the Olympian can read minds but then decides if Eros had that ability, he’d be using it mock Tim by now. The guy's sort of a dick.

Tim scowls at the notion and opens the hatch in the side of the unit and shoves the takeout bag inside, punching in the code to decontaminate the area.

Eros gets up from the cot, stretching in a languid movement that’s distracting for reasons other than his shirtless state, and stalks over to the hatch on the other side. As he moves, he brushes his fingers across a bronze Grecian krater from the Classical period. Something like golden wisps of smoke swirl around it and then settles into the piece, which gleams a bit brighter.

He wasn’t kidding about that, I guess.

Eros clutches at the takeout bag and begins unloading it on the table by the door hatch, stuffing fries in his mouth and making borderline pornographic noises that have Tim swallowing uncomfortably.

“So where’s Tall, Dark and Angry?” the Olympian asks. “I figured you’d be wrangling him back here—force him into a sweet set-up like this one.”

He kicks at the glass.

“There’s no wrangling when it comes to J—Red Hood.”

“And you’re not worried at all?”

Tim considers the last meeting and carefully says, “He seemed fine when I ran into him tonight.”

But he can’t quite hide his unease. Eros picks up on it.

“You get that that’s only temporary, right?” he asks, stuffing a handful of fries in his mouth.

“I also know that going at Hood head-on isn’t the way to convince him of anything. He’s got to reach out for help himself. The most I can do is monitor him from a distance until he’s ready.”

He wanders over to his main computer and brings up the tracking program for the bug he planted on Jason when he grabbed him tonight. The other man was more distracted than he let on if he didn’t notice Tim slip it on him.

And he hasn’t gotten rid of it, judging from this.

It’s not making a quick exit via sewer or a passing truck, which is par for the course when ditching a tracker. He’s chased enough of those to know what that pattern looks like. And when Tim pulls up camera footage from the surrounding area, he catches several shots of Jason making his way to the safehouse in Coventry no one’s supposed to know about.

“Really?” Eros drawls. “Are you sure it’s not because you’re perfectly happy with this state of affairs? Maybe you’re hoping you’ll finally get some recognition from the guy you’ve been pining for?”

Tim tenses and turns, forcing a blank look and neutral tone. “I’m not pining for him.”

“Don’t lie to me—God of Love, remember? I could smell it on you the minute you were both in the same room.”

Tim clenches his fists, a pit forming in his stomach at the idea that someone knows, followed by disgust as he registers what Eros just said.

“No, I’m not happy about it,” he growls. “Why would I be happy about him being forced to do something against his will? Especially if it’s giving a crap about me?”

“Hey, no offense meant,” Eros says, holding his hands up in surrender; the effect is ruined by the burgers clutched in each fist. “My mother and I have made a career off guys wanting the object of their affection to pay attention to them, at whatever the cost. And there was no such thing as dick pics back then. It’s kind of a question I’ve got to ask in my line of work.”

“Your line of work? You mean you still fly around the world making people fall in love?”

“Uh, no, human beings fall in love fine on their own. I just…make it happen faster and last longer. To my mother, love is a whimsy, gossamer thing, all moonlit strolls, and flowery words and basking in the newness of it all. For me, it’s fierce. Intense. Something that when denied guts you like a knife and hollows you out with desperation.”

A hungry expression passes over his face that has nothing to do with food, and Tim shivers, disliking how a lot of that sentence is hitting too close to home. Rather than betray his discomfort, he takes a chiding tone. “If that’s what you do, no wonder people kill themselves after bad break-ups. Some people aren’t able to deal with that sort of pain—do you even care?”

“Not particularly. Besides, it’s only the interesting ones we get involved with. They tend to be stronger at heart.”

“Because that makes it so much better!”

“Do I tell you how to do your job? No. So how about I get a little less judgment and a little more ‘start finding my diviners’ from you?”

“Oh, we’re going to find them,” Tim says, fighting to control his anger. Whether I’m letting you have them back is another story entirely. If I can figure out some way to keep you and your bow locked up, it’d save a lot of people grief. “But just so you understand, Red Hood is my priority here, not you or your toys.”

“Really?” Eros purrs, sneering skepticism on his face. “Even though I could ensure he starts to return those pesky feelings of yours? In a less life-threatening way, of course.”

“He might not even be affected.”

“Naivety’s not a good look on you, darlin’. But seriously—all I have to do is use an arrow, and you two could retire from the cape gig and go antiquing in New England once this is all over.”

Tim snorts at the ridiculous image and shakes his head. “No.”

“Really? You’re still willing to fight for him, even if he goes back to treating you like an afterthought if you help him?”

“When I help him. And it’s not like it would be something new.”

And, yeah, that still hurts.

Eros huffs, his expression suggesting he’s not sure what to think of that, and then shakes his head.

“Self-sacrificing as ever,” he pronounces and pops the top on a can of Zesti.

Tim puzzles at that remark for all of five seconds, when the screen of his computer lights up with an incoming transmission from Titans Tower. Tim accepts it and the screen fills with a familiar face.

For the first time that night, his mouth smooths into a genuine smile. “Hey, Cassie.”

“Red Robin,” she replies, eyes flicking over him as if to assess him for injury or danger.

She keeps to his rules about secret identities in his base. Sometimes he wishes his identity was public like hers—and then he remembers that he gets enough unwanted attention as Tim Drake-Wayne, it would be worse if people knew for sure he was Red Robin.

Vicki Vale would be the first in line to turn my life into some kind of reality TV show…

“You tried to get a hold of me earlier?” his friend asks, and Tim nods. He’s never been the type to leave anything to chance, and last night while Eros was still conked out, he shot an email to Cassie asking her to get back to him as soon as she could.

“How are things in California?”

“A hell of a lot warmer than where you are, but I don’t think you want to talk about the weather.”

“Nope. How much have you heard about Eros?”

“Eros?” she asks. “Like Cupid?”

“Really?” the winged Olympian groans. “You too? You’re supposed to know better.”

Cassie’s eyes narrow as she takes note of the figure in the containment unit behind him. “Who is that?”

“He says his name’s Eros, and from what I’ve seen, I’m inclined to believe him.”

Eros gives Cassie a smarmy smile. “Hello, Auntie. Nice to meet you finally.”

She wrinkles her nose, and Tim can’t help mirroring the expression. “And I thought my family was messed up.”

“Your family is messed up,” she retorts. “Mine’s just been doing it longer.”

“Touché.”

“So, why’s he in a cage?”

“The real question is why isn’t he gagged,” Tim replies, earning a smirk from Cassie and an offended ‘hey!’ from his detainee. “Basically, he’s losing control of his powers and when that happens apparently there will be a nuclear explosion of desire.”

And that’s possible the weirdest sentence he’s ever said.

“Super orgy,” Eros agrees. “Which though fun in theory, is a lot messier than any of us want.”

Cassie and Tim shudder.

“Not that Gotham couldn’t use a collective chill pill,” Cassie says, “but that sounds like an easy fix. You’ve got him locked up, send him on to Iron Heights or one of the other places that have meta containment.”

“Hey! What’d I ever do to you?!”

“I would, but there’s a complication,” Tim sighs. “He was wounded in an altercation involving a bunch of mobsters, and some of his blood infected a human—no, not me.” He is quick to add that at her widening eyes. “But the individual in question isn’t exactly known for being in control of their emotions. They have a history of trauma as well that could turn this into an issue, so I need to find a cure as soon as possible. Preferably before the symptoms Eros insists are coming manifest.”

He purposefully downplays Jason’s involvement, since the Titans aren’t his biggest fans. Even the ones who weren’t around at the time have heard the story of unconscious bodies, a message written in blood and Tim nearly dying. Heroes are supposed to be above grudges, but they are still teenagers.

“Not sure what I can do for you on that front…”

“Eros says his arrows will reverse it, but they’re missing, along with his bow. I’m looking for that. But I have to find out how bad this could potentially get, and how long it will take.”

“I could tell you that,” Eros grumbles.

“I need independent corroboration because I don’t believe he’s being completely honest with me,” Tim finishes, ignoring him.

“I know nothing beyond what I’ve heard in the stories, and those you have to take with a grain of salt,” Cassie muses.

“Told you,” Eros informs Tim.

“But I’ll contact a few people in my family. They might know something concrete.”

“Thanks,” Tim says, relieved. “Other than that, everything’s good with the Titans?”

“Just the usual stuff. Nothing end-of-the-world bad this week, but it’s only Tuesday.”

“Don’t jinx it!”

“We live in a jinx,” Cassie replies with a roll of her eyes. There’s a crash somewhere in the distance, and the trumpeting of an elephant and she winces.

“Beast Boy?”

“I’ll see you later, Red, I’ve got an idiot to kill,” Cassie sighs.

“Isn’t it fun being the leader?”

“Shut up.”

The screen goes blank, and Tim can’t help his grin.

“So, you know my aunt.”

The grin vanishes as he turns to face Eros. “First, stop calling her that, it’s weird. Second, she’s with the Titans. Of course I know her.”

“Titans,” the Olympian scoffs. “You call yourselves that, but you’ve never met an actual Titan. They were formidable warriors. So fearsome they had to be thrown into the deepest pit of Hades to ensure they never rose up again to threaten the gods.”

“Clearly they weren’t all that if they got locked up,” Tim retorts, offended on behalf of his team.

Miraculously, Eros has nothing to say to that.

⁂

Jason wakes to the sensation of lips between his shoulder blades and someone’s fingers sliding down the curl of his spine. He grumbles in dozy annoyance, shoving his face deeper into his pillow. It took him way too long to fall asleep last night, his overactive imagination plying him with thoughts he does not want to be having. Whoever’s bothering him is about to—

He jerks upward then, fingers clenching around the pistol beside his bed and whirls around to aim at whatever intruder has slipped into his room.

Because he went to sleep alone last night, and no one should know about this safehouse or how to bypass his security.

(Well, obviously there are the members of the Family, but Jason’s fairly confident none of them would be waking him like that.)

He faces the emptiness of the room, breathing hard as he tries to gather his wits. The space is too sparsely furnished for someone to find a place to hide, the shadows already eaten away by the sunlight. There’s no question he’s utterly alone, gun pointed at nothing and his body heaving like he just went three rounds with Bane.

What the hell…

He lowers the gun, scowling, and rubs the back of his head with his free hand. He’s used to having realistic dreams, but that’s new…

Jason scrubs a hand down his face, gives one last bleary glance at his surroundings, and heaves himself out of bed. There’s no way he’s falling back to sleep after this.

He’s distracted the rest of the morning, paranoia higher than usual as he takes second and third glances around the room before getting in the shower. He really shouldn’t have skipped it last night, because his skin is sticky with dried blood.

The wound in his shoulder is completely gone now.

If he’s learned anything in his life it’s not to ignore when things magically appear or disappear.

And yet…

If he acknowledges it, it means acknowledging the fact that he’s starting to fixate—hell, already is fixating—on Tim, and that’s something he can’t give in to.

Repressing shit is a time-honored Bat tradition, and he decides for once he’s going to partake for as long as possible. He’s still able to function, which means there might still time for him to figure all of this out on his own.

He returns to the location of Eros’ warehouse, hoping to find some trace evidence left from the night before. If he can get an analysis of the blood that infected him—

Except, the person he’d usually ask for that is the one he should be avoiding at all costs. The other options are ten times as unpalatable.

Damn it.

It turns out there’s nothing to be found anyhow, although Jason isn’t sure it’s because someone cleaned it up (the GCPD crime scene cleaners or the ever-diligent Red Robin) or because maybe Olympian blood doesn’t stick around. His wound is healed like it was never there, it’s possible it’s the same with the blood.

The day gets steadily more discouraging.

The first time Jason hears the voices, he’s in the middle of busting up a shipment of drugs he stumbled onto while leaving the warehouse district. The Triad flunkies seeing to said shipment aren’t exactly happy to see him, which is why things quickly devolve into fisticuffs.

As one of the knife-wielding henchmen take a run at him, Jason crouches, ready to engage, when without warning, someone whispers in his ear.

“Ready to lose?”

“Do your worst, infant.”

Somehow, he can feel warm breath along his jaw, even though he’s wearing his helmet.

Jason jerks to one side, prepared to pull whoever is behind him over his shoulder, only to find the air behind him empty. His pause allows his opponent to shove his knife at his ribs.

Body armor and his own deflection abilities keep the blow from being fatal, but the rest of the fight, Jason is thrown. There’s no one else but him and the Triads, but the sensation of someone hovering behind him doesn’t disappear.

Tim?

He’s looking for him before he even registers it, stepping over the groaning bodies of his opponents and examining the shadows for any sign of Red Robin. It would be just like him to sit and watch from the shadows, the little stalker. Dick told him stories about what little Timmy was like as a kid, and it wouldn’t surprise him if he still liked to sneak around with a camera.

That idea makes the blood rush to his cheeks for some reason.

Disappointment rises when he confirms he’s completely alone—followed by the queasy realization of what he was just doing.

He doesn’t even bother calling the GCPD to do a clean-up as he flees the scene.

As he stitches himself up later in his safe house, Jason eyes his reflection in the mirror, glaring at himself in reprimand. He should be stronger than this, damn it! If not because of his All-Caste training, then even thanks to Bruce’s insane regimens for dealing with poisons.

His gaze flicks over his scarred body, assessing the damage. He’s used to the litany of scars that cut across his skin, this latest is just part of a growing collection. The other one, though—

He studies the healed part of his shoulder and swallows.

If he hadn’t known there was something wrong with it before, healing as quickly as it did, he knows now. The raised skin of the new scar looks as if it’s been glossed over with gold; fine threads of it follow the surrounding capillaries like loose threads.

If this is some kind of King Midas deal, I’m going to kill that winged douche. Though, turning into a golden statue is potentially a better outcome than what could happen if what Eros said was true. At least this time Bruce will have something better to stick in the case than an empty suit.

The grim humor usually makes him feel marginally better; today it doesn’t.

After that, the voices are everywhere he goes, needling at him in a way that is somehow more present than the insanity of the Pit, more maddening. At least when he was driven by an insane rage, the voices egging him on made sense. There was a purpose, a logic behind their prompting.

“Always planning, aren’t you?”

“Well, someone has to.”

The whispers that dog him are more like snatches of a picture or a dream, without context, and yet each word murmured to him falls on him like a searing iron on his heart.

“Should e’er I go, will you go with me?”

In the next few days, things get steadily worse.

Jason’s all but given up on sleep, since every time he closes his eyes, Tim’s face seems engraved on the backs of his eyelids. Only not Tim—sometimes he looks different, but the image is so fleeting Jason couldn’t even explain how. And when it’s not Tim’s face or his voice, then his slumber gets interrupted by vibrant flashes of color and sound. There is warmth and laughter that abruptly turns to crushing, wrenching pain.

“You think of me as a shield?”

“I think of you as my shield.”

“You’ll have to catch me!”

It’s not an echo of the physical, the way nightmares about his death tend to be; the bone-shattering imprint of the metal bar against his bones. No, this pain is something else, a gaping hole, someone shouting into a dark void that no one will ever hear.

“I would that you would leave them all to perish.”

“Bury us together.”

During the day, he experiences a bitter longing, like he’s missing a limb or a lung. By night, his patrols are more vicious, bloodier as he tries to exercise his frustration the best way he knows how. As if hitting harder, and faster, will bleed out whatever is slowly poisoning him.

By the middle of the week, Jason is smoking a pack a day and filled with the manic energy of the perpetually exhausted. He’s started seeing things out of the corner of his eye—full lips tilted upward in amusement, flashes of blue eyes, dark hair disappearing into a crowd—that makes his stomach flip.

“Come back to me.”

He picks his phone up and puts it down several times one morning, each time getting closer to calling Tim until he throws it at the wall. He leaves his apartment before he can do the same to his tablet.

There’s no point carrying out his usual errands, and he ends up wandering aimlessly around the city for a few hours. Somehow he ends up on a building across the street from Wayne Enterprises, staring at the floor where he knows Tim’s office is. Where he knows Tim is.

Even on a case, pretty boy has to be the model employee or no allowance from B.

It would be simple for Jason to get into the building if he wanted to. There’s Bat access points all over the place, and secret corridors and doors. He wouldn’t even need a disguise to keep anyone from recognizing Bruce Wayne’s dead kid.

Yeah, and then what, moron? What exactly is the game plan once you get in?

He can’t even answer himself and lets out a wordless yell of rage that gets lost in the whipping wind.

“Screw this,” Jason growls and turns his back on the WE building. It galls him that it’s difficult to do even that.

Time to get some answers.

Since there haven’t been any reports of arrests of winged metas, he knows exactly where to look. Tim’s as paranoid and as much of a control freak as Bruce, and he’s not about to let a potential resource go before he’s used it to its full potential.

And there’s no way babybird doesn’t have a secret hideout under his place.

It’s a short journey back to the old theater district, or at least it feels that way; Jason’s more distracted than he’d like and barely registers the trip. Once there, he circles the block where Tim’s apartment is located a few times, making sure that there’s no sign of its owner (even though he knowsTim’s at work, there’s a part of him that keeps hoping) and then breaks in.

It’s a bit of effort to disable the security system (the little shit is too paranoid and smart for his own good) and then even longer to start looking for a way into Tim’s base of operations.

He may or may not get side-tracked snooping through the kitchen (no wonder he’s so scrawny, he’s got barely any food in here) and rummaging in the bathroom medical cabinet (at least he’s well-stocked, it’ll keep him from bleeding out the next time he gets injured) and picking through various DVDs (of course Tim has the extended versions of Lord of the Rings, why doesn’t that surprise him?). It’s only when he peeks into Tim’s bedroom, sees the king-sized bed and has a sudden image of the younger man sprawled out on it that Jason remembers the actual reason he’s here and almost runs back downstairs.

It takes longer than he’d like to find the trick to opening the secret door, though when he finds it, he snorts.

Because fish? Really?

When would Tim even have the time or patience to remember to feed them, unless he was coming over to the aquarium every day? It’s the only thing in the apartment that doesn’t feel like Tim.

Jason scowls, wondering when he started being so familiar with Tim’s esthetic. They’ve barely hung out together since his grand and bloody return to Gotham, and they’re both always traveling the world or wide void of space, there hasn’t been the opportunity to get to know the kid. Yes, he once studied his replacement obsessively, but that was to find his weaknesses, to learn how to take him apart, to destroy him and in turn destroy Bruce.

None of that should translate to knowing minutiae like how Tim takes his coffee.

When did I even pick that up? Could it have been that time with the waffles?

His ruminations trail off as he takes in the vast, three-level cavern he’s descended into.

And…okay, this place is way cooler than Jason’s pseudo-Batcave, but he guesses that’s par for the course when a tech nerd whose Daddy bankrolls everything.

Though he doubts Tim would have used Bruce’s money to finance this. He likes his independence; Jason learned that for himself about the time he found the kid holed up in Lex Towers. It’s one of the things he likes about him.

He finds Eros in a containment unit.

Bingo.

The guy has a decent set-up too, from the look of it; he might as well be in a swanky hotel room.

“Back so soon?” Eros calls, not looking up from his show right away. “I thought you had work or whatever it is you humans force yourselves to endu—” He glances up and sees that it’s not Tim, and his sentence trails off, expression becoming almost gleeful as if he’s been waiting for him a while.

“Kairόs dé, poimḗn laôn,” he purrs.

Jason blinks, not understanding the words even as they tug at something in him. It’s like being spoken to in a dream or from beneath running water.

He shakes his head. “Sorry, that’s not one of the languages I had drilled into me.”

Eros’s face morphs instantly.

“Well, you’re no fun,” he says, and though the words are accompanied by a childish pout, Jason thinks he senses actual disappointment there. Normally he might investigate that, but he’s here for a reason, and that involves figuring out what the hell is going on with him.

“You know why I’m here.”

“Indeed,” Eros says. “Starting to get that unscratchable itch, aren’t you?”

“What do you think?”

“I think I warned you and you didn’t believe me. Not sure what you expect me to do about it now.” The Olympian examines his nails.

“Oh, I don’t know--fix it, maybe?!”

“I already told you how to fix it. You could have been helping the pretty boy the past few days and possibly gotten closer to sorting things, but then you had to be all brooding and tortured and stomp off like a teenager.” Eros considers him. “Unrelated, but have you ever actually seen a bird brood? I’m curious, if you took that bucket off, would there be actual similarities?”

Jason tells himself the reason he clenches his fists is because of the Olympian’s flippant manner, and not because he called Tim ‘pretty’.

Which, no, not relevant.

“You said I’d be going out of my mind over T—Red Robin,” Jason growls. “That including hearing voices? Or seeing things that aren’t there?”

“It might? To be honest, I have no idea,” Eros says with a yawn. “I’ve never had anyone with your particular…history exposed to my blood. There’s any number of things it could be.”

“My history,” Jason repeats.

“Well, to start with the most glaringly obvious, you’ve returned from the dead. There’s an odor Revenants like you give off…hm, sort of like dirt and petrichor. If they’re brought back properly, I mean, otherwise it’s all rotting flesh and bodily fluids.” He shudders. “And there’s the unmistakable seal of the All-Caste on you. Ducra’s work, I’m guessing.”

Jason’s mouth twists. “And you can just…tell all that.”

“It’s written in the story of your soul,” Eros intones, and then looks smug, “among other things.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen too much in my time to go for that poetic New Age crap.”

“Oh, it’s far from New Age, boy, it’s from an olden time when men were men—”

“And sheep ran scared?” Jason interrupts. “Spare me the walk down memory lane and just answer my questions.

“You haven’t really asked me anything yet.”

“How long do I have before I completely lose it?”

“Again, no idea. Though no one’s ever made it more than two weeks, and by that point, there’s not really much left to save, if you know what I mean.”

Kind of figured that.

“And before it gets to that point? Is there a way of putting off the…urges?” he almost gags on the word.

“Depends.”

“On?”

Eros smirks. “On how far the object of your obsession is willing to go to save you.”

Rage frissons through Jason’s body. “Fuck you. That’s not happening.”

“Then you’d better get your affairs in order and say your goodbyes, et cetera…”

“I’m going to kill you.”

“Oh, do try,” Eros sniggers. “Birdboy took great pains to tell me there’s no way into this shiny prison cell unless you unlock the door from the outside. And if you walk in here now…well, you might end up seeing those troubling hallucinations and hearing those whispers a little more clearly following a second exposure.”

Jason snarls with rage and punches the glass in front of Eros’s face; it doesn’t even make a dent, and his knuckles immediately burn with pain.

“Feel better now?” Eros simpers, and then his face goes cold. “I don’t care if it’s with or without your little crush, it’s in everyone’s best interest to get my toys out of the world and back in my hands as soon as possible. You two have already withstood enough tragedy, don’t you think?”

“That written on my soul, too?” Jason spits but doesn’t wait for an answer. He whirls around and stalks away from the containment unit. This was a waste of time, and he needs to get out of here before Tim returns.

He’s not sure what he’d do if he actually ran into the other vigilante just now.

But one thing’s for sure: he’s going to have to start taking this seriously.

Knowing Tim’s already investigating the bow and arrow angle, Jason decides on a different take. There’s something not entirely above board about Eros, and Jason has no illusions the guy wouldn’t screw them over in a second. He’s calculating, like Tim, except in the Olympian’s case, the only one to benefit from that calculation is himself.

And there are some things he says that don’t jive. Jason’s not sure what exactly he’s been picking up on—going over all of their interactions, there’s nothing that stands out—but his gut is telling him there’s more going on here than the Olympian is telling.

The problem is, who the hell is going to help him out with this?

He can’t work with Tim, for obvious reasons, and contacting Bruce or Dick to use their Themysciran connections is right out. He doesn’t have any of his own, not really—Donna doesn’t really talk to him anymore. Even if he did have an in somewhere, he’d want to have at least enough background on the issue to understand whatever mindfuck logic usually comes along when dealing with Olympians or magic or anything like that.

He needs information, and he knows who he needs to reach out to to get it since Tim isn’t an option. He’s not looking forward to it.

It’s always a toss-up if she’ll help or not.

Or make him beg or demand a favor in exchange.

Though at this point, the sooner he unravels the shitstorm that his life is devolving into, the better. Then he can hightail it out of Gotham and not come back until he and Tim have forgotten all about this little bit of awkwardness. Perhaps get back to the Ally-Possibly-Friend-Kinda-Brother-Sort Of? thing.

And so, before he can talk himself out of it, he taps into the private comm line to Oracle, the one he purposefully keeps muted whenever he’s back in town.

“Red Hood,” the familiar digital voice acknowledges a few seconds later.

“I need a favor.”

“Will wonders never cease.”

“I’ve been asking myself that for years.”

“You’ve been pretty adamant about not wanting help from me,” she remarks, and even with the lack of intonation he can hear the rebuke and rolls his eyes.

“Look, can we skip the guilt-trip? I’ll owe you.”

“I know you will.”

“It’s more your research skills than hacking.”

“Oh?”

“I need to know as much as you can find about the Greek god Eros.”

Oracle is quiet for a long moment, and he wonders if she hasn’t logged off, but then she says, “Does this have anything to do with Red Robin asking me to watch for reports of individuals carrying a bow and arrows over the past few weeks?”

“It might,” Jason allows, a smile in his voice at the mention of Tim. He forces that back down, mentally castigating himself.

None of that!

“Are you two working a case?”

“Sort of. Not together—” Definitely not together! “—but same case. We’re approaching it from different angles.”

“But you’re reaching out to me, which you don’t do unless things have the potential to take a turn for the worse.”

“I’m reaching out to you so that they won’t have to later on, and that’s all I’m going to say. Can you help me or not?”

Another pause.

“It will take some time.”

“We’ve got less than two weeks. Think you can manage that?”

“What did you boys get yourselves into this time?” Oracle sighs. Her cooperation is implied, and Jason relaxes a hair.

Things are going to be fine.

“Thanks,” he says, and then pauses. “So, when you spoke to him—Red Robin, I mean. How did he sound?”

Or not.

⁂⁂⁂

Next Chapter

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vaspider · 6 years ago

Text

New & Updated Intro Post

My intro post is now incredibly outdated, so, here’s an entirely new one. Let’s start with a few important updates:

If you like what I do? Consider hiring me, consider buying something from NerdyKeppie (the shop I own with my spouse - we do custom work!), consider buying me a coffee or becoming a Patron or tossing some money in my PayPal tip jar.

I am a disabled, queer, fat, Jewish non-binary butch whose entire income is derived from selling Quality Queerwear via our company NerdyKeppie (we also offer patches of all sorts, nerd gear, etc -- if you don’t see it, ask!), Patreon (queer fiction for a dollar) and freelance work. Please consider supporting me if you like what I do!

Yes, I used to identify as femme and in 2018 I came out as butch and forgot to update my intro post for like a year. So, yes, at one point I identified as femme, largely due to social pressure and trying to be something I wasn’t. 2018 is the year I claimed my butch soul, and holy shit, I’ve never been happier. This is not an indication of me not understanding butch and femme - it’s an understanding that no matter how old you get, you are constantly on a journey to understand yourself better. Or, at least, you should be.

At one point I identified as pansexual as well as bisexual, and I like the header art with the pansexual flag in it which was made for me years ago, so even though I no longer identify as pansexual, I’m keeping it until I find something I like better. You’d think I wouldn’t have to explain all this but people love picking at these things.

No, I am not going to debate the history or meaning of butch and femme with you or anyone. The links are in my header.

If you’re here to hateread, do yourself a favor and don’t. That’s just not healthy. And for the love of G-d, stop linking to my posts. I can see your posts, y’all; I have a site tracker. It’s just awkward and kind of sad.

Okay, so anyway.

Radfems, TWERFs, SWERFs and REGs/Exclusionists are explicitly not welcome here, and I do not want my family stories or life used for your politics. I block all of these categories, full stop. Radfems & TWERFs/TERFs deny the essential humanity of myself and my daughter and Exclusionists are just sort of painfully clueless about community history and what the community actually looks like offline. if you self-ID as one of those, please save us all the trouble and just don’t. If you’ve reblogged one of my posts and added something about how this proves one of your points, please pretend you respect other people and take it down.

If you are here because you don’t understand the post about the dog that attacked me, or its point, either legitimately or because you don’t really want to get it & want to argue with me about it, tell me I need to get counseling for my fear of dogs, tell me I’ve compared men to dogs, please go read seananmcguire explaining the post to someone who already sent me an ask about it. That pretty much covers why the post exists. Also you should buy and read Seanan’s books.

Also, also, all of the stories about @seananmcguire you’ve heard are probably true if they’re bizarre or funny. Especially the one about the lizard and the one about the frog.

If you’re here to tell me my views on asexuality & the queer community are wrong or that stuff I lived through & you weren’t born yet for is ‘ahistorical,’ go away. This blog is explicitly anti-gatekeeping for the Not-Straight Club.

If you’re here about the post about my great-grandmother, I kind of don’t have it in my heart to answer all the sad family stories. If you shared a family story on that post, thank you. If you want to use it to make some sort of gross radfem point about marital rape or some comment about how my great-granddad should have learned to pull out, I’m gonna block you without answering you. Don’t be gross.

If you’re here about the tiny house post, please read the notes, I’m not gonna explain it again.

Anon is never turned on, but if you ask me not to publish an ask, I won’t. Please remember to put that in the ask.

So here’s some stuff you should know about me:

I’m older than large portions of Tumblr, and in a fair number of cases I’m probably twice your age or more. If that’s a problem, I really am not offended if you aren’t cool with interacting with me. Age can be a powerful unbalancer in social relationships. I AM going to get annoyed if you start ‘explaining’ stuff I lived through to me and insisting you know my history better than I do.

Since it bears repeating one more time: I’m not interested in interacting with TWERFs, SWERFs, or ace-exclusionary queers. I’ve been Out for nearly 30 years & I really have no desire to argue my lived experience with anyone. I explicitly reject the term SGA.

My immediate family consists of my spouse @dadhoc, our beloved @apocalycious, my teenage daughter @mistresskabooms and stepson, my adopted son Owl, and DadHoc, MK and I’s 3 dogs: Lyudmila Pupperchenko (Mila), Captain Malcolm Reynolds (Cap), and Ser Davos Seawoof (Davos).

My brother’s band is Downtrodder and you should listen to them, because they’re awesome.

No one in my immediate family is cis or het. I have been called Spider for 20+ years, & now a lot of people call me Mama Spider.

In this house we understand that Ally is a verb, and it’s possible to be antagonistic toward a marginalization that you possess. Internalized transphobia, ableism, etc. are hellacious things to uproot. In this house we try to stay in our lanes & we understand call-outs while being aware of the toxic parts of call-out culture. Be cool to teenagers: you were one, and yes, the shit you said was just as stupid. You don’t win points for browbeating a teenager over an idea, you just look like a jerk.

I used to have a lot of paragraphs here about specific beliefs of mine, but really: Ally is a verb, intersections matter, capitalism is broken and cannot be fixed. I understand the difference between a bolt of linen and four shirts and believe that labor is entitled to all it creates. My class is ‘petit bourgeois,’ as I have seized the means of my own production.

If you screw up and you say something that hurts someone, say you’re sorry, and try not to do it again. It’s not that hard! Don’t tell them they shouldn’t be hurt. This goes double if it was an accident. “I didn’t know that was offensive, I’m sorry for hurting you. I’ll be more mindful in the future.” See how easy that is? That’s how we do in this house.

I’m bisexual, non-binary, disabled, neurodiverse, and don’t want pity or to hear how sorry you are for either of those last two things. Being autistic is just fine, and it didn’t happen because I was vaccinated. I have PTSD and GAD, and I live with both of them. They’re terrible roommates but I’ve got used to them. I’d like it if people would just stop throwing shade at the invisibly ill when we park in handicapped spots – I’m missing part of my spine, for fuck’s sake – and playing Oppression Olympics will get you stern looks and no dessert.

In this house we do nerd culture, there are no fake geek girls, and we understand that women invented masked superheroes (The Scarlet Pimpernel), science fiction (Mary Shelley), the modern novel (Jane Austen), dystopia fiction (Mary Shelley again), computer programming (Ada Lovelace and the ENIACs, which is my new band name), and got Star Trek on the air (Lucille Ball).

If I didn’t cover it, assume if it involves being a jerk or punching down, I’m not okay with it.

If it involves dogs being adorable, otters, mermaids, spiders, most of the major fandoms Tumblr loves (I can’t get into Supernatural, sorry, I tried), or people doing awesome shit, I am definitely here for that.

I am a Social Justice Paladin. I tank trolls. I used to think I was a Rogue, but, yeah, I tank trolls.

About six months ago, someone started calling me the ‘Non-Binary Regent of Summer,’ and I ran with that like an Olympic torch. Yep. It me.

@hypoallergeniccuddles thinks I’m secretly Mrs. Weasley.

That may be true also. If so, please remember what happens when you fuck with Molly’s children.

Welcome. Supper is at seven, the Wizard Home will make a room for you if you need it.

This post will be repeated a few times over the next few days so everyone sees it. <3 Thanks. I’m glad you’re all here.

#faq #byf

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photographynotes · 5 years ago

Text

About: A natural woman

An article published in The Guardian in 2011., by Suzanne Moore seems more relevant as the time goes by. The article doesn’t argue the position of a wild woman who uses no make up, has hair to her knees etc., it rather questions ways to become a woman in Western society. The key thought behind the article could be best describe by one of Moore’s sentences: “To become a woman is to become a female impersonator.”

Here is the entire article with favorite parts marked in bold:

Why does nobody want to feel like a natural woman any more?

Suzanne Moore

Falsies have become my preoccupation. But clearly not just mine. I could buy a mascara called Falsies to give myself "the ultimate false lash glam look". But why do that when I could just wear enormous false eyelashes? Or, better still, spend a small fortune on lash extensions, which hopefully wouldn't fall off for a few weeks if tended lovingly. It all seems a lot of time and energy, really.

On the train or at the supermarket I see many young girls with long, spidery, glittery lashes, even when in their uniforms. I quite like this overalls-and-drag-queen look. I like the lack of pretence that this is real. But how did we get here, I wonder – to this new aesthetic of femininity where everything is meant to look as fake as possible? Hair, nails, tan, teeth, tits. Sure, I know the rules: that we are born naked, and "the rest is just drag". Sure, I get the hyper-femininity of the big queens and the game old birds such as Dolly Parton and Cher. What is strange is that a parody of femininity is now what many ordinary women are aspiring to.

There was time when falsies were the pads shoved down your bra to make your breasts seem bigger, a kind of comedy stuffing. Now the stuffing is put directly inside the flesh, in the form of silicon implants. While not as cheap as chips, false breasts are certainly becoming as common as them.

The "boob job" industry is massive. Boom boom. And everyday. Cosmetic surgery was once only the province of the rich, famous and deluded. It was surely another era when I was ferried to an American TV studio to debate with the legendary Betty Friedan and some daft woman who was claiming that her breast enlargement was a political act. A grouchy Freidan keep shouting into my ear: "So she thinks she can buy big bazookas, right?" It was a struggle to explain I was on Friedan's side, and now I wonder if anyone would even bother with this discussion. The political language of empowerment about reproductive rights and equality in the workplace has itself been given a makeover. Gok Wan makes women feel better not by giving them more actual control, but by giving them control pants.

As the inimitable satire website The Onion once wrote, women "are now empowered by everything that the typical woman does". From driving the kids to school to eating energy bars! "Owning and wearing dozens of pairs of shoes is a compelling way for a woman to announce that she is strong and independent and can shoe herself without the help of a man." This is satire? Only just, says this humourless feminist.

Buying stuff is the way our culture encourages us to believe we have some kind of power. When it all goes wrong and we have bought the wrong stuff, then we discuss the morality of it all. The woman who died recently after having industrial silicone injected into her buttocks was a sad case of someone buying the wrong stuff. The moral of this story seems to be: next time you are having buttock implants, get a reputable surgeon.

It's the same with Botox, liposuction , tummy tucks and all the rest of it. People get "work done". Most discussion centres on whether that work has been done well, not whether it should have been done at all. The kind of feminism that espoused looking "natural" has pretty much lost the argument about body image. It was hardly ever going to be a fair match: some activist women against an entire military-industrial-cosmetic complex geared up towards getting us to commodify our own bodies. That's right. I am not saying that men do not objectify the female body, but now the gaze we direct at ourselves, at each other and in the mirror is a harsh one, too. It is sexualised in that we see what the body could become, as well as what it is. It is the gaze of search and destroy, and it certainly affects the inner lives of those who are not perfect. Which is a fair few of us.

Heath, happiness and relationships are secondary to what Catherine Hakim provocatively calls "erotic capital". This is the basic "if you've got it, flaunt it" model to wave in the face of feminism. It doesn't wind me up particularly. What is key here is who defines erotic capital, and how. Today's templates of beauty for women are very samey, but they rarely occur in nature. The tall, slim-hipped figure with huge, pert breasts – basically the body of a Brazilian transsexual – was sought after for a while. Now we are told bottoms are making a comeback (where HAVE they been all these years?). These things are spoken about it in vacuum, as if we are not allowed to talk about the racial aspects of "the bootylicious".

Increasingly, surgery cuts across race, gender and age alike. The girl in Miami has a nose job just as the woman in Tehran does. Signs of ethnicity can be erased, other signifiers or "capital" can be purchased. And once you have made a purchase, you want people to see that you have. The fashion – or indeed fetish – for fakery means women are actually asking surgeons to make their implants look as fake as their tans. Certainly, the way to counter what is going on here has to be strategic.

One way is to promote a diversity of body shapes and all kinds of beauty. Susie Orbach is launching an Endangered Species International Summit. The purpose of this is to "challenge the culture that teaches girls and women to hate their own bodies". Who could argue with that? For it is the entire culture, not a male conspiracy, that is making impossible demands. Yet none of this is simple.

Artificially enhanced femininity is on display everywhere. Older women pay to look younger. Young women start altering themselves very early on. One result is a kind of glazed uniformity. You see it in porn. You see it in all those late-30s, Botoxed faces that look neither old nor young, just done.

Somehow, though, something else is going on that is blowing apart any idea of "the natural". Some women are not saying, "this is what I really look like", rather they are saying, "enjoy the performance". Just as a drag queen would. The media then scrutinises this performance of femininity entirely as a construction. This radical idea – that gender is constructed – is being acted out in all this fakery. But as an aesthetic, depoliticised "style".

Lady Gaga may sing Born This Way, while clearly demonstrating with her hard body – complete with internal shoulder pads/prosthesis/spare ectoplasm – that she wasn't, that this is all an act.

A look that has comes to us via porn, ladyboys, transsexuals, queer culture and high fashion is a look I now see on the bus. This excess of femininity may compensate for endless anxiety about appearances. There is nothing natural going on here, and some women are not hiding that fact. To become a woman is to become a female impersonator. How, in such a world, can we say to any young girl: "You are fine just as you are"?

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hisvanity · 5 years ago

Photo

POKÉMON TRAINING: THE WORLD’S GREATEST LIE

i’ve headcanoned a lot of things about social justice in the pokémon world and so far, i’ve made it a pretty bleak place. a place where poc coordinators are routinely discriminated against, where team aqua is actually an indigenous people’s only recourse for a dignified independence, and where one power-hungry royal family controls the entire global media. but there’s one thing i haven’t touched. one thing you probably thought was safe. one thing that makes the pokémon world what it is, without which none of my other social justice ramblings would even be possible.

after all these months (or years? i forgot when i had it) of holding this hc in…it is time.

buckle up, kids. i’m going to ruin all your childhoods.

So What’s Up With Training?

several things, actually.

one, given that all of the trainers are seen constantly traveling on the road and camping out, we can easily deduce that the vast majority of trainers are homeless.

two, since the only ingame source of income that a trainer has is winning matches against other trainers, we can assume that money is hard to come by.

and three, because we hardly see any trainers go to school, we can also assume that unless we see them in a trainer’s school geared specifically toward training, these kids aren’t in school.

there are some things that can be expanded upon with this.

one, if we look at the mere fact that most trainers are homeless, we can clearly see that they’re not coming from a lot of money. if training was a sport favored by the wealthy or even the middle class, we’d see much less journeying on foot and many more taxis going from place to place, much less camping out and much more staying overnight in hotels. there are obviously exceptions to this rule, as we’ve seen some really posh/elite trainer schools in canon (think the first few dozen episodes of the kanto series, or the dojo that ash went to in johto). but i think it’s canonical that the vast majority of trainers are just out on the street with no transportation and not even a temporary home.

two, if you start off training while poor, it can be very hard to work your way up the socioeconomic ladder. if your main source of income is winning battles, and you lose money every time you lose a battle, every day is literally a gamble in which you could either get the necessary cash for your next three meals or lose everything you have and go hungry. sure, there are headcanoned ways to earn other money, such as entering tournaments and winning prize cash, or performing unskilled labor at a poké mart or pokémon center (because what else can a kid really do?) but even with these headcanons, most methods of earning money are either 1) contingent upon you winning battles or 2) not very rewarding at all.

three, it can always be assumed that trainers are attempting to get a decent education on the road. there could be online classes, there could be free classes offered by training schools. however, if trainers are both homeless and strapped for cash, concentrating in class and while doing schoolwork can be exceedingly difficult--and work or battle is usually a better use of time than study, because it ensures that you’re going to eat the next day.

from these things we can conclude that training, from a realistic standpoint, is a low-income sport that is commonly pursued by low-income individuals during which obtaining a proper education is difficult if not impossible, and attempting upward mobility presents a similar challenge.

in the real world, you bet your ass people would try to take advantage of that.

Why Trainers Should Give Up on Their Dreams

let’s be honest. training is like sports is like having a career in the arts. it is devilishly hard to succeed in any of these fields--hard to the point that most artists have to work a second job just to stay afloat. only the top 0.001% of trainers will ever see six figures, with the rest forever plugging away at the grindstone, hoping that one day they’ll get that shiny carrot of success that’s been dangled in front of them from the moment they chose their profession.

this is the life of artists.

this is the life of sportspeople.

there is no reason to believe that it will not be the life of a trainer as well.

this fact about training will never be fixed, and that is because there’s a benefit to the upper class if this is the case. if poor people are distracted by training from doing anything truly productive…they stay focused on their pokémon instead of societal injustice. and they stay out of school, which means they’re less likely to threaten the incumbent upper class with potential upward mobility.

if you’re thinking three steps ahead, you’re absolutely right!

Modern training is a global capitalist conspiracy to keep poor people uneducated, and to keep them from questioning their rich oppressors.

let me tell you how this works.

training has always been a part of human civilization. but the modern version of training (challenging gym leaders, earning badges, then challenging leagues and national conferences) first started becoming popular in the 1950′s after WWII. ever since then, i think it’s safe to assume that in the pokémon world, training is the #1 worldwide hobby/occupation for people ages 10 - 18. this did NOT happen on accident. league champions in conjunction with governments and pokémon-centered merchandising companies such as poké mart, inc. billed it to parents as a fun and rewarding activity where you could learn how to be independent, intelligent and quick-thinking--not to mention earn some cash for yourself and your family on the side. they ran countless advertising campaigns depicting happy trainers with their pokémon, urging kids to start their journeys with tantalizing images of victory in grand arenas. governments in america and western europe even billed training as a patriotic symbol of independence from communist rule, because communist-ruled countries (except for china) did not establish proper leagues until after the soviet union fell. due to a cultural shift encouraged by the Powers That Be, pokémon training became the most prevalent sport worldwide.

it wasn’t until the early 1970′s that world corporations figured out that there could be something to be gained from all this. with rising prosperity across the globe, they needed a way to make sure that they could maintain a solid “underclass” to do all the dirty work that nobody else wanted to do--while also making sure that pokémon-related companies turned a profit. they realized that in training lay their answer. the system that resulted from their collaboration with world governments creates a vicious cycle that goes as follows.

kids from poor families are told to quit school and train at age ten. they are thrust into a life of constant fight and constant struggle, just to earn a few more scraps of cash to send home. anxious families are promised that their children can still continue their educations via trainer schools, and that they can still have a path to college if that’s what they so desire--the most commonly found and most expensive scholarships in the world are reserved exclusively for trainers. however, given the rigors of training, 90% of trainers are unable to maintain consistent schooling of ANY LEVEL while they pursue a training career. of the 10% that can maintain consistent schooling, a further 90% of trainer school-educated children are unprepared for college, and roughly that amount of trainer school-educated students drop out of college once they attempt it. without a college degree, they are locked out of higher-paying jobs and forced to continue in unskilled labor, perhaps continue as trainers in the hopes that one day they can afford school. instead of getting angry at the system, however, many people are so focused on the day-to-day concern of trying to better their lives (and of potentially trying to achieve their training dreams) than trying to take down what holds them in chains. and so the cycle of poverty perpetuates.

They Use Training For A Reason

and that reason is fairly simple.

nobody has childhood dreams about working one’s way up from fry cook to manager at mcdonald’s. nobody has childhood dreams of becoming the world’s fastest-cleaning janitor, or becoming employee of the month five times in a row as a cashier. everybody, however, has childhood dreams about “being the very best, like no one ever was.” pokémon training has an emotional appeal due to its glorious veneer, an appeal that can motivate even the most stubborn people to drop out of school even when there’s no pragmatic reason to drop out of school in the first place. you just don’t get that out of cleaning toilets. you never will.

now, one can argue that the people at the top could have just relied on the natural tendency of capitalism to keep the poor at the bottom while the rich get richer. but they didn’t trust that it could stay that way on its own, and so this system was born as a guarantor of their greed.

So What About Rich and Middle-Class Trainers?

the richer your family is, the more likely you are to “make it big” as a trainer, and obtain the dreams that are promised to impoverished children all over the world. rich families have the advantage of giving their children tutors to improve their battling craft, enrolling them in expensive elite trainer schools, getting them interviews with media outlets in order to increase their visibility. the children of rich and even some middle-class families don’t have to worry about where their next meal is going to come from, or even where their next pokémon is going to come from--many well-off trainers have never caught a pokémon in their lives, instead buying them from expensive breeders. society also tends to look at the rich trainers and use them as examples of people who “made it,” and shame poor trainers without those advantages for not being able to do the same.

hold on, one might say. won’t well-off children have the same difficulty as their lower-income peers in staying in school? won’t they drop out of school to train, just like said peers? well, the powers that be have already thought that through. in all private schools, there are training and coordinating teams that meet after school for 2-2.5 hours a day mondays through fridays, similar to teams of other sports. also like teams of other sports, they hold practice sessions and compete regionally + nationally--each individual student has a ranking in the competition, but all students’ individual performances contribute to the overall ranking of their school. such programs also exist in public schools in low-income neighborhoods, but their quality is far below the programs found in private schools; also, full-time training is usually a financially more realistic option for low-income students than joining a school team because most school tournaments don’t give money to winners. moreover, going to school with a full stomach and a guaranteed roof over your head is very different from going to school with economic anxieties on your shoulders. a key difference between the two is that in the former, one battles for pleasure, not for cash, and if one loses cash, one can easily replace it; in the latter, one’s win-loss ratio can make a big difference in one’s day-to-day life. in addition, those of the lower middle class usually find themselves facing the same pressures as poor people during training--which means that the system used to keep poor people poor is also used to widen the gap between the poor and the rich.

government bigwigs and corporate fat cats know these truths. in fact, they bank on them. they run cartoons where children are told to “be the very best, like no one ever was.” they constantly uplift the rare cases of the people who made it from rags to riches, dangling the everlasting promise that you, too, could be like them. they drop propaganda leaflets into suffering neighborhoods telling them that you can have a better life if only you take up your poké ball and take up the fight. they do this with the full knowledge that training is not a sustainable solution for these children, but that it would benefit them to keep these children in training. and then they turn around and victim-blame the poor trainers who inevitably fail to reach the goals they were promised--calling them “lazy” and “unmotivated” when really, they are victims of a system that was rigged against them from the beginning.

you will not be the very best.

you will only ever be a pawn in somebody else’s long game.

Dishonorable Mention: Unovamerica

because it’s not a true worldbuilding post from me without a little shitting on the country that we liberals love to hate.

the united states is known for its dislike of free healthcare, but there is one brand of free healthcare that it has mysteriously never disliked: that provided to trainers. human healthcare from pokémon centers is completely free, but only if you are a registered trainer--many children become trainers purely because they can’t afford healthcare any other way. this practice has been adopted in many other parts of the world, but america started it first. pokémon centers in the u.s. are particularly notorious for enforcing the “free healthcare for trainers only” rule: they have been known to turn away the seriously ill, seriously injured and even the dying because they couldn’t present a valid trainer ID. in addition, to ensure that registered trainers are actually training and not just “mooching off the system,” the u.s. and countries adopting its system have a “fight per month” rule: if you don’t get a new badge or participate in a new tournament at least once every month, your access to free healthcare in pokémon centers is revoked.

many american states and non-american countries offer free and comprehensive healthcare for the families of traveling trainers as well--training is the ONLY low-income job where you can get this sort of treatment. most notably, trainer healthcare disregards preexisting conditions, which prevents many people from receiving the care they need via insurance. the government does this on purpose to funnel people into training, which not only achieves their goal of keeping kids uneducated and complacent but also makes sure that poké mart, inc. can always turn a profit--poké mart, inc., an american company, is actually a main player in the global conspiracy because the more trainers there are, the more money it makes off its monopoly on trainer goods. and so far, it’s been working. up in washington, the poké mart lobbyists have really been doing their job, and the healthcare system of an entire nation is suffering because of it.

there is no challenge to this system anywhere in the united states. conservatives use trainer’s healthcare to pander to undecided voters and demonstrate that they do have a “good” healthcare plan that “works.” liberal politicians also support trainer’s healthcare unquestioningly, believing falsely that this mechanism to funnel people into a profession with a lack of education is an innocent step in the right direction to universal healthcare for all. for reasons of political pragmatism, both sides are complicit in the rotten healthcare system that pins a basic human right to your willingness to enter a certain field.

the vigilante justice involved in some trainer journeys also actively upholds america’s system of police brutality and mass incarceration. propaganda encouraging trainers to fight crime often depicts black and brown people as the criminals. trainers’ victims in the u.s. usually end up in jail, subject to the very system that most trainers claim to be working outside or against. many vigilante trainers also use the same techniques of police brutality against unarmed black & brown victims that police often do themselves. lastly, in the u.s., fighting a racist cop is one of the fastest ways to get yourself deplatformed as a trainer: no matter how justified you are, if you do so your career is done.

oh, and do you want to know which country’s elected leaders had the idea for this entire system to actually become a thing?

if you’re reading this post, you’re probably sitting in it.

I Haven’t Even Told You The Worst Part

nowadays trainers are told that they can make a difference by being trainers. that they can use their strength to do justice in the world. commercial after commercial shows young kids beating up on criminals, encouraging youth to become vigilantes in a similar vein--to get out there and start changing the world in front of them. what those kids don’t know is that this promise of being able to enforce justice is also, in some sense, a lie.

training can deal with certain types of crime. training beats up team grunts and kills pedophiles. hell, sometimes training even takes down entire evil teams. but training will never be able to fix ITSELF--no amount of battling can ever undo the insidious system that has made itself as much a part of a trainer’s existence as potions and poké balls. training will also never solve modern slavery, the climate crisis, income inequality, police brutality and mass incarceration. the people at the top know this. they know that with everybody’s eyes fixed on pokémon training, nobody will focus on the greater issues plaguing the world today, and that this is exactly how they want things to be.

essentially, trainers are told that they are the arbiters of justice as part of a mechanism to prevent them from solving some of the greatest injustices in the world.

vigilante justice, the thing most dear to many trainers, the very thing that makes modern training what it is--has been transformed into yet another tool for world governments and corporations to keep trainers under control.

So Where Do Leagues Fit In All This?

i pose this question because i hc them as the ultimate vigilantes. the people who are supposed to keep this sort of shit under control. people who, collectively, have the strength to take down an unjust government. theoretically, they should have been able to solve this problem with training a long time ago by unseating those in power and finding real solutions for the kids involved.

however.

you can’t solve a problem if you don’t know that it’s a problem in the first place.

that’s right. this entire system of keeping poor kids (and tbh kids in general) under government and corporate control is so insidious and well-hidden that the very people who are sworn not to let this kind of thing happen are sometimes the ones most responsible for holding it up. leagues are just as guilty as the governments they are supposed to oppose of encouraging kids to take up training, using the same rhetoric and techniques that the higher-ups also use. some leagues are even straight-up complicit with governments (see: the american, prussian and chinese leagues) in attempting to funnel kids into the training system. even wallace, social justice advocate that he is, was not aware of the system he unwittingly perpetuated until recently--and even then, he is not only exploitatively held up as one of the examples of somebody who “made it,” he thinks the training system is just a byproduct of capitalism rather than something that has been encouraged on purpose. granted, leagues around the world have also created programs to help struggling trainers with food, shelter, tutoring. but honestly, the people on top let it happen because these programs are ultimately just a band-aid on a gash that cuts down to the bone.

IN CONCLUSION

if you care about your education, you shouldn’t be a trainer.

if you wish to pursue a dream that you can actually fulfill, you shouldn’t be a trainer.

if you don’t want to sell your soul to capitalism, you shouldn’t be a trainer.

in the pokémon world, a world built on pokémon training, you shouldn’t be a trainer.

#don't give me that pain. || WORLDBUILDING #politics*#race*#|| ok to reblog

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gnosticgnoob · 5 years ago

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2020 DNC Candidates’ Answers to the Healthcare Crisis

The conversation among 2020 candidates surrounding the future of American healthcare has been confusing, convoluted, heated, and all over the place. I’ll try to be as succinct as possible with my points so as not to add too much to the noise. I mostly want to draw attention to the differences and similarities between the healthcare strategies of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

The important difference has been in the specific wording of the discussion, so I will boil the two messages down with relevant, specific wording: Bernie Sanders’ stated goal is to remove private health insurance companies from our healthcare apparatus, replacing the current system with what is known as a Single-Payer system, as is currently in place in Canada, the United Kingdom, the Nordic countries, Spain, Australia, and South Korea, among others. One of the reasons the conversation around Bernie’s plan has been confusing is that people run into the discord between the idea of his goal and the idea that Medicare as it currently exists now would hypothetically be extended to everybody, a case which would not effectively be a single-payer system.

The name of Sanders’ bill is “Medicare For All”, but the plan includes a lot of restructuring that most importantly removes premiums and co-pays from the current Medicare system, instituting a full single-payer system, i.e. Medicare currently has some of the sticky pitfalls of the current system he seeks to replace, but Sanders’ final intention is that if you, a patient, go to your doctor, or the emergency room, or a specialist for any treatment, you simply receive the treatment and then walk out of the building straight to your car in the parking-lot and drive away without having to mess with any financial details (that isn’t to say the service is “Free” as some detractors might believe or mislead you to believe -- it is simply that the rigmarole of finalizing payment is handled wholly by the gears of the system in the background instead of handled personally by the patient, i.e. it’s not free lunch so much as bureaucratic shuffling around of paperwork).

Sanders’ reasoning for switching to single-payer is essentially that the profit-motive as an operating concept, ethically speaking, does not belong in the healthcare system, i.e. the model similar to Coca-Cola or Ford or Apple where the overall goal is for the company to make a financial return on investment: Ford’s bean counters, marketers, and product development teams come together to design and manufacture a product, they calculate the cost of the product, then they price the product higher than it cost them to make it so they can end up with more capital than they started with. Sanders believes on principle that if it costs $40 to fix a broken arm, then the bill for fixing the broken arm should come to $40, and further that the person with the broken arm should not be bothered with the paperwork relevant to this cost on their way out the door -- this vision is impossible if there are corporations like Ford or Apple or Netflix in charge of handling the bureaucratic ins and outs of processing healthcare costs, because there is always a middle-man-entity with a board of executives whose primary concern is making a return on the investment, and these institutions as they exist put the bureaucratic load on the patient in terms of handling the details of cost and payment, i.e. writing checks, handling invoices, making phone calls to finalize and organize the details between institutions, etc.

I want to start discussing Warren’s approach with spelling out her stated goals and how the wording specifically differs from Sanders’: whereas Sanders’ goal is to institute a single-payer system removing health insurance companies from the process, Warren’s stated goal is: “Universal coverage at the lowest possible cost.” If you are already familiar with some of the differently-worded strategies, approaches, and plans for addressing the healthcare crisis, this fundamental difference may already show important ways the two candidates are taking different approaches, but don’t worry if it isn’t obvious as I will elaborate why the wording is important.

The discussion around Elizabeth Warren’s approach to healthcare has been confusing for several reasons, but one of the main reasons is that she has stated she supports Medicare For All when there are some gotchas in the fine print that call into question what exactly this means. We will come back to why this isn’t as simple as it sounds, but first I will take a slight detour explaining why this is relevant to another candidate: Kamala Harris does not currently support a single-payer system like Sanders and does not support removing private insurers from the system, even though Harris was a co-sponsor on Bernie’s original bill. Compared to the rest of the candidates, it has been particularly confusing pinning Harris’ campaign down on what she really believes to be the way forward because Harris has answered one way and then contradicted herself in subsequent interviews answering differently the next day, for various reasons that may or may not be her fault but instead due to confusion in the way candidates are asked questions about their plans. Harris has since clarified her approach by officially proposing her own plan that is different from Sanders’ single-payer plan, keeping private health insurers in the system, but she introduces extra confusion in calling it a “Medicare For All” plan. So Sanders was previously able to set himself apart as a candidate with a unique approach, simply pointing prospective voters to his Medicare For All plan, but now that situation is more complicated, because Harris can look in the camera and say confidently, “I support Medicare For All” or “I support a Medicare For All system” when it technically means something completely different when she says these words. This could be misconstrued as being even more confusing by accusing her of hedging bets on two different approaches, but this isn’t really the case as it is important to note since Bernie’s original bill will not be passed, in a sense it’s irrelevant who has co-sponsored it, and so we can defer to where candidates stand currently--and specifically where Harris stands currently with her own new plan--as canceling out previous support/co-sponsoring for Sanders’ single-payer approach.

Warren has stated for the record that she supports Medicare For All. Looking at the case of Kamala Harris, we can see why saying such a thing does not necessarily translate to sharing Sanders’ goals. Like Harris, Warren was also a co-sponsor for Sanders’ original Medicare For All bill, but again, looking at the case of Harris, we can see why this doesn’t translate to Warren literally sharing Sanders’ exact goals. In discussions that I’ve seen in the media and on various social media platforms, this is where a lot of confusion, arguing, name-calling, and hostility arise: there is a contingency of voters who support Sanders’ goals who want to know definitively whether Warren shares those goals or might instead be led to diverge with more moderate proposals that are similar to those of other moderate candidates.

Some heated comments read like this: “Why are Sanders supporters either daft or intent on sowing discord: it is clear that both Liz and Bernie support Medicare for All. Their plans are the same. Stop pretending like his plan is somehow better when she has said on record that she supports Medicare For All.” -- For reasons already stated, you can see why this statement is problematic, either misunderstanding or misconstruing the conversation as it relates to their approaches.

If stating support for M4A wasn’t a confusing enough issue, Warren unfortunately confuses the matter further by consistently stating, regarding her stated goal of “Universal Coverage” that “there are many paths to get there.”

An interviewer specifically asked: “Is there room for private health insurance in your vision of the ideal American health care system?”

She answered: “Our obligation is to make sure that everybody gets coverage at the lowest possible cost to all of us. So what does that mean? Right now, it means fighting the Republicans who are trying to sabotage the Affordable Care Act. So job number one is to defend the Affordable Care Act. ...Job number two is to make changes where we need to make them right now: changes to hold insurance companies accountable and lower[ing] the cost of prescription drugs. ...And the third: how do we get universal coverage? Medicare for all. Lots of paths for how to do that. But we know where we are aiming: every American has health care at a price they can afford, and that the overall costs in the system are held as low as possible.”

Rightly not getting the impression that Warren had satisfied his question directly, the interviewer asks again, “But right now, your vision for Medicare for all, would it all be a public option, or would it also include private insurance?”

She answered, “So right now, there are multiple bills on the floor in the United States Senate. I’ve signed onto Medicare for All. I’ve signed on to another one that gives an option for buying in to Medicaid. There are different ways we can get there. But the key has to be always keep the center of the bulls-eye in mind, and that is affordable health care for every American.” This answer similarly evades the actual question as it was worded.

As someone who supports Sanders’ vision of instituting a single-payer system in America, and someone who is very much interested in supporting any/all candidates who display a similar willingness to fight for the well-being of citizens over corporate interests, I am NOT trying to paint Warren into some kind of wily “gotcha” corner in a clumsy attempt to discredit her or sabotage her campaign -- I simply feel: 1) she has been consistently, purposefully evasive in signaling whether or not she would fight as hard as Sanders for Sanders’ specific gold-standard, 2) this evasiveness, while strategically understandable, is unnecessary, and 3) the resulting confusion in and of itself is not only damaging to her campaign in muddying the healthcare conversation but also calls into question her overall integrity as it relates to any other given issue or plan in any other area of policy. If she is someone who wants the bar raised as high as Bernie’s aims and is also willing to fight for it as hard as Bernie, then I want to be able to shout from the rooftops my support for her as clearly and fullheartedly as I do for Sanders’ campaign, but I am frustrated by the consistently misleading media narrative that they are two peas in a pod on this issue when there’s obviously room for contention between the goals and approaches of the two, and I honestly cannot tell whether or not she will lower the bar mirroring the incrementalist approaches of other moderate candidates.

When Warren says, “Universal coverage at the lowest possible cost,” it could be the case that she doesn’t include a single-payer system within her idea of what is “possible” -- if the “lowest possible cost” in her view is the cost we can achieve by introducing a Public Option instead of instituting a single-payer system, then it is the case that her views differ considerably from Sanders’. If Warren wants to then argue as many other candidates have argued that the lowest cost we can “possibly” achieve is via introducing a public option into the current system, the problem is two-fold: 1) the math will always prove this argument as technically wrong, since a single-payer system would hypothetically always cost less than the current system, ergo 2) the argument essentially comes down to what is “achievable” or what is “possible” within the American political system, which is a rhetorical point that merely comes around to what people are willing to fight for, in other words, how high we are willing to set the bar; to argue that setting the bar as high as single-payer is not achievable is a self-fulfilling prophecy and a rhetorical point that merely reveals the mettle of the politician fighting for their preferred reforms.

There are some Warren supporters who prefer her approach over Sanders’ because it seems that she might be willing to take a more incrementalist approach such as a public option, that she might be willing to postpone universal coverage (indefinitely?) as she considers it “Job #3” after Job #1 of restoring ACA and Job #2 passing other pieces of regulatory legislation. The worst case scenario would be that she 1) deprioritizes “Universal coverage” as a long-term-nice-to-have, and 2) that her definition of “Universal coverage” is the same as Obama’s (Romney’s?): an individual mandate for every citizen to sign up for something within the current broken system. If this is the case, how is her healthcare approach any different than Buttigieg or Biden? and how do the supporters and talking heads get away with suggesting that Sanders and Warren have solidarity on the issue? And how do the Warren supporters that believe Bernie and Warren have identical approaches manage to miss the Warren supporters that prefer her approach because it’s not the same Bernie’s?

My intent is not to debate single-payer vs public option. I don’t even discredit altogether the notion that a public option could be construed as a “step towards” single-payer (though I think this is extremely problematic, it’s a whole different discussion). My intent isn’t to paint Warren in a negative light, or sow division among democratic voters, or institute a “purity test”. If where Warren’s head’s at right now is, “I’m not sold on fighting for single-payer,”...I just want to know. If where Warren’s head’s at right now is, “I’m not sold on fighting for single-payer, and as a strategy for my presidential run I want the record to be a little muddy right now because I believe it will help me secure the nomination as well as a victory against Trump”...then I not only disagree, I respect her a bit less. But my point is: I don’t know where her head’s at...nobody seems to know...because that’s just where the conversation is right now...and I find it frustrating.

#social justice #u.s. politics #2020 presidential race #bernie sanders #elizabeth warren #politics

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dowling72walls-blog · 6 years ago

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Top 10 Soccer Mom Ideas to Improving Your Child's Soccer Skills

The modern day soccer mom or perhaps dad is constantly being pulled in all directions. From driving their sons and daughters to practice and games to volunteering their time for concession stand duty, a soccer mom is always on the go. Combine this with the demands of a nine to five job, taking care of a household, and having a prosperous marriage and you have the recipe for the modern day soccer mom. On the surface it seems that there's not sufficient time in the day to achieve all that is expected to be a successful soccer mom but hopefully my top ten soccer mom ideas will help you find some balance in your life. These top ten ideas are in no particular order of importance but should be utilized as a guide to helping you come to be an even better soccer parent. 1. Schedule - The most obvious and what I consider to being the backbone of success is having a defined schedule. We unfortunately don't go through life and have a crystal ball and unforeseen events will happen, but to be able to achieve success you need to have structure in your life and that's the result of an organized and well-tuned schedule. All members of your family members including anyone helping the kids have to understand and comply with the daily schedule. I suggest making use of your smart phone's built in calendar or Google Calendar to write down the daily, weekly, and monthly schedule. What has worked best for my family is that every Thursday or Friday we cook a great family dinner and then go over the weekend and following week's schedule. visit here when everyone who's involved in helping with your children is in attendance so that all input and output can be compiled and disseminated and possible issues mitigated. Furthermore, it's good to eat dinner with family members and friends on a weekly basis. 2. Organizational Laundry - People would like our kids to be successful so it's best that we show them being successful at an earlier age. There are numerous adjectives to describe success but one common thread that resonates with most people is the need for having organizational skills. The common villain to being organized is laziness. Thus, what has worked best for my family would be that we actually incorporate in the schedule of ours the person responsible for doing laundry which consists of the soccer uniforms, cleats, socks and practice clothes. The mountain of laundry for a family of 5 each week may be a daunting task and that is the reason why my wife and I alternate this endeavor weekly. Doing laundry includes most, folding, drying, and washing importantly putting it away. If your family members is anything like ours after that you must handle the weekly "Case of the Missing Sock" problem. Any suggestions here will be welcomed because we can't figure it out. 3. Dedicated Fan - Whatever the amount of enthusiasm your kids have for soccer, you should be a dedicated fan. Think about all of the time you have already dedicated to raising the kids of yours in the sport of soccer. To be a dedicated fan means learning about the history of soccer, learning about the different professional leagues and teams and the prestige of winning the entire world Cup. By expanding your bubble of soccer knowledge you can impart that enthusiasm and knowledge onto your children who will really appreciate you taking a true interest in what they are doing on the soccer field. 4. Play soccer - When I was young my dad played a great deal of baseball with me but we also kicked the soccer ball from time to time. Those memories will live with me forever allowing me to replay them as often as I would like in my mind. I think in case he were still in existence today, he would be out their kicking the ball with the family. The son of mine and I have enjoyed watching soccer games and implementing certain techniques on the soccer field. go here of us have dramatically improved the skills of ours and are learning a good deal more about soccer. Although I am in my 40's, I'm still in a position to play at a level that both challenges my 13-year old son and encourages him to play harder and smarter. I know that some parents based on age or health will not be in a position to really play with their kids that perhaps you are able to employ a private coach but do what you can to stay engaged and the children of yours will appreciate you for it. 5. Volunteer - From volunteering at the concession stand to being a referee or even coach, your time is valued by the soccer community. My wife and I schedule our time so that we are able to maximize the volunteer time of ours as well as still not miss our son's games. Additionally, volunteering has allowed us to meet and work with some other soccer families. The concept of it takes a village to raise a child is at the core of becoming a productive volunteer. Volunteering lets you stay in tune with soccer events and essentially makes you an instant role model for kids since they view you as part of the leadership of the soccer community. 6. Fundraising - If there are members of the team of yours that are cannot and fortunate less afford the cost of soccer cleats, shin guards, goalie gloves etc., or your team is attempting to raise money, then a fundraising role may be the niche of yours. Successful fundraising starts with getting a real purpose. Asking men and women to separate themselves from the hard earned money of theirs without any rate of return is anti-capitalism and definitely shouldn't be the goal of yours. However, in case you approach other parents, local business owners, school officials, etc. with a valid and detailed explanation of where and how their money will be invested, it won't only be easy to fundraise but also rewarding. For example, I almost certainly wouldn't ask people to give money so that we can buy pizza for the kids after each game but I'd ask for a donation for an end of the season party. Another concept that worked out really well is this past season we (soccer dads) bought matching soccer bracelets for all the kids and matching soccer necklaces for all of the soccer moms to show our appreciation. Parents from a girl's youth soccer team heard what we had done and purchased soccer earrings for all the teammates of theirs. 7. Carpooling - Gas is expensive whatever element of the nation you are now living in so I recommend carpooling as frequently as you are able to. We carpool with similar family that we've dinner with when a week to write the schedule. During our weekly scheduling session, we assign carpool duty throughout the week and ensure that our kids are aware of who to expect and on what days. We have also coordinated with our school to tell them that our friends are authorized to pick up the kids and drive them to soccer practice. Our mini van has served us well and without a doubt has become a terrific investment allowing us to move our children to all their events. 8. The right soccer gear - When I was young my grandfather enforced the concept of having the correct tool for the job at hand. In the circumstances of playing youth soccer, your children have to have proper fitting soccer cleats, and soccer clothing that's not too constraining. children can outgrow a pair of soccer cleats in under a month so it is important that you constantly inspect your children's cleats. I learned this the hard way when after a game I saw my son's big toe protruding from his best soccer cleat. I asked him how much time he'd been playing with his toe sticking out of his soccer cleat and his response astonished me. He had been going to soccer practice and playing with his toe sticking out for more than 2 weeks! The night when we got home from the soccer game we ordered him a new pair of cleats from and today I make it the business of mine to visually inspect his soccer cleats. 9. Individualism and Soccer - As a parent we have to ensure that our children grow up to be responsible and secure individuals. It is a process that we cannot take lightly considering the kids of today are the leaders of tomorrow. Being an individual means knowing your limitations and skills without being affected by trend setters whose goal it's to sell merchandise. For instance, my boy is a natural when it comes to individualism. He does not pretend to be a person he is not and he's perfectly happy being by himself and consumed with his thoughts and ambitions. Society is full of people who fail to grasp their very own reality and are reliant on others for what I call their "social want." Social want comes in many various flavors but the bottom line is that it has one person wanting a thing from another for his irrational state of being. You will be asking yourself, how will being an individual help my children be better soccer players considering soccer is a team sport? The key is simple: successful teams are made up of successful individuals. It's going to take each individual player to play at their absolute best for the team to be successful. When my son was younger, I asked him to pinch himself with his fingers. He thought it was an awkward request but nevertheless he pinched himself. I said, "Son I could not really feel that as it's not me you are pinching it is you! You're your very own person and your decisions you make will guide you into the future. So if you want to be a better soccer player then you've to commit yourself to the sport." This concept is comparable to leading a horse to water but it's the horse who must decide to drink the water. Keep that in mind when you're investing the time of yours in your child's soccer future. 10. Other sports - Your child's soccer skills can be optimized if they play some other sports. I recommend enrolling the child of yours in gymnastics at an earlier age because of the demanding strength and precision that's required to perform as a gymnast. My daughters are both gymnast but when they play soccer they look like naturals out on the field. As a gymnast you condition your body every day and you fine-tune muscles that can certainly help improve your soccer skills. Some other sports are able to be helpful too but in the opinion of mine and from experience, gymnastics is the best sport you can get the child of yours to do along with soccer. Hopefully, these top 10 soccer mom ideas can help you become a better soccer parent and also help your kid get a much better soccer player. I look ahead to hearing from you about your very own soccer experiences in the blogosphere.

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justlookfrightened · 7 years ago

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NHL!Bitty Part 4

Yes, the parts are still getting longer. And at the end of this, don’t blame me. That’s just the way Jack is.

Probably one more part coming.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 5

The end of the season always sucked. There was no way around it. Well, there was one way around it. Winning it all wouldn’t suck, Bitty thought. But that hadn’t happened since high school, when the competition was a lot less intense.

Going out in the first round of the playoffs was … disappointing. Not as disappointing as not making the playoffs at all, Bitty thought, but still disappointing.

It was like winning a silver medal at a figure skating competition, or maybe a bronze. On the podium, but not on top, and everyone talking about how well you did, when all you could do was look up and see how much better you had to do.

That didn’t stop the guys from coming to congratulate him at locker clean-out.

“You did good, kiddo,” Baby Pops said. “We wouldn’t have made it as far as we did without you.”

Bitty tried for a smile, and said, “Thanks. Wish we could have gone further.”

“Hey, we took the Aces to six games,” Pops said. “You’ll be back next year, and Tricksie Ricksie. We’ll get there.”

Bitty nodded in acknowledgement, but he didn’t feel anywhere near as confident as Pops sounded. Next year wasn’t promised to anybody. That was a lesson Bitty learned when he had to quit figure skating just as he was poised to break out, maybe make the junior nationals.

But then his family had moved, and when he talked about maybe billeting with a coach somewhere else so he could continue skating, his mother had cried and his father had spoken quietly about how that would mean borrowing against the house, Junior, and he put that dream away.

Sometimes it didn’t take a tragedy to end things; sometimes, that’s just the way it worked out.

Bitty shook his head to clear the melancholy away. Things had turned out better than he had any right to expect, with half a season on an NHL team under his belt. He’d certainly earned more in three months than any but the most successful figure skaters.

He bent down to zip his gear bag, the shelves of his locker stall bare. He hoped the Aeros would want him back next season, but he wasn’t counting on it.

He’d told Molly he’d be out of the temporary rental by the end of the week. She’d smiled and told him she would have a list of realtors from him to choose from in August so he could find his own place.

Ricks was waiting in his car, air conditioning already blowing even if it was only April. That was another thing; Bitty would have to bring his car if he returned to Houston, or maybe buy a new one. He’d left his old Ford truck in Baton Rouge; his father had flown to Baton Rouge and driven it home to Georgia.

The Falconers had a game tonight, facing the Islanders to start their second-round series. He could watch that while he made some pies to leave for the front office staff tomorrow. Shoo-fly pie, maybe. It was too early for any fruit to be in season.

Bitty was blind-baking the crusts and just starting to mix the filling when Ricks knocked on the door.

“BIts, you there?” he called. “I brought beer.”

So Bitty baked and drank and Ricks drank and chirped and both of them watched Jack Zimmermann score two goals in the opening game of the Falconers series against the Islanders.

As soon as the final buzzer went, Bitty reached for his phone to send a text.

Great game, Jack!

“Who’re you texting now?” Ricks asked.

“Zimmermann,” Bitty said. “Congrats on the game.”

“I didn’t know you had his number,” Ricks said.

“Aw, jealous?” Bitty said. “You’re still my best friend.”

***************************

Bitty spent eight days at home in Madison with his parents before his skin got itchy with the need to go where he could be more … himself.

It wasn’t so much that he told his parents he was straight as it was they just didn’t talk about it. It was kind of like they’d reached an agreement that Bitty’s sexuality was not an appropriate topic without ever mentioning it at all.

At least Mama and Coach didn’t ask him if there were girls lined up to go home with an NHL player, the way his cousins did.

Bitty considered why it was so bothersome; it wasn’t like he had been out and proud in Houston or Baton Rouge. But those were places where he worked. His value to the team was based on his hockey production mostly, but also a little bit on his popularity with the fan base. Whether they would accept a gay player was an open question, one the Aeros probably weren’t too keen to learn the answer to just now.

In any case, he was pretty sure some of his teammates suspected he wasn’t straight. Ricks knew Bitty didn’t pick up girls when they went out together, no matter how many times Ricks pointed out likely prospects. Baby Pops and Ginger had stopped teasing him about his presumed innocence after the first week. But whatever they thought, they didn’t seem to have a problem with Bitty.

But his family was supposed to love him, love all of him, and he didn’t like not knowing whether they would still love him if came home crying or crowing over a boy.

So Bitty took the key to his truck and told Mama and Coach he was heading to Samwell for graduation, to congratulate his frogs and wish them well. He made the 16 hour drive over two days, blasting his music through the FM stereo adapter he had plugged into the old truck’s cigarette lighter.

He stopped outside of Washington, D.C. and brought his laptop into the hotel room to watch the Falconers win Game 5 and take the series from the Islanders. If he’d planned better, he could have gotten to Washington the day before and taken in the Capitals-Lightning game. Maybe next time.

By the time he pulled up to the Haus the next day, a plan was forming in his mind. Classes had just ended, and there was almost a week until graduation. The Falconers would probably be playing Game 1 of the conference finals before graduation, and they’d probably be at home, if Washington pulled it out.

He was an NHL player, right? He could probably get tickets to the game if he asked. Maybe Baby Pops would know how.

After Bitty embraced Nursey and Dex and was tackled by Chowder, he carried his bag up to Chowder’s room and set up the air mattress. Before heading back to the kitchen, he texted Pops.

Who would I ask to get tickets to the next Falcs game? I’m in Samwell for graduation and wanted to treat a few of the guys.

The return text came before he even got his pie crust assembled.

Pretty sure you have at least one friend on the Falconers you could ask for a couple of tickets. How many do you need?

Four, Bitty responded. And I can pay for the tickets. Should I just go through the front office?

Somehow, Bitty could hear the sigh coming from Texas when Pops texted back, I’ll take care of it. Once the games are set. I’ll let you know.

****************************

Pops was as good as his word, texting Bits that there would be four tickets under his name at will-call for the first game against the Capitals on May 13, two nights before graduation. When Bitty asked, Pops said he didn’t owe him anything, except maybe a pie when he got back to Houston and got settled.

Oh, and Jess really likes those cookies you made, Pops said.

That … wasn’t tremendously clear, but Bitty had some time to figure it out. If he ended up in Baton Rouge, well, he could always ship baked goods.

Nursey, Dex and Chowder were suitably impressed when Bitty told them about the game. He wished he had an actual gift to give them, in addition to the gift baskets he had been baking for, but they seemed thrilled,

“I get to see Snow and Holtby in the same game!” Chowder said.

Bitty drove Chowder to Providence in his truck and Dex drove Nursey in his truck.

“Think they’ll both make it in one piece?” Bitty asked.

“They’ll be fine,” Chowder said. “I know it doesn’t seem like it, but they’re getting along a lot better these days. Sometimes I think they argue just for the fun of it.”

Then Chowder asked about going to training camp as a draftee, and that conversation carried them the rest of the way.

The tickets were there as promised. Bitty’s eyes nearly fell out of his face when he saw where they were: 10 rows back, behind the benches. He had just been hoping for something without an obstructed view.

Then he found all-access passes in the envelope, with a note.

“Hey, Bitty. Pops said you were bringing some of your old teammates to the game. If you want to bring them down to the locker room after the game, we’d be happy to see you. Marty”

When he showed the frogs, their eyes almost fell out, too.

“Can we go, Bitty?” Chowder said. “You think it’s really ok?”

Bitty shrugged. “Well, he invited us, so I don’t see why not,” he said.

“Just how well do you know St. Martin?” Dex asked. “This is a pretty big favor to ask.”

“Not too well,” Bitty said. “But Pops is close to him. I asked Pops how to get tickets, and he said he’d take care of it. I didn’t expect all this.”

“Well, you can always repay him in pastry, right?” Nursey said, maintaining what Bitty was sure was a facade of nonchalance.

“Sure can,” Bitty said. “Now we have to go so I can find out what his favorite pie is.”

The teams skated out for warm-ups, and Marty took the time to find them in the crowd and shoot them a thumbs up. He nudged Jack and pointed, and Jack almost did a double-take before smiling and offering a small wave.

Bitty thought that might be enough for the camera people to find them, and sure enough, during one of the TV timeouts in the first, he and the frogs appeared on the scoreboard. Bitty, dressed in a black T-shirt and a Falconers blue hoodie, waved for the crowd as a picture of him scoring his goal during his game here flashed next to the image of him in the stands.

He knew he was blushing when Jack pointed at him while he skated to the faceoff circle.

There was no score at the end of the first period. The Falconers led 1-0 at the end of two, but the Caps came back and won 2-1.

Bitty and the frogs hung back until the media left. Then they entered the locker room.

Marty, already showered and almost dressed, saw them right away.

“Eric Bittle!’ he said. “Thanks for coming to see that sorry effort. Who’re your friends?”

Bitty introduced them, and when Dex and Nursey were marvelling over the size of Tater’s biceps (“Seriously, dude, what do you do to get muscles like that?”) and Chowder was gushing over Snowy’s 15 saves in the third, not mentioning that it wasn’t Snowy’s fault the D broke down, Bitty saw Jack at his stall, staring hard at the floor as he tied his shoes, and sidled over.

“Hey, Jack,” he said. “Rough game. You played well, though.”

“Not well enough,” Jack said, barely looking up. “Why’re you here, Bittle?”

“I just came back to Samwell to see my teammates graduate,” Bitty said. “I thought it would be nice to bring them to a game.”

“So why’d you come down here?” Jack said. “We lost. Not much of a celebration.”

“It was still a good game,” Bitty said. “And it was just the first game of the series. Anyway, we came down to thank Marty for the tickets.”

“Yeah, that Marty’s a good guy,” Jack said. “Always ready to help out.”

“Yeah, he is,” Bitty said. “It was nice of him.”

Jack nodded. A brief silence fell, then Jack spoke again.

“Must be rough, watching from the stands in May,” he said.

“Must be nice, not to know,” Bitty replied.

@cyn2k

@fifty-shadesofgay

@ontheavalanche

#omgcheckplease #omg check please #pre-zimbits #my fic #nhl!bitty

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pingou7 · 7 years ago

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Nous allons enfin nous régaler! (Tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are)

the food travel au

3 ½ month film schedule. 31 countries. 24 episodes.

2 people who might just fall in love along the way.

Chapter 3: France : Paris-Lille

Author:

@pingou7

(Read on AO3)

They arrive in France on schedule and thankfully the whole crew has pretty much recovered from their stomach bug by then. Shara Bey looks a bit queasy in the morning perhaps, but everyone is still curious about what their short trip to the country of Haute Cuisine will entail.

Everyone but Jyn that is, and despite his growing anxiety — because this was France, people! — Cassian can’t help but notice that she has grown more subdued since they’ve picked out their luggage at the airport.

Okay, she’s in a mood and her French is infinitely better than what he personally recalled from High School. It’s true what they say about French being bad at languages, by the way: It’s not that people don’t bother, exactly, it’s more than they’d best not to, their accent makes it hard to understand.

Honestly, he just gives directions in Spanish and there the taxi driver gets it, easier for everyone. Until Jyn stops looking by the window and engages the conversation!

“Nous ne sommes pas en vacances. On est une équipe de tournage."

The driver seems ridiculously overjoyed to hear her speak his language and grins at her in the rear-view mirror.

"Vraiment? Pour le cinéma?"

"Non, la télévision, c'est un programme culinaire."

"You speak French?" Draven interrupts, interest picked. "I didn't know that, it wasn't on your resume."

"Now you do," she shrugs, turning back her attention on the driver.

"La cuisine française est la meilleure du monde, vous aurez de quoi filmer!"

"C'est l'idée. Mais la France n'est pas notre seule destination, on visite plusieurs pays."

Okay, all of this is so quick and fluid that Cassian can't follow. But he can see Draven's brain gear turning as he insists:

"What did you say?"

"Nothing important, I'm not disclosing anything, don't worry. We're doing a food show for TV, we do several countries. Our friend here thinks French food is the best, obviously, and that we're gonna have a lot to cover."

"It's a given," Cassian smiles, impressed by her proficiency, "it's nice of you to speak up, though. Might facilitate the dialogue, too."

"It's nothing to get excited over," Jyn grumbles, sighing, "I've been to France before and have a knack for language, this is just idle chat anyway."

He can’t explain why but there’s something unsettling for her, that has nothing to do with food poisoning. He's curious, but drops the matter when they make a mandatory stop in a boulangerie, where Cassian marvels about the variety of breads and pastries offered, not to mention the cakes...

Mothma actually volunteers, Luke is already taking out his smartphone and since Jyn has already proven her ability to speak French, she too is put to contribution. The two other cars choose to proceed however, waiting at the hotel.

Cassian, Mothma Jyn and Luke are originally sent to get some crusty golden baguettes, of course, their white crumb, thick and soft. Yet a man before them prefers a boule de campagne, round shaped and thicker still, browner and earthier too.

Fascinating.

Honestly Cassian feels perplexed yet eager to order and the seller is amiable and smiling has she suggests viennoiseries.

"We have to take at least a croissant and a pain au chocolat each for everyone," Jyn declares immediately, strangely bossy all of sudden.

"Can we get a brioche too?" Luke asks, eyeing the one in the counter with barely concealed longing.

"Sure, if you want," she agrees easily, translating the order.

"Oh, there's chouquettes too," Mothma exclaims delightfully, legit clapping like a little girl. Thus a small bag of choux buns with sugar pearls joins the order.

Like she was on a mission, Jyn finally asks for different types of croissants too:

"The regular type is made of fresh butter," Jyn explains, "but we will take the almond version too."

"Would you like some of our savoury version," the seller asks helpfully, "it's with cheese and ham."

While in English he'd known the pains au chocolat to be called chocolate croissant — even if the chocolate is hidden within — he gets primly chastised by Jyn:

"Contrary to popular belief, it's not the same thing."

"Sorry, I had no idea. How do you all even know this?"

"My sister Leia likes posh bakeries," Luke says as only explanation.

"Me too, though it's been years since I've had chouquettes," Mothma adds.

But to his frustration, Jyn doesn't say anything has she asks for the total. He commits as much information as he can to memory and Mothma actually has to chime in with a few Euros of her own since she, Jyn and Luke kept adding some douceurs to taste. Clearly they are more familiar with French pastries than they’d let on, but he doesn’t mind being educated on the subject!

In fact Cassian grins wilder as the demeanor of other clients goes from neutral to slightly amused. He even catches something akin to respect on the face of an old lady behind them, as she glances at the pile of sweetness.

Unfortunately, it’s an improvised stop and they can’t film on a whim right now — photos will have to do. That’s a shame, for Monica Mothma isn’t a woman prone to expansiveness and it would have been nice to catch this unscripted madness, even if just for themselves.

Eventually they buy enough to feed an army or for everyone to develop diabetes, at the very least. It’s all for the greater good of the show, of course... They actually film a tiny clip back at their hotel and post a few candids on Instagram.

Kes teases them for their sweet tooth, saying he should have come with just to protect the bakery’s supplies and Draven rolls his eyes, but both are getting their faces stuffed with croissants and pains au chocolat so... Though far from constituting a balanced diet, their purchases become the entirety of their evening meal.

To be fair, who knew there was so much type of stuffed viennoiseries to begin with? It’s almost maddening!

Rationally he knows he shouldn’t indulge so much on the first day but the bread is crispy, the brioche is sweet but light... choosing is a lost cause and truthfully nobody seems to care.

Jyn is seated across from him though and a tiny speck of chocolate stays struck at the corner of her plush lips. He starts to ogles her mouth and reflexively licks his own — just in case a crumb of his own is there, too — but thankfully she doesn’t pay much attention to the people next to her.

Instead, she keeps staring at an invisible point in her plate. No pastry deserves to be looked at with such sadness unless it got prematurely rotten, and he says as much, eliciting a chuckle from the guys. She momentarily meets his gaze as she bites in her pain au chocolat again but her spirits have not lifted. Failed attempt then... He hopes his heated cheeks are the result of the two glasses of red wine he had before dessert, he’s not usually this awkward.

But she intrigues him, he wants to know her better! She’s unpredictable too and rather enticing. She proves to be an asset to the show and not just as a Camera Operator. But of course there is no way he’s going to say it. Besides it’s wine and sugar load talking and they have to focus on the French schedule within the next hour.

"Last time I was here, I was 15," she finally reveals, "but there's water under bridge."

If he weren't focused on her, he might have missed it, but like a private oath, she whispers next: "Saw has no place on this job, nor in my life. Paris doesn’t change that."

He's the only one to catch that, but before Cassian can figure out the meaning of this comment, everybody’s head snaps up at hearing Draven clearing his throat:

“By public demand, we will be setting this episode slightly freelance, as we go up North. About the capital, Cassian has an appointment at “Au Doux Raisin” tomorrow. It proposes a panel of traditional French dishes that would be interesting to foreign viewers.”

Draven enumerates this in a flat voice, looking bored as usual, yet Cassian starts to freak out internally: France was renowned for its Cuisine. He even follows French cooking shows in his spare time! How is he supposed to do his own thing despite the legions of stuff available?

“Sorry to interrupt Sir, but how are we supposed to squeeze several sets in so little time? As far as I know, most traditional French recipes involve spending quite a bit of time if not the whole day over the stove.”

“Don’t fret Andor,” the Director retorts impatiently, “it’s not like you’re be the one doing the cooking, right? So spare me the nerves. Thanks to our split filming teams, most material will be easily covered too. You just have to taste and judge, not really a hardship for you, I suspect.”

No, perhaps not. But Cassian doesn’t like the way his Director is handling things tonight. Tension increases a bit in the room but he keeps his trap shut, not wanting to spark things off on their first night here. The traveling show was already bumpy enough as far as he’s concerned so better not add to the man’s frustration.

“I wanted to see the sights a bit. It’s the city of lights, it’s every lover’s dream,” Kes mumbles.

Unfortunately, it seems that he's not discreet enough.

“Dameron, if you want to play the tourist, plan a romantic vacation for your fiancée AFTER the rush. We’ve got no time for that and moreover, I don’t care for your personal life,” Draven chastises in a clipped tone.

Cassian suppresses a sigh but the case is closed, crew eventually dismissed for the night. He’s pretty sure Draven was a military at some point before going into production or he is one in an alternate universe, with the way he’s usually behaving...

The next day, the crew did some sightseeing before their appointment — they could not be here and not pause in front of the Eiffel Tower, couldn’t they?

"Come on, we gotta have a picture with all of us! It's Paris guys, you can't be more French than that!"

"We won't all fit on a single one," Wedge Antilles says.

"You already had me posing in London, Skywalker, I'm not doing this again. Besides, Cassian is the one that should feature, he's the face of the show."

"Please Jyn, it'd be a group pic, not just you this time. A memento. Don't you want to show this to your friend Bodhi?"

Damn Luke and his boyishness... Everyone caves, elbows and shoulders squeezed together awkwardly. As Kes and Shara are the only couple, they also strike a cheesy pose for prosperity, likely adding some "romance" to the collection.

They ignore people seeking them for money or whatever petition they wanted to get a signature for though... Some details must be glossed over.

"We're not airing on a discovery channel," Draven says, already checking his watch, "most of the tedious editing falls on Kay’s team anyway. Let's get going."

Of course, for professional purposes Cassian forgoes lunch, preferring to nimble on a sandwich so he’d be famished when the time to shoot arrives.

And arrive it does.

A van comes to pick them up and their materials for the intended point of rendezvous between the Jardin du Luxembourg and the Jardin Des Plantes, in the 5th Arrondissement. Quite a pretty place and Luke already mumbles about some hashtags and photos he’d like to take afterwards.

When they finally enter the brasserie called “Au Doux Raisin” (At the sweet grapefruit) — a little before the opening, obviously, for the team has to settle — they instantly find themselves in a typical homey Parisian environment. From the very first second Cassian knows why the production chose this establishment in particular:

The meals offered represent just as many potential discoveries, yet not always the cheapest — within reasonable price range nonetheless. The brasserie sets a real atmosphere with portraits in black and white of old famous actors, an old-fashioned counter and something in the air so uniquely French that he’s surprised the staff doesn’t wear berets with white striped shirts.

Truthfully, everyone is excited, including Jyn who looks oddly happy to be there.

“We’re somewhere straight out of the movie Les Tontons flingueurs,” she says, watching their surroundings with sparkling eyes. At the lack of response she gets, she prompts: “You know, Crooks in Clover, also known as Monsieur Gangster? Ring a bell?”

To be honest the actors look familiar, Jean Gabin and Lino Ventura most of all, but nobody shares her excitement and she automatically returns to her defensive stance:

“What? I’m a cinephile and actually did study film making, you know? These actors are legendary among French cinema, you must have at least heard of some of them!”

“Somewhat. I'm more interested in the fact that this is the first time that I've caught you smiling since we’ve left England.”

Cassian only wished to put her out of her misery as they prepared the set. He gets a bit jittery before the beginning of each filming session so he likes to see people enjoying themselves, it calms him down. Yet somehow it was the wrong thing to say and her lit-up face turns stony as she replies:

“Yeah, well, let’s get this done.”

Smooth, Andor, well done, he thinks sarcastically as Draven yells action and a waiter gives him the menu. Most of the crew will stick to plates of charcuterie and cheese but he has a few possibilities to consider. Of course the list has been communicated beforehand, but ultimately Cassian always has the final choice, to stay as genuine as possible and because he prefers to eat whatever strikes his fancy. It’s more digestible in case of several takes.

Finally he chooses a “Bourguignon meal”: traditional snails then beef and wine stew, a plate of cheese and some crème brûlée to finish. Plentiful but really appetizing. Of course, if it weren’t for the show, he’d just stick with some of the various grâtins and be done with it, but the place calls for gluttony and as a presenter he has to make sure viewers will be satisfied.

If the French can stomach as much in one sitting, so will he.

(Still, he’s thankful Kay’s not currently with him or he’d be sure to get an earful...)

The preliminary speech done in a single take, the first course comes quickly. Famous escargots, classic of the French to eat snails, so the occasion was too good to pass on.

Cassian already had some experience tasting snails in the French way, had enjoyed it so he thought he didn’t have to mask his facial expressions.

He was wrong.

The promised “Gros Escargots de Bourgogne” come in front of him and truth be told they look appealing enough. But what the heck is he supposed to make of the... unusual cutlery... that the waiter brought along? It looks more like a surgical instrument than anything Cassian has ever used.

This entrée should come with warnings, explanatory note and step by step tutorial included.

For a split second Cassian blinks owlishly at the camera then he recovers, a consummate professional. Should be easily enough, really, right? A circular plate with six stuffed snails in their shells... a tiny fork with two tines... and pliers of some kind? It has a spring with a round extremity, obviously meant to keep the shell in place while with the fork he’s supposed to stab what’s inside.

Alright, I’ve got it, he reflects after a few nano seconds of appraisal.

He doesn’t bother with explaining his course of action yet, focused on the task at hand while he states that the snails are cooked with a butter mixed with chopped garlic and parsley.

He looms over the snail closest to him, lift it slowly from his dedicated hole in the plate... but he hasn’t got the chance to use the fork. The damned thing escapes from the contraption and literally flies several feet away from his stunned face.

Nobody moves, not even Draven says cut, yet Cassian stares dumbly at the ruined snail on the floor, hidden two tables away from his. From the way Jyn angles the camera, he guesses she’s zooming on it too...

Fucking French!

It takes three tries for him to master the so called “pince à escargots” — to the utter delight of the crew around him, as they personally try some pâté de lapin à l’ancienne, saucisson sec or saucisson à l’ail and smelly cheese like Camembert or Roquefort.

By the time the Bœuf Bourguignon is served, he feels oddly proud to have won against the perfidy of posh Gastronomie, despite his bruised ego. Thankfully the beef stew is not as challenging, with a regular, universal and most of all reliable knife. Not that he really needs to cut anything, mind you: from what he knows of the process, the beef has macerated in red wine for hours to get this tender. The serving is pretty generous too, and it comes with boiled potatoes, mushrooms, onions and carrots. Thyme and laurel too, to perfume the whole.

He’s full when the four types of cheese come next but he explains the different milks each of them were made of. He actually has flash cards ready on his knees like a cheating schoolboy but their filming time turning short calls for desperate measures. At the dessert he struggles to get through. It’s delicious, it’s just that he reached the peak of his sugary intake. After a few spoonfuls immortalized on film, he hands the rest to Shara’s extended hands.

Overall, good stuff, really. Two glasses of red wine to complete the meal and footage aside, Cassian is more than satisfied with his Parisian trip.

They wrap it up, shake a few hands but take their time calling it a night. Paris is bewitching in the evening and the company is boisterous as they go along the shores of the Seine. Cassian uses it to his advantage, walking his meal off and doing his best to ignore the taunts made over the snail incident.

"I couldn't believe the famous Cassian Andor got bested by a snail. One that was already dead and cooked too," Jyn teases.

"Hey, I succeeded eventually, and it's not the snail as much as the tool that's to blame."

"Still, I thought you'd have more dexterity."

"Sorry to disappoint you, I'll do better next time."

It’s all in good sports really, but while Jyn snorts, Antilles sniggers and Luke stumbles, slamming against his back, blushing inexplicably. What has gotten into them? But she's still smiling as they drive back to the hotel and suddenly he doesn’t mind the French and their peculiarities so much. The production duo have still a decent amount of work before going to bed, but everyone else goes to sleep.

(Maybe Kes and Shara got MIA along the way but the contract doesn’t bind them to a curfew and Mothma turns a blind eye).

Cassian only wishes he had that much freedom as the so called star of the show. But it has been a long day and he would have nobody to share a nightly tryst. Cassian Andor is reasonable, professional and single to boot, so it doesn’t cost him much.

His dreams are fitful and slightly disturbing though. Jolting awake only five hours later, the only image that stays with him is of Jyn, replacing Nicole Kidman’s part in the Moulin Rouge! movie. She looked tantalizing in his subconscious and very not herself: less pragmatic and more eerily sexy.

He shakes the feeling away as he dresses himself. He has a long day ahead and can’t afford to fantasize about the only unattached woman in his crew. She’s a pretty thing and kinda mysterious too, but he is awake now and the dreamy bullshit has no incidence on his job.

He decides to tiptoe in the free area, seeking a cup of herbal tea. Whether mint or ginger should help with the food overload from the night before, surely such things could be found on the table set for self service?

He forgets all about beverages the instant he sees Jyn awake over an hotplate, her back to him. As her name stumbles from his lips, disbelieving, she stiffens visibly and spins slowly around.

Her voice is still sleepy and his annoyingly raspy as they greet each other. In November, the sun isn’t up so early and won’t be for quite some time, unfortunately and the bleached out white neon lights accentuate the exhaustion on her face. Very far from a dreamy cabaret dancer, his mind evaluates worriedly. Has she even slept? She’s dressed in her usual clothes already and ignores the elephant in the room as she asks why he too is already awake.

“I ate too much,” he answers.

“Well of course you did, not everyone can eat as much as the French do just before going to bed. Stomachache?”

“No, just energy of the calories pumping through my veins.”

“How do you plan to work it out then?”

He represses a smirk. With her velvet morning voice, it sounded a lot like an opening for innuendo. She realizes this a second too late and just purses her lips. They are not yet close enough to tease each other, so he throws her a lifeline and gestures to the food he interrupted.

“Isn’t it what you’re doing in the kitchen Jyn?”

“I wish. It’s just... I needed an outlet and I thought I’d best do something useful. Couldn’t wake my best friend.”

He wanted to ask her about what she needed an outlet for, yet people keep appearing and she visibly closes off. Obviously Cassian isn’t the only one awake as the self-service kitchen fills in slowly with the rest of the team. Fat chance, again. He sits, rubbing the back of his neck and mutters a hello.

“What’s the delicious smell I can sniff?” Luke asks, entering the room, nose upturned and honest to God sniffing the air like the human puppy he usually personifies.

“The bread and brioche won’t keep for much longer. So I’m making pain perdu,” Jyn answers, sending a fleeting smile in his direction.

“Lost bread,” Kes translates confusedly, eyeing the slices browning slowly browning in the pan, “what is lost about it?”

“Dunno, it’s just the name,” she sighs, repeating the process to make enough for everybody.

Or maybe the food isn’t the lost thing here, Cassian muses, she is, her tired eyes and forlorn attitude hinting as much. Then, realizing how stupid his thoughts are, he mentally slaps himself and hands the coffee pot to Wedge Antilles, who is blindly reaching for it, like a drowning man and a lifebelt, a junkie and his fix.

Seriously, besides Luke and himself, Cassian wonders how these people can do this work and NOT be morning people. Like, never ever. Kay has complained he had to put with them grumping and groaning until the clock reached 8 AM in the past, but at the time, he thought his friend was being his usual pessimistic self. But as he considers the bunch of sleepyheads around, he has to admit there was some truth to it.

When a plate arrives in front of him, with icing sugar or cinnamon for him to add on if he so wishes, he’s pleasantly surprised.

“You told me you didn’t how to cook,” he says, mildly accusatory.

He leaves the first slice bare, adds sugar on the second and cinnamon on the third, to have the full tasting range. As soon as he tries the first, the goodness dissolves on his tongue, creamy and buttery, the two variations making a perfect combination between sweetness and a tad spicy. He knows various ways to save stale bread, but somehow this tastes different. Besides them Luke was already helping himself with a second serving, grinning.

“Please, this isn't cooking Cassian,” Jyn shrugs. “I’m sure it’s not the first time you’ve had this.”

“Not like that, though, this is unique. How did you do it?”

Most of all he wants to know what prompted her to fix this at six in the morning. But even if he had the nerve to ask, she likely wouldn’t answer. So, asking for her recipe was as close as he was willing to go.

“I made the slices my own way. More often than not people use eggs where I used milk. Once the slices suck up all the milk, getting slightly spongy again, I put them in a salt-buttered pan. Easy, not haute cuisine.”

Easy perhaps, but her wistful tone speaks of something more. He knows preparing food can reveal a lot about a person — hell, that was the reason he got enrolled in all this cooking stuff in the first place… — and… well, he remembers their stunt at the Lahmu Restaurant in London. Clearly her relationship to food is… personal.

God, why Kay isn’t here to smack the corniness out of his head?! He almost feels like using a pan on his own skull if that could just stop his brain from overanalyzing a mere breakfast plate.

He doesn’t even have time for this, with the shooting schedule they have to maintain. After all, he might envy other people’s low functioning brains, they are saved much trouble.

Draven announces their Parisian Interlude is over and satisfactory — praise the Lord for that — but he still has a surprise in store...

“A… bus?”

“Yes,” Draven confirms, ”we should be grateful, it’s fully furbished too, functional, and a bit cheaper.”

“Whatever spares us a flight,” Dameron says in relief.

“You don’t like flying?” Jyn asks, surprised.

“If I have to take hop on a plane, I will. It’s way quicker, after all. But yeah, if I have to choose, road’s better. Plus, we can build team spirit or whatever. It’d be like a school trip.”

“Oh yeah,” Luke cheers, absurdly enticed with the idea, “I’m sure our followers would dig that kind of thing, you know?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Jyn shrugs, “I never went on school trips, or I was so young I don’t remember. It’s weird.”

“It’ll be a new experience for you then,” Cassian encourages.

“I guess, but why do you care so much?”

(Good question.)

“We’re all in the same train wreck, we gotta stick together.”

(What was that nonsense... for sure if Kay ever heard him talk like that, he would deck him so hard his face wouldn’t be filmed for weeks!)

They take the A1 highway up North, chatting, napping, playing on phones... and yes, to Draven’s utter dismay, there are stupid songs involved at some point. Dameron started, Cassian picked up, and soon everyone was at least humming along. Perhaps because the driver couldn’t take it anymore, they stop in a rest area about midway until they reach Lille, the northern city that ends the French episode. As if the crew’s sugary consumption weren’t already high, they picked sweets again, albeit regional:

Two metal boxes, one with some minty ones called the Bêtises de Cambrai and the other containing toffee-like Babeluttes du Nord, to have a foretaste of their next local cuisine.

If they’re still alive to document it because Cassian swears he’s gonna die of hyperglycemia before they reach Amsterdam!

They have just one day left to shoot in France when they arrive in Lille two hours later, but they make it work. The city, nicknamed “the capital of Flanders” is picturesque in a different way than Paris, of course, but just as pretty. Places with fountains, houses made of red bricks and old cobbled streets, it’s nice.

As they have little time to spare — yet again — the rushes get more hectic than in Paris. It’s much less representative after all.

The people there talk pretty funny, with words even Jyn has a hard time deciphering, but all are very accommodating and helpful. A few wave at the camera and suggest a dish to try. It’s much more easygoing and Cassian relaxes pretty soon.

Not wanting to spoil any Belgian discovery by choosing a dish similar to what can be offered further North, he decides to try « a Welsh ». Like its name implies, this is not originally a French recipe but it became one of the easiest specialty to eat in Lille:

It is a sandwich composed of bread soaked with beer, cheddar cheese and mustard, covered with a slice of ham, dipped into a cream of cheddar cheese, heated in the oven in a ramekin. Not the most elaborate of the establishment they picked’ but it works perfectly with their thematic for the French episode and their lack of time.

Indeed, La Chicorée (The Chicory) is a brasserie like the one in Paris. Except it’s actually an hundred-year-old brewery, not just for the fancy name, and it’s open pretty late, until 4:30 AM. They are told it’s renowned, too, and Cassian can believe that easily.

For dessert, because apparently the mad guys around him have an insane tolerance for sugary treats, or really want him to die on the job, they have some stuffed waffles with cassonade. This version is thin, thankfully, crunchy, though the garnish of vanilla and brown sugar is most likely rich.

“I hadn’t had those in ages,” Jyn says drowsily, waiting for the Lille-Amsterdam flight a while later. “I bought some for my best friend, but I’m not sure I’ll resist the temptation for long. I’ll have to send them to him.”

“Really? How come? It’s good, but it’s not like it’s so addicting,” Cassian asks, because he still feels curious — perhaps sleepy Jyn is more inclined to share anecdotes?

“Wrong, they are addicting. I loved them as a young girl. I’ve spent some time in France over the years, but none so much as northern France. We were British, after all, so crossing the Chanel was easy and Saw... I mean, I’d known an old lady, Louise, who did such waffles for me.”

Yep, oversharing, he thinks with a smile, and there she is talking about a Saw again. More like eluding but it’s more talk than he ever heard from her. The schedule must take its toll on her, same as anyone else.

"You’ve spent holidays in France then, growing up?"

"My guardian actually had a job in France for a time. He was stationed not so very far from here for about a year, before we moved again."

"So the wanderlust goes way back? It explains why you took on the travelling show."

"Maybe. Saw and I never stuck around for long anywhere, but I've been happy there, it brings good memories for once."

At her conflicted expression, he guesses such good memories are far in between. He recalls her enigmatic whisper from a few days ago and surmises she must have had a falling out with her guardian. Cassian doesn't pry further though when she doesn't elaborate, but he stores the information for later.

He’s almost snoozing when Draven — no human has the right to be this operative at 3AM... — hands him his phone, mouthing Kay’s name:

“Hello, Kay?”

“Cassian, did I wake you?”

“No, but that was close. Not everyone can be focused on the show 24/7, like Draven, or you. I feel like I’m slowly losing my soul to the cause.”

“Forgive me if I don’t shed a tear. And you’re as dedicated as the rest of us, you’re just being unusually whiny.”

“Well, you’re not here yet to keep me in check so I can be as petty as I want. I’ll feel better after we leave the country and get some sleep.”

“I’ve seen the first French rushes, actually, to see if they could be easily edited with ours. I have to say it’s fairly entertaining to witness your culinary struggles, Cassian. Especially the snail fetching.”

“Thanks a lot, Kay,”

“I’m serious, honestly it should make the final cut.”

“Did your illness kill your brain cells? What part of the first try should be included? The moment the snail flew across the room or the framing on my butt as I had to get on my knees under the table to retrieve it?”

“Well, I’ll leave it for Draven to decide,” his soon-to-be former friend replies wryly. “But just so you know, it could bring in more female viewers.”

“You’re insane.”

“I’m realistic Cassian, you have a very nice bottom apparently and judging from the people’s enthusiastic reaction on social media, you’d better use it.”

“I... don’t even know what to say to that. Do you even hear yourself?”

“I’m referring to the show’s ratings, not your sex life Cassian Jerón Andor! You know what, we will speak later, once you’ve put your mind out of the gutter!”

“I love you too man,” Cassian smirks.

Only the dial answers him.

#rebelcaptain #food travel au #rebelcaptain food travel au #fanfiction #pingou writes #chapter 3 #sorry I'm passionate about it #so proud #french #star wars #this gives me life #c'mon guys #love and reblog #pretty please #cassian x jyn #cassian andor #jyn erso

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