#my mother wasnt as religious as the rest of them so i was raised going to a more laid back community christian church and wasnt baptized

[madelynpryor]

i love you italian characters who struggle with their relationship with catholicism (or lack of relationship)

[foulserpent]

ned has the most fleshed out history of any of my OCs. i typed it out over the past couple of days, theres some stufff missing but its over 2000 words as is.

here is neds life story prior to the oblviion crisis

ned was born in a village near falinesti’s summer rooting site. his father died before ned was born, and ned was raised by his mother and various farmhands in the community.

his mother was a farmer (though she had a shady past he was always peripherally aware of but never privy to), and they raised hogs and chickens for milk/meat/eggs and would be part of falenesti’s supply chain every year. niviiran also lived nearby, and the two were close friends throughout their childhood and adolescence.

“nasty ned” was in fact his birth name and a name he continued to use, though going by the latter part. he was never able to find out why his mother named him that. the name came in handy, given that ned is transgender and already had a fairly “masculine” name. he was recognized as a boy since he was around 10, but his mother was unable to afford the hormone replacement potions until his later teens.

when ned was 16, he started taking jobs at falenesti, mostly as a bouncer at its taverns. he had been a bit of a nervous child before that and to this day isnt sure why he chose that line of work, but it toughened him up considerably.

when he was about 20, his friend niviiran was being heavily pressured into marrying off to secure her family’s inherited silk business. niviiran saw this as the only chance to escape her emotionally abusive parents, and proposed the notion of entering into a (false) marriage with ned until she could get away. he agreed, both desiring to help his friend and hoping to benefit from niviiran’s far wealthier parents.

during this time, he had his first Actual intimate relationship, but it only lasted about a week. he had picked up a girlfriend at his job, but being emotionally immature and a bit of a dick, he thought that he did not need to inform her that he was TECHNICALLY married, since the marriage was fake and him and niv both did not mind. she left when he found out.

this marriage fell apart within a year, largely as a result of ned panicking and letting it slip while drunk at a gathering with niv’s family. this caused a huge commotion mostly directed at him (and was worsened by his continued panicking), and culminated in niviiran’s brother beating him and attempting to run him over with a horse as he fled. his leg was badly crushed and was saved by his mother.

though their marriage was fake, niviiran and ned had a real falling out as a result of this. both obviously felt bad for the harm to the other, but niv was very angry at ned for having let it slip and putting her in the position of having to run away from her controlling parents rather than leave freely. ned at the time was surprised and hurt that she was so mad, having taken her friendship for granted, and responded in kind. they separated angrily and did not see each other again after that point, and the way he treated niv is one of his first and biggest regrets.

after his leg was mostly healed, he decided he wanted to leave valenwood, at least for a while. he had developed some skill as a bodyguard, and managed to get himself hired to guard a merchant caravan that looped through valenwood, elsweyr, and cyrodiil. this was the time where he really came into his own in mercenary type fields, learning to use swords/shields/armor and how to hold his own against much larger foes. he also learned how to cook at this time, and had his first boyfriend. this relationship was not serious and did not last past ned’s contract with the caravan, but was significant and fondly remembered.

he chose not to continue as a caravan guard, and became interested in mercenary work instead. he joined up with cyrodiil’s fighters guild, and spent the next decade or so working for them. late in this period, he was subcontracted out to mainland morrowind on a longterm job as a hired guard. during this time, he met and began a relationship with yaksha gra-dralas, a morag tong agent. their relationship lasted about three years until ned’s contract ended. it was somewhat serious, but neither felt it was working out well enough to continue (and neds ass was too small). they went their separate ways, and ned returned to cyrodiil.

ned continued working for the fighters guild for an indeterminite amount of years, culminating in the events of oblivions fighters guild questline occurring. when ned was demoted for the death of the guildmaster’s son that he had nothing to do with, he decided that the guild was going to shit and that he was leaving. he resigned, and spent a few years hiring himself out independently as a mercenary or whatever else was paying.

eternally bad at settling, he became unsatisfied and decided to move again. he moved to vvardenfell, where he would live for the next 30 years or so. during this time, he joined their chapter of the fighters guild, took many odd jobs, and became more radicalized against the empire than he had already been (which was a lot).

notably, in the latter half of his time there, he met the disowned son of a hlaalu nobleman named ondryn. he and ondryn were assigned together on a longterm fighters guild job out in the wilderness, and began a relationship that would last a decade. it was ned’s longest relationship, and also the first one that he seriously considered the possibility of being permanent and settling with. he had loved all his partners before this, but ondryn was very special to him and brought out something much more serious in him.

it was this relationship that would also lead to ned’s involvement with daedric cults. ondryn was dissident against the tribunal and a follower of azura, boethiah, and mephala. this was just casual everyday worship, but the two joined an active sect of boethiah worshippers (at least partially trying to impress each other). ned had never been religiously motivated and believed that gods were not owed worship any more than anyone else, but was drawn to the “good daedra” for their seemingly mutually beneficial relationship with mortals.

ned was never the most devoted of boethiah’s sect, but through skill and luck he continuously proved himself worthy, and eventually was challenged to and won a tournament of 10 bloods. he was granted a title as champion of boethiah, and bestowed with the artifact goldbrand.

for a while, he proved himself worthy by continuing to maintain his position and defeat any challenger who came his way. but at one point, he was successfully kidnapped along with a fellow boethiah worshipper to be sacrificed to molag bal. he managed to free himself of his binds and escape, and came back with reinforcements to slaughter the rest of molag bal’s faithful, but it was too late for his friend.

this was the first decidedly traumatic incident of his life, and marked the beginning of a slow downturn of his life and his mental health. he was wracked with guilt at having left his friend to die, and was beginning to realize he wasnt really cut out for the whole champion of boethiah thing, rightfully fearing that he had lost favor for this weakness. in a stupid move (that would turn out smart in the long run in bargaining for his soul back), he kept goldbrand but fled with ondryn from the cult, ghosting boethiah and just hoping it wouldnt come back to bite him.

the blight was also worsening in vvardenfell at this point, with things beginning to get pretty scary. ned had repeatedly expressed desire for him and ondryn to flee vvardenfell, but the latter saw all this as just another crisis that would pass with time, and ned accepted this. around the time of the beginning of morrowind’s events, ondryn fell sick after an encounter with one of the ash creatures from red mountain. when it became obvious and undeniable that it was corprus, ondryn resigned himself to dying and asked of ned to help him be properly cremated and interred in his family tomb. all of ondryn’s living relatives had disowned him, but he still desired to be buried in his rightful place.

agreeing to this was the hardest thing ned had ever done. ondryn said goodbye and took poison, and ned was left alone to burn and lay his body to rest. he almost couldnt bring himself to do it, but eventually succeeded. after it was done, ned remained in the tomb for a few days, catatonic and just waiting to see if he would show symptoms himself. when it became clear that he had not contracted corprus, he considered suicide but became disgusted with himself and decided against it.

he remained in vvardenfell for a short while after this, but when his beloved guar (“jelly”) passed away of old age (mercifully peacefully), he decided enough was enough, and returned to cyrodiil. he had a couple of brief encounters with a person who he would later learn was the nerevarine, and left only weeks before the defeat of dagoth ur.

upon returning to cyrodiil, he was in a rut. he had become near-broke, had newly acquired mental health issues, had a constant fear of boethiah sending prospective champions after him, and had nothing to do with himself. he settled into the imperial city waterfront as a squatter, and attempted to join the thieves guild, but failed the initiation. desperate, he began thieving on his own, sometimes doing jobs for others and sometimes just to have money to get by.

he took a very large risk in agreeing to steal and imperial watch captain’s heirloom sword, and was captured in the act. he resisted arrest and injured the captain, and the captain personally intervened to get him a much steeper sentence than he otherwise would have. he was put into the imperial city prison for a few weeks, before being transferred to the arena and being put to work as a gladiator.

this was essentially a death sentence, with no determined ending besides dying in the arena. he met shap-mota here, a bard who had been blamed for a string of brutal assaults in spite of being pretty unquestionably Not the culprit. the two of them had an intimate relationship throughout this time, and struck up a friendship, but they were under a painful and unusual situation and it could not really be called a romantic relationship.

for a time, ned was managing well. he managed to get some serious dirt on one of the guard captains and effectively blackmail him. he wasnt able to secure his freedom, but was able to force his hand into giving him his sword (goldbrand) back and giving him and shap a bit more leeway as prisoners. having goldbrand is likely the only reason he survived and won all his death matches, but his uncooperativeness and humiliation of a few of the guards gave them a massive grudge.

after about 5 months, shap narrowly won a match, but had been gravely injured in the process and collapsed. ned last saw him being dragged out from the arena, and never saw anything that would indicate shap being alive, and had to assume he died. things got really bad after that, with ned having no buffer against the ire of the guards and other prisoners. he lost his blackmailing opportunity (though was allowed to keep goldbrand, due to the crowd loving his signature flaming sword) and was given absolutely terrible treatment from his captors.

he became incredibly disgusted with being forced to kill other prisoners and enraged at challengers who fought willingly. as he rose in the ranks, he was kept going by not knowing what else to do and by a grim satisfaction at murdering people who willingly chose to be combatants. this was very traumatizing.

ned achieved champion rank, though he almost lost his final match. his opponent disarmed him and instead of killing him, gloated and slashed at him with goldbrand, ripping his abdomen open and giving him his biggest scars. ned managed to take him by surprise and kill his opponent before passing out from shock and blood loss.

he woke up a day later to find he had been released. evidently, no one expected him to live that long and it was decided he might as well be let go. ned already had trauma to deal with, but was suddenly experiencing very unusual and new symptoms (which was ptsd and an anxiety disorder) that he had no idea what to do with. he was also convinced that his challenger was there on boethiah’s behalf, though he cant be sure of that, and the fear of being killed and left to the daedra who probably owned his soul took hold of him again.

he had been given some prize money, and he collected himself and left. he moved into kvatch, and rented an attic from some dunmer in exchange for proofreading his stupid “opus” about him killing all the cliff racers or whatever.

ned spent a few years in a haze, kind of just drifting through life, getting into shit here and there. there was an “incident” involving the towns blacksmith at the general store, and he was not arrested but was considered to owe a favor to the town’s watch captain due to the chaotic results that few dare to speak of.

this favor was finally cashed in when kvatch was burnt down by mehrune’s dagons invasion force and they needed someone to try and close the gate, and lo and behold here comes ned “owes a favor” nasty and some argonian from out of town who just kind of wandered in.

[cutepastelstarsalior]

Kids

Fandom; Sander Sides

Charcters; Patton Sanders, Charcter!Thomas Sanders, Virgil Sanders, Deceit Sanders, Logan Sanders, Roman Sanders, and Remus Sanders

Warnings; character deaths, children death, divorce, car crash, suicide, homophobia

Summery; after a game of truth or dare goes horribly bad after leaving Patton in tears, the other sides try to fighter out what to do to help their father figure

This fic was inspired by a comic by @rinzay

——————

It was a good day.

Key word; way.

The day only turn bad after a game of truth or dare.

It was a ordinary day. A normal rainy Sunday. Thomas and the sides were relaxing in the living room playing games and watching Netflix.

After a while of binge watching tv, everyone was starting to get bored. It was only when Roman decided to play Truth it Dare that made everything more interesting. The game started out as fair and fun but it quickly turn emotional and heavy after Remus starts to ask difficult and personal questions.

Roman, Virgil, and Patton were sitting in a open triangle shape on the floor, Virgil in the middle with Patton on his right, were the happy light blue side had his back pressed against the couch, and Roman was on Virgil’s left side. All three men had their knees touching each other.

Remus, Logan and Thomas were on the couch. Remus was in the middle sitting upside down with his knees hanging against the couch’s back and his head on the carpet. Remus has one hand against his stomach while the other was moving around as he talked.

Logan was in the far right hand corner with his knees against under himself while he was drinking some coffee. Thomas was on the left hand corner leaning against the couch’s arm rest. Deceit was sitting on Roman’s “throne” which was just a bunch of beanbag chair and a bunch of blanket and pillow stack together to form some sort of lump. Deceit was both monitoring the game and keeping sore of who was winning the game and not cheating.

“Ok, ok, ok, who’s turn is next?” Roman ask out loud as he drummed his fingers against his thigh.

“It’s Remus’s turn” Deceit monotonly replied.

“YAY” Remus have a small shout. Quickly looking around Remus look to see who his next victim would be.

“Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm idk, hmm maybe-“ Remus joke as he stroked his mustache carefully looking at each of his friends with a sly look.

“ Oh for the love of- Remus hurry up!” Virgil inpatiently cried out.

“Ok ok, yeesh, fine I chose Patton. Patty-cakes, truth or dare?”

“Oh. Um how about truth.” Patton said glancing up at Remus.

“ Ok, why do you call yourself dad?” Remus asked.

Patton smile, then gave a small giggle. “Isn’t obvious? I mostly act as a father figure to the other sides, so it’s a bit natural to play up the dad role.”

Remus click his tounge. “But Pat, none of us are you’re kids! It would make sense if your acted like a dad after you meet us, but you acted this way before Virgil was alive! Do you have a secret husband that we don’t know about?” Remus rambled.

“ Remus, stop rambling, Patton already answer his question now who-“ Logan started to say.

“Um actually, Patton didn’t technically answer the question, he gave a half-truth, not a full truth.” Deceit interrupted.

“Huh???” Everyone but Patton and Deceit yelled. Patton look sheepishly at the ground while Deciet stared at Patton.

“So time continue the game, Patton you need to tell the truth, the full truth. I know when you are lie so don’t try. Where are your kids, Patton.” Deceit asked.

“ yeah Patton How can you be a dad if you don’t have any kids!” Remus added on. Logan have a hard look at Remus, telling his to knock it off.

Patton stopped smiling.

The room was dead quite. Where was his kids? Patton close his eyes, trying to remember if he even had kids.

Suddenly he remembered two faces. Two young faces of a girl and a boy. The girl was around 10 or younger, she had long brown hair that when to armpits, brown eyes and she wore a pink hair band. The boy taller, he had shorter brown hair and brown eyes. The boy look to be around 12.

He remember created videos and laughing and playing with his kids. He rember loving them and teaching them and caring for them. But what where there names?

Sally? Ben? Haley? Mark? Hannah? Daniel? No matter how are he try to remember his children’s names he couldn’t.

He couldn’t remember. He couldn’t remember. He couldn’t remember. He couldn’t remember. HE COULDN’T REMEMBER.

Patton gave a wet sob. He started to cry. His shoulders shook and he couldn’t see. Panicking, Virgil grab onto Patton arm. The others sides were confused why was Patton crying? Did something happen to their happy dad figure?

“Patton are you ok?” Logan ask as he kneeled in front of Patton. He slowly lifted the crying man’s face, and stared into the man’s eyes.

“Patton, Are you ok? Can you tell us what’s wrong? Are you having a panic attack?” Logan whispered.

Before Patton could replay, he got another memory. He remembers fighting with someone, a women. She had long light brown hair that when to her should blades, pale skin, bright blue eyes, and long legs. The mystery women would wear businesses suits and have a sern face.

But the women seem to love him. She had a wedding ring on. In the memory women wasnt wearing her ring, and in her hands was divorces papers. The women was yelling at Patton about how he was dangerous, stupid, and careless father. The women yelled how he was hurt her children.

Patton remember how he spend the months yelling and fighting with the ex-wife, and how many times he had to go court to fight for custody for his children. Patton was denied full costody, but was given half.

Things we’re getting better after the divorce. Well, it was better for his ex-wife and the kids. They moved two as far as possible for Patton, his ex-wife was reluctant on letting the kids spend tike with their father. But after two years, the two adults found a system that could work.

Everything change after the car crash.

It was a rain April day. Patton was taking the kids back to their mother’s. Patton’s youngest, his beautiful little girl was asleep, and his oldest, his handsome young son was in the passenger seat looking out the window. Patton was pissed. He was angry. After the divorce, Patton changed about his live.

He quite his job and sold his house to live move in town and to work as a bartender. During the years Patton discovered that he was gay. at first Patton paniced, he was heavily religious, what would happen if his church or much worse, his family found out? His family was already angry and disappointed about Patton’s divorce. But over the time after coming out to his family and church Patton slowly found that he could be hisself and to have his religion.

The reason why Patton was so angry right now was because after two years of find and being himself, Patton decided to come out to his ex-wife. It was only far seeing how that she was going to help raise his kids. The only problem was that she was homophobic. His ex immediately got into a fight with Patton, saying how he was going to croupt her children and that it would confuse them.

Now Patton know that he should drive when he was angry, but it was late, the kids had school in the morning, and Patton didn’t have enough money to get a hotel for the night. Patton gave a glance at his son, lately the kids seem withdrawn and tired. The divorce must have been to much for the kids Patton thought. Hopefully Patton would be abel to see his kids next week, if his ex-wife didn’t demand the court to change the schedules.

“Daddy love you sport, you know this right? I love your sister too” Patton gently said, it was hard to talk to his son lately and he wanted to let his son know that he was there for him.

“ yeah dad, I know, [redacted] knows too. I’m just tired for moving place to place” his son replied.

“ well you know sport, if you want you can try living with me or your mother permanently. If that what you want. No pressure.”

“Mm yeah, maybe. I don’t know.”

Before the two could continue talking, the car slid against the wet pavement. Patton jerk the wheel try to keep the car steady, but the car end up flipping and crashing on the road.

Everything even black.

—————-

A month.

One month ago Patton got into a car crash, he and his children were sent to the hospital. His daughter die on impact and his son only lasted halfway to the hospital due to internal bleeding.

In one month, his ex-wife move across country. Never to speak or see him again.

In one month Patton loss his family, both his birth family and his created family.

In one month Patton life became hell.

In one month Patton would rather die then to live without his children.

So Patton did.

Patton swolled a bottle of doctor prescribed medicine and he hung himselve.

Out of two years and one month, this was the happiest Patton was.

———————-

When Patton woke up, he was in a white room. The first think he noticed was that he didn’t have his glasses. The second thing he noticed was that he was a little boy, around 8.

Suddenly there was a little boy that look a lot like him. Or did Patton look a lot like the boy? Anyway the boy walk over to Patton. He had brown hair and eyes. He was wearing a white-tshirt and cargo pants.

“Hi! My name is Thomas! What’s you’re?” Thomas ask as he stood out his hand. Patton shocked it.

“I’m Patton!”

“Hehe that sound like a old man name like a dad!” Thomas laugh.

Patton smile. Was he dead? Or was he a ghost? The little boy could see and touch him so maybe he was in heaven?

“If you want you can call me dad!” Patton reply happy to have a friend.

As the hours when’s by Patton and Thomas played and meet another little boy name Logan. The three of them had lots of fun.

They had so much fun that Patton couldn’t remember how he got here. Why was he here?

Oh well Patton thought. It must’ve not have been important to remember.

[gender-chaotic]

I don’t think I’ve hear anything about your Paranormal Investigator au?? Could you tell me/us about it?

Anon bless, thank you for giving me an exuse to info dump about my au. Also just a warning this is going to mix characters from all 3 canons and its gonna be pretty long. So this au takes place in pleasent pines Connecticut (based on peaceful pines from the show) that is a paranormal hotspot of sorts. Its seen as a town curse and while many of the townsfolk are vaugley aware of the cryptids,ghosts,monsters,ect. That are apart of the town they tend to turn a blind eye/ignore it. This also has to do with the witch trials that took place in Connecticut hundreds of years ago which raises the towns superstitions. Beej, adam, babs are paranormal investigators who live out of their van with lydia who doesnt live in the van with them but helps them hunt the paranormal Beetlejuice/bj/beej (Lawrence beetlejuice Shaggoth) (23) is one of the local paranormal investigator, at a young age he learned he could see ghosts due to the death of his father which was thought to be him leaving his family. After that beej started to see ghosts anywhere they were and tried to tell people around town and attempt to help ghosts as much as he could. This sparked beej's interest in becoming a paranormal investigator and he attempted for years to tell people and town and get them to pay attention but he ended up gaining the reputation as being the "crazy wierd kid who thinks he can see ghosts". Over the years as beej started to humant and investigate the paranormal more and more in town with the rest if the gang the town started to resent him more and he was also seen a making their "curse" worse not to mention breaking into buildings and generally "causing trouble" around town to do his job. Juno, mother to beej and his twin brother Donny hated this and for years tried to shut down his belief in the paranormal and discourage him from hunting ghosts. The fact that beej insists that he says he kept seeing his father as a ghost around made it worse. Juno is a successful buisness woman in town obsessed with her image and status in town and often pits donny and bj against eachother and cares more about they make her look than her own children. She made it clear all bj's life he was a disappointment and always insulted and berated him but favored donny, she even attempted to have beej institutionalized because of his ability to see ghosts and also undiagnosed mental illness she never took seriously, but since beej was always deemed "mentally healthy" it was never sucessful but gave him a fear of being institutionalized and asylums. When beej turned 18 she kicked him out of the house and beetlejuice dropped out of highschool, after this beetlejuice officially started his parnormal investigation buisness out of his van traveling around town and even out of town or out of state at times. Juno still lets him and the rest of the gang in the house at times or atleast let them sleep in the van in their driveway because donny begs her. Beetlejuice often steals food and supplies from his mom's place but donny replaces it for him and attempts to help beej out financially but of course beej is too stubborn to take it. Barbara(21) lived on a farm her whole life with a deeply religious family and was homeschooled, she often went into town to read books at the library where she learned about witchcraft and immediately took a liking to it, secretly practicing at home. Her parents unfortunatly found out multiple times and each and everytime threw out or destroyed any altars, books, herbs, ect. She had anything she had to do with witchcraft. When she was 18 a monster/crpytid started hunting down and killing local farm animals. Baraba who is an animal lover and also a very young witch secised to try and bring the animals back but failed and while doing so was kicked out of their home, blamed for the murders of those farm animals even after she insisted and begged it wasnt hrler and that it was somwthing else out there but none of her family believes her instead she is called the devil and various other insults. After this she moves in with adam for the time being who's parents reluctantly take her in temporarily. Adam (21) used to go to school with beej and donny back in middle/high school. For a long time he kind of saw beej how everyone else saw beetlejuice, and thought he was a crazy trouble making wierdo not wanting anything to do with him until one day barbara brings beetlejuice around telling adam they should help him hunt the paranormal, withadam being the tech guy since his love for fixing and building things carries over into more modern tech in this au. Adam doesnt believe beej at first but on their first job that quickly changes and the 3 of them eventually become paranormal investigation team, barbara being their witch/mystic and adam ad their tech/research/ and camera guy. Adam's parents eventually kick adam and barbara out because they don't approve of Barbara's witchcraft but also that both of them are working with the "town menace" beetlejuice so after that they live with beej out of the van. Often struggling to turn a profit or make ends meet . all of them become infamous around town and ans are mostly hated especially since they're rivaling otho. Otho(early to mid 30's) is the town's medium,exorcist ,paranormal investigator and rival of our mystery gang. Most of the town looks up to him and he's seen as the savior of pleasant pines when he's actually a fraud. He rarely actually solves any actually problems or finds a cheap/half assed way of doing it while pretending to this all powerful mystic. He also tends to just straight up exorsize ghosts even low level ones that arent demons or poltergeists when beetle juice tries to help these spirits and they down need to be exorsized. Otho is assisted by vanessa (She is the magician's assistant from the film)(24/25) his loyal assistant who enjoys having power in town and living ontop working for otho uaually willing to do whatever he says to help them rise to power of course she is very independent and will speak her mind, still often doing what she wants. They both along with otho's other followers want the mystery gang gone. Delia (early to mis 30's) is one of the the many deticated followers to otho in town, being one of his closest friends and wants to help in anyway she can. Delia is also a witch or a witch in training under otho but very new to witchcraft and since she is taken under otho's wing she doesn't really know alot of proper witchcraft. Delia is more naive and thinks otho is actually helping, wanting to assist him and the town in anyway possible. Lydia (13), Charles' daughter and delia's stepdaughter is fascinated with the paranormal and runs a blog "pleasant pines paranormal" documenting all things weird in town. Lydia is also obsessed with the mystery gang and desperately wishes to join them despite being so young and a job like this will put her in alot of danger. She eventually convinces them to hire them because of her father's connections to certain buildings and lands around town since charles has a job in real estate and is pretty successful/well off giving them leads ahead of otho. With her step mother's close friendship with him this also gives them a chance to one up him. Lydia can see ghosts loke beej but keeps it mostly a secret to not be ostracized even more by the town like beej is, and eventually learns witcraft under barbara. Through out the story lydia is also trying to look for emily's ghost around town or find her in some kind of after life. Charles (late 30's) as mentioned works in real estate in town inadvertently helping the gang with leads and investigation. Charles is more neutral toward otho and the mystery gang, he doesnt really see otho as a great saviour of the town like everyone else but luts up with all the otho stuff because of delia. He also doesn't hate the mystery gang just see's them as a bunch of kids making money the same way otho is although he isnt thrilled his daughter is following them around. This is the main cast and story for now, there are more characters like: tina (miss argentina) (24) who is childhood friends with beej and donny she like charles is more neuteral toward bith parties although since she ia friends with beetle juice she is more on their side, often trying to help them with food, essentials, somwetimes lets them sleep in her apartment and use her shower. She unfortunatly doeant areally believe that beej can see ghosts like the town and thinks its "delusions" which puts a strain in their friendship especially since tina thinks they should find a real job, this isnt malicious she's just worried about her friends and hates seeing them struggle. Tina Secretary/assistant to juno in this au and the ex girlfriend to vanessa. Tina doesnt really like otho and broke up with vanessa after she became closer and more loyal to him. Claire (13) lydia's classmate (and crush) like in the cartoon bullies lydia for being "weird" and helping the mystery gang, claire's parents are rich followers of otho. Sometimes acts as a spy/informant for otho to prove her loyalty to him and her parents. I think this is all the basic info and main cast stuff for the au im probably missing some stuff tho. Theres also alot of things i have developed already and alot more world building i want to do so if y'all wanna hear more about this au hmu in asks, I'll probably even draw some stuff for this au.

[candyclan]

Coming out letter to my mom. (FTM) At the start of my transition, I wanted to go by a name that started with an “A”because my birthname did. All the rest of it is basically the same.

THE TRUTH:

I didn’t scream “I am a boy” at my parents. Honestly, my mother (specifically) controlled a lot of what I did, who I hung out with, and what I wore as a child. I believe she has/had an idea about what she wanted out of a daughter since I was born, and really just lived through me. I think she eventually had to give me room to make my own decisions, later in life. I didn’t come out until I was 16, although I had spent 6 months prior to even coming out thinking about my gender identity. I was extremely sheltered. I want you guys to know that I didn’t know what being transgender was until I was a freshman in high school and met my best friend (who is STILL MY BEST FRIEND TODAY) who identified as Non-binary gender fluid. I had never really met someone AFAB that lived to be anything other than female. With that came the knowledge that sometimes, men don’t necessarily have to have penises and I can wear whatever I’m comfortable with. I used to be religious in middle school (raised Christian) but I never found god. It never made sense to me how so many people can put their faith in other people’s ideas of what god is (the Bible) but not listen when their real CHILD comes to them and tells them that they feel uncomfortable in their gender identity. I also came out as bisexual in middle school, after meeting a girl I had a fancy for. To which my mother sobbed and cried and asked how she had failed as a parent. I remember loving pink, it was my favorite color. Pink, purple, blue. My top 3. Now it’s blue, pink, purple but basically the same. I had a pink room, loved hello kitty, let my mom curl my hair with little curlers at night so I could wake up and be somebody different the next day. My brother played with carebears and my Barbie dolls more than I did as a child. I remember a toy gun and handcuffs. I was fairly experimental as a child, I did: Girl Scouts, swimming, piano, soccer, ballet, cheerleading, and more honestly. I always got “boy” toys at McDonald’s (I mean cmon they’re cooler) I just was kinda everywhere. I feel like that’s easier for someone AFAB to be. My brother was harassed by my family for liking girly things but I was never shown that I couldn’t like stereotypical “boy things” by extended family. My mother however in the line at McDonalds I could never forget, turned and looked at me (baseball cap backwards tank top and shorts)and said “So, what?” “Are you batting for the other team” implying that because of the clothes I liked to wear I would be a lesbian. My mother (like I said, kinda controlling and extremely narcissistic) when I was allowed to cut my hair super short for the first time I was 16. Afterwards she has said things like: “but you’re so pretty how could you have cut your hair” “you looked so nice with long hair” I never felt akin to femininity. I was actually VERY uncomfortable with it. I hated being the “weaker” gender. I never wanted my nails painted. It was torture. I acted like makeup and and nail polish was torture, the hairbrush was my enemy. I used to just put my hair up in a low ponytail every day as I got older. I knew she’d never let me cut it all off. Basically, other than wanting to grow up strong and tough and not liking to be treated like a female, I was female. There were parts of being female I didn’t really have a problem with, and honestly that’s why I didn’t come out for so long. I wasn’t in a house or raised by people I knew would accept anything other than me being their “little girl” I was a daddies girl. So between my lack of understanding of where my feelings towards my gender roles were coming from, being encouraged by my family to be girly, not being exposed to gender diversity (or anything queer), and my controlling mother, I remained in the dark about who I was.

TRIGGER WARNING:::(abuse)::::: I was never close with my mother, and actually hated her growing up. To this day she is the most judge mental, self-centered woman I know. My father was funny, charismatic, and lost his shit sometimes. I like to say, 90% of the time he was amazing. We made jokes and could literally finish each other’s sentences. But honestly my father, 10% of the time was abusive. Most of my abuse in my life was covert (narcissistic abuse from my mother) and verbal/emotional/barely physical abuse from my father. He’s 6”3’ 350 lbs and very loud and scary, especially to a young child. He punched a hole in my wall, he threw a remote at a wall and shattered it to pieces, he threatened to kill my dog with a baseball bat in front of me. Which I swear to god he would have done if I wasn’t holding my dog, protecting him. These moments were few and far between, but they were riddled with insults and almost always left me with less than I started with. My father did spank my brother and I, and one time he clapped my brother so well that he left a purple hand mark on his butt. My mother told my father she’d take us away if that happened again. My father never left marks. He never had to, he was so big and would just get up in my face and scream at me. He made me feel helpless. Because he was invading my space I felt physically threatened, and he never actually had to touch me and leave bruises because that threat was already implied by invading my space. I was so young, but I always knew my family wasn’t right. Finally at 16, I stood up to my father for the first time. I didn’t care if he was bigger than me, I didn’t care if I would lose, I was willing to fight for me. Anyway, long story short the police were called because we were screaming at each other in front of his apartment building. I’m not going to say I didn’t fuck up as a teenager, but I never deserved the pressure and the abuse he was dishing out and had dished out my whole life. I knew that. I cut him out of my life just after turning 16, by then I had been questioning my identity. It became easier after leaving my father to fall into who I was. My father is FAIRLY religious and my mother claims to be but she never talks about god, she never prays, and now that my father and her are divorced I don’t think she’s been inside a church since. Losing my father was a lot, despite his abuse he and I were really close and had really similar personalities. The reality of abuse isn’t “well, now I see them as an abuser so now none of that good stuff is left it’s all tainted” I had to struggle with losing someone very important in my life at a young age, for myself.

Arguments against me being trans:

My family has been a bit divided in responding to me coming out. By now, it’s been about 4 years.

My mother and her side of the family are in denial. They don’t understand how I can’t be a “lesbian that just likes boy things”. They don’t use my name or pronouns.

My father, what little communication I have with him now, is bewildered. He and I had a discussion this past Christmas where I brought up what his abuse did to me mentally and he apologized but then tried to say “well what about your part in all of this” and said that I was hanging out with crazy depressed people, cutting myself, doing drugs, (I was smoking weed and I’ve tried acid like once piss off) and was sneaking out. Yeah. I did do all of that BUT GUESS WHAT. IM 20. I go where I wanna go. I fuck who I wanna fuck. I smoke what I want and guess what? It’s not any different from when I was 16 except now I don’t have parents up my ass telling me what to do. His argument basically was that I need to own up to what I did too and that fucking angered me. You don’t apologize and then go “well what about you” that’s not an apology. That’s deflection and honestly I don’t think I need to apologize because my parents were super controlling. I was just trying to do what I wanted and they didn’t like it. He and I have talked about me being trans and he pretty much thinks I’m certifiable. Doesn’t use my name or pronouns.

My brother: Ethan, my brother and I have always been close. He’s 17 now, and he had a different reaction to me being trans. Of all of my family he was the most receptive to my pleas of gender dysphoria and he suffers with anxiety so he gets stuff. But alas, after asking him if he’d call me by my name and pronouns (after 4 years of being out) he thinks that I am the one that has an issue with society. I told him I was starting T soon and he said: “Hrt won’t lessen all the things that come with being transgender. If you feel like doing hormones is the best for you then do it, but from a logical standpoint I think there just needs to be more thickening of skin” he claimes that if I try hard enough I could be fine living as female. Doesn’t use my name or pronouns.

None of my family supports me. None of my family understands. And none of them ever will. I have been out for four fucking years. I can’t tell you how frustrating family rejection can be. I have cried so much at the idea of not having a supportive family. I feel like I was ripped away from a beautiful life somewhere and thrust into this mess.

Honestly though, it doesn’t matter, the world keeps spinning and I keep finding people who love and accept me for who I truly am. I have made peace with my family’s lack of acceptance. It’s made me stronger and more compassionate towards others. Made me want to be better than them. I am actually going to start hormones soon, and on top of other fears I have, will be cutting my family out of my life. I can’t be 25 with a full beard and getting misgendered by my family. I can’t do it. They may feel like I’m going too far, that I don’t have to do this, but I do. I’m not doing this because I didn’t get too much attention as a kid or my mom favored my brother over me, I’m not doing this because it’s cool, I’m not doing this because I’m bored, I’m not doing this because I hate myself or anyone else. This is AFFIRMATION. Sometimes, cutting people who can’t see you for who your really are out of your life is affirming too.

Guys, girls, people, keep your head up. Things get better, I know. I thought life was never going to get better so I know that’s what it can feel like. But it does. Never ever let someone control your life or who you are. You’re beautiful/handsome/amazing! You deserve to be comfortable in your own skin and to love who you are. I am getting there, we all are.

Love,

Tanner M.

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Why do we feel so guilty all the time?

The long read: Food, sex, money, work, family, friends, health, politics: theres nothing we cant feel guilty about, including our own feelings of guilt

I feel guilty about everything. Already today Ive felt guilty about having saidthe wrong thing to a friend. Then Ifeltguilty about avoiding that friend because of the wrong thing Id said. Plus, I havent called my mother yet today: guilty. And I really should have organised something special for my husbands birthday: guilty. I gave the wrong kind of food to my child: guilty. Ive been cutting corners at work lately: guilty. I skipped breakfast: guilty. I snacked instead: double guilty. Im taking up all this space in a world with not enough space in it: guilty, guilty, guilty.

Nor am I feeling good about feeling bad. Not whensophisticated friends never fail toremind me how selfinvolved, self-aggrandising, politically conservative and morally stunted the guilty are. Poor me. Guilty about guilty. Filial guilt, fraternal guilt, spousal guilt, maternal guilt, peer guilt, work guilt, middle-class guilt, whiteguilt, liberal guilt, historical guilt, Jewish guilt: Im guilty of them all.

Thankfully, there are those who say they can save us from guilt. According to the popular motivational speaker Denise Duffield-Thomas, author of Get Rich, Lucky Bitch!, guilt is one of the most common feelings women suffer. Guilty women, lured by guilt into obstructing their own paths to increased wealth, power, prestige and happiness, just cant seem to take advantage of their advantages.

You might feel guilty, Duffield-Thomas writes, for wanting more, or for spending money on yourself, or for taking time out of your busy family life to work on improving yourself. You might feel guilty that other people are poor, thatyour friend is jealous, that there are starving people in theworld. Sure enough, I do feel guilty for those things. So,itis something of a relief to hear that I can be helped thatI can be self-helped. But, for that to happen, what I must first understand is that a) Im worth it, and b) none of these structures of global inequality, predicated on historical injustices, are my fault.

My guilt, in other words, is a sign not of my guilt but of myinnocence even my victimhood. Its only by forgiving myself for the wrongs for which I bear no direct responsibility that I can learn to release my money blocks and live afirstclass life, according to Duffield-Thomas.

Imagine that: a first-class life. This sort of advice, which frames guilt as our most fundamentally inhibiting emotion, takes insights from psychoanalytic and feminist thinking and transforms them into the language of business motivation. The promise is that our guilt can be expiated by making money.

Its an idea that might resonate especially in the German language, where guilt and debt arethe same word, schuld. One thinks, for example, of Max Webers thesis about how the spirit of capitalism conflates our worldly and heavenly riches, on the basis that what you earn in this world also serves as a measure of your spiritual virtue, since it depends on your capacity for hard work, discipline and self-denial.

But what Weber calls salvation anxiety within the Protestant work ethic has the opposite effect to the self-help manuals promise to liberate entrepreneurs from their guilt. For Weber, in fact, the capitalist pursuit of profit does not reduce ones guilt, but actively exacerbates it for, in an economy that admonishes stagnation, there can be no rest forthe wicked.

So, the guilt that blocks and inhibits us also propels us to work, work, work, to become relentlessly productive in the hope that we might by our good works rid ourselves of guilt. Guilt thus renders us productive and unproductive, workaholic and workphobic a conflict that might explain theextreme and even violent lengths to which people sometimes will go, whether by scapegoating others or sacrificing themselves, to be rid of what many people considerthe mostunbearable emotion.

What is the potency of guilt? With its inflationary logic, guiltlooks, if anything, to have accumulated over time. Although we tend to blame religion for condemning man tolife as a sinner, the guilt that may once have attached tospecific vices vices for which religious communities couldprescribe appropriate penance now seems, in a more secular era, to surface in relation to just about anything: food, sex, money, work, unemployment, leisure, health, fitness, politics, family, friends, colleagues, strangers, entertainment, travel, the environment, you name it.

Equally, whoever has been tempted to suppose that rituals of public humiliation area macabre relic of the medieval past clearly hasnt been paying much attention to our life online. You cant expect to get away for long on social media without someone pointing an accusatory finger at you. Yet its hard to imagine that the presiding spirit of our age, the envious and resentful troll, would have such easy pickings if he could not already sense awhiff of guilt-susceptibility emanating from his prey.

It wasnt meant to be like this. The great crusaders of modernity were supposed to uproot our guilt. The subject ofcountless high-minded critiques, guilt was accused by modern thinkers of sapping the life out of us and causing ourpsychological deterioration. It was said to make us weak(Nietzsche), neurotic (Freud), inauthentic (Sartre).

In thelatter part of the 20th century, various critical theories gained academic credibility, particularly within the humanities. These were theories that sought to show whether with reference to class relations, race relations, gender relations how we are all cogs in a larger system ofpower. We may play our parts in regimes of oppression, but we are also at the mercy of forces larger than us.

But this raises questions about personal responsibility: if its true that our particular situation is underpinned by a complex network of social and economic relations, how can any individual really claim to bein control or entirely responsible for her own life? Viewed in such an impersonal light, guilt can seem an unhelpful hangover fromless selfaware times.

As a teacher of critical theory, I know how crucial and revelatory its insights can be. But Ive occasionally also suspected that our desire for systematic and structural formsof explanation may be fuelled by our anxiety at the prospect of discovering were on the wrong side of history.When wielded indelicately, explanatory theories can offer their adherents afoolproof system for knowing exactly what view to hold, with impunity, about pretty much everything as if one could take out an insurance policy to be sure of always being right. Often, too, thats as far as such criticism takes you into a right-thinking that doesnt necessarily organise itself into right-acting.

The notion that our intellectual frameworks might be as much a reaction to our guilt as a remedy for it might sound familiar to a religious person. In the biblical story, after all, man falls when hes tempted by fruit from the tree of knowledge. Its knowledge that leads him out of the Gardenof Eden into an exile that has yet to end. His guilt isaconstant, nagging reminder that he has taken this wrongturn.

Illustration: A Richard Allen

Yet even within that source we see how mans guilt can bedeceptive as slippery and seductive as the serpent who led him astray. For if man has sinned by tasting of knowledge, the guilt that punishes him repeats his crime: with all its finger-wagging and tenor of I told you so, guilt itself comes over as awfully knowing. It keeps us, as the psychoanalyst Adam Phillips has written, in thrall to that boring and repetitive voice inside our head that endlessly corrects, criticises, censors, judges and finds fault with us, but never brings usany news about ourselves. In our feelings of guilt, we seemalready to have the measure of who it is we are and whatit is were capable of.

Could that be the reason for our guilt? Not our lack of knowledge but rather our presumption of it? Our desperate need to be sure of ourselves, even when what we think of ourselves is that were worthless, useless, the pits? When we feel guilty we at least have the comfort of being certain ofsomething of knowing, finally, the right way to feel, whichis bad.

This may be why were addicted to crime dramas: they satisfy our wish for certainty, no matter how grim that certainty is. At the beginning of a detective story, were conscious of a crime, but we dont know who did it. By the end of the story, ithas been discovered which culprit is guilty: case closed. Thus guilt, inits popular rendering, is what converts our ignorance intoknowledge.

For a psychoanalyst, however, feelings of guilt dont necessarily have any connection tobeing guiltyin the eyes of the law.Our feelings of guilt may be a confession, but they usually precede the accusation of any crime the details ofwhich not even the guilty person can be sure.

So, while the stories we prefer may be the ones that uncover guilt, its equally possible that our own guilt is a cover story forsomething else.

Although the fall is originally a biblical story, forget religion for a moment. One can just as well recount a more recent and assuredly secular story of the fall of man. Its a story that has had countless narrators, perhaps none finer or more emphatic than the German Jewish postwar critic Theodor Adorno. Writing in the wake of the Holocaust, Adorno argued famously that whoever survives in a world that could produce Auschwitz is guilty, at least insofar as theyre still party to the same civilisation that created the conditions for Auschwitz.

Inother words, guilt is our unassailable historical condition. Its our contract as modern people. As such, says Adorno, we all have a shared responsibility after Auschwitz to be vigilant,lest we collapse once more into the ways of thinking, believing and behaving that brought down this guilty verdict upon us. To make sense after Auschwitz is to risk complicity with its barbarism.

For Adorno too, then, our knowledge renders us guilty, rather than keeping us safe. For a modern mind, this could well seem shocking. That said, perhaps the more surprising feature of Adornos representation of guilt is the idea expressed in his question whether after Auschwitz you cango on living especially whether one who escaped by accident, one who by rights should have been killed, may go on living. His mere survival calls for the coldness, the basic principle of bourgeois subjectivity, without which there couldhave been no Auschwitz; this is the drastic guilt of himwho was spared.

For Adorno, the guilt of Auschwitz belongs to all of western civilisation, but its a guilt he assumed would be felt most keenly by one who escaped by accident, one who by rights should have been killed the Jewish survivor of the second world war.

Adorno, who had left Europe for New York in early 1938, was probably attesting to his own sense of guilt. Yet his insight is one we alsoget from psychologists who worked with concentration camp survivors after the war; they found that feelings of guiltaccompanied by shame, self-condemnatory tendencies and self-accusations are experienced by the victims of the persecution and apparently much less (if at all) bythe perpetrators of it.

What can it mean if victims feel guilty and perpetrators areguilt-free? Are objective guilt (being guilty) and subjective guilt (feeling guilty) completely at odds with each other?

In the years after the war, the concept of survival guilt tended to be viewed as the byproduct of the victims identification with their aggressor. The survivor who may subsequently find it hard to forgive herself because others have diedin her place why am I still here when they are not? may also feel guilty because of what she was forced to collude withfor the sake of her survival. This need not imply any incriminating action on her part; her guilt may simply be anunconscious way of registering her past preference that others suffer instead of her.

On this basis, then, it may be possible to think of survivors guilt as a special case of the guilt we all bear when, aware or unaware, were glad when others, rather than ourselves, suffer. Obviously, thats not a pleasant feeling, but neither is ita hard one to understand. Still, there remains something deeply uncomfortable about accepting that survivors of the worst atrocities should feel any guilt for their own survival. Instead, shouldnt we be trying to save the survivor from her (in our view) mistaken feelings of guilt andthus establish, without smirch or quibble, her absolute innocence?

This understandable impulse, according to the intellectual historian Ruth Leys, saw the figure of the survivor emerge in the period after the second world war, alongside a shift in focus from the victims feelings of guilt toward an insistence on the victims innocence. This transformation, Leys argues, involved replacing the concept of guilt with its close cousin, shame.

The difference is crucial. The victim who feels guilt evidently has an inner life, with intentions and desires while the victim who feels shame seems to have had it bestowed from outside. The victims of trauma consequently appear to be the objects rather than the subjects ofhistory.

Shame, then, tells us something about what one is, not what one does or would like to do. And so the effect of this well-intentioned shift in emphasis may have been to rob the survivor of agency.

It may be tempting to assume that survival guilt is an extraordinary case, given the abject powerlessness of the victims of such traumas. But, as we will see, attempts to deny the validity of the guilt of others often have the similar effect of denying their intentions as well. Consider the case of liberal guilt, the guilt we all love to hate.

Liberal guilt has become a shorthand for describing those who feel keenly a lack of social, political and economic justice, but are not the ones who suffer thebrunt of it. According to the cultural critic Julie Ellison, it first took hold in the US in the 1990s, on the back of a post-cold-war fragmentation of theleft, and a loss of faith in the utopian politics of collective action that had characterised an earlier generation of radicals. The liberal who feels guilty has given up on the collective and recognises herself to be acting out of self-interest. Her guilt is thus a sign of the gap between what she feels for the others suffering and what she will do actively to alleviate it which isnot, it turns out, a great deal.

As such, her guilt incites much hostility in others, not least in the person who feels himself the object of the liberals guilt. This person, AKA the victim, understands only too well how seldom the pity he elicits in the guilty liberal is likely to lead toany significant structural or political changes for him.

Rather, the only power to be redirected his way is not political power, but the moral or affective power to make those more fortunate than he is feel even more guilty about the privileges they are nonetheless not inclined to give up.

But just how in control of her feelings is the guilty liberal? Not very, thinks Ellison. Since feelings arent easily confected, her guilt tends to assail her unbidden, rendering her highly performative, exhibitionist, even hysterical. In her guilt, she experiences a loss of control, although she remains conscious at all times of an audience, before whom she feels she must show how spectacularly sorry she is. Her guilt, then, is her way of acting out, marking a disturbance in the liberal who doesnt know herself quite as well as her guilt would haveher think.

The idea of guilt as aninhibiting emotion corroborates the common critique of liberal guilt: that, for all the suffering it produces, it fails completely to motivate the guilty subject tobring about meaningful political change.

But what if the liberals guilt actually has another purpose, to allow the liberal respite from the thing she may (unconsciously) feel even worse about: the lack of a fixed identity that tells her who she is, what her responsibilities are and where these come to an end.

If anything can be said to characterise the notoriously woolly liberal, guilt may be it. Liberal guilt suggests a certain class (middle), race (white) and geopolitical (developed world) situation. As such, despite the torment it brings to those who suffer it, it might, paradoxically (and, again, unconsciously), be reassuring for someone whose real neurosis is that she feels her identity is so mobile and shiftingthat she can never quite be surewhere she stands.

If this is what chiefly concerns her, then one might envisage her guilt as a feeling that tells her who she is, by virtue of telling her who she is failing to be for others. Who is the liberal? She who suffers on account of those who suffer morethan she. (I know whereof I speak.)

This may suggest why, in recent years, there has been mounting criticism of the liberals sensibilities. To her critics, the liberal really is guilty. Shes guilty of a) secretly resenting victims for how their sufferings make her feel, b) drawing attention away from them and back towards her, c) having theaudacity to make an exhibition out of her self-lacerations and d) doing practically nothing to challenge the status quo.

For critics of the guilty liberal, in other words, feeling guiltyis part of the problem, rather than the solution. And yetthis criticism is itself subject to the same accusation. Giventhat criticising someone for feeling guilty is only going to make them feel guiltier, guilt has, asweve seen, proved atricky opponent one that its various modern combatants have yetto defeat.

Once again, therefore, in the case of liberal guilt, we encounter a feeling so devilishly slippery that it repeats the problem in the course of confessing it. Because there is, of course, aform of guilt that does not inspire us to act, but prevents us from acting. This type of guilt takes the uncertainty of our relations with others (and our responsibility for others) and turns them into an object of certainty and knowledge.

But since the object in this case is our own self, we can see how liberal guilt, too, mutates guilt into a version of shame.Shame, infact, could well be a more accurate appellation for what motivates the guilty liberal in her public and private self-condemnations.

However, before we declare the liberal guilty as charged as in guilty of the wrong kind of guilt its worth reminding ourselves of the survival guilt that has likewise been viewed by many as guilt of the wrong kind. For as we observed in that case, in seeking to save the victim from her guilt, the victim becomes deprived of the very thing that might distinguish herfrom the objectifying aggression that has assailed her: asense of her own intentions and wishes, however aggressive, perverse or thwarted these might be.

For this reason, then, its vital to preserve the notion of survivors guilt (and, despite obvious differences, liberal guilt) as that which could yet return to the survivor (or the liberal) apower of agency such as must be absolutely necessary if sheis to have a future that isnt bound, by the resolving or absolving of her guilt, to repeat the past ad infinitum.

If religion often gets the blame for framing man as sinner, thesecular effort to release man from his guilt hasnt offered much relief. The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben suggests that subjective innocence belongs to a bygone age, the age of the tragic hero. Oedipus, for example, is someone whose objective guilt (parricide, incest) is matched by the subjective innocence of the man who acts before he knows. Today, however, says Agamben, we find the opposing situation: modern man is objectively innocent (for he has not, like Oedipus, murdered with his own hands), but subjectively guilty (he knows that his comforts and securities have been paid for by someone, somewhere, probably in blood).

By falsely promising a tabula rasa bound to his historical and intellectual emancipation, modernity may not only have failed to obliterate mans subjective guilt, but may even have exacerbated it. For what many a modern man is guilty of is less his actions than his addiction to a version of knowledge that seems to have inhibited his capacity for action. As such, the religious assignation of man as sinner a fallen, abject, endlessly compromised, but also active, effective andchangeable creature begins to look comforting bycomparison.

Such a view also shares much in common with a certain psychoanalytic conception of guilt as a blocked form of aggression or anger toward those we need and love (God, parents, guardians, whomever we depend on for our own survival). But if guilt is the feeling that typically blocks all other (buried, repressed, unconscious) feelings, that is not initself areason to block feelings of guilt. Feelings, after all, are what you must be prepared to feel if they are to move you,or if you are to feel something else.

Main illustration by A Richard Allen

Adapted from Feeling Jewish (A Book for Just About Anyone) by Devorah Baum, which will be published by Yale University Press on 19 October at 18.99. To buy it for 16.15, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over 10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of 1.99.

Follow the Long Read on Twitter at @gdnlongread, or sign up to the long read weekly email here.

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‘I’m like a secret assassin’: Poo Bear on writing for Justin Bieber, Skrillex and Sam Smith

The songwriter aka Jason Boyd has been writing hits for more than 20 years, but his collaboration with Bieber on Where R Now? made him an overnight sensation. It literally changed music, he tells Elle Hunt

You may not have heard of Jason Boyd, better but not widely known as Poo Bear, but youve heard him.

After more than two decades as a songwriter and producer of mostly R&B and pop, his fingerprints are on hits for an array of artists including Usher, Chris Brown, and Lupe Fiasco.

Peaches & Cream by the R&B quartet 112, which spent 25 weeks in the Top 40 in 2001, is one of his. So is Caught Up, Ushers fifth single from Confessions. And Work, one of Kelly Rowlands most successful solo works.

Poo Bear was 14 and still in high school when he co-wrote his first hit, Anywhere, for 112; he is now 38.

He considers his low profile the secret to his longevity; people tire of the same old songwriters and producers. It might not mean that your music isnt great anymore; it might just mean they might just be over it, he says. For me, it was a blessing to stay under the radar so they couldnt really get tired of me … Im like a secret assassin. You dont even know its like, oh, Poo Bear did that.

His star is in fact the highest its ever been, thanks to a boost from a musician whose own could not have fallen much lower. Poo Bear was instrumental in Justin Biebers turnaround from one of the worlds most-loathed celebrities to electronic dance music superstar, co-writing much of his 2015 album, Purpose.

Just weeks after Bieber brought his megatour-stroke-victory lap to Australia, Poo Bear is in Sydney for the world premiere of Afraid of Forever, a documentary about his career, produced by Red Bull.

Softly-spoken and earnest, with the trademark greeting happy birthday (because youre supposed to feel like that every day), he seems a little bemused by the attention.

Poo Bear: Ive watched songwriters, writers, producers, even artists that Ive written hits for come and go. Photograph: Dustin Downing

Ive watched songwriters, writers, producers, even artists that Ive written hits for come and go, he says, speaking to Guardian Australia at the Star casino on Wednesday morning. But to the world, it looked like Justin Bieber was my first success.

When Bieber and Bear were first introduced in Las Vegas in January 2013, they bonded over their shared love of R&B, with Bieber a fan of many of the artists Bear had written for.

Both were raised by single mothers in low-income, religious homes, and both entered the music industry at a young age. As Bieber once put it, they kind of just vibed on a personal level.

Poo Bears parents divorced when he was eight; two weeks later, a tornado destroyed the family home in Connecticut. He and his mother and brother spent nine months homeless before moving to Atlanta, Georgia, for a fresh start made possible by a donation of $4,000 from their church.

Bear signed his first record deal four years later. Bieber was the same age 13 when he was discovered on YouTube by his longtime manager, Scooter Braun.

Braun disapproved of Bear when he first started spending time with Bieber, concerned he was a bad influence at a time when the young singers star was already in a nosedive. (Bear did once characterise his early friendship with Bieber as making bad decisions with a minor smoking weed and getting into trouble.)

[Braun] did try to separate us, and that brought us closer. Over time, I understood it … This was a kid hed been raising since he was 13 if I was in that situation, I probably wouldve been a little overprotective too. (Braun is now Bears manager as well.)

Poo Bear and Bieber eventually collaborated on Journals, an unassuming compilation of mostly R&B singles released at the end of 2013. It was never intended to be a commercial hit, says Bear; Bieber was exercising some creative freedom and taking tentative steps out of child-stardom a transition to which Poo Bear proved crucial.

People always say, I wasnt really feeling Justin, but it wasnt really for them. It was always for kids and little girls. When Journals came out, it opened up the world to this other side of Justin that we never knew existed.

Most Top 40 hits are collaborations between producers, who make the beat, and top-line writers such as Poo Bear, who come up with melodies and lyrics. Photograph: Dustin Downing

At that time, Bieber was almost exclusively known for abandoning his pet monkey to customs officials, spitting on fans from a balcony, and urinating in a restaurants mop bucket.

Theres no time for failure; theres no money for failure, the producer Scott Storch, with whom Poo Bear collaborated closely between 2005 and 2008, says in Afraid of Forever.

Compared to the songwriting-by-committee approach and safer bets such as the Swedish hit-making powerhouse Max Martin Biebers insistence on working with the relatively unknown Poo Bear constituted a risk, and at a time when his future was at stake.

The foundations for Biebers comeback were laid in a whole campaign devised by Scooter Braun, says Bear: The [Comedy Central] roast and everything that was all Scooters idea.

Poo Bear and singer-songwriter Justin Bieber at Poo Bears Grammy Party at Serafina Sunset on February 10, 2017 in West Hollywood, California. Photograph: Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images

But public relationships could only do so much: it would take a hit to cement Biebers return, and that pressure was on Poo Bear.

The breakthrough was Where R Now?, imagined by Bear as a piano ballad. Then Skrillex turn it into a movie, he says, almost with awe.

Skrillex and his fellow producer Diplo had heard the demo of the track, and expressed interest in it as a single for their upcoming collaboration as Jack .

In their hands, the wistful ballad became springy and cinematic, with a throbbing beat and a dolphin-cry chorus that was revealed to be Biebers voice, digitally manipulated beyond recognition, in a slick New York Times video about its production.

Its influence is inescapable now; in February 2015, when it was released by Jack with Justin Bieber, it was utterly new. It literally changed music, says Bear. It took a while, but it ended up catching on. It was played, oh my God, so much on the radio.

Where R Now paved the way for What Do You Mean?, the lead single off Purpose and co-written by Bieber, Poo Bear and just one other. It was an immediate hit the first number-one of Biebers half-decade career and introduced to the charts the Caribbean-influenced tropical house sound now so ubiquitous, even Ed Sheeran has dabbled in it. (Its like, out of all the people, I would have thought you would be somebody to do something different, says Bear, slightly accusatorially.)

Two more number-one singles followed, while Purpose itself debuted at number-one on the US Billboard 200 album chart. It topped album charts in 11 other countries, and was nominated for album of the year at the 2017 Grammys.

Bieber was back.

It was done, says Bear. Nobody could take it away from him. I dont know about the rest of the world, but America loves redemption. They love giving people second chances.

With the momentum behind Bieber came unprecedented attention for Poo Bear, who gave the first extensive interview of his career to the New York Times in October 2015; at the time, he didnt even have a Wikipedia page.

At the same time, he is under no illusions that he is now a celebrity.

I like going out and having very few people coming up to me because they read the credits and they know, he says. I see my friends who have superstar lifestyles, and its great to have hundreds of millions of dollars, but at the same time, its a sacrifice of your own sanity.

He has, however, quadrupled his pre-Purpose fee in a bid to retain some exclusivity in the face of increased demand. Now he is working with Skrillex and UK singer-songwriter Sam Smith on projects that, he hopes, will throw out the sound he pioneered 18 months ago and which has been widely aped since. (He makes a conscious effort not to listen to popular music: its not inspiring.)

Finally, Ive reached a place where if Im working with an artist, they allow me to just do whatever I feel, he says. Growing up it was like, we want another Peaches and Cream. Then you realise … why would you want a 2001 Mercedes Benz when Im making 2018 Benzes?

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from ‘I’m like a secret assassin’: Poo Bear on writing for Justin Bieber, Skrillex and Sam Smith

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I just told my parents that I'm not a muslim and it was my worst decision ever. via /r/atheism

Submitted March 18, 2017 at 01:36PM by BaselNoeman (Via reddit http://ift.tt/2nyg7t0) I just told my parents that I'm not a muslim and it was my worst decision ever.

I'm a 19 year old Egyptian guy living in the Netherlands, I've been raised a muslim, but all hell broke loose when I told my parents last night that I am in fact a non-believer. I am an open person respecting all people who make the choice to pursue their faiths, but boy would I lie to y'all if I told you I don't hate religion with a burning passion. It destroyed my life and it seems like it will keep on destroying the rest of my life

I've started to realise I might not have been a religious person by the time I was 12 and started lying to my parents about whether I would have prayed or not. While fasting I would sneakily eat some snacks when my parents were not watching and everytime they told me to read a little of the Quran I would act like I did and play video games in my room. I've always hated the rules and traditions of this religion and the moment I realised that I was living a lie (even though I was young) was the moment I started to realise that I am not a muslim. In fact I didn't believe jack about the things I've learned about this religion. The things I read in the Quran, the things my whole family have been feeding me, the things my Imams said to me, the things they were saying on television...

I knew this was a secret and I just had to take this secret to my grave, but it got harder to keep it a secret as I grew older. I must have been 15/16 when I really started to become a teenager. I got into smoking weed, I started having sex with my girlfriend and the time and I would drink alcohol from time to time. These were the things that I truly enjoyed, I didnt care about the fact that my parents would ever be okay with that, I am a man that just does whatever he pleases and no one can restrict me. As time passed by my parents started to realise that I am not that holy. From time to time they would find things like lighters, rolling papers, condoms etc in my room and I always just took a scolding followed up by some promises that I would never do it again. But this week I got caught with the worst of all things. A bottle of whiskey. God that was so dumb to even bring into my house but all right they found it, I knew they found it because it wasnt in the place I hid it in. Along the whiskey was a little joint and a condom.

Yesterday I heard my parents arguing about me and shortly after that my father wanted to take me for a drive. I got in the car and my father brought me to the mosque and we'd start praying (me pretending to pray of course) and after that at 9 PM he brought me to his store a few miles away to have a talk with me. The whole 30 minutes drive was awkward as fuck and we didnt say shit to each other, I just knew I was fucked. We went to this room and he told me to wait. I waited for what seemed like forever and eventually my dad came to me with a box. He emptied te box on the table and the box contained all the "bad" things they found. Condoms, rolling papers, that stupid bottle of whisky and many more things. That was the moment I knew I just had to tell him. I've been living a lie all my life and I dont want the lies to eat me up. "Why is my son like this" he asked. He started pointing at a joint "Of course you would tell me that this is from one friend" and then he pointed to the bottle of whiskey saying "and that one over there is from your other friend. But I know it is a lie. Your mother wants to believe it but I simply can't. Tell me... why is my son like this".

I told him the reason why it didnt matter to me that I did bad "bad things". I started telling him everything, about how I am not religious and I don't believe in god, never did. How I just always acted like I did in order not to break the hearts of my parents. I told him there was no saving me and I stood by my choice, I no one will make me believe in a god, its just the way I was. He was shocked, he asked me "and what now...". To which I replied "well of course having said that, I know you will never accept this. Thats why I kept it a secret all my life and I see no other choice than us to part ways since no atheist could be living in the house of a religious family". He said that I took the words out of his mouth. But it was stupid, I am stupid. I just thought this was a way of freeing some load, but it was way worse than that and I realised that as the discussion proceeded with my dad. I am stupid because I have no back up plan, and I never did think of a back up plan. I recently became un employed, college is not going wel and I have 300 euros saved up. Enough to bring me exactly no where. Anyway back to the story, after I told him everything he told me that he was a failure as a dad and that I am his failure, he said to me that he will tell everyone in the future that he has just 3 kids instead of 4. And I accepted all that, I always kinda hated my father anyway. However that was not it... I had to tell my mother and brothers. 30 minutes went by, we were back home and my father just gathered everyone around a table and told me to tell everyone my little secret. I told them...

The talk I had with my father was mild, he kept saying mean things to me but I didnt care. But as soon as I told my family, lets just say they reacted bad, really really bad. I could shoot myself in the head and they probably wouldnt have cried as much. My oldest brother, the one I talk to once every month even though we share a room, just went to our room and started crying and destroying stuff. My mother was devestaded, I tried to calm her down but she didnt want me to touch her. My sweet mother, the mother that has been so loving to me. That was the first time I saw her look of disgust. She hates me now. She told me that she will not leave me, that she will bring me to Mecca and bring me to the best imams in the world and all that stuff, but I just told her that that wouldn't work out. My father just brought me family pictures and a scissor and told me to start cutting. They all hate me, I brought sadness to this family and it will take a long time to heal. My parents gave me an ultimatum and I have till tonight to decide. Either I try to get religious or I can never show my face again. I will never be able to call my mom asking her how she's been, and I will never be able to see my brothers again. One of the 4 being my best friend but he has down syndrome so it will be hard to keep touch with him. I just regret my choice to come clean, I really do... I whish I could have taken this secret to my grave. Yesterday was litteraly my worst day ever. I just dont know what to do, I cant make this choice, fuck this choice. But I know one thing, I hate religion for what it did to me. And it may seem edgy but I just want to type it out: fuck religion fuck islam fuck every brain washing fairy tale fuck

I am very not okay at the moment but I just wanted to share my story and it felt good to type it out. English is not my native language so I am really sorry if I hurt your brains.

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Why do we feel so guilty all the time?

The long read: Food, sex, money, work, family, friends, health, politics: theres nothing we cant feel guilty about, including our own feelings of guilt

I feel guilty about everything. Already today Ive felt guilty about having saidthe wrong thing to a friend. Then Ifeltguilty about avoiding that friend because of the wrong thing Id said. Plus, I havent called my mother yet today: guilty. And I really should have organised something special for my husbands birthday: guilty. I gave the wrong kind of food to my child: guilty. Ive been cutting corners at work lately: guilty. I skipped breakfast: guilty. I snacked instead: double guilty. Im taking up all this space in a world with not enough space in it: guilty, guilty, guilty.

Nor am I feeling good about feeling bad. Not whensophisticated friends never fail toremind me how selfinvolved, self-aggrandising, politically conservative and morally stunted the guilty are. Poor me. Guilty about guilty. Filial guilt, fraternal guilt, spousal guilt, maternal guilt, peer guilt, work guilt, middle-class guilt, whiteguilt, liberal guilt, historical guilt, Jewish guilt: Im guilty of them all.

Thankfully, there are those who say they can save us from guilt. According to the popular motivational speaker Denise Duffield-Thomas, author of Get Rich, Lucky Bitch!, guilt is one of the most common feelings women suffer. Guilty women, lured by guilt into obstructing their own paths to increased wealth, power, prestige and happiness, just cant seem to take advantage of their advantages.

You might feel guilty, Duffield-Thomas writes, for wanting more, or for spending money on yourself, or for taking time out of your busy family life to work on improving yourself. You might feel guilty that other people are poor, thatyour friend is jealous, that there are starving people in theworld. Sure enough, I do feel guilty for those things. So,itis something of a relief to hear that I can be helped thatI can be self-helped. But, for that to happen, what I must first understand is that a) Im worth it, and b) none of these structures of global inequality, predicated on historical injustices, are my fault.

My guilt, in other words, is a sign not of my guilt but of myinnocence even my victimhood. Its only by forgiving myself for the wrongs for which I bear no direct responsibility that I can learn to release my money blocks and live afirstclass life, according to Duffield-Thomas.

Imagine that: a first-class life. This sort of advice, which frames guilt as our most fundamentally inhibiting emotion, takes insights from psychoanalytic and feminist thinking and transforms them into the language of business motivation. The promise is that our guilt can be expiated by making money.

Its an idea that might resonate especially in the German language, where guilt and debt arethe same word, schuld. One thinks, for example, of Max Webers thesis about how the spirit of capitalism conflates our worldly and heavenly riches, on the basis that what you earn in this world also serves as a measure of your spiritual virtue, since it depends on your capacity for hard work, discipline and self-denial.

But what Weber calls salvation anxiety within the Protestant work ethic has the opposite effect to the self-help manuals promise to liberate entrepreneurs from their guilt. For Weber, in fact, the capitalist pursuit of profit does not reduce ones guilt, but actively exacerbates it for, in an economy that admonishes stagnation, there can be no rest forthe wicked.

So, the guilt that blocks and inhibits us also propels us to work, work, work, to become relentlessly productive in the hope that we might by our good works rid ourselves of guilt. Guilt thus renders us productive and unproductive, workaholic and workphobic a conflict that might explain theextreme and even violent lengths to which people sometimes will go, whether by scapegoating others or sacrificing themselves, to be rid of what many people considerthe mostunbearable emotion.

What is the potency of guilt? With its inflationary logic, guiltlooks, if anything, to have accumulated over time. Although we tend to blame religion for condemning man tolife as a sinner, the guilt that may once have attached tospecific vices vices for which religious communities couldprescribe appropriate penance now seems, in a more secular era, to surface in relation to just about anything: food, sex, money, work, unemployment, leisure, health, fitness, politics, family, friends, colleagues, strangers, entertainment, travel, the environment, you name it.

Equally, whoever has been tempted to suppose that rituals of public humiliation area macabre relic of the medieval past clearly hasnt been paying much attention to our life online. You cant expect to get away for long on social media without someone pointing an accusatory finger at you. Yet its hard to imagine that the presiding spirit of our age, the envious and resentful troll, would have such easy pickings if he could not already sense awhiff of guilt-susceptibility emanating from his prey.

It wasnt meant to be like this. The great crusaders of modernity were supposed to uproot our guilt. The subject ofcountless high-minded critiques, guilt was accused by modern thinkers of sapping the life out of us and causing ourpsychological deterioration. It was said to make us weak(Nietzsche), neurotic (Freud), inauthentic (Sartre).

In thelatter part of the 20th century, various critical theories gained academic credibility, particularly within the humanities. These were theories that sought to show whether with reference to class relations, race relations, gender relations how we are all cogs in a larger system ofpower. We may play our parts in regimes of oppression, but we are also at the mercy of forces larger than us.

But this raises questions about personal responsibility: if its true that our particular situation is underpinned by a complex network of social and economic relations, how can any individual really claim to bein control or entirely responsible for her own life? Viewed in such an impersonal light, guilt can seem an unhelpful hangover fromless selfaware times.

As a teacher of critical theory, I know how crucial and revelatory its insights can be. But Ive occasionally also suspected that our desire for systematic and structural formsof explanation may be fuelled by our anxiety at the prospect of discovering were on the wrong side of history.When wielded indelicately, explanatory theories can offer their adherents afoolproof system for knowing exactly what view to hold, with impunity, about pretty much everything as if one could take out an insurance policy to be sure of always being right. Often, too, thats as far as such criticism takes you into a right-thinking that doesnt necessarily organise itself into right-acting.

The notion that our intellectual frameworks might be as much a reaction to our guilt as a remedy for it might sound familiar to a religious person. In the biblical story, after all, man falls when hes tempted by fruit from the tree of knowledge. Its knowledge that leads him out of the Gardenof Eden into an exile that has yet to end. His guilt isaconstant, nagging reminder that he has taken this wrongturn.

Illustration: A Richard Allen

Yet even within that source we see how mans guilt can bedeceptive as slippery and seductive as the serpent who led him astray. For if man has sinned by tasting of knowledge, the guilt that punishes him repeats his crime: with all its finger-wagging and tenor of I told you so, guilt itself comes over as awfully knowing. It keeps us, as the psychoanalyst Adam Phillips has written, in thrall to that boring and repetitive voice inside our head that endlessly corrects, criticises, censors, judges and finds fault with us, but never brings usany news about ourselves. In our feelings of guilt, we seemalready to have the measure of who it is we are and whatit is were capable of.

Could that be the reason for our guilt? Not our lack of knowledge but rather our presumption of it? Our desperate need to be sure of ourselves, even when what we think of ourselves is that were worthless, useless, the pits? When we feel guilty we at least have the comfort of being certain ofsomething of knowing, finally, the right way to feel, whichis bad.

This may be why were addicted to crime dramas: they satisfy our wish for certainty, no matter how grim that certainty is. At the beginning of a detective story, were conscious of a crime, but we dont know who did it. By the end of the story, ithas been discovered which culprit is guilty: case closed. Thus guilt, inits popular rendering, is what converts our ignorance intoknowledge.

For a psychoanalyst, however, feelings of guilt dont necessarily have any connection tobeing guiltyin the eyes of the law.Our feelings of guilt may be a confession, but they usually precede the accusation of any crime the details ofwhich not even the guilty person can be sure.

So, while the stories we prefer may be the ones that uncover guilt, its equally possible that our own guilt is a cover story forsomething else.

Although the fall is originally a biblical story, forget religion for a moment. One can just as well recount a more recent and assuredly secular story of the fall of man. Its a story that has had countless narrators, perhaps none finer or more emphatic than the German Jewish postwar critic Theodor Adorno. Writing in the wake of the Holocaust, Adorno argued famously that whoever survives in a world that could produce Auschwitz is guilty, at least insofar as theyre still party to the same civilisation that created the conditions for Auschwitz.

Inother words, guilt is our unassailable historical condition. Its our contract as modern people. As such, says Adorno, we all have a shared responsibility after Auschwitz to be vigilant,lest we collapse once more into the ways of thinking, believing and behaving that brought down this guilty verdict upon us. To make sense after Auschwitz is to risk complicity with its barbarism.

For Adorno too, then, our knowledge renders us guilty, rather than keeping us safe. For a modern mind, this could well seem shocking. That said, perhaps the more surprising feature of Adornos representation of guilt is the idea expressed in his question whether after Auschwitz you cango on living especially whether one who escaped by accident, one who by rights should have been killed, may go on living. His mere survival calls for the coldness, the basic principle of bourgeois subjectivity, without which there couldhave been no Auschwitz; this is the drastic guilt of himwho was spared.

For Adorno, the guilt of Auschwitz belongs to all of western civilisation, but its a guilt he assumed would be felt most keenly by one who escaped by accident, one who by rights should have been killed the Jewish survivor of the second world war.

Adorno, who had left Europe for New York in early 1938, was probably attesting to his own sense of guilt. Yet his insight is one we alsoget from psychologists who worked with concentration camp survivors after the war; they found that feelings of guiltaccompanied by shame, self-condemnatory tendencies and self-accusations are experienced by the victims of the persecution and apparently much less (if at all) bythe perpetrators of it.

What can it mean if victims feel guilty and perpetrators areguilt-free? Are objective guilt (being guilty) and subjective guilt (feeling guilty) completely at odds with each other?

In the years after the war, the concept of survival guilt tended to be viewed as the byproduct of the victims identification with their aggressor. The survivor who may subsequently find it hard to forgive herself because others have diedin her place why am I still here when they are not? may also feel guilty because of what she was forced to collude withfor the sake of her survival. This need not imply any incriminating action on her part; her guilt may simply be anunconscious way of registering her past preference that others suffer instead of her.

On this basis, then, it may be possible to think of survivors guilt as a special case of the guilt we all bear when, aware or unaware, were glad when others, rather than ourselves, suffer. Obviously, thats not a pleasant feeling, but neither is ita hard one to understand. Still, there remains something deeply uncomfortable about accepting that survivors of the worst atrocities should feel any guilt for their own survival. Instead, shouldnt we be trying to save the survivor from her (in our view) mistaken feelings of guilt andthus establish, without smirch or quibble, her absolute innocence?

This understandable impulse, according to the intellectual historian Ruth Leys, saw the figure of the survivor emerge in the period after the second world war, alongside a shift in focus from the victims feelings of guilt toward an insistence on the victims innocence. This transformation, Leys argues, involved replacing the concept of guilt with its close cousin, shame.

The difference is crucial. The victim who feels guilt evidently has an inner life, with intentions and desires while the victim who feels shame seems to have had it bestowed from outside. The victims of trauma consequently appear to be the objects rather than the subjects ofhistory.

Shame, then, tells us something about what one is, not what one does or would like to do. And so the effect of this well-intentioned shift in emphasis may have been to rob the survivor of agency.

It may be tempting to assume that survival guilt is an extraordinary case, given the abject powerlessness of the victims of such traumas. But, as we will see, attempts to deny the validity of the guilt of others often have the similar effect of denying their intentions as well. Consider the case of liberal guilt, the guilt we all love to hate.

Liberal guilt has become a shorthand for describing those who feel keenly a lack of social, political and economic justice, but are not the ones who suffer thebrunt of it. According to the cultural critic Julie Ellison, it first took hold in the US in the 1990s, on the back of a post-cold-war fragmentation of theleft, and a loss of faith in the utopian politics of collective action that had characterised an earlier generation of radicals. The liberal who feels guilty has given up on the collective and recognises herself to be acting out of self-interest. Her guilt is thus a sign of the gap between what she feels for the others suffering and what she will do actively to alleviate it which isnot, it turns out, a great deal.

As such, her guilt incites much hostility in others, not least in the person who feels himself the object of the liberals guilt. This person, AKA the victim, understands only too well how seldom the pity he elicits in the guilty liberal is likely to lead toany significant structural or political changes for him.

Rather, the only power to be redirected his way is not political power, but the moral or affective power to make those more fortunate than he is feel even more guilty about the privileges they are nonetheless not inclined to give up.

But just how in control of her feelings is the guilty liberal? Not very, thinks Ellison. Since feelings arent easily confected, her guilt tends to assail her unbidden, rendering her highly performative, exhibitionist, even hysterical. In her guilt, she experiences a loss of control, although she remains conscious at all times of an audience, before whom she feels she must show how spectacularly sorry she is. Her guilt, then, is her way of acting out, marking a disturbance in the liberal who doesnt know herself quite as well as her guilt would haveher think.

The idea of guilt as aninhibiting emotion corroborates the common critique of liberal guilt: that, for all the suffering it produces, it fails completely to motivate the guilty subject tobring about meaningful political change.

But what if the liberals guilt actually has another purpose, to allow the liberal respite from the thing she may (unconsciously) feel even worse about: the lack of a fixed identity that tells her who she is, what her responsibilities are and where these come to an end.

If anything can be said to characterise the notoriously woolly liberal, guilt may be it. Liberal guilt suggests a certain class (middle), race (white) and geopolitical (developed world) situation. As such, despite the torment it brings to those who suffer it, it might, paradoxically (and, again, unconsciously), be reassuring for someone whose real neurosis is that she feels her identity is so mobile and shiftingthat she can never quite be surewhere she stands.

If this is what chiefly concerns her, then one might envisage her guilt as a feeling that tells her who she is, by virtue of telling her who she is failing to be for others. Who is the liberal? She who suffers on account of those who suffer morethan she. (I know whereof I speak.)

This may suggest why, in recent years, there has been mounting criticism of the liberals sensibilities. To her critics, the liberal really is guilty. Shes guilty of a) secretly resenting victims for how their sufferings make her feel, b) drawing attention away from them and back towards her, c) having theaudacity to make an exhibition out of her self-lacerations and d) doing practically nothing to challenge the status quo.

For critics of the guilty liberal, in other words, feeling guiltyis part of the problem, rather than the solution. And yetthis criticism is itself subject to the same accusation. Giventhat criticising someone for feeling guilty is only going to make them feel guiltier, guilt has, asweve seen, proved atricky opponent one that its various modern combatants have yetto defeat.

Once again, therefore, in the case of liberal guilt, we encounter a feeling so devilishly slippery that it repeats the problem in the course of confessing it. Because there is, of course, aform of guilt that does not inspire us to act, but prevents us from acting. This type of guilt takes the uncertainty of our relations with others (and our responsibility for others) and turns them into an object of certainty and knowledge.

But since the object in this case is our own self, we can see how liberal guilt, too, mutates guilt into a version of shame.Shame, infact, could well be a more accurate appellation for what motivates the guilty liberal in her public and private self-condemnations.

However, before we declare the liberal guilty as charged as in guilty of the wrong kind of guilt its worth reminding ourselves of the survival guilt that has likewise been viewed by many as guilt of the wrong kind. For as we observed in that case, in seeking to save the victim from her guilt, the victim becomes deprived of the very thing that might distinguish herfrom the objectifying aggression that has assailed her: asense of her own intentions and wishes, however aggressive, perverse or thwarted these might be.

For this reason, then, its vital to preserve the notion of survivors guilt (and, despite obvious differences, liberal guilt) as that which could yet return to the survivor (or the liberal) apower of agency such as must be absolutely necessary if sheis to have a future that isnt bound, by the resolving or absolving of her guilt, to repeat the past ad infinitum.

If religion often gets the blame for framing man as sinner, thesecular effort to release man from his guilt hasnt offered much relief. The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben suggests that subjective innocence belongs to a bygone age, the age of the tragic hero. Oedipus, for example, is someone whose objective guilt (parricide, incest) is matched by the subjective innocence of the man who acts before he knows. Today, however, says Agamben, we find the opposing situation: modern man is objectively innocent (for he has not, like Oedipus, murdered with his own hands), but subjectively guilty (he knows that his comforts and securities have been paid for by someone, somewhere, probably in blood).

By falsely promising a tabula rasa bound to his historical and intellectual emancipation, modernity may not only have failed to obliterate mans subjective guilt, but may even have exacerbated it. For what many a modern man is guilty of is less his actions than his addiction to a version of knowledge that seems to have inhibited his capacity for action. As such, the religious assignation of man as sinner a fallen, abject, endlessly compromised, but also active, effective andchangeable creature begins to look comforting bycomparison.

Such a view also shares much in common with a certain psychoanalytic conception of guilt as a blocked form of aggression or anger toward those we need and love (God, parents, guardians, whomever we depend on for our own survival). But if guilt is the feeling that typically blocks all other (buried, repressed, unconscious) feelings, that is not initself areason to block feelings of guilt. Feelings, after all, are what you must be prepared to feel if they are to move you,or if you are to feel something else.

Main illustration by A Richard Allen

Adapted from Feeling Jewish (A Book for Just About Anyone) by Devorah Baum, which will be published by Yale University Press on 19 October at 18.99. To buy it for 16.15, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over 10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of 1.99.

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