#not everyone knows about the bureaucratic bullshit of charities!!

[erisisthefairest]

ah tumblr, the only website where you'll get hate for... donating to a nonprofit

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Ok, so Firefox’s pocket suggestions have been trying to get me to read a list of “8 life-changing nonfiction books selected by top authors” and while I don’t really feel like reading that article, I think it could make a cool prompt. Nonfiction tends to have a rep for being dry or trite, but I think it can be powerful and engaging as well. I probably don’t have near enough followers to be doing a book rec post, but whatev, I like talking about books, we’re doing this.

Prompt: List 5-8 Life-Changing Nonfiction Books

In no particular order:

1. The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels, and the Business of AIDS by Elizabeth Pisani (2008)

This is probably the book I’m most scared to go back and read, because I suspect parts of it did not age well. I think she’s released an updated edition and I’m interested in revisiting that one. That said, as someone raised in a very conservative environment, this book completely revolutionized my thinking on harm reduction strategies like needle exchanges and free condoms from the cOnDONinG bAd beHaViOr bullshit I believed when I was younger to “oh look, a way to keep people alive and healthy”. She also had some eye opening comments on the “rescuing women from developing nation brothels” charities that were so popular in the 90s. I still think about the insights in this book often.

2. The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscape by James Howard Kunstler (1993)

I don’t know if I can even describe how foundational this book was for me when I first read it in my early 20s. Kunstler describes the way cars have usurped human comfort in American architecture, land management, and city planning in meticulous detail. It made me look at my environment with new eyes, and appreciate alternatives I had barely even grasped, in spite of having traveled internationally. I don’t recall Kunstler’s book explicitly speaking to the disabled community’s concerns with anti-car rhetoric, which have gotten increasingly relevant over time. But I still highly recommend the book as an excellent introduction for USians interested in improving our lived environment and anyone else who wants to know What The Hell Happened With The US And Cars.

3. Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking by Michael Ruhlman (2009)

I’ve never been an intuitive cook: the kind of person who can look in the cupboard and throw together a dish based on what I can see. I actually started out baking almost exclusively, because the precision of baking recipes helped keep me from going astray. Ruhlman’s book was the first to help me crack the cooking code. Ironically, I’ve made very few of his recipes, which tend to have an overly fussy, professional chef ring to them. But learning about the basic ratios and techniques that went into popular western dishes helped me start to understand how cooking worked. It’s been 10 years since I read Ruhlman’s book, and I still often cook with a recipe. But sometimes I don’t. And his book is part of the reason why.

4. My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness by Nagata Kabi (2009)

I’m sure this one isn’t new to a tumblr audience, but it deserves its excellent reputation. This graphic memoir is hard to quantify accurately. It is, of course, an important work on the experience of being queer in Japan. But it’s also a searching, thoughtful, and sometimes brutal examination of the self, a coming of age story that is unsentimental but insightful and, I think, ultimately hopeful. I bought the book several years after it came out, at a time when I personally felt like a failure and a disappointment to my parents, and devoured it and felt less alone. Highly recommend to everyone, regardless of sexual orientation. (Note that it does at one point describe the author’s eating disorder.)

5. Too Much and Not the Mood by Durga Chew-Bose (2017)

This book revolutionized the way I thought about personal essays. This is not “I had a mildly risqué experience as a young white middle class cis woman which I will now recount to you for money.” Nor is it really my much-beloved genre of creative nonfiction that combines rapturous descriptions of the taste and scent of peaches with rigorously researched discursions on the history of the state of Georgia. No, this is a creative explosion, raining color and candy, flashing by your face too quickly to be fully registered but delightful all the same. Chew-Bose writes stream of consciousness, but one loaded with sharply observed images and quicksilver thoughts, tangents to tangents to tangents, some circling back and some not, personal memory and constant cascades of cultural commentary threading together into universal but deeply personal tapestries. If you have any taste at all for either essays or virtuoso writing you MUST read this book.

I think that’s a good stopping point for me. Curious to see if anyone else does this prompt and if so, what they pick.

[borrowedfeathers]

I’m wondering, has anyone ever done a zine or an essay or anything about proposing ideas for long-term chronic illness management within the framework of an anarchist society based around mutual aid? It’s not that I doubt it could be done, I’m just curious. 

I got to thinking about that because tomorrow I go in for my second infusion (it was supposed to be last week but I didn’t get it because, funnily enough, the first chemo infusion worked too well — my blood tumor markers went down and I could physically feel some shrinkage in the site of my recurrence from a year and a half ago, but it wiped out too many of my white blood cells to safely do it then, so we decided to switch from a weekly to a biweekly basis and I got a white blood cell booster shot on Monday. And honestly a biweekly schedule works better for me anyway since it’ll make me less flat-out exhausted) and despite my gratitude for how good of care I get, particularly with the combination of my insurance and hospital charity care covering virtually all my bills, it’s so fucked that not only am I at the mercy of the atrocious American health care system and its metric fuckton of bureaucratic bullshit, but given that my insurance comes from my university and is contingent on being a student in good standing, I basically had and still have to earn the right to not die of cancer with my performance as judged by institutional academia.

So I really would want to know what things people have come up in imagining a world where this didn’t have to happen. I’m especially interested seeing that kind of thing as a counter-narrative to primmie shit that would either just throw me to the wolves or insist on the kind of homeopathic treatment that killed one of my buddies from CancerCon after she’d practically achieved remission. Again, this isn’t coming from a place of skepticism, but I would like to know, how would an anarchist society go about training doctors like oncologists, making sure everyone gets the medicine and equipment necessary for proper diagnosis and treatment, and making sure patients feel comfortable and cared for? Of course, there’s nothing that says a state is necessary for all this, but it has naturalized itself to the point where my imagination hits a brick wall when I try to imagine its absence in such a scenario and I want that to change.

[thissupposedcrime]

otayuri as... batcat....

Fam, I am so sorry. I wrote 2k of Otayuri dramatic superhero AU before realizing you requested Batman/Catwoman dynamics. If it helps, picture the Hero of Kazakhstan having no idea how to handle Yuri dressed like Chat Noir from Miraculous Ladybug. Maybe I should write that next?

Superhero AU 

In which there is very little skating but the universal constants in Yuri Plisetsky’s life are Victor ruining everything and Otabek Altin’s distracting jaw line.

Before Yuuri Katsuki, Yuri Plistsky is happy. 

All he has ever wanted is to be a superhero, and his dream is real after years of injuries, training, and trauma.

They have a good thing going, a well-oiled machine of badassery and rage. Yakov has been training superheroes for decades, since the 1970s when having a secret identity was still outlawed in Russia. He and Lilia even lead the revolution and protests for heroes to retain separate personas. 

(And like everything Lilia involves herself in, she wins.) 

Lilia’s elastic bones enabled a terrifyingly electric career as a ballerina. 

Yakov’s power of flight and telekinesis made him a masterful hero and a terrible task master of Russia’s secret hero development program and leader of St. Petersburg’s heroes. 

Civilians know him as a businessman. A few assume mob connections but Yuri’s hung out in enough malls, alleyways, and schools to know people pretend ignorance of Yakov’s identity. Because it means something to him. Jesus. 

Under Yakov and Lilia, Yuri P (20, abnormal flexibility, spite, and ability to communicate with animals) thrives, protecting St. Petersburg with: 

Mila (23, controls fire, and makes jokes about having no chill that Yuri would rather kill himself than hear again).

Georgi: (27, an actual fucking witch who can’t keep his shit together depending on his heartbreak or the lunar cycle)

The lunar cycle thing is bullshit, just an excuse for his really emotional days.

And…the ice-man cometh himself.

Victor (28) is a dick. Victor is a dick, thinking with his dick. Only that asshole would go to charity dinner celebrating the Sochi Grand Prix and fall in love with a fucking ice skater named Yuuri Katsuki (24) INSTEAD OF GUARDING THE PLACE.

The dude was drunk and likely doesn’t remember who Victor is, but did that stop him from rushing home to Yakov’s training space, squeeing about soulmates? No.

Victor trashes the place in his haste to pack, leaving destruction and a garish, proud note, “Retiring to Japan for love!” in his wake. 

Years prior, when Victor was 14 and successfully adopted by Yakov, he asked if Victor would like to continue skating or go into ‘the family business’ of protecting St. Petersburg

The dick just had to become the best superhero Russia ever had. Fuck people with ice powers in Russia. They have to do nothing and get all the credit. Fuck Victor.

Naturally, they can’t let Victor go without a fight, but, plot twist, THE ONLY ONE TO REMAIN IN RUSSIA IS YURI P. 

Yakov follows his dipshit son out of foolish, displaced loyalty (everyone knows he wants to meet his prospective new in-law)

Lilia looks on with disgust. Yuri inherited this look from her.

In hysterics, Mila and Georgi are not missing out on this. Besides, Mila knows about the hot springs. She’d literally light anyone on fire who tried to stop her. Georgi lives to see Victor get yelled at. Yuri can relate.

“We deserve this Yuri. We’ve dealt with him longer.”

“Assholes, you didn’t live with him and Yakov for the past decade!”

So Yuri P stays home with Lilia because someone needs to actually do their damn job around here.

“Are you sure you’re not jealous that Katsuki threw himself at Victor and not you?”

“Shut up hag!” There are not posters of Yuuri Katsuki’s skating in his bedroom, despite what she insinuates.

There are. Many.

More importantly, Katsuki’s a fucking civilian. Dating those is a death sentence. Look at half the superhero community for proof.

Yakov isn’t irresponsible. Just his children are. So he contacts a few old friends to see who wouldn’t mind covering for his missing team while they’re out of the country.

Yuri isn’t good at interacting with the teen girls who mob crime scenes during danger. 

Yuri thinks if they’re stupid enough to stay when someone is shooting thunderbolts from the sky, he doesn’t need to save them. This is natural selection trying to work things out.

Honestly, part of the reason they want Victor to come home is because he’s the only one who handles the public well. 

When Yuri was 17, he was nearly strangled by a supervillain because Mila and Victor were busy entertaining the crowd by melting ice to water and then freezing it into ice sculptures.

Yuri should have stayed in Moscow

(Tragic backstory of civilians-heroes dating in his family and always dying)

“Fuckers, I can protect the city on my own. I basically do already!” 

“Language!”

“Lilia, it’s true! Last month Georgi was too busy crying and almost let a bank robber escape.”

Despite his compelling arguments and temper tantrums, no one listens to Yuri. The story of his life. 

On a bleak January morning, two foreign gifts arrive for Yuri:

A postcard from Mila describing how amazing Yuuri Katsuki and his town are. Using a lighter, he watches it burn with deep satisfaction.

A man from Kazakhstan, flanked by a duo of pale losers, marches into Yakov’s training center, unarguably the prime superhero compound in the country.

(”In Europe,” Victor has been known to drunkenly proclaim until reminded it’s a secret, asshole)

The two men are dressed in nondescript suits, clean-cut but scuffed shoes. Bureaucrats from Russia to help the paperwork and assistant coaches. 

Ugh.

The other man? He’s broad shouldered, compact but graceful as he navigates the wild superpowers and children training under Yuri’s less than watchful eye. He’s at least three centimeters shorter than Yuri yet intimidating and imposing, standing in front of a window as the gray skies outside outline his body. 

Yuri is disgusted to note the man is wearing sunglasses indoors, and uses that fact to justify ignoring that his jaw is better cut than any diamond or how large his biceps appear under his leather jacket. This man stares at Yuri, like an old friend rediscovered. Yuri growls.

“Who the hell are you?” Yuri asks, hackles raised while the bureaucrats realize they’re in over their heads in assuming Lilia hasn’t been running things with brutal effectiveness since Yakov left.

It does not matter that people have been collapsing in exhaustion or crying during training. Fucking Yakov has clearly been coddling people if three weeks with Lilia has broken their spirit.

Yuri despairs of what will happen once he retires.

This city is going to wither and die.

“Otabek Altin,” the stranger replies, taking off his glasses and tucking them into a pocket. At least he didn’t put them on his head. Hesitating for a short moment, he reaches a hand out to Yuri, who decides to grasp it as firmly as possible.

Altin doesn’t even wince, handshake powerful and strong. Impressed, Yuri smirks and thinks Altin won’t be so bad.

Naturally, Yuri is right. Otabek, Beka, proves himself an indispensable revelation, a gift from Kazakhstan requested by Yakov to help out in training. 

His scowl terrifies their cockier recruits but calms the students skittish when people without powers train them. Unlike countless others before him, no one questions if Otabek should be present, despite his lack of laser beams or telepathy. 

Proudly, Yuri calls Mila and tells her to keep enjoying Japan, for Beka is doing a better job than any of them ever had in training and supporting him.

“How rude Yura!”

In the background of one such call, Victor is building an impromptu ice rink for Yuuri on a beach while Yakov and his beloved scream about his usage of powers.

“Do they know who Victor is?” Yuri already knows the answer to this question.

“Well. They love him regardless, and that’s all that matters to Yakov,” Mila offers brightly.

But back to Beka, wonderful, thoughtful Beka who understands what Yuri wants before he asks, patiently listens as he whines about the villains he has faced and his annoying colleagues. 

Beka hums encouragingly every time he collapses against his warm shoulder during practice, allows him to nestle his chin against his collarbone.

Lilia doesn’t hate him. Clearly Beka isn’t a regular civilian but powered by miracles and effort.

Occasionally, when he stops raving about Beka to Lilia during dinner, he delicately broaches the topic of keeping him once those losers come home from vacation. 

“He’s good for you,” Lilia states. He takes it as tacit approval to amp up his efforts to show off St. Petersburg. 

Yakov will be overjoyed he’s found someone so capable to make up for the defects he calls teammates, Yuri decides.

It is a shame he cannot keep the Hero as well.

Nearly a month after Victor fled, Yuri breaks up a museum heist. Most of the criminals are normal, powerless, but the leader shoots plasma from a gauntlet on his hand. 

Ice Tiger has successfully knocked out all but the jackass leaking liquid from his wrist, and cautiously moves around the columns at the front of the museum when jackass gets a lucky shot, and sends the columns Ice Tiger rests between into a crumbling mess.

Before Yuri can start swearing, and dodge, a man clad in all black, save for a dark blue belt, steps next to him and presses a palm against each column, steadying them. His mask spans the bridge of his nose, circling around to the back of his neck.

Yuri scampers away with, not stupid enough to hesitate or question during battle, and sends plasma jackass flying with a well placed kick to his upper chest. 

He might have given him a collapsed lung, but Yuri cares more for the man standing behind him, nonplussed as he holds up tons of weight.

Once the police arrive and danger settled, Yuri impatiently drags the stranger up to the rooftop. 

“Who the hell are you?”

The man blinks, but his dark costume and the pale snippets of moonlight make it impossible to determine the color of his eyes. Alarmingly, he pauses to consider his answer and Yuri wonders if debris concussed him. “Hero.” He finally settles on.

“Hero. Hero of what?” Yuri rolls his eyes in frustration.

“Hero of a far off land, where I use my strength to protect my people.” 

“Why. are. you. here.” Yuri grits out between clenched teeth, frustrated he’s been saved, by the slowness of his conversation, and over the powerful upper body of this super-strength junkie. He’s shit at upperbody power, known for his lithe form and kicks. Mila regularly outlifts him.

“Yakov requested-”

“Motherfucker,” he yowls. Alley cats in the street below make noise in unison.

“Sorry for rescuing you,” Hero replies placidly. 

“I had it under control!”

“Of course you did. You’re an excellent hero, but I thought it best to avoid more damage to the museum.” Yuri’s shoulders relax slightly at the sincere, admiring tone of Hero.

“Whatever. If Yakov sent you, I might as well make sure you don’t accidentally destroy my city.” For some reason, Yuri doesn’t loathe this guy, despite his nondescript costume or the assumption Yuri can’t protect the city alone.

“Thank you for your confidence,” he replies, tumbleweed dry, and Yuri muffles a laugh, oddly charmed and at ease.

“Do you normally dress like that?” Yuri can’t help but ask as he paces across the roof, preparing to jump down to a fire escape.

“No, I reserve my real costume for home.”

“Oh. Alright.” Better than nothing.

Cue a night of Hero being impeccable and charming and the best partner Yuri ever asked for

In the morning, Yuri will call Yakov and tell him how slowly the Hero aid he requested arrived but he doesn’t disapprove.

When Yakov hangs up the phone, he’ll turn to Mila and wonder if he imagined Yuri’s praise of Otabek Altin for the past week.

Mila laughs uncontrollably, once she pieces it together.

Victor is impossible to drag away, but Yakov refuses to give up, and Mila and Georgi refuse to abandon the show. Georgi might be trying to fall in love with a local girl. Yuri doesn’t want to know.

It means perfect weeks with Otabek in the day, sharing brunch. Beka takes on some of Yuri’s instructor duties (something he’s shit at anyway) so he can train with the upper level students.

Whenever possible Yuri tugs him out of the training center early, desperate to show off his city and give Beka a reason to stay.

Among the many perfect things about Otabek is his understanding of time. He never calls Yuri until the afternoon on weekends, because his week is busy with training in the day, fighting for half the evening. 

He even orders “more sleep” when Yuri awakens before 1 PM on a Sunday and calls him. Beka is so thoughtful.

It means perfect weeks with Hero in the night, silent communication and a fearlessness Yuri’s never understood before. The crime rate keeps low so they explore St. Petersburg in the dark or sometimes they play, chasing each other across the rooftops or seeing how many cats Hero can carry, along with Yuri perched on his back. 

Hero shares secrets more freely than Beka, the only complaint he has. 

He’s waiting for someone to remember him.

His laugh is ugly when Yuri tells him no one is worth his time if they can’t remember Hero.

Yuri falls in love in the mornings, falls in love during the night.

Yuri doesn’t realize the trouble he’s in until early April, when Mila disrupts an early dinner with Beka to announce their return.

“A man held a gun to Yakov’s head and Yuuri punched him! Oh Yuri, you should have seen it. Victor’s still crying over his fiancee throwing himself into such peril for the family.”

“Did Yakov already disarm the gun with his powers?”

“Well yes, but Yuuri didn’t know that! Yakov’s charmed and helped Victor shop for a ring.”

“Wait, what?”

“Vakov approves! We’re coming home.”

A dial tone interrupts Mila’s explanation of their flight details. 

Yuri has this huge night long panic as he figures out he’s in love with two people, doesn’t know what to do.

Falling in love with civilians is a death sentence. Just look at his family.

He loves Otabek far too much to put him at risk. So he lets him go.

Ultimately, he cares about Hero because he’s powerful and shares everything with Yuri. Yuri feels safer than he ever did with Mila or Victor or even Lilia who treats him like her own.

Someone needs to tell Yuri the only reason he feels this way is because part of him must realize its Otabek and only trusts him because its Otabek but god help him, he is slow and still doesn’t connect the two after over a month.

But then Yuri remembers Hero belongs to his own country, to another person. So he lets him go as well. 

If a gun was put to his head, he’d pick Otabek anyway

The following few nights are awkward, as both understand there’s a countdown for Hero to leave.

On the final night, it is silent. Neither speaks as they guard the town. There is no goodbye, and Yuri feels like a failure.

The days are worse, as Yuri has the option to ask Otabek to stay because he doesn’t belong to Kazakstan the way Hero does to his country. Yuri nearly bites his own tongue off twenty times as he swallows down how badly he wants to beg Otabek not to leave.

He remembers every hero who loved and lost a civilian and refuses, even as he drives Otabek to the airport.

Otabek keeps staring at him, waiting for something he can never offer.

He departs, taking parts of Yuri with him.

Uh this is getting long and we’re at risk at me deleting this in favor of a 10k actual fic version of this so let me wrap up

Yuri sulks for weeks, is a beast to everyone

Beka returns after a month, as does Hero 

(the person I’m waiting for is still here. Yuri is still clueless)

Beka’s life is at risk somehow as a civilian but separate from Yuri

Yuri realizes that danger can come regardless and commits to dating Otabek

Yuri tries to confess to Beka, but fucks up horribly, accidentally makes it seem like he’s settling for Beka because he can’t have Hero.

A lot of fucking drama, so much crying

Georgi screaming in the background about how he just left Japan, why is he dealing with this again

Eventually Yuri proves he’s wanted Beka the entire time, long drawn out love confession where he offers to leave Russia and being a superhero (what he loves most) behind if Otabek will have him

Beka is weak, so weak by love

Reveals he’s the Hero, specifically the Hero of Kazakhstan (super famous, super skilled, kick ass costume inspired by his skating uniform) and has known Yuri since they trained together as kids

Traumatic backstory where people always loved Hero, not Otabek

Yuri’s like “I love you for you, you could retire tomorrow, I still want to be here…WAIT NO YOU GOT TO RETIRE RIGHT NOW I DON’T WANT TO SEE YOU HURT OH MY GOD RETIRE”

Beka eventually calms him down and they live happily ever after. They spend vacations in Kazakhstan

“Beka, do they even have villains here?”

“Beka, do they even have a training program for heroes here?”

And a lot of time in Russia, where Otabek takes on Yuri’s training duties of baby superheroes/kids with powers while Yuri scouts and fights

Victor is offended no one thanks him at their wedding for setting this entire thing in motion.

I frantically typed this out so sorry for the bad spelling and sorry again for not following the prompt. Should I make this an actual fic?

Update 1/16: Here, it’s becoming a fic.