#no listener trauma erasure in this house

[jacks347]

Do you think the reason Angel stole David's jacket when he came home and found them asleep on the couch wasn't because of Angel being Angel but because they were scared?

David was working late that night, the weather was bad, what if Angel started having flashbacks to the Inversion? What if they started panicking thinking things had gone wrong and no one had told them? What if the only way they could calm themselves down was to wrap themselves up in his jacket like they did during the Inversion, hoping they'd have the same outcome? Hoping that holding themselves in his jacket would bring him home again.

The TV wasn't on because they were watching, it was background noise so they wouldn't be stuck in a quiet house with nothing but their bad thoughts to fill the silence. Just sleep, he'll be back when you wake up. He has to be. They weren't clingy because they were trying to be cute, they were reassuring themselves that he was alive and okay, that he had come home again and everything was alright.

But they didn't want to worry David by saying why they were acting the way they were so they hid it under teasing and jokes, hoping he wouldn't be able to feel how their hands were shaking. Hoping he'd think their fluttering heart was from love instead of anxiety.

His cologne wouldn't be enough. A pillow wouldn't be his warmth around them. It wouldn't he his natural scent from a hard day's work. It wouldn't be him. And in that state of panic, they need him.

But who knows, maybe I'm just overthinking again. That's kinda what I'm known for.

[laughing-drawing-aces]

What also annoys me about Robin being the first to understand Nancy and help her is the implication that neither Jonathan, Steve or hell even her family wasn't there for her when canonically that's not true.

Steve might have not had the best approach to trauma,for her, but she still went along for a year. And to say Steve surpressed her emotions or never allowed her to talk about it, is also wrong. Them going to Barb's parents implies he is supportive and aware of the trauma, they would have to discuss it at one point. He also only shut her down when Nancy wanted to be self destructive and endanger her family and his by wanting to expose the lab. We never saw them fully together, s1 they just started dating and in s2 it was the end of their relationship. I also hate when ppl blame him for not listening after Nancy drunkenly told him she doesn't love him and that he's bullshit. What would you do in that situation when the person you love insults you. He had every right to be hurt and remove himself from that situation. Like what do people want him to do ignore that and focus on the part where she accused them both of murder? He probably would have come around later, after processing it, they both could have talked it out if Nancy hadn't run off with Jonathan already, I mean he already took the steps to make it better.

Jonathan is still her boyfriend, yes they do long distance and have communication problems, but still the whole thing before R//nance came along was that Jonathan understood Nancy's grief better than Steve. Again it's complete erasure of that relationship. I'm not even a huge Jancy shipper but to say Jonathan wasn't understanding of her struggles and Nancy again was just alone with her grief/problems is wrong.

And Karen might have flaws, but she tries. Yes Nancy probably couldn't talk about everything UD related but Karen knew about Barb missing and then her ending up being dead a year later. If Nancy wanted to, she could talk to her about it, she just needs to omit some things. A huge point in s1 was Karen wanting Nancy to open up. Plus Mike and her have similar trauma, they could have talked if they wanted to. The problem is that Nancy struggles with her emotions and not wanting to open up. I doubt Robin would be any different from Steve or Jonathan if Nancy doesn't communicate with her properly. To say nobody understands her when there are so many characters who canonically are there for her problems (not the other way around btw) is just infuriating. Idk you don't have to put others down for Robin being put on a pedestal. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth when people bash her boyfriends when they did everything they could. If Nancy doesn't want to talk then nobody could have helped her in those situations.

Yes you are so correct about all of this like Nancy has other people! also it seems to just come from this place of "well you only need one person to depend on," and the romanticism of that. like i dont mind if people have that trope and etc with people in shows and etc but just ACKNOWLEDGE that it isn't a good thing! it's called co-dependency and usually it just isn't good. but yeah it also erases how nancy does have other people!

Yes about eveything in this paragraph! like you said steve may not have the best approach but also we have no clue how they genuinely talked to one another with their problems. like the one sscene where they do talk about their trauma THEY ARE IN PUBLIC AND IT IS ALSO A LIBRARY! like they're in a place where they are supposed to be quiet in the first place where people would be able to hear their convo because it is a quiet place. and they were told not to talk about this in public because the government would come after them and these places could be rigged. the government had every house rigged in season 1 - who's to say they don't have the high school rigged too? it could be a very high possibility - also it's so wild to me how people use this one convo as "steve not caring about nancy's problems," because he does end up calming her down and comforting her slightly. also if they think that i would love to see how they would react to all this shit. also steve legit isnt a therapist - HES A TEENAGE BOY! so it's even more absurd that they just want him to act like a therapist.

YES! like jonathan is still her boyfriend and he would also be there for her. and like talk about their struggles and etc. like you i'm not a huge jancy fan but it's kind of insane how they just want the same thing to happen with jancy where nnancy doesn't love him and then before fully breaking things of goes with nancy - it's just a repeat of history what happened with steve nancy and jonathan and somehow people don't realize this?

and yeah like nancy also did have karen to talk to and like you said karen did know some thins about barb going missing and etc. and she could have helped after season 2 when the town finds out that barb did die. like nancy can't talk about the UD but she can talk to karen about enough to have support from karen. and like you said mike and her could have also talked!

i feel like people don't often realize that nancy is often just not communicating with people so they just blame it all on everyone around her. like everyone tries to be the best they can for her and yet she doesn't communicate with them so it's so frustating whrn everyone will blame it on every single character instead of seeing that nancy doesn't communicate the best. anyway this got hella long but anon you are so correct about everything here!

[irelandisanislandculturestudy]

Blog Post # 10: Managing Differences

Final Blog Post

I think vacationing in Ireland for a couple of weeks would be relatively easy, especially because of the welcoming nature of the Irish people and the rich cultural experiences available. My boyfriend, who just got back from a European trip, had a wonderful time in Dublin and Belfast. He found it easy to adapt to the local culture, thanks to how friendly and open the locals are. One of the things he appreciated the most was the beautiful scenery of the Irish countryside and the riveting pub culture of the bigger cities—it's an integral part of Irish life, and he made a lot of friends just by chatting with people in pubs. He flew into Dublin and while the city itself is relatively expensive (Ireland is going through its own housing and job crisis) his short stay of a week or so was manageable from all he had saved for the entire trip, staying in hostels, and eating from more affordable places. Which is not ideal long term, but certainly part of the experience for spontaneous travel. He definitely acquired some “mates”  and he mentioned that the conversations flowed naturally, with wit ever present. The warmth of the locals made him feel at home very quickly.

The Temple Bar - Downtown Dublin, Ireland

However, living in Ireland for a year or more could present more challenges. I have found multiple blogs like Moving to Ireland: 25 Things I Wish I’d Known Before I Did It (2024) that detail the underestimation of how cold it gets, and just how rural of an island Ireland is. While the cultural assimilation might start off easy, longer-term adaptation obviously requires deeper understanding and integration. The weather is not something that always comes up when you're just vacationing, but after living there for a longer time, the rainy and unpredictable weather could affect your mood and daily life. Seasonal depression is a real thing. 

One specific cultural example that stands out from my blog posts is the idea of hospitality in Ireland. People are genuinely kind and willing to help, which would make settling in easier. That said, it could also be a challenge to navigate the subtleties of Irish humor, which can be dry and sarcastic. It might take some time to get used to, especially when trying to understand jokes or casual conversations. So, I would suggest becoming familiar with the language variations (like Irish slang) and even taking a jab at Gaelic.

What really came to mind when reflecting on the ethical components of an intercultural exchange or a location transition was how Ireland is a high context culture and riddled with intergenerational trauma. Since the country and its people were colonized by the British for hundreds of years and they have fought hard for its independence, any disrespect or disregard of that history is incredibly offensive but not a rare occurrence. Many foreigners mistakenly group Ireland into the United Kingdom which directly glazes over the history of famine and power imbalance that the people dealt with. It is a perpetuation of erasure. So, by asking questions, advocating for underrepresented voices, etc. I can become more ethically aware and prepared for meaningful intercultural exchanges in the future.

I love watching Irish movies and TV shows, which help me connect with the culture and its unique storytelling traditions and listening to Irish artists like The Cranberries, Hozier, and Sinéad O'Connor who give me a deeper understanding of Ireland's history and political landscape through their powerful music. They all have created songs that discuss the social and political issues of the Irish identity that I find really insightful. 

De Selby by Hozier - De Selby is a character from a book called The Third Policeman.

Swan Upon Leda by Hozier - References Ireland’s abortion laws.

Run by Hozier - The colonization of Ireland.

Zombie by The Cranberries - A protest song written after the IRA (Irish Republican Army) detonated two bombs in the English town of Warrington, killing two young boys.

Famine by Sinead O'Connor - A protest song challenging the British government's role in the Irish Potatoe Famine.

[your-regina]

Is my poison sweet enough?

Hi there again. I never forgot to tell you about the latest turn of events. We briefly talked about grief and quite possibly liking girls, but it all came eerily real when I spoke about it to the cause of a lot of my problems.

At some point I wondered if it all went south the moment I caught feelings for her.

It's just that she was my first on so many things! I really crave sitting down and talking while drawing and listening to music. It was such a cathartic experience for me. Even that day, when I felt like the world was ending, she held me in such a warm embrace that I briefly thought I would love to stay like that forever.

Of course I know we can't be together like that, for a number of reasons. It is completely one sided, and I never really intended to let my feelings out when we met.

This time, I texted her like nothing had ever happened and said that I wanted to see her. She said I could go to her house, but she asked me to meet her next week, and for some odd reason I really wanted it to be right now. She took about 3 days to respond, while I usually answered in a matter of seconds. I was so mad at her, but I still wanted to face her, and not necessarily to clarify or discuss any of the awful things she made me feel.

We only bought two shorts and coke and then went to a quieter place to talk while we share one esquite. I don't know how I felt, but now that I'm writting I think I was drunk on pure ecstasy to see her. She was even cuter than how I remembered her.

I started by talking about how I felt like one person had completely engulfed my life, that somehow that experience made me realize that I most likely like girls exclusively. She didn't seem all that surprised, we made some jokes and laughed it off while I hoped my foundation was hiding my creeping blush.

After we were done with my simple story, she began to tell me about something really serious. She was sexually assaulted as a kid, and lived with her abuser for several years in which she told me she was always afraid. She lost her dad and couldn't even mourn her loss because she had to be always guarding her own back. But the worst part is that about 2 weeks ago she learnt that her assaulter had abused two of her nieces, aged 7 and 8 years old. It was such a shocking story I didn't know what I was supposed to say.

She said her mom was still dating her abuser, and showed no signs of remorse. I was so disgusted I couldn't really speak, so I simply shit talked her mother and the disgusting man who did those horrible things. She told me, very maturely, that she wanted to go to therapy and try to heal that wound, because she wanted to be well to show her nieces that it was possible to live a good life despite having gone through such trauma.

If you learn something like this, any petty drama becomes quite trivial, doesn't it? So I briefly forgot that I was supposed to become a beacon of light for her, and I told her that I didn't believe in therapy, and that she was too smart to go to any therapist. She didn't agree with me but I thought that surely that would remain forever in the back of her mind. Is that poisonous?

She didn't look like she hated me at all, but I could feel something like a wave setting us appart. I learnt, at that moment, that is totally possible to enjoy the company of someone you hate with, perhaps, too much passion.

Flan also stopped talking to me, like I did something severe enough to guarantee my permanent erasure of the group I created myself. Isn't it infuriating? Without me they wouldn't know each other, but they still have the priviledge of excluding me completely, despite knowing full well how much I was struggling.

They do read my posts where I almost beg for help of any kind. I remember so vividly the way I wept misserably for hours thinking about how lonely I was now, with no familiar faces to turn to. Again, Cider didn't know about the awful situation regarding her nieces at that point in time, but she still chose not to talk to me. Like I was merely an annoyance, something that would bring darkness and pain to her already difficult existence. I understand, to a certain extent, but I would be so willing to carry her heavy load if she said she needed it. But she never told me anything, I was a ghost, trapped in the past, in another dimension.

She wrote me such a beatiful letter for my 21th birthday, and then for the 22th she totally forgot about it. I always remember their birthdays, they're so special now that we are in our twenties, we're quickly running out of youth. It hurt so much, even though it is such a simply thought.

What now?

Movin' on, but how?

Uh, somethin' put my feelings in the lost and found

Now I'm stuck forever Tell me where to go

Can I have my heart back? 

I resented her the most and mourned her loss like she had been struck by a double decker truck. I can only imagine the kind of things they said about me in the new group they opened for sure.

I don't know why I remember clearly how one day we were all playing together. It was a group of four, of course, but they only matched their characters to be a trio, jumping around and saying that they were a group of three like I, the person who got them to play, wasn't even there.

Then christmas arrived and Cider simply stopped responding, only coming back when I had been silent for a long time as well. I experienced one of the most nerve wracking experiences when I did my test to get my college degree, and everyone on the group wished me good luck, except her.

She has so many drawings I did for her, completely for free. And to this day, even though she draws as well, I continue to have absolutely zero drawings from her. It drives me nuts.

But seeing her in person somehow cures the pain for a while. I remember I'm not there to complain, but to be brighter than the sun, since that's what she seems to be looking for. It's not that I don't have the words; as you may know, one of the things I do as a hobby is imagining her and Flan coming back to me.

God, how I wish to receive an apology! The primitive way I cried can't compare to whatever I did to them. Sometimes I read our conversations to try to divise where i messed up.

Hell, do I know that i'm a difficult person. But I still had that last remaining hope of someone finding something valuable in me. I thought, for a fragment of a second, that they could be the ones to find that light in me. Maybe that's what's I called love so many years later, despite it's clear deviation from the normal, actual meaning of it. If there is any, that is.

I don't know what else is there to say. We went out one day, that's for sure, but even if those two hours meant climbing up the Everest for me, maybe for such an adventurous soul like Cider it just felt like jumping over a puddle. I still loathe her so much, despite the laughs, despite the one-sided sense of wonder.

She asked to meet me the next day, and as soon as I grasped the idea my heart and my brain worked in unprecedented unison to conjure up a vivid image of what that would (for sure, no doubt about it) have been like.

She cowardly cancelled some hours latter, and that crystal castle glittered over my eyes. I thought it would have caused far less damage if she had outright said that she didn't want to see me ever again.

The same thing goes for the first time she went absolutely radio silent, when it came about me only, that time last december. It is something I shouldn't have ever forgiven; but you know I need her way more than she needs me. She latter said she stopped talking to "us" because she was going through a rough time. I couldn't help but wonder if I should feel sorry, or if I should perhaps ask myself if her rough time was, in fact, any rougher than mine. I don't think I was even big enough in the clutches of her brain to consider me an important person to warn about her oncoming disappearence.

Then, after she learnt about the extent of my non so pleasant aspects of my many and varied mental illnesses she did little more than quietly fade into the backround and feign amnesia. I was so mad. Why does it bark at anyone else but me? Esterile, useless.

Now fast forward to the day my beloved kitten died. He caught parvo seemingly out of nowhere. My family, allegedly, saw him puking on friday, they took him to the vet on saturday, and by sunday dawn he was gone. Put down, if you ask me.

I just took all the benzodiazepines i could find and kind of hoped for the best. I wanted to discuss with myself the best couse of action. I simply blocked everyone. I don't want to sleep, but I guess I could use some rest.

Today I communicated my suicidal ideation to my family and they all called me a coward and unproffesional on top of that. Proffessional people don't dress colofur, don't wear weird hairdoes, don't forget what the boss just said, all of those things, they made sure I knew.

My aunt famously denied me the chance to see my cat one last time, and if I survive today I'll make sure I fuck her over and demand the rest of my inheritence. Damn rat.

I cherished that kitten like a supernatural being.

[yourlocalshittywriter]

The Duty of a Hero

Author’s Note: Howdy folks! I’m here with my first proper fic and I really hope that y’all like it! This will be exploring what could’ve happened if the Dabi that Aizawa fought wasn’t one of Twice’s clones. Since this is a fight, I advise the folks that are sensitive to things like that to click off and read another fic. Also, since this story does change scenery and moods a bit, I included some songs that change along with the the stories mood! This is mainly just because I like showing off my music taste and shit. Here’s Part 2!

Songs to Go Along: The Fighter by In This Moment, Acid Bubble by Alice In Chains, The Great Gig In The Sky by Pink Floyd

I felt extremely at peace for once in life. I felt the normal crackling of my joints silence into a warm nothingness. My aching muscles that had been torn to shreds time and time again, the ones that had been strained and stretched beyond the limits of the human body seemed to reform perfectly as they melted into the rest of my numb form. My skin, a forest of calluses, scars, stitches, and open wounds felt as if it was no longer there. I was no longer confined to the space of my body, and instead moved around as freely as water or air. I was a sort of goo, unmoving, stationary, simple, yet free. 

With a quirk as self-destructive as mine, becoming a hero was a sort of death wish. My quirk was known as “pain transfer.” Anytime I made eye contact with a person, I could activate my quirk and subject myself to pain only to have them suffer the pain of the injury for as long as I was looking at them. I could also transfer existing pain to my target. Although I may have had a wicked high pain tolerance and quick recovery period, my humanity was bound to catch up to me eventually. Quirks like mine, “villainous quirks” according to most people, should be kept hidden and the people born with them should go on to live normal lives as ordinary civilians. My parents were among these people. When I told them that I was enrolling in the hero course at UA, I was given the choice to either become a hero and be disowned, or ditch my pipe dream and stay their beloved child. I packed my things that night.

It was a miracle that I passed the entrance exam the next day. I was running on little sleep, the loss of my financial support, and the trauma that came with the realization that your parents didn’t love you anymore because you didn’t live in a way that they approved of. I had trained since my will to become a hero first arrived, a sort of passionate drive that crashed into my life so unexpectedly that the impact nearly gave me whiplash. 

I supposed that that inferno of, what? Spite? No, not spite, something deeper, hotter, and more righteous than spite. Let’s say ardor. This ardor was what drove me to take out as many robots as I could, despite the fact that my quirk was utterly useless in this situation. I took out a decent amount of robots, at least, decent enough to get into the hero course. A lady by the name of Recovery Girl healed me before I went on my way. I thought that I just had a few scrapes and bruises, but apparently I had a broken wrist. Surprisingly, I wasn’t the worst-off there, some poor kid broke both of his arms and one of his legs. 

The time between this moment and when I got into UA seems to have flown by. I came into UA, a semi-blank canvas, and now here I was, bleeding out on the campsite that I planned to spend my summer at with my classmates. Dying feels far less painful than one would assume; you really don’t even realize that you’re dying at first. It’s sort of like that feeling you get after eating a warm meal after starving for so long, sickening at first, but comforting after you grow used to it. It’s like taking a hot bath after spending a day in the snow; it burns at first, but the burning subsides into a comforting numbness. Your senses slowly dull into nothingness but your brain is left to conjure whatever image it pleases. I could have seen dead relatives, met idols, or even pictured an alternate life where my parents still loved me, but I didn’t.

I didn’t want it. Fame, fortune, admiration, acceptance, rebirth, none of it. I wanted none of it. I wanted to live. I wanted to do what I swore to do as soon as I got into UA. I wanted what I signed up for when I packed my bags and left my parents’ house at age fourteen. I wanted what I fought tooth and nail for. I wanted my ambitions and goals fulfilled.

Of course I wanted what I had worked for, that was beyond obvious, however, I also wanted the small things in life. I wanted my afternoon tea with Yaoyorozu, Sato, and Todoroki. I wanted my fashion shows with Aoyama, Ashido, and Hagakure. I wanted my midnight conversations with Shinsou and Tokoyami. I wanted my video game sessions with Kaminari and Sero. I wanted my morning meditation meetings with Shoji, Ojiro, and Koda. I wanted to watch pro-wrestling with Bakugou and Kirishima. I wanted to train with Iida, Uraraka, and Midoriya. I wanted to swim with Asui. I wanted to listen to music with Jiro and Mr. Present Mic. I wanted inappropriate jokes with Ms. Midnight. I wanted to make Mr. Aizawa proud; I wanted to make myself proud. So, with so many incredible things to live for, I opened my eyes, and attempted to move.

Much to my distaste, it turns out that my relief from pain, as well as the disassociation from my body was nothing more than a thin veil that was easily permeated as I rose from near death. The forest was nothing more than a verdant blur, one that was far from easy to navigate. However, all things end eventually, so I decided to run from death and wherever I ended up would be the least of my worries. I sprinted through the disorder and dysfunction, and wound up walking in on my teacher fighting the son of a bitch who had left me to die a lonely death with only the company of insects and whatever plants were to take over my wilting corpse.

As Mr. Aizawa tackled the cremation villain, I rose from the forest, stared at the man in restraints, and activated my quirk. As the pain transferred from me to him, I felt the veil of insensibility slip over me once more. The villain howled out in agony, the very agony that he had inflicted on me only minutes before. 

“Whatever you do, don’t break your gaze Eraserhead!” I chimed as I finally straightened my form, not wanting the hero to see me in such a state, “You’ll just have to trust me on this one!” Mr. Aizawa nodded, keeping a steady gaze on his target.

“Tried to kill me off?” I snarled as I made my way towards the sadistic bastard and beloved teacher holding him in place.

“You’re supposed to be dead,” the captive growled through gritted teeth, still under an amount of pain that would knock-out any average human. He looked beyond pissed that I survived, as if he took offense to the fact that I didn’t appreciate his work. I waltzed over to him, just far enough from Mr. Aizawa, but just close enough to the charred villain. 

“Surprise, I remain,” I cooed, low enough for only the villain to hear. He bared his teeth at me, looking at me as if he were some sort of rabid animal. I wanted to taunt him. I wanted to make fun of the fact that he had been taken down by a high schooler and their teacher, but I knew that it was never good to brag, because Karma would usually come to bite you in the ass for it. 

I stared at the man covered in staples, every blink I took releasing him from the effects of my quirk. Every blink motivated me to continue staring at him, to immobilize him so Mr. Aizawa could use his eye drops or blink, to buy him some time. However, I knew that this game of “pass the villain” could only go on for so long. Something had to be done. Eventually, the patchwork villain would catch both of us off guard and use his quirk, or one of his buddies would come and back him up. Mr. Aizawa and I were miles away from my peers or the rest of the pro-heroes. It was just the two of us up against this villain, and we were growing tired.

Only minutes after the realization had struck me, the villain escaped from Mr. Aizawa’s scarf when the two of us accidentally blinked at the same time. The human crematorium stood before us, and before I could use my quirk to disable him, he shot out a flurry of blue flames my way.

I dodged this attack as Mr. Aizawa ran towards the villain, yelling out the name “Dabi.” Before Mr. Aizawa was able to restrain him, Dabi grabbed the erasure hero and threw him headfirst into a brick wall, effectively knocking him out. I desperately wanted to check on my partner in battle, but I knew that I couldn’t let my guard down, because now Dabi was staring me directly in the eye.

I could attempt to charge at him, but I would be charred to bits, and even if I somehow managed to avoid his flames, I would meet the same fate as Eraserhead, knocked out and at Dabi’s mercy. I was screwed, I had no back up, my teacher was unconscious, and I was face to face with one of Japan’s most notorious criminals. I was dead meat.

That was until I devised a plan, one that would take out the cremation villain for good. One that would end his reign of terror once and for all. However, there was only one downside to this plan, and that was the fact that this plan would result in two casualties, Dabi and me. However, if I went with any other plan, Mr. Aizawa and I were to become the victims while Dabi walked off scot free. 

I was destined to become a martyr.

With that realization, I turned to my teacher who was slowly coming to his senses and gave him a gentle smile,

“Eraserhead, it has truly been a pleasure,” I announced as Dabi’s arrogant gaze turned to one of confusion. As Mr. Aizawa slowly faded back into his previously comatose state before he had time to be confused, I focused my gaze back on the blue-flamed bastard. It was time to end it, to end his rule once and for all.

I reached into my pocket, grabbed a tiny weapon that fit perfectly in my hand, locked eyes with the villain, smirked, and painlessly slit my neck. As Dabi grasped his neck and choked on his unseen blood, which was truly my blood, he fell to his knees.

As I took what I knew were my last steps, I came face to face with the first half to my murder-suicide. He glared at me, an amalgam of agony that felt nothing at all, and snarled.

“I’ll see you in hell, you cunt.”

I laughed, of all the things he could’ve chosen to be his final words, he chose to give into the childish desire to have the last word with me. As his oddly-familiar eyes drained of life, I felt the pain I had so carelessly inflicted upon myself finally hit me like a freight train.

I began to choke as I fell to my knees, similarly to how Dabi had fallen only seconds before. I knew that my time was up soon, I would succumb to my injuries and lose the thing I had fought tooth and nail for only moments before. I looked to the horizon to find the sun casting his loving gaze upon my battered body. It was as if Apollo himself was granting me a warrior’s death, like he knew I had made some kind of a righteous sacrifice that warranted a soothing transition from death to afterlife.

The sunrise was something like I had never seen before. The blues burned brighter than the flames I had defeated minutes before, the yellow pooled around my weary being like an evening gown to a death dance, and the red painted a comforting scene in the clouds, as if to distract me from my own red that painted my body and the ground around me. I smiled my final smile as I walked into the loving embrace of the sun.

My duty as a hero had been fulfilled.

[tiger-manya]

The regime builds itself on two things: lie and erasure of individual memory.

I've noticed that a lot while listening to people's recollections of Soviet Union and studying Soviet texts and such. If you had someone in your family deported or arrested but you were lucky enough to stay, you didn't talk about it and pretend they never existed in the first place. If your child asked you why were there so many empty houses in the village, you said them to stay quiet and never explained anything. Talking was dangerous. Showing that you remember anything was dangerous. Because, of course, individual memory is what could oppose the lies of official narratives. And the lies are plentiful. Holodomor, Bykivnia, mass executions in the 30s (that were often later documented as war loses), mass deportations in the late 40s, occupation of East and Central Europe, Chornobyl, and that's just a fraction. There're, of course, a lot of smaller, subtler things that may forever be lost in oblivion, as there's nobody to remember.

The trauma of this lost memory is something very prevalent in contemporary Ukrainian literature, but now let's instead talk about She-Ra and the Princesses of Power season 5.

The empire of Horde Prime is just like any other. To preserve the lies of its own greatness, it wipes out any mention of its past defeats, any individual memory, any possibility of life other than in the Horde. More than that, it openly admits this total oblivion as its basis and presents it as a strength. "Join us to forget the pain." Horde Pride himself lives in this, even though he, of course, is also the only one with a reserved right to occasionally remember.

And now let's look at how this regime falls apart.

Wrong Hordak frees himself the moment he learns the truth. At first, he actively rejects it and denies its existence, despite the obvious facts. But the moment it gets through to him, and he chooses living in truth as opposed to living in lie, the regime has no power over him anymore.

And Hordak? He allows himself to remember Entrapta, the possibility of a better life outside the Horde.

They fought the regime with truth and memory, and they won.

[dk-chez]

II. religion

and I walk around your house and see the scattered bible verse canvas hanging on the wall, the beginners children’s bible on your sister’s old bookshelf, your ring with a psalm engraved in it that sits on your bathroom cabinet, your parents’ CDs of preachers’ sermons, and your over abundance of church camp hoodies that hang in your closet. I have never felt so out of place. you ask me to come to church with you and we fight, tirelessly. “It’s just to please my parents” you say. what about me? I don’t believe these things. I just don’t. I respect you but I don’t want to go. “I need you to go” you say. I feel uncomfortable going to this place. I go. I go and sit and listen to the priest utter sexist, homophobic nonsense. I am told they typically announce when there is a visitor, but I am your girlfriend, I am your sin, my presence goes deliberately unnoticed. “It’s just an older church with more conservative views but I don’t believe those things” you say. But you sit there, week after week, silent. and in that silence, you are supporting these ideologies that reject your identity. they reject you, and you comply with your own erasure. it makes me angry. I don’t know where to put this anger. I listen to the priest saying that wives must be submissive towards their husbands. who am I? who are you? there’s no place for us here. you go to please your parents, but, in doing so, you reject me. you reject you. you reject us. how can you worship at the hands that oppress us? I try to talk to you. you don’t listen. I feel betrayed. I am never going to change. I’m not going to remain silent as white colonizers preach that we “need Jesus in our lives” but neglect to address the trauma they have caused thousands of people just like you and me. I am not going to change and I know you hear that, but I know that deep down you don’t understand. I am never going to change.

[mwolf0epsilon]

DBH Human AU - Info

After days of trying to organize this massive AU, I've finally done it. Ladies and gentleman, I give you my DBH Human AU which is perhaps the angstiest and heaviest of my AUs!

I'll advise caution as the themes are...Pretty fucking dark and revolve around a ton of different kinds of abuse, including domestic violence, sexual abuse, trans-erasure, rape and more. With that in mind, read at your own peril!

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[[MORE]]

--Plot--

Over the last couple of years the rate of missing teenagers has increased dramatically in Detroit. These teenagers are mostly abuse victims coming from very difficult family situations, failure of the adoption system, a botched educational system, and quite a few instances of racial and religious tension that lead to exposure to violence of varying degrees.

The story follows a group of 5 teens and 1 child who've banded together as they escape this sort of abuse, following signs and clues left behind by other previous victims who've joined forces and formed a nomadic group called Jericho. A group composed of runaway teens and children, who live completely on the move and never settle for too long in the same place (with the exception of a few members of the group).

Their main traveling system? 

Freighter trains.

Nothing is as it seems however, and three members of the group have attracted the attention of not only the police, but if a very shady company as well...

Things might take quite the turn for the worse, but for now all the group can do is pray and follow the train tracks.

--Cast--

DPD: The precinct has archived all of the missing persons cases related to Jericho, it's the disappearences of three young boys however, that calls into action a proper investigation.

Captain Jeoffrey Fowler - The captain of the DPD, Fowler is in charge of not only everyone in the precinct, but also has to make difficult decisions when certain high profile cases show up. He has faith in his officers, and especially Hank who he hopes can solve the current case he was assigned, and get back to his former glory. There seems to be an ongoing despute between him and the captain of the SWAT team, Allen, over a particular officer's work ethic, as well as the nature of all of the missing person case files.

Lieutenant Hank Anderson - A bitter old cop whose career has been practically cast aside after his son Cole's death. Armed with an acute intuition, a somewhat jaded perception of the world around him, and a massive saint bernard named Sumo, Hank has taken on the case to end all cases: Find three missing brothers who've recently run away from an orphanage overseen by the ever watchful Amanda Stern. Something tells him, however, that he's bitten off more than he can chew, and that this case is much more than it seems.

Detective Gavin Reed - A newly graduated rookie from the academy, Gavin is an ornery young man with an aggressive streak and a few self-esteem issues. He's been looking into Hank's case without permission, in the hopes that he might be able to find something the older cop hasn't already. Despite his hardened shell and angry disposition, the missing persons cases seem to mean something to him, and Gavin is as stubborn as he is dedicated to figuring out what the pattern is that links all of the missing teenagers and children together.

Officer Tina Chen - Gavin's partner and another newly graduated rookie, Tina is a lady of very few words but a great listener and perceptive to boot. She's been helping Gavin look into Hank's case clandestinely. While this would seem like something unfitting of her standards and morals, she has her reasons to help her partner, particularly to find someone she knew who went missing two years prior to her graduation.

Detective Ben Collins - One of the more experienced detectives in the DPD, Ben is an old friend of Hank's and Is currently working on a case relating to shady black market sales. He has joined forces with Hank on a few instances, due to the sensitive nature of both of their cases. Ben is one of many officers who despises Perkins, and he has been keeping tabs due to some very worrying complaints coming in recently.

Officer Chris Miller - Ben's partner and a new father, Chris is a kind man and the previous officer to work on missing persons cases. He had to ask Fowler to be removed from said cases after the number of children and teenagers going missing began to grow. He has given all of the info he had collected to Hank, and has proven himself to be a great help with the case.

Captain Allen - The captain of the SWAT team, Allen has been in the force long enough to know when certain cases seem dodgy. Hank's case, as well as the multiple missing children and teenagers cases, seem to concern him greatly as he has a feeling there might be more to the three missing orphans than what anyone currently knows. He seems to be highly suspicious of Perkins,but many of his warnings over these concerns have gone unheard.

Officer Richard Perkins - A corrupt, mysoginistic and racist cop that cares more about furthering his career than to serve and protect the civilians of Detroit. With little to no remorse, and capable of holding a mighty grudge, Perkins has set his sights on grade-A student Markus Manfred and has done everything in his power to put the mixed-race teenager behind bars for no particular reason other than thinking "his kind" are nothing but thugs, drug addicts and thieves. His constant harassment has led to Markus running away and Leo requesting multiple restraining orders to keep the man well away from the Manfred household. He's currently under evaluation by the DPD, Which of course has turned his unwarranted grudge against Markus into a blood feud. He will stop at nothing until he has the youngest Manfred boy in his grimy clutches.

Stern's House of Second Chances: A high profile orphanage that takes in and reabilitates difficult cases within the adoption system. The orphanage is run and owned by Amanda Stern and seems to be allied to Cypherlife, a shady company that has more than mental healing in mind...

Amanda Stern - The owner and overseer of Stern's House of Second Chances, Amanda Stern was Elijah Kamski's mentor before she quit her job as a professor and set her sights on a personal project that she claimed to be for the bettering of the human condition, but that proved to be too immoral even for someone as ambitious and enigmatic as Kamski. Obsessed with mental disorders, traumas, behavioral patterns and how they affected a person Amanda hoped that, in allowing Cypherlife to study and perform experimental treatments on the children residing at the orphanage, that she would be helping enhance both the medical field and the science behind psychology studies. This ultimately failed as Cypherlife had more than medicine in mind when they began to subject the children and teenagers to cruel tests and social experiments. She was the one who requested the DPD to look for the missing Dechart boys, but she did not predict Hank would look too deep into the case. All she knows is that she needs to get those three boys and get rid of the evidence before the happenings at the orphanage are exposed.

Connor "Eights" Dechart - The oldest of three brothers, Connor is a traumatized young man who's lived in Stern's House of Second Chances for most of his childhood. Having witnessed the violent death of his parents, and been subjected to experimental hypnotherapy treatment by specialists at the orphanage to deal with his trauma, Connor's memories are a confusing mess and not always reliable, but he knows for sure not all is as it seems and that something nefarious is going on behind closed doors. Having only just turned 18, Connor decides to trust his instincts and runs away with his siblings in the hopes of escaping whatever it is that's going on at the orphanage. Connor is a clever young man who's very perceptive but who's trauma has led to him becoming emotionally unattached to the world around him. His main priority is his and his younger siblings's safety. He doesn't trust Kara and Markus when he first joins forces with them, but grows to appreciate them and even consider them friends as they all search for Jericho.

Shawn "Sixes" Dechart - Connor's twin. The more emotional of the brothers, Shawn is an angry young man who has a lot of insecurity that lead to him living a very sheltered life at the orphanage. Unwilling to take risks, and often searching for guidance through Amanda, Shawn immediately dismissed Connor's concerns as being delusions and paranoia but, after witnessing something odd one night, he began to doubt his initial judgement of his brother's perception of the world and even went along with the escape plan. Equally as clever as Connor, but sensitive and over-emotional, Shawn is often considered the troublemaker of the three brothers.

Newton "Nines" Dechart - The twins's younger brother, Newton is a highly functioning autistic 16 year old boy. Often keeping his nose buried in a book, Newton loses track of time very easily, but can't help notice the littlest of things that just seem off-putting to him. He has a vague idea that something just isn't right with Stern's House of Second Chances, despite it being his home for a tremendous portion of his life, but he can't quite put into words what bothers him… He thinks highly of his older brothers and trusts their judgement wholeheartedly, although he'll more often side with Connor due to Shawn letting his volatile emotions get the better of him.

The Manfred Household: Home to Carl Manfred and his two boys, as well as Carl's caretaker, the Manfred household is faced with a lot of drama after a corrupt officer becomes hell-bent in ruining their lives.

Carl Manfred - Once a successful artist, painter, and figurehead of the Neo-Symbolism movement, Carl is a wise and patient man who's eccentricities have led to an interesting and awe-inspiring life. Before his accident Carl never really thought about settling down and starting a family, as he didn't consider himself to be father material. While he did acknowledge his firstborn, Leo, Carl never met him until he was 16, opting for paying child-support while the mother raised him instead. This was not the case for his second born, Markus, who was thrust into his care unexpectedly. Having just suffered his accident, Carl was initially very reluctant to care for a young child, as he did not feel like he was capable of supporting a growing child while trying to adjust to his newly acquired disability. With a little bit of encouragement from his closest friends, Carl reluctantly took charge and became a full time father to the young boy whose mother he couldn't even recall. As the years went by and Markus grew, Carl became quite fond of the boy and felt more confident around children. When Leo's mother passed away, however, Carl welcomed his eldest son into his home and realized that the distance he'd put between himself and his firstborn had led to an extremely shaky and strained relationship. Unsure how to mend the gap, Carl acted more strict around the 20 year old, while he treated Markus more lovingly. This only worsened their bond and even turned his sons against each other for three years. It took a lot of work to gain Leo's trust and for Carl to finally open himself up to his estranged son. This all changes when Markus got into trouble with the police for no other reason than the color of his skin. The three grew closer in adversity but, after a terrible car crash caused by sabotage, Carl ended up hospitalized in a coma. He's currently under the care of his caretaker and nurse, Matthew, and is regularly visited by Leo who talks to him in an effort to try to get his father to wake up.

Matthew the Caretaker - Matthew is a young man who has always aspired to do good in the world. As someone who doesn't let life get him down, Matthew is a patient and level headed person with a mix of interests such as chess, art, ballet, opera and more. This greatly helped him connect with Carl when he was first assigned as his caretaker and nurse after the accident. Having been around for a good portion of Markus's life and Leo's integration into the family dynamic, Matthew is quite accustomed to the Manfred family drama by now, and will often get involved with the Manfred boys when he knows they could use a little extra help. The day of the car crash was his one day off, and Matthew feels immensely guilt for not being there to help when it happened. He tried to do his best with tending to Markus while he was getting used to his prosthetic legs, and kept a closer eye on Leo, who was also doing poorly at the time, but his attention remains focused primarily on Carl's needs, so it's no surprise he couldn't stop Markus from running away.

Leo Manfred - Carl's eldest son and a product of a brief fling with a younger fan, Leo is a troubled young man with a lot of internalized issues that have followed him throughout his entire life. Between trying to prove himself to the world, and trying to balance what little money he made on his own to afford his T treatment, Leo never wanted to accept the child-support money his father gave him out of pride. When his mother fell ill, however, Leo stopped using it to fund his education and instead began using it to try to help his mom recover. The worse she got, the more he'd spend, until eventually the money just wasn't enough to combat the amounting medical bills. When his mother died, a 16 year old Leo had no other option but to go live with the father he'd never met. He initially resented both Carl and Markus for living in the lap of luxury while he and his mother were left to rot, but eventually he acclimated to life with his remaining family and grew closer to them. When the accident happened, a 27 year old Leo was incredibly distraught by what befell both his father and younger brother, and he once again tried to do his best to help. A little after he turned 28, he began to work a few odd jobs, but a month after Markus's 19th birthday he had to go to the hospital after he got jumped in an alleyway and stabbed. When Markus ran away, Leo began to fall into a downward spiral, but he's tried to remain strong for Carl's sake. He has no idea where Markus has gone but he hopes his brother has at least managed to escape the cop that started all of their problems.

Markus Manfred - Carl's youngest son and product of a one night stand with an unnamed woman, Markus is an athletic and highly talented young man with a lot of ambition and heart. Having never met his mother and been raised entirely by Carl, Markus is his father's son and shares multiple interests with Carl. Having come from a background of privilege, however, has left Markus somewhat naive and sheltered, which has always concerned his father to no end. Markus himself only realized things weren't exactly golden when his older brother came to live at the mansion. Initially despising one another, Leo and Markus's relationship was downright hostile for a good part of three years, up until some very difficult events brought them together. When Markus turned 18, he was a victim of racial profiling and harassed by a police officer for weeks on end until things took a turn for the worse. One afternoon while returning home from classes, he was chased down by the same cop, and was badly beaten for "resisting arrest". When Markus later tried to take action against the unfair treatment, he began receiving death threats. He didn't think anything would happen, until one afternoon he went out for a drive with Carl. The two were rushed to the hospital after their car crashed, due to the breaks having been cut, and while Carl ended up falling into a coma, Markus was seriously injured. Even during recovery (in which Markus had to adjust to having both legs amputated, losing sight and hearing on his right side, and painful and disfiguring scarring all over his body) the death threats kept coming. On his 19th birthday, when he'd fully adjusted to his prosthetics, another incident occurred where Leo was attacked, and a guilt ridden Markus decided he needed to disappear so as to keep his family safe. He's been on the run ever since, and his search for Jericho has led him to meet quite the interesting cast of characters, including the Dechart brothers and the Williams girls, who he's joined forces with to find Jericho.

The Williams Household: Home of Todd Williams and the disguised prison of Kara and Alice Williams. Nothing is as good as it seems.

Todd Williams - A deadbeat taxi-driver with a grudge against his ex-wife and an addiction to several different stimulants, Todd is an ill-tempered individual with a violent streak. After his sister passed away, Todd took in his young niece Kara who he initially treated well. Eventually, as he got himself tangled up with the wrong kind of people, Todd became unemployed and ended up doing odd jobs around the neighborhood to pay the bills and sustain his many addictions. He began to abuse Kara soon after, and ended up impregnating her in the process. To save face, he hid all evidence of their familial ties and forcefully married his niece to make it appear as though everything was normal. As the years went by, Todd's abuse only got worse and Kara's life of forced servitude and motherhood only made her crave freedom more and more.

Kara Williams - After her mother passed away from cancer, a young 13 year old Kara ended up in her uncle Todd's custody as her sole living relative. Initially treated lovingly, Kara was completely caught off guard when her uncle began to change due to his downward spiral into a life of drug-dealing and dependency. Experiencing Todd's abuse and hateful nature soon shaped the once boisterous and cheery Kara into a shy and submissive girl, which only made things worse after she eventually became pregnant with his child. Powerless against her uncle, Kara was forced to become his wife and have the baby as a way to feign normalcy as well as substitute the family Todd had previously driven away due to his bad habits. While she resented Todd and all he had done to her, including pulling her out of school and forever tainting her idea of a family, Kara was always a loving mother to her daughter. When she turned 19 and Alice turned 6, she managed to run away while Todd suffered an overdose. She has since been on the run in search of a better place to restart her life from the ground up. She meets Connor's tiny group and Markus completely by accident while searching for Jericho. She's the one to suggest they band together to find the elusive group.

Alice Williams - Kara's 6 year old daughter, Alice may be a result of sexual abuse but her mother loves her more than anything in the world. A very quiet, shy, and intelligent little girl, Alice has only ever known a broken home but, with Kara's quick thinking and wits, both girls have managed to get out of their disguised prison and have been living on the run. Life is uncertain, but Alice tries to keep a brave face, if only to help reassure her mother in the face of adversity.

The Chapman Household: A known ally of Jericho's situated in Canada, this small family is known for helping those in dire need.

Rose Chapman - A kind-hearted and family oriented woman who has helped many runaway kids along their journey. A firm believer that everyone deserves a second chance, especially if they came from very difficult and dangerous situations. A lot of the youngsters she has helped in the past have gone to live at her brother's farm, while others have gone under the radar. Some maintain contact with her. She is Josh's and Lucy's aunty from their mother's side and has been trying to win custody over them ever since her sister passed away, since she knew their father was an unstable individual. She's been searching for them ever since she found out they ran away, and hopes they'll make it to Canada without much issue.

Adam Chapman - Rose's son and Josh and Lucy's younger cousin, Adam is a young boy with a very nervous disposition. He means well, but his fear that his mother might get in trouble by helping hide runaway kids usually causes him to be outwardly hostile towards their temporary guests. He was distraught when he found out his cousins went missing, and has been helping his mother search for them.

The Phillips Household: The humble beginnings of a family destined for disaster.

John Phillips - A workaholic and often absent father, John is a man who worked his entire life to get where he is and who's become a bit of an idealist and show-off as a result. In his youth he and Caroline had been high school sweethearts before both parted ways to pursue the life they had always wanted for themselves. Years later, the two reunited and got married, with John accepting the twins as if they were his own kids. After Emma was born, John became less present in the kids' lives, which left them completely under Caroline's care. Obsessed with climbing up the social ladder and with furthering his career, John supported Caroline's old fashioned ways as a means to create the idyllic and perfect picket fence family dynamic he wanted to convey to the world. This ultimately ended in failure when a tormented and disconsolate Simon ran away, and when Daniel attempted suicide. John has since taken a step back from work to recollect his thoughts and try to fix the mess he'd let happen.

Caroline Phillips - An old fashioned and a recovering alcoholic, Caroline is a woman who was pushed around all her life and shaped to be the perfect american housewife. When she was younger, Caroline had dreams of becoming more than a stay-at-home wife. She'd wanted to be a teacher, or even a doctor at one point. These dreams were thoroughly beaten out of her by her ex-husband, a belligerent asshole who'd married her after she'd gotten pregnant. Shaped into a bitter and angry woman by her abusive relationship, Caroline eventually divorced the man who'd ruined her life but did not come out of the marriage unscathed. She married her highschool sweetheart and started her life anew, but began to put a lot of pressure on the twins so they wouldn't be anything like their biological father. When her eldest daughter came out as trans, however, Caroline was furious. She couldn't accept Simon for who he was, having wanted him to be the perfect daughter and role model for her youngest daughter, and did everything in her power to force Simon to remain a perfect young girl. After Simon was assaulted at school by a bully, Caroline blamed him for "instigating the attack with all of the nonsensical spheal of being a boy". This argument encouraged Simon to run away, and inevitably caused Daniel to deteriorate and attempt to take his own life. Caroline has since been forced to seek help, while John tries to fix the lasting damage she caused their children.

Emma Phillips - The sweet and loving younger sister, Emma had to stand and watch as her family was ripped apart by the lasting effects of abuse and from prolonged absence and ignorance. She was the apple of her mother's eye and as such often used as an excuse for the twins to behave, least their behaviour affect Emma in anyway. This ultimately became an excuse for Caroline to continuously reject and force Simon into a role he did not want and, subsequently, created a distance between Simon and Emma. She was much closer to Daniel as a result. After Simon ran away, Emma could see Daniel wasn't ok despite his best attempts to hide his depression from his littlest sister. Emma was the one who found Daniel when he attempted to take his own life. The event has left her traumatized and fearful.

Daniel Phillips - The older of the Phillips twins, Daniel is a tragic example of someone who couldn't choose between his own morals and his familial obligations until it was too late. Once upon a time, Daniel and Simon had been close as any set of twins is bound to be. They had been the result of another relationship of their mother's before she married John and, as a result, there was always a lot of pressure put upon them to be good despite their biological father having been a deadbeat asshole. Daniel, having been the protective older brother, had taken it upon himself to shoulder that pressure because he knew Simon already had a lot on his plate. Doing as his mother always told him, and doing his best to please his workaholic and show off of a father, Daniel's relationship with his twin deteriorated as the years went by, his parent's old fashioned views taking their toll on his moral compass. Unable to understand Simon's plight, and being too scared to go against his parents' wishes, Daniel rejected his twin whenever Simon plead for help. It was his job as the oldest to be the example, a role model for their little sister Emma. He had to make his parents happy, and taking Simon's side wouldn't make them happy. As he watched his twin deteriorated, however, Daniel was left guilt ridden and depressed. He knew he'd failed as a brother, but he didn't want to crack under the pressure and make things worse. So, despite knowing his parents were wrong, Daniel did nothing to ease his brother's heavy heart. It was when Simon ran away that Daniel finally lost control of everything in his life. In the span of a few days, the eldest Phillips twin's life became a complete train wreck which led him to attempt suicide as an escape. He's currently hospitalized and under watch while in a catatonic state.

Jericho: A group of runaway teenagers and children that live a nomadic life. They follow the train tracks wherever they may take them, and sometimes get on freighter trains clandestinely, where they seek shelter and a few supplies stolen from crates.

Silvia Phillips/"Simon of Jericho" - The younger of the Phillips twins, Simon was one of Jericho's founding members and has always been the go to person when runaway children are involved. Like most of the teenagers in Jericho, Simon's story is filled with tragedy and abuse.  Ever since he was a young child, Simon knew he'd been born in the wrong body. No matter how much his mother tried to bring out the perfect daughter she'd always wanted, Simon just didn't feel like he fit in that role, nor that he could ever feel comfortable in his own skin as long as she tried to shape him into something he clearly wasn't. As he and Daniel grew older and apart, Simon tried to open up about his concerns with his family. This failed tremendously however. Rejected by his mother's old fashioned views, his father's overall dismissal of anything non-work related, and his brother's compliance to his parents' demands, Simon felt lost and alone even at home. The laughing stock of his community, Simon lived a life of pure misery due to being treated like a freak by his peers, and was basically left to fend for himself as his brother got more absorbed into the family life and his growing depression. Simon felt like there wasn't anything he could ever do to change his life for the better, and his tormentors fed off that negativity. After he was sexually assaulted at school by the class bully, and subsequently discovered he was pregnant due to the attack, he tried to once again reach out to his family in a desperate attempt to get the help he needed. The following argument with his mother is what drove him to run away, after cutting his hair, binding his chest and stealing some of his brother's clothes. He abandoned his old life and name, and is now only known as Simon of Jericho. The protector and caretaker of children.

Riley "North" Kelly - There are a lot of stories about pretty girls, all looks and no brain, getting pulled from college earlier to pursue careers as models. Then there are stories like Riley Kelly's. Riley was a young girl born in poverty and who never had anything yet gave a lot to those around her. Forced to prostitute herself to earn money for her family, she was always bitter that she'd never accomplished any of her life goals, such as getting a degree or living stable. When the money wasn't enough, Riley ended up on the streets, abandoned and unwanted due to just being "another mouth to feed". Ever the resourceful and clever 18 year old girl, however, Riley took what she could by pickpocketing and doing some dodgy work here and there, before leaving the city entirely to search for Jericho. Her old name was all but forgotten as she headed North, and eventually she became a sort of legend within the group that readily took her in. She is one of the best hunters and fighters in Jericho, and has taken on several apprentices.

Josh Sawyers - The son of a highly religious and traditionalist priest, Josh's early childhood had been nothing if not a nightmare. He lost his mother after his younger sister was born, and practically raised her himself despite their age gap being very minute. Josh was always known to be a very clever and curious boy, as well as a pacifist at heart, three traits that his father didn't seem to like too much considering his old fashioned views of manhood. Often punished for the smallest of inconveniences, or beaten for being too wimpy, Josh had only ever known abuse and hate despite the hypocrite preaching of love and tolerance that his father spewed every Sunday to the rest of the community. When his sister Lucy turned 17, and Josh himself turned 20, the two ran away from their abusive household to escape their father. Their final goal is to reach their aunt Rose's house that is all the way in Canada, but until they get there they remain with Jericho who took them in when no one else would. Josh serves as a teacher to the children of Jericho, as well as the head of inventory due to his meticulous organization skills. His attentive nature and overall knowledge is very useful for the group.

Lucy Sawyers - Josh's younger sister and the daughter of a belligerent preacher, Lucy is a brilliant young woman that, despite her blindness, has the most accurate perception out of everyone in Jericho. She has a talent for tending to other's medical needs, and her calm disposition is rather soothing. She is the primary "doctor" in Jericho, alongside Simon, Shaolin Being and Rupert.

Cornelius Ortiz/"The Shaolin Being" - A young man with a knack for mysticism, spiritual healing as well as physical healing, the Shaolin Being is a heavily scarred victim of domestic abuse, as well as one of the longest standing missing child case in the DPD's records. While his real name is confidential, the one his kidnapper gave him was all but discarded after Shaolin couldn't take much more of the abuse he received daily. After murdering the thief and drug addict, Carlos Ortiz, who took him from his biological family several years ago, Shaolin renamed himself and left in search of safe haven where he could pray to the divine deities he'd come to worship as a means of escaping the suffering he'd been put through under Ortiz. He has a vast knowledge of healing herbs, home remedies and meditation rituals which, while unusual, are actually quite beneficial to Jericho. Shaolin Being is seen as a kind older brother and healer, but one shouldn't underestimate someone who is very skilled with a knife.

Tracy "Echo" Rose - A victim of sex trafficking, Echo was once a young girl named Tracy Rose who was kidnapped from her hometown and sold to a sex club alongside many other young girls like herself. Once a naive and complacent victim, she began to hope for a better life after meeting and befriending another girl that worked at the club. At 17, she killed and strangled a patron of the club after she witnessed him beat another girl to death, and then she found the courage to flee with her lover. She's been with Jericho ever since, under the protection of North.

Stacy "Ripple" Blaire - Like Echo, Ripple is also a victim of sex trafficking. However, unlike her lover, Ripple was unfortunately forced to work at the club by her own father. She had lived her entire life under his control, degraded and incapable of standing up for herself after years of conditioning. This all changes when she met Echo, who slowly brought out the fight she'd hidden within her all along. After the two fled, they joined Jericho and became North's apprentices.

Rupert Travis - The orphaned son of a farmer, Rupert was always considered to be a little off by the rest of the community he lived in. He didn't like people too much, preferring to be in the company of the farm animals he helped his father tend to, and he had a rather odd fixation with birds. Often shunned by his peers, Rupert didn't have any friends during his childhood and seemed to grow accustomed to the loneliness that followed him everywhere he went. After a fire claimed the life of his father and the property they lived in, Rupert ended up on the streets. Homeless and unwanted, Rupert opted with isolating himself from the world, living on his lonesome in the woods. As the years went by, he became a sort of urban legend: A crazy young man who trains pigeons to do his bidding. The stories aren't entirely wrong, except the part about cults and blood sacrifices. He has no idea where those came from. He's one of Jericho's suppliers, since living independently from the rest of the world has given him plenty of time to hone his hunting, gathering and farming skills. He also serves as an emergency medic for more seriously injured group members.

Ralph Vladimary - Ralph is a mystery all on his own. Having been found living alone in an abandoned cabin in the woods, it's obvious from the scars and his overall behaviour and unpredictable mood swings that something absolutely horrible happened to him in the past, but Ralph has never opened up about it. A very reserved and easily frightened young man, Ralph doesn't do well in crowds and doesn't join Jericho in their travels because he's easy to overwhelm. Instead he continues to reside in the woods in his little cabin, receiving help from Rupert when he sets off on his own away from the group to check on his many camps and crops. Suffering from several mental disorders makes it hard for Ralph to get by on his own, but there are very few people he trusts so he manages out of sheer willpower and perhaps a little bit of spite towards those who think he's bound to fail. As reserved and difficult as he may be, Ralph would do anything for his friends, and is actually quite good at growing food and medicinal herbs. He's another one of Jericho's top suppliers as a result, although it's advised to send someone he likes to get the supplies.

The Jerrys/The Bosch Quintuplets - The sons of an old Canadian Navy Captain, Jeremiah, Jerome, Jeremy, Jerard and Jeronim, otherwise known as the Jerrys, are a set of happy-go-lucky quintuplets who are considered outliers of Jericho, as they wound up missing by pure accident. The unfortunate series of events that lead them to where they are now, are rather ironic, as the nautical theme loving Jerrys fell overboard and ended up getting washed away. How they survived is beyond anyone, considering the harsh temperatures of Detroit in winter, but they somehow managed to only sustain a few injuries from frostbite and still march on with a smile on their face. They hope to get back to Canada to their father one day, but for now they remain with Jericho, adamant to help the group members find a place to call home.

Luther - The first person to befriend Kara and Alice on their travels, after both ended up at Zlatko's mansion by mistake. Luther is a rather tall and intimidating young man, but at heart he is a gentle giant who means well. An amnesiac, he was forced to be Zlatko's slave and main enforcer from a young age, and has no memory of who he was before he was purchased. He is also the co-leader of the Creatures gang, whom he calls his found family. Luther helped Kara and Alice escape, and later rejoined her with his group after she joined forces with Connor and Markus.

The Creatures/Luther's Gang - Former slaves of Zlatko Andromikov, Luther's gang is comprised by a series of teenagers who grew up bound to servitude and a life of cruelty. Many bare terrible scars, others were born with birth defects, but they are all bound to each other by loyalty and one commonality: They were unwanted by their kin before they found a family in each other. Their spokesperson/leader is a very tall and muscular young woman who is covered in multiple scars, and who only speaks Russian. Despite her terrifying appearance she's a teddy bear at heart and is considered the older sister of Luther's group.

The Founder: The DPD and Amanda aren't the only ones following the Dechart missing case. Someone else in a higher place is watching...

Elijah Kamski - An enigmatic man and the original founder of Cypherlife, Elijah Kamski is a man of many secrets. When he originally founded Cypherlife his goal was to enhance human lives through specialized and experimental treatment of neural and psychological disorders. It's unknown why he left, but rumours say that he was betrayed by a group of very ambitious staff members in the company.

"Chloe" - Elijah Kamski's equally enigmatic secretary, not much is really known about Chloe, not even her real name. A highly intelligent and resourceful woman, she seems to have a lot of contacts within the city limits. Some question how such a beautiful recognizable young lady can get around unnoticed when she can captivate everyone whenever she's on screen with her boss.

Zlatko's trafficking ring: Jericho has many enemies that mean them harm. The worst of the bunch are those who wish to prey on them and turn them into merchandising.

Zlatko Andromikov - The leader of a child trafficking circuit, Zlatko is a cruel man who has ruined the lives of countless youths that have mistakenly gone to him for help in their times of dire need. Known well in the black market for his "quality merchandising" and many "services", Zlatko has multiple eyes and ears around Detroit who spread his lies of promised safety and new beginnings. He, like Amanda and Perkins, has loose ends to tie with two particular members of Jericho.

[architectnews]

Amant art campus, East Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Amant art campus East Williamsburg, Brooklyn Building, NYC Architecture Photos, New York City

Amant art campus, East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY

May 7, 2021

Design: SO–IL

SO – IL Designed ‘Art Campus’ Amant in Brooklyn Opens This Summer with Solo Exhibition by Grada Kilomba

Interdisciplinary, Research-based Artist Residency Begins This Fall

Amant exterior, under construction, April 2021: photograph Courtesy the Amant Foundation

Amant art campus in Brooklyn, New York

BROOKLYN, NY – May 2021 — The Amant Foundation is pleased to announce that on June 5th it will open the doors on Amant, a 21,000 square foot multi-building “art campus” in East Williamsburg, designed by the award-winning architecture firm SO–IL. The complex will serve as Amant’s new headquarters, as well as the home for its exhibitions, public events, archival projects, performances, and residency program. Conceived as a research and process-oriented platform, Amant provides a public forum that presents and supports the practices of both established and under-recognized artists working across diverse creative fields.

Amant will open with a survey of work by Grada Kilomba (b.1968), the Portuguese artist, writer and academic of West African descent whose work deals with the difficult legacies of slavery and the colonial past. It will mark Kilomba’s first show in the United States.

The Amant Foundation made its debut with the launch of its Siena residency in the summer of 2020. The foundation is the vision of philanthropist and art collector Lonti Ebers, with the Brooklyn programs to be spearheaded by Artistic Director Ruth Estévez, former Gallery Director at REDCAT in Los Angeles and Senior Curator at Large at the Rose Art Museum. She is also the co-curator of the 34th São Paulo Bienal, which opens this fall.

The New York residency will welcome its first group of four artists in September and will host similarly sized groups three times a year. While its summer residency in Siena is geared towards mid-career artists as a “working retreat,” the Brooklyn program is research-focused, facilitating cross-discipline collaborations between Amant’s residents.

“The idea behind Amant was to create studios and exhibition spaces that would encourage artistic research and experimentation, free of the time restrictions and financial and administrative confines that typically accompany art practices in New York,” said Ebers.

Amant’s program will focus on research-based projects that do not always neatly fit into pre-existing systems of artistic and cultural production. Forthcoming collaborations include a commission by Gala Porras-Kim exploring current practices in the restitution and repatriation of cultural objects, and a new work by New York-based filmmaker Manthia Diawara depicting a series of hypothetical conversations between Martinican poet Édouard Glissant and thinkers of the African diaspora, drawn from Diawara’s own archive.

“At a moment when New York is still reeling from the pandemic, Amant wants to stress the importance of human relations,” said Estévez. “We want to provide opportunities to seed long-term cohesion between artists and audiences, supporting a tissue of intellectual, creative and emotional togetherness.”

Most of Amant’s time-based programming will occur at Géza, a 1800-square foot multipurpose building on campus for performances and screenings. In the fall, as conditions permit, Géza will host a screening series featuring Grada Kilomba, Olivia Plender, Dora García, and Clara Ianni, whose cinematic works dissect and re-assemble history through found footage, news archives, and other epistolary documents and ephemera.

Grada Kilomba: Heroines, Birds and Monsters June 3 – October 3

Amant’s gallery spaces will host three exhibitions in 2021. The first, on view from June 3 through October 3, is the first solo exhibition of Berlin-based artist Grada Kilomba in the United States, presenting her unique form of storytelling. Working with theory, performance, film, and literature, Kilomba reveals the narratives of the colonial past, giving space to the silenced voices whose traumas are ever present. In her own words: “What if history has not been told properly? What if our history is haunted by cyclical violence precisely because it has not been buried properly?”

Kilomba’s work is showcased across three of Amant’s buildings, transforming them into a theatre stage where characters, gestures, words, sounds and props unfold into a hybrid body, exchanging roles and staging a new dramaturgy that traverses geographies and temporalities.

In the exhibition’s centerpiece, A World of Illusions (2017-2019), Kilomba radically reinterprets three well-known Greek myths to expose the unresolved tragedies of the postcolonial condition. Drawing on her academic background in psychoanalysis, the artist dedicates Narcissus and Echo to the politics of invisibility and Oedipus the King to the politics of violence, while the tragedy of Antigone exposes the politics of erasure and the importance of ceremonial memory. Combining music, mime, and dance, she re-stages the fables through African traditions of oral storytelling —the Griot— and building on analogies to the modern patriarchal system through the inclusion of a postcolonial lens.

The trilogy reincarnates as a sequence of photographs with the shared title of Heroines, Birds and Monsters (2020), portraying the female protagonists in a sculptural pose. In The Desire Project (2016) the representational image disappears entirely, with text displayed as the only visual element, accompanied by musical rhythms substituting for the narrator’s voice. The concluding work, Table of Goods (2017), a sculpture born out of ritual-performance, presents as both an object and landscape of the whole exhibition. The trans-atlantic trade between Europe, America, and Africa—sugar, coffee, cacao–are interred in a pile of soil. Kilomba displays these extracted materials as a burial, a symbolic ritual of remembrance of the slave trade as historical trauma, of which the consequences on the psyche are yet to be thoroughly explored.

Heroines, Birds and Monsters applies a new poetic, theoretical, and political framework to the colonial past, and the ways by which these narratives continue to embed themselves.

“Retelling history anew and properly is a necessary ceremony, a political act. Otherwise, history becomes haunted. It repeats itself. It returns intrusively, as fragmented knowledge, interrupting and assaulting our present lives.” – Grada Kilomba

Interior of Amant’s performance space Géza, under construction: photo : Naho Kubota. Courtesy SO-IL and the Amant Foundation

The Space

Amant’s home in New York is a research and artistic platform spread across four different buildings in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn at 315 Maujer Street, 306 Maujer Street, and 932 Grand Street, with construction projected to conclude in May 2021. Flexibility is of deep pragmatic and conceptual importance for Amant, which, due to its interdisciplinary program, requires its premises to fulfill multiple purposes.

“With the design of the Amant campus we introduce a more humane grain and texture to the industrial neighborhood,” said SO–IL. “Both robust and intimate, we believe the complex of buildings will offer an oasis for creative thought and production, as well as an inviting and intriguing environment for visitors.”

Designed by architectural firm SO–IL as an “art campus,” the new space includes exhibition galleries, a bookstore, a courtyard garden and a multifunctional space dedicated to moving images and live art. The overall complex allows for an internal networking of activities while connecting, spatially, with the dynamics of the surrounding neighborhood. SO–IL’s design is both a new landmark and a seamless addition to East Williamsburg. Their intimate reinterpretations of materials like concrete, brick, and steel were conceived with Amant’s industrial surroundings in mind.

The main entrance is located in the center of the complex at 315 Maujer Street, which houses Amant’s offices and a daylit, 22 ft. tall gallery space. Across the courtyard at 932 Grand Street, what was once a marble shop has been converted into a vast second gallery space spanning over 2,000 square feet, in addition to a cafe and bookstore.

To the south at 306 Maujer is a dedicated studio building for residents featuring a large communal meeting area, library, and dining space, encouraging social exchange. Four daylit studios occupy the floor above. Walkways at the east and west perimeter lead to a second concrete volume housing Géza, a 1,800 square foot multipurpose space for performances and screenings.

Amant exterior, under construction, April 2021: photo Courtesy the Amant Foundation

Residency

In September, Amant’s Brooklyn campus will welcome its inaugural group of national and international residents. The four artists will come from a wide range of artistic fields and reflect Amant’s commitment to geographic diversity. Residencies take place three times a year and form the heart of Amant. The New York residency is open to artists at all stages of their careers, with the sole restriction that residents may not already live in New York.

With a focus on research, rather than production and fabrication, residents will enrich their creative practices by observing, absorbing, and listening to the many perspectives, lived experiences, places, and communities that New York has to offer. More specifically, the residency will foster an active dialogue between local art and academic institutions, art professionals, and cultural producers. Additionally, the Amant residency will emphasize engagement with informal centers of knowledge often overlooked by the art historical canon or wider historical record.

The selection process prioritizes artists who require resources for long-term research and archival work, in line with Amant’s ethos of supporting thoughtful, experimental practices that “slow down” and ease the time pressures of the art production process.

In addition to individual studio space at 306 Maujer, each resident will receive a $3,000 monthly stipend, and Amant will cover the cost of transportation to and from New York.

Amant Founder and CEO Lonti Ebers with Artistic Director Ruth Estévez on site at Amant, March 2021: photo: Lyndsy Welgos. Courtesy the Amant Foundation

About Ruth Estévez

Ruth Estévez is a curator and stage designer. She is the co-curator of the 34th São Paulo Biennial, which opens in September 2021. From 2018 to 2020 she was Senior Curator-at-large at the Rose Art Museum in Waltham, Massachusetts and curator of Idiorhythmias, the performance program at MACBA in Barcelona. She was Redcat Gallery Director in Los Angeles and Chief Curator at the Carrillo Gil Museum in Mexico City, where she also founded LIGA, Space for architecture (2010-), a non-for-profit platform focused on spatial practices.

About Lonti Ebers

Lonti Ebers is a long-time art collector and supporter of contemporary art. Lonti hired the renowned architectural firm SO–IL to design Amant’s innovative performance and art complex. Lonti has served on the boards of several museums in both the US and abroad and is currently a trustee of New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMa), serves on the board of the Centre for Curatorial Studies at Bard College in Upstate New York, and sits on the European Committee of the Tate Gallery in London.

SO – IL

Amant art campus, East Williamsburg, Brooklyn building images / information from Amant

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[marcosoropoet]

Subtextual

1~ With a curious reluctanct endearment I push open the old mossy stone door once more, more so, its creaks razor sharp, its groans prolonged, and even if you might chance upon my being away on furlough, which begs the question... yet, still, I bid you come along enter since I am alone, tonight, and all I think of is you. the interface efficient, see if there's anything...again as it is always; to see if there's anything, again. something electric and vast. something that is from day to night to day... something brilliantly bright Still, I must cover myself from the brightness of day, and I am not ashamed. Those people laughing outside sound like hyenas post modulation. If I were from your earth, hype would arouse and excite me maybe (it is so often manufactured & crafted so irresistibly)... even ciphered anomalous flarfy glitches or black spidery realizations frozen in mid-scream my feet don't feel as though they are touching and treading ground. searingly clear & hyper-real floating Hey! Hey! (waving) I see somebody- (running up to them)— Hey! I see someone walking towards me across the street, but in my dream, the clumps of greyish snow don't allow me to see how they are (((walking)))...hard to record my found footage audio and video.shit!!! movie buzz is chainsaws love human flesh ~ 2~ mysterious more glancing out the car window the burning needle embroidering curtains of cloud-mystifying infinite violet and red radio tableaux, a tactile postmodern nostalgic melancholy.... affixing associatives in rampant aggregate slowness; flashing known images of fields, houses, rusted fixtures, patinaed a bright orange red-brown, horses, & certain deep periwinkle blue wildflowers she really likes... in my private self I lose the center of this piece and plunge, more into the fingerprints fetching a face, myself, I see you. that I am here. a punchyouface tongue-out in the funhouse restrained endless cloistered chasm trauma loop I penetrated through damaged fake tongue warning, our glass galaxy, is after all, suspended awash in opal blue, an oceanic wave of time is sweetly scrawled: because it must do with time. 3~ navigated by the black-cloud rope smoke of inertia & cold slanting rain pummeling under sound pounding studio bootleg basement lichen leavening every square inch of air awestruck with violet reversal, we looked horrified brain crazy. all the while the aroma of desert sage, outdoor coffees and our blue sky is never the same again you know you... frozen still burning quantum dreaminess, inside the black hole, light blue-grey microcosm ruse of identity melting frog candy, causal spinning eyes almost deeper now. no it's a red splatter handprint of smoke darkening room spacestealing nihilistic distorted space erasure gutted black caricature inert everything offends and our blue-grey microcosm ruse of inertia & movie buzzing endless timestamped outtakes; rain pummeling under sound pounding studio bootleg basement rhythm & blues hmmmmmmmmmmmm... harmonica: an imparted sharp musical squeal fell to the glass floor cracking in quickly fissuring musical inches of bubbling silver flash guitar wailing hard...itsa gotsa wail hard chil' (((Twang))) itsa gonsta wail so hard chil' ev'ry night and day (((Twang-a Twang Twang))) I sed, heh (((Atwang-a Twang Twang)))...Wwwelll... 4~ navigated by the black hole, light blue sky is never the same again you know you... frozen still burning inert everything offends and is confusing every square inch of air awestruck with tricky quantum reversal mindbend episode triggers blooming we looked Horrified Brain Crazy. all the while the aroma of ice blue desert sage, outdoor black coffees every square electric inch of raw air grimace— Hardcore Serious Animal Real serial repeated ditching Sequences when I move my hand beyond the light The sky the sharpest expert royal blue, chalk-white-bark. Rose-red threads weave dreams of Blustering Roses under Blue-Black Skies. Fingerprints fetch a face, mystifyingly filed in with the letters X&Z, "I was jus' goin' down tha street...heh, did you jus' mutt'r: "ramshackle derelic', you suppose, inside trash industrial chain link fake funk tongue warning out through damaged electronic faked out tongue "tutti-frutti" baby babeh...sound pounding out the center of this piece's fingerprints really gettin' down tuhnite babeh?! "I sho' enuf did...babeh! "whew! fetched me a face, myself (I lose) (I like) the black-cloud chasm trauma Looked Horrified by the Presence of Air Awestruck Twice in the Frozen Half of yesterday overlapping superimposing quietly with minimal embellishment. The morphing stand-alone Center of Inert-Everything Feral Chasm Trauma dormant looked horrified brain crazy in The Center of a Fresh Gelatinous Engineered Peach...glowing bright, Lime Yellow Lava Projected Blobs melting one into the other in citrus and cinnamon associative scents...synthetic dark patchouli notes~ —in the back: the band's waiting, twitching, rustling around edgily rumbling, banging about; a cymbal clashes and everyone registers the unique sound: their muffled pranks continue to keep themselves cracking up so badly— geeks re-recording the faux equivalent of dated found filler footage super8mm reductive spotlight trash b-roll fantasy knockout...drums pound and roll hard, cymbals clash, band members filmed yawning on silvery scratched up film...looking wildly blank, dressed weird on purpose, sitting in a chair, red and green brocade...sensational auteur angles...superimposed out of frame constant quirky jump cuts in a jerky slow motion— urns of inertia & rain pummeling navigating the serpentine candle-lit old-brick-passages and*time portals*> >>> > >>> >>> >>> >>>] the needle burning the LP deep past midnight baby soft background scratches and easy funk vibes playin' slow... far deep-red basement cloister black and white art deco textiles, stepping inside the trauma loop pattern I penetrated, tossed inside trash industrial cinema churning, suffused in streaming bluecloud fingerprints fetch a face, inside industrial trash cinema churning, the conversation...the recording. In my private self I lose the car window's identity.mystifying, shaping emptily, basement chairs of faked tongue warning spread out vastly, magenta clouds, pink moons, and a green rope smoke of flame and licking fire, makes the whole skylook green chalk white mottled bark beyond the light microcosm grey-blue light quantum ore skips time burning still frozen smoldering deep grey-moss ruse of rubber spider legs identity melting, causal spinning eyes almost deep splatter handprint of smoke darkening room spacestealing nihilistic distorted space erasure gutted black caricature hardcore serious real serial electric implements, repeatedly ditched the trophies, skipped the noir and hard-boil egg-peeled the victims, one by one "momma-momma, this is whin thuh program starts up, showin' yuh all thoze pitchers of thuh serial killahs strikin' ag'in and ag'in in a weirt circl' were thuh camera slowly zooms out tah revill from direc'ly ovahhead one of 'em momma, insahd anothuh large circl' of all kindsa weaponry...lookit fur yerself momma...see? 5~ sequences are stilled when I move my eyes beyond the light of the venetian blinds, and complancies of lilac valances... (the wind outside howls through the slanting rain). it's always been a miasmic isolated place... grey, dank, overgrown with burbling albino moss... and a rare and very deep-violet lichen. 6~ I Sn-nuuuck*- - - through the/hee-hee-hee/house HaLLWays to the LaUnDrysome clothes done...clotheschangecolor .but they chanGeUPchange t he t he...eeeeethecolor clothes of clothes negativo to the "neGative" négatif of the O/riginal ColOr…no bot 2///bot3-x-x-x pod cast install bot 4: synthesizing other annoyed bots and aberrant rogue algorithms. "mamA MAma MAmewww oOoO HURREeEe I think up hurry it's those _S-SErial KillaHS down dowNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNstairs DOWn...thuh...B-B-block :LIVE alien tunnel collapse horror[FILm/ed pure filmic inversion filmed Livestream accessible: entry portals close in 5 earth or increments|..../*/*/* |repeat : audio is still sideways\ again-0-no/…\t00—Trying hardto regain the-camera Again. noise/sounds lik|e plain staticXXX}]}]}]fweepooowha-wheee ---interference c*r*a*c*k*l*in*g/ there unidentifiable. Heavy static, beeps, and clicks...we are proceeding—I REPEAT we are proceeding—Lock it the fuck down NOW and bounce! Radio...banging noises...repeated thuds, garbled audio/an indistinct scream, but a clearly sequenced human scream from next door, listen for it when the tape is run back. Very loud—yikes! I think it's that guy with the hat and flimsy raincoat. 7~ Lightflash pinball machine arcades are an ambient and surprising ethos of cheap hyper bright jewel tone lights, many mirrors re-reflecting low art in other mirrors, projected radiant phases of the resonating stadium roar were pure human-machine. For forgive for interrupt inter attention ACTION cycle breakthrough exchange cycling down. I am the machine, and myself we beg rest...just the pittance of a few nano seconds & infinity are virtually interchangeable...please I need to re-up, to get well: you might complex : compress : comprehend|:| you probably may not even see but I must shut down now:/command.> override to optional personalized AI thought interface access5access4access3access2access 1access- - / |---------------------------------- ----- * Utter Quintessential granted key-trace ///-...enter code signal * ///code: : : crackling smoky synapses trailing electrical eclectic thought, lightning... tv program black-out: energy matrix, excursus scrutinized: Carnival bumper cars trail ceiling sparks gloriously arcing a piercing blue spray of cascading fire & silver smoke sputtering and spraying flashes of bright blue dotted iterations of light rawly all over our heads— that smelt so burnt-up & good. ~ Marcos Oro

[shenanigans-academia]

Sports Festival Arc

Okay so I’ve just decided to talk about each episode individually since so much happens in them and I have a lot of things to say that nobody cares about ANYWAY MOVING ON here you go!

Episode 14: That’s The Idea, Ochaco

•Can we talk about how Todoroki had the prettiest animation in the intro please???

•Aizawa shows up like I LIVED BITCH we love one grumpy crippled old man (reminds me of this English teacher I had who showed up to class after breaking 3 ribs and couldn’t laugh or move and was in visible pain while teaching, Professor Saunders if you ever see this please just take a day off my dude)

•Mido: “Mineta don’t you know how important the Sports Festival is?”

Mineta: “yes but I just don’t want to get MURDERED”

...you know what he has a point

•Jirou to Kami: “most people miss their chance and end up just staying sidekicks. You know what that’s probably what’ll happen to you. You’re kinda dumb” BRUH SHE DIDNT HAVE TO MURDER DENKI LIKE THAT

•Kirishima being so excited for the Sports Festival is so cute I’m gonna cry

•Ojirou and Hagakure are so fucking ADORABLE

•Uraraka getting all pumped up/ ragey and Mineta being ✖️Mineta✖️ and Tsuyu just straight up SMACKING HIM IMMEDIATELY I LOVE HER COLD BLOODED ASS

•“YOUNG MIDORIYA!!!...do you want to eat with me?” I LOVE DADMIGHT

•Todoroki eavesdropping on Uraraka and Iida talking about Mido/All Might: Secret Child Theories activated

Episode 15: Roaring Sports Festival

•SHINSOU SNARKY PURPLE BABY BOY

•TESTUTESTU!!! loving the other classes showing up like fuck y’all 1A bitchass nerds right now honestly

•Kiri stop thirsting for Bakugou when he’s being an ass we get it, you’re gay and love an angry Pomeranian also WHY ARE YOU JUST STRAIGHT UP JUMPING OFF A BUILDING BOI WHAT IS YOU DOIIINNNNGGGGG ROCKS CAN STILL B R E A K

•Todoroki you dramatic hoe I love you but just. Take a nap. “We’Re nOt hEre To MakE FriEnDs” bitch you soft, shut up

•I’m genuinely curious what exactly is Midnight’s quirk? She’s the “R rated Pro Hero” but like...what is it? Is she just Super Sexy? Is it the pheromone thing that makes people think she’s sexy/ feeling aroused? Like what is her power exactly?

•”I just wanna say...I’m gonna win” KACCHAN HONEY WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS

•Todoroki freezing EVERYTHING and being unimpressed by the giant robots sweetie you’re so extra

•Birth of Icy Hot Bastard nickname

•Mineta got fuckin MURKED MAN lmao at least he tried

•Mama Midoriya is Best Mom she worries so much

Episode 16: In Their Own Quirky Ways

•KIRI BREAKING THROUGH THE FUCKING ROBOT SCREAMING IM ALIVE HOLY FUCK (Also Testu bursting through too. Intro to the Hard Boi Twins)

•Lets go Sero and Tokoyami!!

•All Might’s little YES watching Mido using the robot part as a launcher for the explosion warms my heart he’s so proud of his boy

•MIDO vs. TODO vs. BAKU YES BITCH ITS THE BOYS

•”THIS JUST IN ERASURE HEAD IS A TERRIBLE TEACHER” “wait wHAT” I love 2 chaotic teachers

•Shiggy you’re gross please invest in some cortisone skin cream it majorly helps my eczema it can help you too sweetie

•”the 1st place winner is worth...10 MILLION” Everybody around Mido: Activate Instant Kill

Midoriya my boy rUN

Episode 17: Strategy, Strategy, Strategy

•”Wait, remind me of your quirks again. And your names” Bakugou I’m gonna kick your entitled ass square up babe

•Kiri we get it you want Bakugou to top you. Also I love how Bakugou’s just like let’s fucKIN GOOO SHITTY HAIR

•Iida I love your dramatic over-energetic ass so much

•”TEAM UP WITH ME PERSON IN FIRST PLACE”

“YOURE SO CLOSE TO ME WHO ARE YOU???” Hatsume please. Take a dozen chill pills

•Ah. There he is. Monoma. Rat Boi 3000. Let’s go babey

•MY FAVORITE BIRD BOYS YAMI AND DARK SHADOW COMIN IN CLUTCH

•Ah. Cue the Daddy Drama

•This game is just Kill Midoriya, huh

•Monoma is a pro monologuer and honestly? I respect that. But then again it doesn’t take much to get Bakugou riled up

Episode 18: Cavalry Battle Finale

•Shouji is a SCARY BADASS and deserves more acknowledgement

•no matter your opinion on him, Monoma is an interesting character and has a REALLY COOL QUIRK

•Endeavor? Just. Shut up

•Bakugou- I am powered by rage and nothing else

•”Has anyone seen Deku?”

Todoroki: tragic backstory time

Episode 19: The Boy Born With Everything

•Yo FUCK Endeavor lives, man

•Mido ”so why did you bring me here”

Todo ”...soooo THIS IS THE STORY ALL ABOUT WHY I’m depressed/ also are you All Might’s secret love child or something?”

•Okay but All Might asking Endeavor on how to raise a powerful child I’m cackling. But the more Enji talks, the more All Might’s just like “what the fuck are you doing to your kid??”

•Todoroki’s whole monologue is literally just him over sharing and rambling about his trauma I love it

•Bakugou why you being such a creep boo

•”He’s like a comic book character” BITCH YOU ARE TOO YOU’RE ALL LITERALLY SUPERHERO TEENAGERS JFC

•Midoriya telling his friends/rivals “I’m gonna beat you” is basically just his equivalent of “I have a crush on you” change my mind

•Kaminari. I’m disappointed in you. I expected the uniforms from Mineta but come on dude

•Ojirou is so PURE long live Tail Boi he is also too under appreciated and he is just. So good

•KIRISHIMA CRYING OVER MANLY MEN I LOVE HIM

•Kendo is best girl Class 1B

•”Uraraka? Who the hells that?” Bakugou don’t be fuKING RUDE

•SHINSOUSHINSOUSHINSOUSHINSOUUUUU

•Midoriya what did Ojirou fucking TELL YOU

EPISODE 20: Victory or Defeat

•Dadzawa activated, time to adopt a Sleepy Boy into the Hero Course

•Complete BAMF Midoriya has been UNLOCKED PEOPLE

•Poor Shinsou when he goes “im used to people thinking I’m a bad guy” I just couldn’t NOT think of Billie Eilish IM SORRY now I have Bad Guy stuck in my head YOU DID SO GOOD BABY IM PROUD OF YOU

•”Spooky IM A GHOST???” God I love All Might

•”Stop rebelling Shouto”

“It’s NoT a PhaSe DaD”

•Todoroki did you have to go so HARD BRUH WHAT THE FUCK YOU DEPRESSED SHOW OFF

Episode 21: Battle On, Challengers!

•Lmao get wrecked Denki

•Mama Kendo to the rescue come get yo kids

•Everyone at Mido, Please. Shut the fuck up and stop being CREEPY

•Midnight. Please stop lusting over your students it’s gross

•Hatsume played Iida like a fiddle and I’m crying baby boy tried so hard

•WE RESPECT OUR ALIEN QUEEN MINA ASHIDO

•Poor Momo

•KIRI vs. TESTU I LOVE HARD BOI TWINS

•Bakubabe you’re so UGLY I can’t why is your face like that

Episode 22: Bakugou VS. Uraraka

•”Pink Cheeks” Bakugou just learn your classmates names it’s not that hard

•Ochaco is so fucking STRONG

•”like I always suspected. Bakugou’s a total sadist” sometimes Mineta is just. Accurate.

•Can we please talk about how Aizawa was just like “The FUCK are y’all talking about Bakugou is doing what he’s supposed to do in these games it doesn’t matter if his opponents a girl or not y’all are DUMB” like THANK YOU AIZAWA

•Mic has no chill I miss him real talk we don’t get enough Present Mic

•”You’re wrong Kacchan” YOU TELL HIM MIDO

•Bakubitch may be a little much sometimes and I get why a lot of people don’t like him but he does understand his classmates ARE also strong and powerful and you know he respects them in his own weird way even though he’ll never admit it

•KIRI WINS THE ARM WRESTLING MATCH THATS MY FAVORITE BOY

•We love supportive parents (Ochaco’s parents. Fuck Endeavor. Just leave these kids aloonnneeeee you asshat)

•MIDO vs. TODO LETS GO BOYYSSS

•”I’m not worried about a couple of kids” you’re clearly not worried about your crusty skin either Shiggy learn some priorities

Episode 23: Shoto Todoroki: Origin

•IT’S SHOUTO TIME YALL

•All that power in one little fucking finger what the FUCK Mido also PLEASE STOP BREAKING YOUR BONES “I’ve only got 6 more chances” well there go your fucking hands my dude

•Aaaaand there goes your arm

•”You haven’t been able to put a single scratch on me yet, Todoroki” you’re doing a pretty good job of that by yourself Midoriya

•Baby Shouto kills me every time IM GONNA FIGHT ENDEAVOR

•IT’S YOURS. YOUR QUIRK NOT HIS. ITS YOUR POWER T O D O R O K I

•SHOUTOOOOOO

•Shouji grabbing Mineta by the leg so that he doesn’t fly away oh my god

•Endeavor and All Might come get y’all kids

•Midoriya’s fuckin dead rest in fucking pieces you masochist

Episode 24: Fight On, Iida

•Okay but why is Endeavor such a fucking Brick House holy fuck absolute unit of pure shit

•”In his first match he looked so sad. I was trying to figure out why...” it’s because you have a crush Mido

•And the first of many scars appears

•Recovery Girl is right and she should say it

•All Might said Quirkless Rights send tweet

•AHH TENSEI NOOOOO

•Highkey completely forgot about Stain OH WAIT THAT MEANS THE INTERNSHIPS ARE NEXT I really forgot the whole timeline wow

•Explosion Boy vs. Shitty Hair I love competitive boyfriends but Jesus Bakugou

•Testu cheering for his new friend tho? That’s the content I love to see

•Legacy Children Battle (Iida vs. Todoroki)

•”I didn’t know he couldn’t kick like that” he is ALL LEGS that’s literally his quirk Denki what do you mean

•Anybody fighting Todoroki: time to drag a Sad Bitch

•TENSEEIIIIIIII

•Bruh why did Iida tense up like that was your phone up your ass dude???

•Yo Stain is ugly as fuck

Episode 25: Todoroki VS. Bakugou

•Lmao Midoriya literally triggered Todoroki into using his Left Side

•And Todoroki triggered Bakugou by asking about his past friendship with Midoriya these boys are a MESS

•oh look it’s a Fucking Fire Gremlin

•BOOM BOOM BITCH THOUGHT YOU’D SEEN THE LAST OF ME HALF AND HALF BASTARD

•oh my GOD Endeavor shut UUPPPP

•Everyone listening to Bakugou go off at Todoroki: ...please seek some therapy

•SUPPORTIVE BOYFRIEND MIDO TO THE RESCUE

•The first time I saw this I highkey thought Bakugou actually killed Todoroki.

•Bakugou going feral for winning I can’t he literally looks like a trapped wolf

•We respect Tokoyami in this house

•About Bakugou ”Look at that face” I’d really rather not

•I’m sorry but Mineta sitting on Shouji’s shoulders is actually adorable

•Iida running through the hospital to his brother: It’s Loss

•I love the Iida Brothers so. Fucking. MUCH

•Shouto I’m so proud of you sweetheart

•Honestly I need more family stuff they’re all so interesting in their own ways and it’s a nice reminder that yes these are just kids and they have lives outside of hero school

SO that wraps up the Sports Festival Arc! I’m going to do the second half of Season 2/ The Internship Arc/ Final Exams all in one post so get ready for another long one ✌🏽

[nationaldvam]

Wednesday, January 08, 2020                  

By Saman Quraeshi with Peaceful Families Project

As domestic violence shelters build capacity to serve diverse populations and strive to become culturally competent, it is important for advocates to understand how they can have a direct impact on the outcome of the survivor’s path.

“I spoke to one woman who owns a shelter out in Baltimore that specifically caters to Muslim women. And she tells me her clients have gone to other agencies, have gone to other shelters where they face discrimination and harassment, such as shelter residents harassing Muslim women if they choose to pray, some cooks putting in pork in Muslim women's meals who traditionally don't consume pork. And so oftentimes, these are some obstacles that they face.” – Rowaida Abdelaziz, Muslim Survivors of Domestic Violence Need You to Listen

The Muslim community is an extremely diverse community that is represented across all racial and ethnic backgrounds, including indigenous populations, as well as immigrants and refugees. For Muslim survivors of domestic violence, there are multiple barriers to accessing social services and getting to safety.

Barriers for Muslim Survivors of Domestic Violence

The heightened level of Islamophobia and the increased hostility towards immigrants and refugees, as well as the state’s role in violence against Black communities, has left many segments of the Muslim population fearful for their safety not only in their abusive relationship, but also in accessing services outside of their community.

Islamophobia is the first of many barriers that Muslim women face when accessing services and staying at shelter. Other barriers for Muslim survivors include 1) lack of inclusion and erasure of Muslim survivors from shelter, 2) lack of knowledge about resources, 3) spiritual abuse, 4) familial abuse, and 5) shame. These barriers are discussed below, along with recommended best practices for domestic violence shelter advocates.

1) Lack of inclusion and erasure of Muslim survivors from shelter

Although Muslim women, like other minorities, have benefitted from shelters, the domestic violence shelter system has not necessarily been equipped to support and serve women of color and women that are not part of the dominant culture. Some of the ways that Muslim survivors may feel erasure when they are in the shelter include:

The celebration of some religious holidays with no mention of Muslim holidays like Eid or the holy month of Ramadan

Active programs like lunches, groups, or youth programs in partnership with local churches, but not other houses of worship

Dietary restrictions are not considered

Their language is not understood, and a translator is not available

Ignoring the spirituality of the client and/or minimizing religious practices and cultural viewpoints.

Best practice for shelter advocates: Advocates should actively work towards cultural humility and recognize their own implicit biases. Self-awareness regarding biases and accurate information about the Muslim population are two of the best ways to counter Islamophobia. If an advocate identifies behavior that is Islamophobic or discriminatory, they should address the behavior with shelter residents or bring it up to management.

Community outreach should extend beyond churches to include other faith groups. Advocates can invite survivors to make use of their spiritual tradition to feel centered and can offer to facilitate whatever may be required for survivors to access their spirituality in a safe way. To build partnerships with the Muslim community, the shelter can reach out to local mosques, Islamic groups, and cultural organizations. There should be ongoing training that explores the values that affect the way Muslims perceive and respond to domestic violence, best practices when serving Muslim survivors, and the Islamic perspective of domestic violence.

Language access is also an important element in providing the necessary safety and hospitality in a shelter so that a survivor speaking a language unknown to shelter staff feels welcome. Shelters should explore local resources to have access to competent translators.

The shelter can honor and share in Muslim religious holidays, including the holy month of Ramadan and the two Eids by acknowledging the holidays and asking survivors if they need anything to facilitate or commemorate the holiday. Ways to support survivors during Ramadan and Eid include:

During Ramadan, Muslims fast from dawn to sunset so Muslim survivors may need flexible access to kitchen/food during the pre-dawn time and post dawn to prepare for their fasting.

It’s traditional for Muslims to conclude the fast with dates. Shelters can make Muslim survivors feel supported by providing them with dates.  

Since Muslims’ routines change in Ramadan, advocates can check in with clients to see when appointments would be most appropriate.

Muslim holidays occur based on the lunar calendar, so the holidays do not occur on the same date every year. For upcoming dates for Ramadan and Eid, check this link.

2) Lack of knowledge about resources

Often the shelter may not be an option for many Muslim survivors due to the lack of meaningful outreach, awareness and connection between Muslim communities and domestic violence agencies. Immigrant Muslim survivors in particular may not know what to expect at a shelter. I have heard women saying, “I would rather be in my abusive situation where I know where things are than to go to a shelter.” There remains suspicion, cultural stigmas and fear about how a Muslim survivor will be able to live with dignity in a shelter. Some common fears include being unable to observe religious dietary practices and rituals related to worship.

Best practice for shelter advocates: Advocates and shelter leadership should make their domestic violence programs and shelters accessible to the Muslim population by cultivating relationships with the Muslim community. This could mean resource sharing and joint programming at a mosque or a community event. This relationship building will be crucial for survivors to feel like they are understood. The relationship between a domestic violence shelter and a mosque can also facilitate important community resources for Muslim survivors. Shelters can invite a Muslim advocate to do a shelter audit so that the shelter is equipped to house Muslim survivors. Domestic violence programs should have a diverse staff that can connect with the diverse populations and community-specific literature that speaks to the community. An example of this may be the Muslim Domestic Violence Wheel and the Healthy Relationships Wheel for Muslim Families. Other Muslim specific resources can be found here.

3) Spiritual abuse

Muslim survivors and members of other faith communities may utilize spirituality and faith as an important tool of resilience during the abuse and during the transition into the shelter. However, abusers, and sometimes religious leaders, may misuse faith-based language to manipulate and coerce victims to stay in an unsafe relationship. This phenomenon may look like pointing fingers at the survivor for seeking help from a non-Muslim organization, which can further be weaponized and used as way to shame and/or make a character judgement about the survivor’s lack of belief in her faith. Community leaders and family elders that are not educated in domestic violence may tell her that she is acting against her faith teachings, and that she should have consulted with family before taking such a huge step. Misconstrued verses from the Quran, such as those that emphasize forgiveness and patience, may be used to confuse the survivor and guilt her into coming back to the abuser.

Best practice for shelter advocates: Spiritual abuse can be very complex for both a survivor and an advocate. The best way to support a survivor that is going through this type of experience is to have a basic understanding that Islam prohibits any form of injustice and does not tolerate any form of domestic violence. An advocate can validate that spirituality is important to the survivor and offer to make sure that survivors have access to resources that make them feel connected to their faith.

Recommendations for advocates:

Upon entering the shelter, the staff can offer a clean and private space that the client may access as a prayer space, go over any religious dietary needs such as halal meat and ask how they can  best support the client so that they are able to access their faith.

The staff can curate a faith-based library in which they have religious texts, including a Quran as well as domestic violence specific books from a faith based perspective. Often local mosques can provide free Qurans. Other helpful publications are available from FaithTrust Institute and Peaceful Families.

Staff can offer to connect survivors to Muslim domestic violence advocates, clergy,  chaplains, and therapists that are trauma-informed and culturally responsive.

4) Familial abuse

Depending on the cultural context of the survivor and their family dynamics, the survivor may have multiple abusers in the family unit. The abusers may have ways to access the survivor which may then lead to breaking location confidentiality. The abusers may work in coordination to threaten the survivor and her reputation. This can look like a mother-in-law calling the survivor’s family and telling them that their daughter is causing dishonor to the family by going to the shelter. The mother-in-law may consolidate power to get her way using emotional and spiritual abuse. She may say things like,

“Women from good families don’t behave this way.”

“We took care of you and this is how you treated our family.”

“You're destroying your children's future.”

Best practice for shelter advocates: Providers can inquire about the family household and understand what the dynamics in the house were like. Providing psychoeducation and counseling around domestic violence, while using the culturally appropriate Muslim Power and Control wheel would allow survivors to identify that they may be in an abusive relationship with multiple abusers.

5) Shame

Shame can manifest in many ways depending on the lived experiences of survivors and also their worldview. Often shame can be weaponized by abusers with spiritual abuse. Shame can also be exerted by the survivor’s parents or elders, who because of concern for preserving the family’s reputation and fear of social repercussions may not provide support or ignore the needs of the survivor. This looks like the abuser or even community members saying things like,

“Why would you not do things the proper way and go to the imam or a family elder?”

“Why did you have to take such an extreme step?”

“Why would you go to non-Muslims for help?”

Also, survivors can feel shame when they may not be ready for a divorce due to cultural stigma surrounding divorce, as well as women living on their own without a husband or other family members. Survivors may also feel shame if they feel like they may want to go back to the abuser. Advocates can unknowingly trigger feelings of shame by minimizing things or making survivors feel like they are not doing the right thing.

Best practice for shelter advocates: Advocates should use a trauma-informed, strengths-based approach to highlight that survivors are doing the best that they can and to empathize that they may not know what it is like for the survivor. They can build trust and establish a safe space and explain that they are there to help. A collaborative model in which the survivor’s goals are prioritized will help achieve the best outcome for the survivor in the most effective way. Cultural humility and empowering the survivor to be an expert of their own life will be the most effective way in minimizing shame.

For more information:

Peaceful Families Project (PFP): PFP is a national non-profit organization that is committed to work towards ending all types of abuse, including emotional, spiritual, physical, and sexual abuse in Muslim families. PFP does this work by facilitating domestic violence awareness and cultural sensitivity training workshops in cities across the United States for Muslim leaders and for service providers and professionals.

Institute of Muslim Mental Health (IMMH): IMMH has been mobilizing mental health professionals interested in caring for Muslims to exchange resources, disseminate original research on Muslim mental health, trained professionals and community leaders, mentored students and young professionals, and connected American Muslims to mental health services.

Walking Together: Working with Women from Diverse Religious and Spiritual Traditions by FaithTrust Institute: This is an essential guide for domestic violence advocates and social workers. This groundbreaking anthology for domestic violence shelters and community-based programs is designed to educate advocates about how to work effectively with women from a wide variety of religious and spiritual traditions.

Garments for One Another: Ending Domestic Violence in Muslim Families Training Package (DVD) by FaithTrust Institute: An important resource for mosques, religious leaders, social workers, community groups and shelter staff who offer help to Muslim women who currently experience violence in the home. This complete package offers solutions to prevent future violence within the context of the Islamic faith.

[cyanpeacock]

Realtalk(tm): The (Over)Sensitive Soldier, And How He Swapped His Gun For A Feather

One particularly hurtful thing that was said to me by somebody emotionally ignorant was “you don’t know the meaning of stress.” 

Then pray tell me, my good bitch, how being homeless was an easier experience to process than living with you, and the woman before you?

OK this turned into a weird extended metaphor realtalk under the cut.

When I say I’m stressed, I mean I am stressed. I didn’t even bother telling you about anxiety, or its little brother, nervousness, because you had no respect for them. 

And - I gotta read you a little, I’m sorry - as far as I’m concerned, you have no business acting like a drill sergeant in daily life when you get faced with somebody showing emotions you don’t like. You were a lieutenant who slipped off a bridge, broke his elbow, and received a medical discharge. But I know why you do it: you have unprocessed trauma from military conditioning and experience. 

Rank, order, and command didn’t actually serve you so well, did they? Until you got to The Top yourself, anyway, and started reenacting those structures unconsciously, in adapted ways. It was the collaboration, cooperation, and communication that actually worked when you were at the bottom with mud in your boots, right? Those were the basis of the better times, or the bad times that didn’t hurt so bad, because somebody close was going through the same as you. The General in his office didn’t know shit about what you boys were living through. 

You got some promotions. You got the desk job. You became the General, in charge of your own operation, but not the war, of course. 

I joined the unit. I followed orders. I realized didn’t like the way you ran your operation, and brought you my concerns. You didn’t provide right for this (hyper)sensitive soldier, or any of them, if you asked him - but plenty stay in your unit, plenty are happy and proud to be soldiers with you, you call them ‘tough’ - and this one can’t do a thing about them. 

Things got complex. The General lost his patience with this soldier, over and over. So, this soldier, who wanted to make a change, and was not content to just follow the status quo, left.

Where did I go? All over. What did I do? I merged, blended, mingled, to survive. I kept building my own unit, one that would keep me living.

It’s a resistance cell. We’re very quiet, and talk only online, and I’d already been building it before I knew what to call it. I used to whisper and hide our communication. People have come and gone. There are a few who have been here a very long time, now, and seen an awful lot. I’ve got more battle scar stories than you cared to listen to.

I got a base. I expected to have to run, but nobody’s come to find me yet - I’m not enough of a threat. It’s just me in here, for now, but the others have other bases, just like you have connection to other units, all moving more-or-less independently. We don’t like war. We’re in it, the same as you. We’re all looking for peace. We had different ideas about how to achieve it. 

It boiled down to erasure vs. acknowledgement.

More about the cell - I’d already been building it under your command, and you didn’t like it. You wanted to erase it. You thought they were the problem, and they were, to you. You consider your unit, the ones you can see. The enemy is that which is hidden. You make the decisions and actions you think are best for your people, most strategic. It’s only right. It’s fine, if they want to follow an order. If you want to, it hardly feels like an order at all. 

I didn’t want that kind of strategy. I wanted my unit, the one you couldn’t understand, acknowledged and welcomed. 

You didn’t acknowledge it, or welcome it. You tried to control it, to erase the place where I was most authentic. I followed your order in order to survive, like anybody would. The thing is, I was following orders that didn’t align with my ideology, and eventually, it was hurting me too badly to stay in your unit. My resistance was more important to me. To you, the resistance was the enemy. That was the only way you could survive.

I did learn from your chain of command, but not the way you might have wanted. 

My point is: you don’t have to be physically in the trenches, holding a gun, waiting for the enemy to strike, to feel those same emotions, or the numbness of necessity and survival. Circumstances are different. Emotions are not. Intensity and expression is an individual experience, but crossing the threshold to life-and-death is life-and-death. Sometimes the battleground is a house, and the trench is a bedroom, and your expressed emotions are the gun, and the enemy lives one room away. 

At least with this soldier, you were still using your emotions as a gun, to threaten, control, and wound. And if you feel stronger with a gun, if you’re comfortable living that way, you’re not going to get along fantastically with somebody who only ever wanted to hold a feather. They’re too gentle, too wishy-washy.

Look, man, yours is a shotgun. I had a pistol. I didn’t want it. I had to make it. I had to carry it to stay alive, same as you, and I didn’t have anything different to use when I had to communicate hurt. It’s still in the drawer, and I reach in there when I’m frightened, but I’d much rather be holding a feather.

I was asking you how to find a feather, where to make a feather. You didn’t know. You still had your hand on the shotgun. You pointed the nose the other way when you didn’t feel threatened. It was still a shotgun. It kept you safe.

I feel stronger, and safer, with a feather. The recoil of using a gun was bad for my heart. So was the shock of the volume. I felt awful about wounding and killing people. Having a gun in your holster brings in other people with guns. You get shot at, eventually, when you cross somebody, maybe without even realizing. If you’re alright healing from it, if it works for you, great! Sometimes it’s easier to keep using the weapon you have than to find an alternative, even if you’re out of ammo, and can only use it as a club. But me? No thanks. I wanted a different tool. I didn’t enjoy using my pistol. I’d seen too many empty shells.

I wanted a feather. I’m using it right now, to write. I still don’t quite know how to use it when I talk, but I’ll learn.

Turn a feather the right way around, and give it a shove, and you can still take a man’s eye out. 

The difference is, a feather won’t go through to your heart, man. It won’t make you bleed out. It takes thought to work out how to wound somebody with a feather. You gotta really think, do I want to do that, how am I going to do that, do I have or can I make an opening to do that? About the most you can do with the quill normally, is scratch the skin. Blinding somebody with a feather is maximum force, and precise execution. Blinding somebody, temporarily or permanently, with a gun? That’s easier, arguably, but it’s a tool of its own.

I don’t want a gun. I don’t want to shoot, or to bludgeon. That’s how your life appeared to me, the longer I observed, and it isn’t how my healthy looks. I can’t just “grow thicker skin” - like, both emotionally and literally, dude, my skin is thin and stretchy. It can bend more than you, but breaks easier than you, too. You can put a callus on it with repeated exposure, a whole lot actually, but I’m not coarse to the touch, and my calluses just fade away.

I only want to brush most of the time, and scratch if I’m annoyed, and stab if I really, really need to. I don’t even want the gun in my drawer, but it’s still there, until I finally can feel safe just forgetting about it. Eventually I’ll only get it out when I need it.

Being homeless? We all had pistols. We were still young, inexperienced with them. We were all working under The Man, in some way, trying to get by, and even different gangs and cliques knew that it was just personal, the lives and deaths between them - they were on the same level, unlike the General and his soldiers. As for changing their weapons? Some people would later find favour with shotguns. Some would prefer to keep their pistols, they can manage forever that way. Me? I couldn’t be satisfied with myself until I learned to incapacitate with a feather. 

A shame I didn’t have it earlier, but then, if I had, I would have avoided a man with a gun altogether. 

And: If it’s all in your head, remember the thing is still connected to your body. They’re both telling you things to try and keep you alive as long as possible, given your circumstances. 

And here, I return the book to the library.

For real, though, it’s really annoying being able to see straight into why somebody is acting in a way that hurts me, when I’ve expressed I’m in pain, and haven’t knowingly done anything explicitly harmful to them. It’s because something I’ve done recalls a hurt from something they went through before, or brings up an emotion they don’t have strong, mutually effective tools for dealing with in the moment. And I feel so damn much. Can’t switch it off. I tried.

Took me a while to realize that I’m doing the same damn thing, because I was always looking outside my body for the Next Imminent Threat, instead of at the Simmering Episodic Memory Threats I already contained. Going to take me a while to accept that I’m always going to hurt people accidentally in some ways, too. I just want to do EVERYTHING I can to minimize that damage.

Anyway, how do I go about learning to talk with a feather? I still talk with a damn pistol. I mostly just wave it around, my trigger finger isn’t so happy any more, but I’d really like to feel safe putting it away. Is it just practice? I guess so. 

[haikiri]

Memory

Etched into my genetics

Attacked by eugenics

My defence is ongoing because

The war

Continues

Grandmother

Daughter of my Mixiti

With your Afro and wide nose

Beautiful

I was first formed inside of you

When my mother developed in your womb

So did I

So my own experience of slavery is closer than what society would like me to believe

Closer than what feels comfortable to those who benefit from these systems

This ain’t history

When I existed then

On a cellular level

and I’m standing here

Speaking to you

Now

So dear woke white guy

Yeah you

The one that’s so loud in all spaces

So sure to tell me that

Oppression is subjective

That there are two sides to every story

Yet you only see two sides in theory and cowardly slip into your privilege when convenient

Only caring about fracking and land rights cause it’s “your” water too

Anti-war but not anti-police

Stay neutral

When the same folks you hang around exotify me sexually

It’s not trying to pick me up

As they tell me Latinas are hot but get all psycho and you gotta “take charge or they will”

When First Nations women make up the demographic for the most sexually violated

But your friend’s still a good guy right?

And you awfully quiet when I raise this

But you’re still a good guy right?

Tell me I won’t get love like that

Too political I scare all the “good men” away

I won’t even start on the levels of erasure in that statement

But

Why’s it always white people telling me that?

When I say this I acknowledge

Lateral violence is a thing but

That’s an issue we gotta sort out in house

And melanin in your skin doesn’t mean a thing if you’re still colonised within

Yeah

I know we’re still untangling from centuries of our identities being knotted

Our work is past-present

Re-storying histories and overcoming trauma

But our work is also present-future

The young ones need nourishment

We need to step away from this colonised life

Re-think our consumption

Change what we ingest, how we invest, who we protest

Strengthen the bonds between each other

We don’t have the luxury of being equal

We have to be better-than

We have to be better than

Because woke white guy won’t listen

Unless our life experience is peer reviewed with fifty references

Stop living our lives in relation to oppression

Where tragedy becomes our only story with survival always as the ending

Let’s re-write the survive and force their pens to write about our thriving

Our joy

A world where we don’t exist in relation-to

A world where we

Are not exhausted

A world where we

Can

Just

Exist

[indoafrikanqueen-blog]

Love and Whiteness (Part II)

So the last time I wrote a post on this subject it was more directly lamenting the difficulties of loving a white person and the ways in which they fail to see you on a one-on-one level. But as we get deeper into our relationship big things keep coming up. And this is why it has taken me so long to get around to writing part two of that post. Put simply, loving a white partner is not simply about the one on one relationship the two of you have. It is about much much more than that. See, there are the interpersonal dynamics between the two of you, then there are the larger societal power dynamics. Basically, what I have been coming to realise over the increasing course of my relationship is that deciding to build something with a white person is complex, because the advantages they have of being in the world slowly crowd out the little space you have. As a pansexual person in a heterosexual presenting relationship, this is because of the role patriarchy plays - a woman slowly is expected to conform to the culture of her partner, and her partner's family. That is, assimilation. But this is compounded because of the settler-colonist culture in South Africa, whiteness is seen as the highest bar of existence for all, and so with whiteness comes a sense of supremacy and entitlement, and if you don't fit the bar, you guessed it, you are less than worthy of being a part of the family. There are a number of challenges that come up when I think about the costs that being in a relationship with a white cis-het male have had on my psyche. And to speak frankly I am tired. In fact all the women in me are tired. But because it is a release, and because it may help someone else out there I am going to dish them up right now. So sit back, and enjoy (if possible). 1 - Privilege and the associated lack of lived experience. This is perhaps the biggest stumbling block in our relationship. If you are a black woman (or person) dating a white male, there probably is a phase where it is all hunky dory. But sooner or later, one day you wake up and have the earth-shattering realisation that:

"There is no way in which my cis-het, upper class, able-bodied, christian, male partner, has ever been systemically discriminated against in his entire life."

And this shakes you up because all you've ever known was struggle. As a woman, as a person of colour, as a non-hetero person, as a poor person, for me - as a survivor. And for a second you can't reconcile how it is that the two of you are together. For a split second you feel lucky, like maybe you won the lottery. You remember how hard it used to be when you were young, how you struggled through abuse, through trauma, through the vicarious trauma of those in your community, and you think "Ah, how did I get here? That all feels like a long and distant dream." Then you wake the fuck up and realise that you are not lucky. That the boundaries of the prison have just changed, and now while you are able to live and love and exist a lot easier than you were able to before there are constraints facing you that you would never imagine existed and these come in the shape of your partner's privilege. 

Obviously different people are woke to different levels, but white partners in particular tend to suffer from the white liberal affliction. They think that because you agree on the basis of morality and ethics there is no need to do extra work to be a good ally. In fact they may not even know what allyship means. And the burden of educating them is then defaulted onto YOU, the partner. 

Because they are an entitled white male, they get offended when you say that it is not your duty to educate them. They don't understand that you don't owe it to them. If you choose to educate them it is because you love them and you have committed  to your relationship. Educating them is a god damn privilege, not your job.  

In any case, privilege fucks with the power dynamics, and unless your partner is willing to put in the active conscious work, reading, listening to podcasts, watching stuff, reading and reading, he is not going to wake up. Not now. Not ever. 

2- Compounded with class and privilege comes family. In the case of my partner, he is half foreign, and half South African. And I always find that the half foreign aspect is what has saved him. Of the micro-aggressions that I experience at the hands of his family, those from his dad - a white South African apartheid era male - are the worst. To him I am not an individual, I am other. Whenever he talks about black people or indians, or black colleagues, he makes eye contact with me. Needless to say he thinks I am the fucking spokesperson for every Indian person in South Africa. 

And while the microaggressions from him are regular and particularly bad, it is not much better from the rest of the family. While the mum is less problematic she is not unproblematic, and the sisters are so couched in their own privilege that it suffocates me. This is the thing, when you relate to them (the whole family) it is on their terms. You do what they want and expect you to do and you do it in their way. They speak upper-crust english, and because I speak my vernacular I become a fucking cute little joke to them, "Oh, Anne*, did you hear how she said that?". Ha. ha. ha. Big fucking deal. I am sorry I am not a colonist settler who stole land, preserved imperial culture and went to the most expensive private school owned to man. 

So, yeah, white families. And guess what, you tell your partner about it and they accuse you of hating their family? It has actively started causing me anxiety. I can't go there and not get a tummy ache or headache, and a sinking feeling (Queue get out) in my stomach. Worst part is - they don't know it. My partner thinks he is between a rock and a hard place, and to date has only had a discussion with them about how problematic they are on one occasion.  And in this process I am villainised. It becomes me against the family. Well it wouldn't be if they weren't such passively racist human beings. 

3- Friends. I'll keep it short. This post is becoming taxing. The microaggressions are terrible. One of the friends also did the thing all white people do by referring to me as curry! Racist pig. There was no backlash from my partner who then went on the defensive and like a week later forgot it happened. Well, I didn't forget. Then, there are the extremely racist and misogynist friends. He has a friend who had a road rage incident and drove past the woman, rolled down his window and flashed a wad of cash in her face. Then bragged to me and my partner about it, and proceeded to say that he 

was sure that she wanted to fuck him. My partner sees this as a once off isolated incident, and his family says boys will be boys. My partner also thinks he is between a rock and a hard place. 

Don't they understand that these are our fucking lives - oh wait, they don't!

2 - Society. South Africa, and particularly Cape Town is the most racially segregated racist place in the country. It is worse because white liberals who live here go to church and think they are doing their duty unto society. They live in big houses on the foot of the mountain and donate blankets and money to charity but have never paid retribution and will not give back the land. They see no link between the exploitation of black bodies under apartheid and their economic success. And because they are colonist-settlers, they think they belong here and also behave as Gods. They don't make eye contact with you if you are not white, and do not acknowledge your humanity. When they do it is in a patronising way. They don't see black people as people, forget as their inferiors. They are entitled trash. Period. Now think about having kids, black kids, and this is what they aspire to. Nope. 3 - The lack of a reprieve. So, I go to work. It is extremely white, I go to therapy, she is white, I go home my partner is white. My family is scattered. I am alone in this city. My black friends have moved on from this mini-apartheid state to places that will feed their souls. My white friends mostly have the liberalism affliction, and I am isolated. There are very few public spaces that have black bodies in them, and it becomes suffocating. Loving a white person, then, is not about loving that individual. It is about being able to live with the toll that that love takes on your psyche and the price you pay for it. But I've basically decided that I am no longer willing to pay this price for our love. I demand respect from his parents, I will not associate with his friends, and he has to graft for it. I mean I could keep writing about this, the anger, the erasure, but I'll stop here. I love my partner. I really do. When it is just the two of us hanging, I see his soul and I truly feel that he sees mine, and I don't wanna end what we've been building. I dig it. I dig him. I dig our life. But add to the equation the expectation of settling down (I don't want to) and where (Cape Town? City of spatial apartheid?), monogamy (contentious one)  and kids (I am strictly adopting when I decide I am ready - too many abandoned lil puudin' faces ouchea), it quickly becomes a lot. Look, I don't have the answers. Being in a relationship with a non-white male could easily have just as many challenges, there is always patriarchy and religion. In any case, we're investing in something here and I will try to make it work, but the bottom line is this guy is going to have to put in some serious work. I guess if I could speak frankly to him I would say: I know you've never had to work for anything in your life. I know you are hyper-intelligent, so why don't you put some of that intellect to work and research concepts such as wokeness, allyship, feminism, intersectionality?  Oh it bores you? Well listen up... this is the lifeline of our relationship, and it is ALL up to you at this stage. You think that what I have displayed up to now is rage? You have no idea of the leaps and bounds by which it will expand if you don't do something about it. Gone, are the tears and the fear. This is a fight for survival, and you are either going to step up to the challenge or not.