#paul 'changing the narrative'

[i-am-the-oyster]

Seeing Ian Leslie's new book, I've been reflecting on the recent shifts in the Beatles' narrative. I believe that Paul is intentionally driving these changes, whether it's regarding the reasons behind the band's breakup or the heightened focus and discussion on the Lennon-McCartney relationship. However, I don't think Paul is deliberately trying to alter anything; I sense that he simply wants to leave behind his version of the story before he passes, and dictate how he wishes to be remembered. This also explains why he continues to mention John in various ways—he wants to be remembered alongside John. Paul's actions seem to be perpetually questioned and misunderstood. Perhaps many people still believe that when he highlights his contributions to John's achievements, it's because he wants to prove he's better than John. But I think it's more about him wanting to demonstrate his influence on John, to share with everyone the memories he and John shared. Before John became Yoko's John, he was first and foremost Paul's John.

Hi anon

I'm not sure what kind of response you're hoping for, but I'm in the mood for Thinking About Other Things, so here's everything your post made me think of.

"Paul is intentionally driving changes to the narrative" is such a funny concept to me. He's not Kingpin, sitting at the head of a conference table, surrounded by his daughters and all the reporters he has in his pocket, cooking up book deals and magazine articles.

Paul has always been a relentlessly optimistic person. (Optimistic, not just in the sense of hoping for the best in the future, but interpreting the best from the present). He ignores and avoids negativity (sometimes to his very serious detriment) and focuses on the positive. As he gets older, and further away from the terribly painful aspects and phases of his relationship with John, he thinks more and more about the beautiful broth of a boy, who loved him and worked so well with him.

The idea that Paul would ever try to show that he's better than John is hilarious. John is the one person in the whole world the Paul doesn't think he's better than. He's always seemed to me to be desperate to prove that he was *good enough* for John.

I'm sure he wants to see the narrative change, because it has got him so wrong for so long. But (except for a brief period in the early 70s) his strategy has always been keep your council and the truth will out. He's spent his life doing what he wants to do, saying what he feels like saying, and patiently waiting for his reappraisal. I for one am glad he's still around to see it.

[lucifer-kane]

putting all the mechanisms songs and shaperaverse songs in one big playlist on spotify calling it story driven emotional whiplash roulette

[widowshill]

ghost vicki real true

[thecoleopterawithana]

“Talking is the slowest form of communicating,” John Lennon said in 1968. “Music is much better.” In a sense, the music of the Beatles, which brings so much joy and consolation, is the glorious fruit of male repression.

[mondoreb]

End Times Prophecy Headlines: July 20, 2023

End Times Prophecy Report HEADLINES THURSDAY July  20,  2023 And OPINION “And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you.” —Matthew 24:4 “The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he’s in prison.” —Fyodor Dostoevsky ===INTERNATIONAL UKRAINE: Russia-Ukraine war: Moscow attacks Odesa for second night RUSSIA: Russia launches intense…

[jeannettearroyo]

I dunno man I find it hard to critique without it coming off as like, "annoying fandom shipping brain" but it's painfully clear that early in s3 of shadows they were canonically writing that Guillermo had feelings for Nandor (how do you explain his sudden departure from him talking to Meg when she mentioned he had feelings? His jealousy of Gail? All while Nandor was explicitly seeking a romantic partner and becoming tired of being alone and being a vampire?)

I don't understand why people insist on having some semantics argument about whether it's definitionally queerbaiting or not if the characters are queer when the show itself took advantage of the growing interest around a potential romance between the two characters and then did not resolve it or address it in any way.

It seems clearer to me that the show took a sharp heel turn in season 4 and decided only at that point that actually nothing matters or changes and the characters will always be stagnant which is not only boring TV but also explicitly wasn't true. The characters had been consistently changing and evolving up to that point. There was never some deep and complex storyline but there were still overarching narratives that had impact.

I know shadows isn't a deeply serious show but it was well balanced between its comedy and character writing and sparse occasional sweet moments. All completely thrown out so Paul Simms could write more shitting/farting/pee jokes.

Sorry for not shutting up about it ha. I already didn't like the show anymore while in season 4 but the finale just makes me mad about it again.

[fuckyeahisawthat]

There are so many places in the Villeneuve Dune adaptations where he just...takes all the narrative pieces that Frank Herbert laid out and subtly rearranges them into something that tells the story better--that creates dramatic tension where you need it, communicates the themes and message of the book more clearly, or corrects something in the text that contradicts or undermines what Herbert said he was trying to say.

The fedaykin are probably my favorite example of this. I just re-read a little part of the book and got smacked in the face with how different they are.

(under the cut for book spoilers and length)

The fedaykin in the book are Paul's personal followers, sort of his personal guard. They show up after his legend has already started growing (the word doesn't appear in the book until chapter 40) and they are people who have specifically dedicated themselves to fighting for him, and right from the moment they're introduced there is a kind of implied fanaticism to their militancy that's a bit uncomfortable to read. They're the most ardent believers in Paul's messianic status and willing to die for him. (They are also, as far as you can tell from the text, all men.)

In the book, as far as I can remember (I could be forgetting some small detail but I don't think so) there is no mention of armed resistance to colonialism on Arrakis before Paul shows up. As far as we know, he created it. ETA: Okay I actually went back and checked on this and while we hear about the Fremen being "a thorn in the side" of the Harkonnens and we know that they are good fighters, we don't see anything other than possibly one bit of industrial sabotage. The book is very clear that the organized military force we see in the second half was armed and trained by Paul. This is exacerbated by the two-year time jump in the book, which means we never see how Paul goes from being a newly deposed ex-colonial overlord running for his life to someone who has his own private militia of people ready to give their lives for him.

The movie completely flips all these dynamics on their head in ways that add up to a radical change in meaning.

The fedaykin in the movie are an already-existing guerrilla resistance movement on Arrakis that formed long before Paul showed up. Literally the first thing we learn about the Fremen, less that two minutes into the first movie, is that they are fighting back against the colonization and exploitation of their home and have been for decades.

The movie fedaykin also start out being the most skeptical of the prophecy about Paul, which is a great choice from both a political and a character standpoint. Of course they're skeptical. If you're part of a small guerrilla force repeatedly going up against a much bigger and stronger imperial army...you have to believe in your own agency. You have to believe that it is possible to win, and that this tiny little chip in the armor of a giant terrifying military machine that you are making right now will make a difference in the end. These are the people who are directly on the front lines of resisting oppression. They are doing it with their own sweat, blood and ingenuity, and they are not about to wait around for some messiah who may never come.

From a character standpoint, this is really the best possible environment you could put Paul Atreides in if you want to keep him humble. He doesn't get any automatic respect handed to him due to title or birthright or religious belief. He has to prove himself--not as any kind of savior but as a good fighter and a reliable member of a collective political project. And he does. This is an environment that really draws out his best qualities. He's a skilled fighter; he's brave (sometimes recklessly so); he's intensely loyal to and protective of people he cares about. He is not too proud to learn from others and work hard in an egalitarian environment where he gets no special treatment or extra glory. The longer he spends with the fedaykin the more his allegiance shifts from Atreides to Fremen, and the more skeptical he himself becomes about the prophecy. This sets up the conflict with Jessica, which comes to a head before she leaves for the south. And his political sincerity--that he genuinely comes to believe that these people deserve liberation from all colonial forces and his only role should be to help where he can--is what makes the tragedy work. Because in the end we know he will betray all these values and become the exact thing he said he didn't want to be.

There's another layer of meaning to all this that I don't know if the filmmakers were even aware of. ETA: rescinding my doubt cause based on some of Villeneuve's other projects I'm pretty sure he could work it out. Given the time period (1960s) and Herbert's propensity for using Arabic or Arabic-inspired words for aspects of Fremen culture, it seems very likely that the made-up word fedaykin was taken from fedayeen, a real Arabic word that was frequently used untranslated in American news media at the time, usually to refer to Palestinian armed resistance groups.

Fedayeen is usually translated into English as fighter, guerrilla, militant or something similar. The translation of fedaykin that Herbert provides in Dune is "death commando"...which is a whole bucket of yikes in my opinion, but it's not entirely absurd if we're assuming that this fake word and the real word fedayeen function in the same way. A more literal translation of fedayeen is "self-sacrificer," as in willing, intentional self-sacrifice for a political cause, up to and including sacrificing your life.

If you apply this logic to Dune, it means that Villeneuve has actually shifted the meaning of this word in-universe, from fighters who are willing to sacrifice themselves for Paul to fighters who are willing to sacrifice themselves for their people. And the fedaykin are no longer a group created for Paul but a group that Paul counts himself as part of, one member among equals. Which is just WILDLY different from what's in the book. And so much better in my opinion.

[letherightonein]

Why "male loneliness epidemic" is a male supremacist psyop [corrected ver.]

I said in a former post that the "male loneliness epidemic" is not real and is a male supremacy psyop, and I want to explain more broadly why it is.

Manosphere

If you don't know about it yet, there is a thing called "Manosphere", a name that stands for a group of communities created by men and oriented towards men. Manosphere is composed of incels, redpill, blackpill, MGTOW and MRA ideologies.

Incels are "involuntary celibates", men who want to date but can't do it. The term was created by a woman called Alana (invcel) and mostly referred to people who felt isolated and incapable of forming romantic relationships or trapped in a dying relationship. But nowadays it is tied to a broad ideology that I will explain later.

Redpill stems from the Matrix scene where Neo has to choose between the redpill and the bluepill, being the redpill the one who will awaken him. The whole ideology started to take its form in pick-up artistry forums such as SoSuave, and states that in order to mate and get laid a lot you have to become a "high value male", while also understanding "female nature". The original big three exponents of this ideology were Rollo Tomassi, Chateau Heartiste and Roosh V, but nowadays only Rollo remains moderately relevant.

Blackpill is the most pessimistic and nihilistic version of the redpill, it is tied to incels but is not exclusive of them. It focuses on biological determinism, and states that the most important thing on mating is looks. That seems innocent at first sight, but this ideology also states that most men are not attractive to women, and they are having a soft harem relationship with “Chad”, a highly attractive man, in detriment to average men and creating incels in the process.

MGTOW started as an independent community, with a first manifesto written in 2001 in a male focused forum. In the manifesto they advocated in favor of a society with enforced gender roles and a smaller state. But nowadays they are connected to redpill and blackpill. It is mostly overlooked, but in Spanish communities there are also two other manifests, MGTOW 2.0 and MGTOW 3.0. I don't know if there is a fourth one nowadays, but they help to understand the transition MGTOW has made over the years and how manosphere ideologies have been adopted by this group.

MRA stands for Men's rights activism, also called Men's rights Movement (MRM). The father of the movement is Ernst Belfort, who wrote against women's rights and the "legal subjection" of men, in response to feminists and John Stuart Mill. Nowadays it is also tied with redpill, given that prominent figures of the movement promote or believe in redpill ideology, such as Paul Elam or Karen Straughan.

In 2014, Cassie Jaye who was allegedly a feminist by that time, did a documentary on MRA called "The Redpill". It's not clear why she called it that way, but it is suspected that it was with the purpose of dragging more people on the redpill. It is also said that she received money from r/Theredpill subreddit. The documentary was international, since it reached both English and Spanish audiences (I don't know much about other languages/countries). It exposes a lot of problems men face, such as dying in war, losing custodies and domestic violence, but never explains what MRAs do to help those men.

That term

Once you become familiar with all these communities, you start to see how they are all the same. They share the same stats, the same studies, the same terms, the same narratives. The only thing that changes is the label, if the members can or not to have sex with women, if the members want or not to have sex with women, and if the members "care" or not about society.

One of the core terms that is transversal to almost all communities is "Hypergamy". (The central one on MRA is Gynocentrism). And it is a tricky one.

Men in these communities are used to gaslight and belittle external people, but also they bully each other constantly. In Spanish, for example, MGTOW ones used to dedicate long livestreams and called each other cucks, betas, manginas, etc. One point of discussion and "artistry" in the manosphere is hypergamy. It has inspired long videos, live streams, books, blogspots and debate among its members. Entire communities have been divided over this concept, and others have been created.

In their videos and "private" spaces they call any woman hypergamous. I remember when MacKenzie Scott divorced Jeff Bezos, and she was called hypergamous by these people, arguing that she planned it all - “they marry the provider and once they secure their money, they go with someone they really like”- and ignoring that she divorced because Jeff cheated on her. 

“Hypergamy” in short, is mating “up”, but the manosphere twists this term to make it fit anything women do. Women who date men who are more attractive than them are hypergamous, women who date men who are less attractive than them but have money are hypergamous, women who date men with less education than them are hypergamous. Women who rate men "below average" (another male bullshit story) are hypergamous. 

Women's nature is hypergamous and male nature is not, even if men also leave their geriatric wives for 20 year old women, even if men also cheat with a more attractive mistress, even if men marry more educated women, even if men marry women with more money. They are not hypergamous, they are polygamous, but also don't mind settling with a woman given that "women choose" and men barely have any chance with women. 

Anything a woman does is hypergamy. Except when you call them out and tell them it's all fake, or where is the inner consistency, given that they call marrying a poor man and a rich one “hypergamy”. Then, they come with studies on hypergamy. "How can you say that women are not hypergamous if this study says that they 'marry up'?". Suddenly the term only applies to marriage, behind are left all those theories over “Chad” being picked by all women.

Hypergamy, in academia, is a term used by social scientists that is related to marriage and the act of marrying up in social class, annual income or status. Since superior education in the west is a high sign of status (repeated two times in a list of status signals among men and women across 14 countries), studies on the subject account for income and degrees. 

The research found that women are married to men who earn more than them, but don't have more education than them, so men are "marrying up" in status. Such a trend has not substantially changed among decades. Nevertheless, it is recognized that it doesn't translate on men being the breadwinners, given that most marriages are dual income, and that hypogamous marriages, where the man has less education than the woman, are becoming more common.

Nothing about women making heartless plans on marrying with the rich one, divorce him and then mate with “Chad”, nothing about women sleeping mostly with “Chad”, certainly nothing about hypergamy being exclusively female. But it's enough for them, even when the second they provide those studies they make it clear they are being dishonest. The seeds have been planted; women are choosing only the rich ones to marry, leaving poorer men single. The one who is debating them and the ones watching the exchange, only have to start to believe that female hypergamy is rising, being amplified by technology and being extended to other aspects of relationships.

The Lie...

...and how everyone decided to believe it

As we have seen, the manosphere term is not the one that social scientists use. It is whimsical and doesn't make sense...on the surface. The magic is in repeating that women are hypergamous, that they will choose all the time only a few men and let the rest sexless, single or childless, that sexual revolution and women's freedom of choice is a disaster and contrary to civilization. If the lie is repeated enough times, people will start to believe it. 

And well, it worked. It worked so well that feminists, instead of checking the data, seeing the male strategy and debunking the nonsense, decided to repeat the same lie. “Women are choosing better, women are making men single and sexless! Pussy Power!”. There is literally a book on this. 

White supremacists also adopted the term, and the manosphere also adopted white supremacists perspective; they quote the work of Roger Devlin, Sexual Utopia in Power from time to time. 

Authorities regarded as “thinkers”, such as Jordan Peterson, and a long list of influencers also adopted the narrative and repeated it to the public. 

Normal people also believe in it, in 2019 The WaPo decided to craft and release a graph that, until today, is made viral countless times in social media, indicating that “men are in crisis” given that “ a third of them are sexless”. They repeat that there is a “male loneliness epidemic” and it’s implicit that women are the problem; “they should lower their crazy standards, they should stop being delusional”.

Women are rating 80% of men below average! They are delusional! Their simps make them believe they are 10/10!

It's extremely easy to fall in the rabbit hole. They start hearing about a disbalance on the distribution of sex, or dating, or in dating apps matches. They start hearing about a singleness crisis among men, and they have already accepted that such disbalance, such crisis, is a modern thing, because no one seemed to talk about it in the past. (right?)

They hear about male loneliness and mental health issues, and they understand that the disbalance is a bad thing. So they are one step away from starting to believe that mating is a process that should be regulated and controlled by the state, religion or cultural norms. Like, one click away from watching Jordan Peterson saying exactly that.

The manosphere has been repeating this idea for more than 10 years. At least one decade feminists had to stop this shitshow and they didn't, which is surprising given that the whole thing is perfectly summarized in the white supremacist essay I linked above. But they didn’t, because at some level, this meme also can benefit liberal feminism. The ones who spread and believe in this idea don't care about the data, they want the narrative, and it can be used to promote diverse agendas. So, instead of debunking and calling out, they chose to use the narrative for the feminist cause and they are now losing. Women are losing. Women lost.

The truth

While the General Social Survey graph from 2018 is made viral again and again on social media, the same survey on more recent years is completely ignored. 

The most repeated bunk of the last couple years.

Reality is that in both 2021 and 2022, the sexless in those years were below 20%, which is consistent with former years. Most men and women were having sex. In 2021, women even reported being slightly more sexless than men -but no one threw a tantrum over a “female loneliness epidemic”.

The survey also included a variable to measure people who were sexless for the last 5 years. Less than 10% of men and women reported being sexless that amount of time. It indicates that there is not “soft harem” around “Chad” or “Alpha males”, but people are having sex in a 1:1 ratio, and that most of the time, for every sexless man there is a sexless woman.

It is also repeated constantly that there are more single men than women, and it is suggested that it is because women are part of soft harems with High Value Males. This idea has been repeated so many times that even researchers have adopted it.

But the truth is that this disparity has been a thing for decades, even a century.

Before the sexual revolution, when everyone was married (right?), there was also a disparity between single men and single women. The key here is that the disparity exists between young people, and the most near explanation is age gap relationships; young men are more single because their female counterparts are dating slightly older men. But also, nowadays single people report less interest in having a relationship; men are not suffering for their “involuntary celibacy”, they are not into it.

I't curious how the "women and men are different" crowd swear that single women are looking for casual dates with "high value males" when it has been proven over and over that men have a higher sexual drive.

It’s also said that Dating apps have caused a disaster on the “dating market”, given that women nowadays have instant access to “high value males” and can ignore average men, while they are there longing for the minimum chance. Again, the idea that women are into a soft harem with “Chad”. This idea doesn’t hold reality, it’s true that by taking into account raw data, it seems that women have much more matches than men, but the major factor ignored is the gender ratio within dating apps; when adjusting that, matches become even, again fulfilling the expected 1:1 ratio between men and women.

It’s also stated that dating apps have increased “hook-up culture”, but that doesn’t seem to be true. Here's a deep dive on dating apps and dating.

Academic naiveté(?

Manosphere gives a final push for the hypergamy narrative by quoting the experts on the matter. And somehow, researchers don't have a problem with it.

It has been said -by prominent figures like David Buss- that there is or will be a mating crisis among educated women, because there will be a shortage of high income husbands. They say "women don't marry because there are not enough economically attractive men". And with "don't marry" they understand "remain single and childless".

That crisis doesn't exist. Marriages between college educated people are the longest ones, there are less widows and divorces even. Educated women are more likely to be married than the opposite.

The focus also is steady on marriage, and I suspect that’s because their narrative perishes if they actually start to value mating and reproduction instead. In the US, at least 40% of all births are out of wedlock, and that figure increases if we take into account other American and European countries. Maybe women are not marrying out of “lack of economically attractive men”, but they are still reproducing with them. More bluntly: women are having kids with men that can’t buy a ring, but they keep saying that women are “too picky”.

The real crisis, if there is any, is happening among classes, the poor are poorer and the rich are richer. They are sharing their assets with each other and forming strong families while the poor prioritize reproduction since they can’t afford marriage and everything that entails.

Ironically, equality and women's choice have achieved what these men are apparently longing for. The secretary marrying her boss or the nurse marrying the surgeon is becoming a thing of the past -or probably it was never a thing. The doctor is marrying another doctor, the boss is marrying a woman with a Phd. Rich men are not dating down, even when rich they marry rich women, not the cashier 20 years younger than them. 

To counteract this they quote Leonardo Dicaprio and his creepy behavior, without noticing that the man is not marrying or having children with those women. While even richer men are married and with kids with women at their level.

The future

It's clear to me that the agenda is settled, and they will do anything that can reinforce it. If we push for the truth to be known, they probably won't be able to use sexlessness or the singleness gap as a thing, so they have created a new term: "dysphoric singlehood". And they will start measuring it soon. 

The stats, the terms, the memes will change. But the core will remain the same. Women’s choice is dangerous, it leads to the creation of more incel men and to degeneracy. "Women will destroy civilization" at worst and "women's nature causes pain to men and it should be controlled or put in check" at best. And there are and there will be groups who will propose tight control from men over women as a solution.

Call to action

Nowadays, as I have said, this conspiracy is shared by a lot of different groups with different interests, but are more tightly enforced by male supremacists.

As feminists are interested in women's well being and freedom, they shouldn’t make male supremacists work easier by repeating their lies. Sadly, I have seen countless times feminists, here and in other places, spreading manosphere lies, mostly because it serves to a temporal sense of victory over men or because it can feed the “patriarchy hurts men too” libfem bit.

But feminism shouldn’t prioritize fantasy over reality, even if it’s rough; almost everything remains the same in the heterosexual world, women are still dating, having sex, marrying and having kids with men in large numbers. Incels are tiny outliers in the big scheme of things: nothing is rising.

Our sisters should know the truth, our nature is not contrary to civilization, our choices are not detrimental, we shouldn’t be controlled. Nature runs its course.

Conclusion

It is important to understand that evolution doesn't allow everyone to reproduce. It's nothing new that some men and women didn't pass their genes, this was a thing in the past and will always be. 

Mating, having sex and therefore, reproducing is not a right. The whole point of evolution is that effective subjects make it, and the few remaining ones are left behind. This process is not being blown up by technology or women having more freedom. 

The influence of women on reproduction is discussed, but given that even in cultures with arranged marriages the future wife has a word on it and mothers, who are also women, have also a said in who the husband should be, I highly doubt that there was a long period of time in human history where women had no choice at all. It doesn’t seem to be consistent with reality to believe that women are programmed to only like a few men.

About data on human relationships, I think it’s important to be skeptical from now on of every viral graph and any “too perfect and bright” theory. If it relies on a result given in only one year, it’s bunk. If it incites a moral panic, it’s bunk. If multiple sources don’t show a clear trend, it’s bunk.

Doesn’t matter if it comes from your respected professor, that influencer or popularizer that you like, that intellectual that always transforms big chunks of information into easy concepts to get. Don’t trust, they are probably wrong. If your grandma knows about it, you are late in your contact with reality by at least 20 years.

[itsawritblr]

Holy shit, the New York Times is FINALLY interviewing and listening to detransistioners.

The tide is turning.

Opinion by Pamela Paul

As Kids, They Thought They Were Trans. They No Longer Do.

Feb. 2, 2024

Grace Powell was 12 or 13 when she discovered she could be a boy.

Growing up in a relatively conservative community in Grand Rapids, Mich., Powell, like many teenagers, didn’t feel comfortable in her own skin. She was unpopular and frequently bullied. Puberty made everything worse. She suffered from depression and was in and out of therapy.

“I felt so detached from my body, and the way it was developing felt hostile to me,” Powell told me. It was classic gender dysphoria, a feeling of discomfort with your sex.

Reading about transgender people online, Powell believed that the reason she didn’t feel comfortable in her body was that she was in the wrong body. Transitioning seemed like the obvious solution. The narrative she had heard and absorbed was that if you don’t transition, you’ll kill yourself.

At 17, desperate to begin hormone therapy, Powell broke the news to her parents. They sent her to a gender specialist to make sure she was serious. In the fall of her senior year of high school, she started cross-sex hormones. She had a double mastectomy the summer before college, then went off as a transgender man named Grayson to Sarah Lawrence College, where she was paired with a male roommate on a men’s floor. At 5-foot-3, she felt she came across as a very effeminate gay man.

At no point during her medical or surgical transition, Powell says, did anyone ask her about the reasons behind her gender dysphoria or her depression. At no point was she asked about her sexual orientation. And at no point was she asked about any previous trauma, and so neither the therapists nor the doctors ever learned that she’d been sexually abused as a child.

“I wish there had been more open conversations,” Powell, now 23 and detransitioned, told me. “But I was told there is one cure and one thing to do if this is your problem, and this will help you.”

Progressives often portray the heated debate over childhood transgender care as a clash between those who are trying to help growing numbers of children express what they believe their genders to be and conservative politicians who won’t let kids be themselves.

But right-wing demagogues are not the only ones who have inflamed this debate. Transgender activists have pushed their own ideological extremism, especially by pressing for a treatment orthodoxy that has faced increased scrutiny in recent years. Under that model of care, clinicians are expected to affirm a young person’s assertion of gender identity and even provide medical treatment before, or even without, exploring other possible sources of distress.

Many who think there needs to be a more cautious approach — including well-meaning liberal parents, doctors and people who have undergone gender transition and subsequently regretted their procedures — have been attacked as anti-trans and intimidated into silencing their concerns.

And while Donald Trump denounces “left-wing gender insanity” and many trans activists describe any opposition as transphobic, parents in America’s vast ideological middle can find little dispassionate discussion of the genuine risks or trade-offs involved in what proponents call gender-affirming care.

Powell’s story shows how easy it is for young people to get caught up by the pull of ideology in this atmosphere.

“What should be a medical and psychological issue has been morphed into a political one,” Powell lamented during our conversation. “It’s a mess.”

A New and Growing Group of Patients

Many transgender adults are happy with their transitions and, whether they began to transition as adults or adolescents, feel it was life changing, even lifesaving. The small but rapidly growing number of children who express gender dysphoria and who transition at an early age, according to clinicians, is a recent and more controversial phenomenon.

Laura Edwards-Leeper, the founding psychologist of the first pediatric gender clinic in the United States, said that when she started her practice in 2007, most of her patients had longstanding and deep-seated gender dysphoria. Transitioning clearly made sense for almost all of them, and any mental health issues they had were generally resolved through gender transition.

“But that is just not the case anymore,” she told me recently. While she doesn’t regret transitioning the earlier cohort of patients and opposes government bans on transgender medical care, she said, “As far as I can tell, there are no professional organizations who are stepping in to regulate what’s going on.”

Most of her patients now, she said, have no history of childhood gender dysphoria. Others refer to this phenomenon, with some controversy, as rapid onset gender dysphoria, in which adolescents, particularly tween and teenage girls, express gender dysphoria despite never having done so when they were younger. Frequently, they have mental health issues unrelated to gender. While professional associations say there is a lack of quality research on rapid onset gender dysphoria, several researchers have documented the phenomenon, and many health care providers have seen evidence of it in their practices.

“The population has changed drastically,” said Edwards-Leeper, a former head of the Child and Adolescent Committee for the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, the organization responsible for setting gender transition guidelines for medical professionals.

For these young people, she told me, “you have to take time to really assess what’s going on and hear the timeline and get the parents’ perspective in order to create an individualized treatment plan. Many providers are completely missing that step.”

Yet those health care professionals and scientists who do not think clinicians should automatically agree to a young person’s self-diagnosis are often afraid to speak out. A report commissioned by the National Health Service about Britain’s Tavistock gender clinic, which, until it was ordered to be shut down, was the country’s only health center dedicated to gender identity, noted that “primary and secondary care staff have told us that they feel under pressure to adopt an unquestioning affirmative approach and that this is at odds with the standard process of clinical assessment and diagnosis that they have been trained to undertake in all other clinical encounters.”

Of the dozens of students she’s trained as psychologists, Edwards-Leeper said, few still seem to be providing gender-related care. While her students have left the field for various reasons, “some have told me that they didn’t feel they could continue because of the pushback, the accusations of being transphobic, from being pro-assessment and wanting a more thorough process,” she said.

They have good reasons to be wary. Stephanie Winn, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Oregon, was trained in gender-affirming care and treated multiple transgender patients. But in 2020, after coming across detransition videos online, she began to doubt the gender-affirming model. In 2021 she spoke out in favor of approaching gender dysphoria in a more considered way, urging others in the field to pay attention to detransitioners, people who no longer consider themselves transgender after undergoing medical or surgical interventions. She has since been attacked by transgender activists. Some threatened to send complaints to her licensing board saying that she was trying to make trans kids change their minds through conversion therapy.

In April 2022, the Oregon Board of Licensed Professional Counselors and Therapists told Winn that she was under investigation. Her case was ultimately dismissed, but Winn no longer treats minors and practices only online, where many of her patients are worried parents of trans-identifying children.

“I don’t feel safe having a location where people can find me,” she said.

Detransitioners say that only conservative media outlets seem interested in telling their stories, which has left them open to attacks as hapless tools of the right, something that frustrated and dismayed every detransitioner I interviewed. These are people who were once the trans-identified kids that so many organizations say they’re trying to protect — but when they change their minds, they say, they feel abandoned.

Most parents and clinicians are simply trying to do what they think is best for the children involved. But parents with qualms about the current model of care are frustrated by what they see as a lack of options.

Parents told me it was a struggle to balance the desire to compassionately support a child with gender dysphoria while seeking the best psychological and medical care. Many believed their kids were gay or dealing with an array of complicated issues. But all said they felt compelled by gender clinicians, doctors, schools and social pressure to accede to their child’s declared gender identity even if they had serious doubts. They feared it would tear apart their family if they didn’t unquestioningly support social transition and medical treatment. All asked to speak anonymously, so desperate were they to maintain or repair any relationship with their children, some of whom were currently estranged.

Several of those who questioned their child’s self-diagnosis told me it had ruined their relationship. A few parents said simply, “I feel like I’ve lost my daughter.”

One mother described a meeting with 12 other parents in a support group for relatives of trans-identified youth where all of the participants described their children as autistic or otherwise neurodivergent. To all questions, the woman running the meeting replied, “Just let them transition.” The mother left in shock. How would hormones help a child with obsessive-compulsive disorder or depression? she wondered.

Some parents have found refuge in anonymous online support groups. There, people share tips on finding caregivers who will explore the causes of their children’s distress or tend to their overall emotional and developmental health and well-being without automatically acceding to their children’s self-diagnosis.

Many parents of kids who consider themselves trans say their children were introduced to transgender influencers on YouTube or TikTok, a phenomenon intensified for some by the isolation and online cocoon of Covid. Others say their kids learned these ideas in the classroom, as early as elementary school, often in child-friendly ways through curriculums supplied by trans rights organizations, with concepts like the gender unicorn or the Genderbread person.

‘Do You Want a Dead Son or a Live Daughter?’

After Kathleen’s 15-year-old son, whom she described as an obsessive child, abruptly told his parents he was trans, the doctor who was going to assess whether he had A.D.H.D. referred him instead to someone who specialized in both A.D.H.D. and gender. Kathleen, who asked to be identified only by her first name to protect her son’s privacy, assumed that the specialist would do some kind of evaluation or assessment. That was not the case.

The meeting was brief and began on a shocking note. “In front of my son, the therapist said, ‘Do you want a dead son or a live daughter?’” Kathleen recounted.

Parents are routinely warned that to pursue any path outside of agreeing with a child’s self-declared gender identity is to put a gender dysphoric youth at risk for suicide, which feels to many people like emotional blackmail. Proponents of the gender-affirming model have cited studies showing an association between that standard of care and a lower risk of suicide. But those studies were found to have methodological flaws or have been deemed not entirely conclusive. A survey of studies on the psychological effects of cross-sex hormones, published three years ago in The Journal of the Endocrine Society, the professional organization for hormone specialists, found it “could not draw any conclusions about death by suicide.” In a letter to The Wall Street Journal last year, 21 experts from nine countries said that survey was one reason they believed there was “no reliable evidence to suggest that hormonal transition is an effective suicide prevention measure.”

Moreover, the incidence of suicidal thoughts and attempts among gender dysphoric youth is complicated by the high incidence of accompanying conditions, such as autism spectrum disorder. As one systematic overview put it, “Children with gender dysphoria often experience a range of psychiatric comorbidities, with a high prevalence of mood and anxiety disorders, trauma, eating disorders and autism spectrum conditions, suicidality and self-harm.”

But rather than being treated as patients who deserve unbiased professional help, children with gender dysphoria often become political pawns.

Conservative lawmakers are working to ban access to gender care for minors and occasionally for adults as well. On the other side, however, many medical and mental health practitioners feel their hands have been tied by activist pressure and organizational capture. They say that it has become difficult to practice responsible mental health care or medicine for these young people.

Pediatricians, psychologists and other clinicians who dissent from this orthodoxy, believing that it is not based on reliable evidence, feel frustrated by their professional organizations. The American Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics have wholeheartedly backed the gender-affirming model.

In 2021, Aaron Kimberly, a 50-year-old trans man and registered nurse, left the clinic in British Columbia where his job focused on the intake and assessment of gender-dysphoric youth. Kimberly received a comprehensive screening when he embarked on his own successful transition at age 33, which resolved the gender dysphoria he experienced from an early age.

But when the gender-affirming model was introduced at his clinic, he was instructed to support the initiation of hormone treatment for incoming patients regardless of whether they had complex mental problems, experiences with trauma or were otherwise “severely unwell,” Kimberly said. When he referred patients for further mental health care rather than immediate hormone treatment, he said he was accused of what they called gatekeeping and had to change jobs.

“I realized something had gone totally off the rails,” Kimberly, who subsequently founded the Gender Dysphoria Alliance and the L.G.B.T. Courage Coalition to advocate better gender care, told me.

Gay men and women often told me they fear that same-sex-attracted kids, especially effeminate boys and tomboy girls who are gender nonconforming, will be transitioned during a normal phase of childhood and before sexual maturation — and that gender ideology can mask and even abet homophobia.

As one detransitioned man, now in a gay relationship, put it, “I was a gay man pumped up to look like a woman and dated a lesbian who was pumped up to look like a man. If that’s not conversion therapy, I don’t know what is.”

“I transitioned because I didn’t want to be gay,” Kasey Emerick, a 23-year-old woman and detransitioner from Pennsylvania, told me. Raised in a conservative Christian church, she said, “I believed homosexuality was a sin.”

When she was 15, Emerick confessed her homosexuality to her mother. Her mother attributed her sexual orientation to trauma — Emerick’s father was convicted of raping and assaulting her repeatedly when she was between the ages of 4 and 7 — but after catching Emerick texting with another girl at age 16, she took away her phone. When Emerick melted down, her mother admitted her to a psychiatric hospital. While there, Emerick told herself, “If I was a boy, none of this would have happened.”

In May 2017, Emerick began searching “gender” online and encountered trans advocacy websites. After realizing she could “pick the other side,” she told her mother, “I’m sick of being called a dyke and not a real girl.” If she were a man, she’d be free to pursue relationships with women.

That September, she and her mother met with a licensed professional counselor for the first of two 90-minute consultations. She told the counselor that she had wished to be a Boy Scout rather than a Girl Scout. She said she didn’t like being gay or a butch lesbian. She also told the counselor that she had suffered from anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation. The clinic recommended testosterone, which was prescribed by a nearby L.G.B.T.Q. health clinic. Shortly thereafter, she was also diagnosed with A.D.H.D. She developed panic attacks. At age 17, she was cleared for a double mastectomy.

“I’m thinking, ‘Oh my God, I’m having my breasts removed. I’m 17. I’m too young for this,’” she recalled. But she went ahead with the operation.

“Transition felt like a way to control something when I couldn’t control anything in my life,” Emerick explained. But after living as a trans man for five years, Emerick realized her mental health symptoms were only getting worse. In the fall of 2022, she came out as a detransitioner on Twitter and was immediately attacked. Transgender influencers told her she was bald and ugly. She received multiple threats.

“I thought my life was over,” she said. “I realized that I had lived a lie for over five years.”

Today Emerick’s voice, permanently altered by testosterone, is that of a man. When she tells people she’s a detransitioner, they ask when she plans to stop taking T and live as a woman. “I’ve been off it for a year,” she replies.

Once, after she recounted her story to a therapist, the therapist tried to reassure her. If it’s any consolation, the therapist remarked, “I would never have guessed that you were once a trans woman.” Emerick replied, “Wait, what sex do you think I am?”

To the trans activist dictum that children know their gender best, it is important to add something all parents know from experience: Children change their minds all the time. One mother told me that after her teenage son desisted — pulled back from a trans identity before any irreversible medical procedures — he explained, “I was just rebelling. I look at it like a subculture, like being goth.”

“The job of children and adolescents is to experiment and explore where they fit into the world, and a big part of that exploration, especially during adolescence, is around their sense of identity,” Sasha Ayad, a licensed professional counselor based in Phoenix, told me. “Children at that age often present with a great deal of certainty and urgency about who they believe they are at the time and things they would like to do in order to enact that sense of identity.”

Ayad, a co-author of “When Kids Say They’re Trans: A Guide for Thoughtful Parents,” advises parents to be wary of the gender affirmation model. “We’ve always known that adolescents are particularly malleable in relationship to their peers and their social context and that exploration is often an attempt to navigate difficulties of that stage, such as puberty, coming to terms with the responsibilities and complications of young adulthood, romance and solidifying their sexual orientation,” she told me. For providing this kind of exploratory approach in her own practice with gender dysphoric youth, Ayad has had her license challenged twice, both times by adults who were not her patients. Both times, the charges were dismissed.

Studies show that around eight in 10 cases of childhood gender dysphoria resolve themselves by puberty and 30 percent of people on hormone therapy discontinue its use within four years, though the effects, including infertility, are often irreversible.

Proponents of early social transition and medical interventions for gender dysphoric youth cite a 2022 study showing that 98 percent of children who took both puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones continued treatment for short periods, and another study that tracked 317 children who socially transitioned between the ages of 3 and 12, which found that 94 percent of them still identified as transgender five years later. But such early interventions may cement children’s self-conceptions without giving them time to think or sexually mature.

‘The Process of Transition Didn’t Make Me Feel Better’

At the end of her freshman year of college, Grace Powell, horrifically depressed, began dissociating, feeling detached from her body and from reality, which had never happened to her before. Ultimately, she said, “the process of transition didn’t make me feel better. It magnified what I found was wrong with myself.”

“I expected it to change everything, but I was just me, with a slightly deeper voice,” she added. “It took me two years to start detransitioning and living as Grace again.”

She tried in vain to find a therapist who would treat her underlying issues, but they kept asking her: How do you want to be seen? Do you want to be nonbinary? Powell wanted to talk about her trauma, not her identity or her gender presentation. She ended up getting online therapy from a former employee of the Tavistock clinic in Britain. This therapist, a woman who has broken from the gender-affirming model, talked Grace through what she sees as her failure to launch and her efforts to reset. The therapist asked questions like: Who is Grace? What do you want from your life? For the first time, Powell felt someone was seeing and helping her as a person, not simply looking to slot her into an identity category.

Many detransitioners say they face ostracism and silencing because of the toxic politics around transgender issues.

“It is extraordinarily frustrating to feel that something I am is inherently political,” Powell told me. “I’ve been accused multiple times that I’m some right-winger who’s making a fake narrative to discredit transgender people, which is just crazy.”

While she believes there are people who benefit from transitioning, “I wish more people would understand that there’s not a one-size-fits-all solution,” she said. “I wish we could have that conversation.”

In a recent study in The Archives of Sexual Behavior, about 40 young detransitioners out of 78 surveyed said they had suffered from rapid onset gender dysphoria. Trans activists have fought hard to suppress any discussion of rapid onset gender dysphoria, despite evidence that the condition is real. In its guide for journalists, the activist organization GLAAD warns the media against using the term, as it is not “a formal condition or diagnosis.” Human Rights Campaign, another activist group, calls it “a right-wing theory.” A group of professional organizations put out a statement urging clinicians to eliminate the term from use.

Nobody knows how many young people desist after social, medical or surgical transitions. Trans activists often cite low regret rates for gender transition, along with low figures for detransition. But those studies, which often rely on self-reported cases to gender clinics, likely understate the actual numbers. None of the seven detransitioners I interviewed, for instance, even considered reporting back to the gender clinics that prescribed them medication they now consider to have been a mistake. Nor did they know any other detransitioners who had done so.

As Americans furiously debate the basis of transgender care, a number of advances in understanding have taken place in Europe, where the early Dutch studies that became the underpinning of gender-affirming care have been broadly questioned and criticized. Unlike some of the current population of gender dysphoric youth, the Dutch study participants had no serious psychological conditions. Those studies were riddled with methodological flaws and weaknesses. There was no evidence that any intervention was lifesaving. There was no long-term follow-up with any of the study’s 55 participants or the 15 who dropped out. A British effort to replicate the study said that it “identified no changes in psychological function” and that more studies were needed.

In countries like Sweden, Norway, France, the Netherlands and Britain — long considered exemplars of gender progress — medical professionals have recognized that early research on medical interventions for childhood gender dysphoria was either faulty or incomplete. Last month, the World Health Organization, in explaining why it is developing “a guideline on the health of trans and gender diverse people,” said it will cover only adults because “the evidence base for children and adolescents is limited and variable regarding the longer-term outcomes of gender-affirming care for children and adolescents.”

But in America, and Canada, the results of those widely criticized Dutch studies are falsely presented to the public as settled science.

Other countries have recently halted or limited the medical and surgical treatment of gender dysphoric youth, pending further study. Britain’s Tavistock clinic was ordered to be shut down next month, after a National Health Service-commissioned investigation found deficiencies in service and “a lack of consensus and open discussion about the nature of gender dysphoria and therefore about the appropriate clinical response.”

Meanwhile, the American medical establishment has hunkered down, stuck in an outdated model of gender affirmation. The American Academy of Pediatrics only recently agreed to conduct more research in response to yearslong efforts by dissenting experts, including Dr. Julia Mason, a self-described “bleeding-heart liberal.”

The larger threat to transgender people comes from Republicans who wish to deny them rights and protections. But the doctrinal rigidity of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party is disappointing, frustrating and counterproductive.

“I was always a liberal Democrat,” one woman whose son desisted after social transition and hormone therapy told me. “Now I feel politically homeless.”

She noted that the Biden administration has “unequivocally” supported gender-affirming care for minors, in cases in which it deems it “medically appropriate and necessary.” Rachel Levine, the assistant secretary for health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, told NPR in 2022 that “there is no argument among medical professionals — pediatricians, pediatric endocrinologists, adolescent medicine physicians, adolescent psychiatrists, psychologists, et cetera — about the value and the importance of gender-affirming care.”

Of course, politics should not influence medical practice, whether the issue is birth control, abortion or gender medicine. But unfortunately, politics has gotten in the way of progress. Last year The Economist published a thorough investigation into America’s approach to gender medicine. Zanny Minton Beddoes, the editor, put the issue into political context. “If you look internationally at countries in Europe, the U.K. included, their medical establishments are much more concerned,” Beddoes told Vanity Fair. “But here — in part because this has become wrapped up in the culture wars where you have, you know, crazy extremes from the Republican right — if you want to be an upstanding liberal, you feel like you can’t say anything.”

Some people are trying to open up that dialogue, or at least provide outlets for kids and families to seek a more therapeutic approach to gender dysphoria.

Paul Garcia-Ryan is a psychotherapist in New York who cares for kids and families seeking holistic, exploratory care for gender dysphoria. He is also a detransitioner who from ages 15 to 30 fully believed he was a woman.

Garcia-Ryan is gay, but as a boy, he said, “it was much less threatening to my psyche to think that I was a straight girl born into the wrong body — that I had a medical condition that could be tended to.” When he visited a clinic at 15, the clinician immediately affirmed he was female, and rather than explore the reasons for his mental distress, simply confirmed Garcia-Ryan’s belief that he was not meant to be a man.

Once in college, he began medically transitioning and eventually had surgery on his genitals. Severe medical complications from both the surgery and hormone medication led him to reconsider what he had done, and to detransition. He also reconsidered the basis of gender affirmation, which, as a licensed clinical social worker at a gender clinic, he had been trained in and provided to clients.

“You’re made to believe these slogans,” he said. “Evidence-based, lifesaving care, safe and effective, medically necessary, the science is settled — and none of that is evidence based.”

Garcia-Ryan, 32, is now the board president of Therapy First, an organization that supports therapists who do not agree with the gender affirmation model. He thinks transition can help some people manage the symptoms of gender dysphoria but no longer believes anyone under 25 should socially, medically or surgically transition without exploratory psychotherapy first.

“When a professional affirms a gender identity for a younger person, what they are doing is implementing a psychological intervention that narrows a person’s sense of self and closes off their options for considering what’s possible for them,” Garcia-Ryan told me.

Instead of promoting unproven treatments for children, which surveys show many Americans are uncomfortable with, transgender activists would be more effective if they focused on a shared agenda. Most Americans across the political spectrum can agree on the need for legal protections for transgender adults. They would also probably support additional research on the needs of young people reporting gender dysphoria so that kids could get the best treatment possible.

A shift in this direction would model tolerance and acceptance. It would prioritize compassion over demonization. It would require rising above culture-war politics and returning to reason. It would be the most humane path forward. And it would be the right thing to do.

*~*~*~*~*~*

For those who want tor ead more by those fighting the cancellation forquestioning, read:

Graham Lineham, who's been fighting since the beginning and paid the price, but is not seeing things turn around.

The Glinner Update, Grahan Linehan's Substack.

Kellie-Jay Keen @ThePosieParker, who's been physically attacked for organizing events for women demanding women-only spaces.

REDUXX, Feminst news & opinion.

Gays Against Groomers @againstgrmrs, A nonprofit of gay people and others within the community against the sexualization, indoctrination and medicalization of children under the guise of "LGBTQIA+"

[pparacxosm]

something borrowed

(dearly beloved part 2: electric boogaloo ! ; tashi duncan x fem!childhood best friend!reader x patrick zweig ((x art donaldson?? a little?)); nonlinear narrative; playing fast and loose with tenses; where do i start; patrick and reader are their own trigger warning; tw pregnancy and childbirth; major major tw for talk of abortion; tw depression and antidepressant talk; cw breeding kink centric smut; more artashi wedding scenes; baby lily !! ; art donaldson #dadding out; grammy donaldson mentioned ! ; tw vomit again i’m so sorry lol; cw more menstrual talk; tw adultery but i mean come on; baby names; lasagna; we all have annie’s reblog to thank ((blame)) for this)

‘ JESUS: Judas—

JUDAS: You forgave Peter and bullshit Thomas—you knocked Paul of Tarsus off a horse—you raised Lazarus from the fuckin’ dead—but me? Me? Your “heart”? . . . What about me??!! What about me, Jesus?! Huh?! You just, you just—I made a mistake! And if that was wrong, then you should have told me! And if a broken heart wasn't sufficient reason to hang, THEN YOU SHOULD HAVE TOLD ME THAT, TOO!

JESUS: Don't you think . . . that if I knew that it would have changed your mind . . . that I would have?

Pause. ’

Stephen Adly Guirgis, ‘The Last Days of Judas Iscariot’

“Is it one of those ugly ones?”

You’re not special; you, too, hate hospitals. Not the least because your parents ralphed up all that cash for med school and you tanked like a castiron anchor. But there’s so much else to feel guilty for. You feel guilty for being alive while people are dying. You feel guilty for wanting to die while people are being born. You feel guilty, and nauseated, by this sickly visceral fume of birth and babyflesh, and the fact that you’re so upset.

You’d marked it on your calendar, is the thing.

March seventh, Doomsday, the purge, the end times.

Tashi Duncan’s Caesarean section.

Timely and clinical, fittingly so. You’d bought a little beanie for the occasion. The beanie is soft and grey and pink. It has a cartoon flower embroidered on the side of it.

But then this is the spawn of Art and Tashi Donaldson. The baby is inherently desperate, and eager, in that order.

It’s February twentyeighth.

It’s probably for the best, you think, while you and Art are on either side of the hospital bed, and he’s grasping Tashi’s hand more tightly than she is holding his, even though she is the one whose innards are being shat out. You don’t believe she could take another scar.

You grimace as she crowns. Art is sobbing and sniffing. He looks at Tashi like he’s getting to watch God populate the world with greenery. It makes your mouth tug sharply to one side, and you close your eyes, briefly, escaping the bright white light.

You watch the papery sheets go redder and redder with every gush from the cavity of her torso.

The baby is not rosy pink so much as she is carmine. Before this, as an idea, she’s existed mostly in black and white. Aminocentesis results on a MacBook screen. The sonogram on their coffee table. The concrete wall of your abject jealousy. The living colour of her, it shocks you more than her glass-shattering screech.

Art holds the baby first, of course, since Tashi is somewhat incapacitated. You soothingly caress her damp hairline.

“What was that like?” you whisper, wincing down at her.

Tashi sheds a few tears and manages a smile that’s part relief and all agony. “Remember…” she croaks, “Remember when Tre fuckin’… like, roundhouse kicked you up the crotch?”

You blink, quirking your brows. Then you snort in surprise, grinning. “Oh my God, yeah,” you giggle. “When Yas and Matteo got that trampoline.”

Tashi nods weakly, her desiccated mouth twitching at the memory, her eyes shivering gently closed.

The baby is tiny against Art’s body, cradled so carefully in his arms. He’s counting all her toes and fingers.

“Hey there,” he murmurs to her, like they’re the only two people on this earth Tashi made. Then he sinks down onto the stool by Tashi’s head, and holds this tiny, beautiful thing out toward her. “Say hi to momma,” he says, his voice soft as gauze.

Tashi reaches out. Her hands are trembling but all of her is trembling; both you and Art tried to get her on the epidural, but fuck if she’s not stubborn. She crooks the tip of her index finger into the fleecy receiving blanket, pulling it down just a little so she can see the baby’s entire pink face.

The baby opens just one bleary eye, only halfway, but it’s enough for her to see you, for you to feel yourself being seen.

Tashi sobs and Art sobs and you wonder, momentarily, if her obstetrician can reach up the cavity of your body, too, and tug out your heart.

So, of course you hate hospitals, and of course you feel guilty. For many reasons. Chief among them being how, the very moment your dear, gutted friend conks out, you’ve stolen to the hall to ring her ex. And he’s asking you, hopeful, if her fucking newborn is one of those ugly ones.

You sigh into the receiver, shaking your head all solemn. You’re sure any passersby think you’re delivering horrific news. “She’s beautiful,” you confess sadly.

“Fuck!” Patrick says forcefully, like he’s just stubbed his toe.

You can hear the hum of the highway on his end of the line, and he’s definitely a bad enough driver that he shouldn’t be calling you right now, because you don’t want to be back here at his bedside when he’s in a fullbody cast after a nearfatal accident—and you would come to visit, actually, if he were in the hospital; maybe that’d just be the guilt again—but this is pretty urgent.

You frown, tucking your hand under your armpit and managing a smile at a passing couple cautiously rolling their precious trolley to the NICU. “They named her Lily.”

Patrick scoffs. “Those fucking assholes.”

“Right?”

You appreciate his company in your deplorable sorrow. There’s a special corner in the firescape for the two of you, but at least it’ll be the two of you.

“That’s a beautiful name for a baby girl,” he says, practically insulted.

You sigh again. “I know,” you pout.

They’d planned the wedding, as they did all other things, a bona fide team. A well oiled unit. Art and Tashi. A&T. Handing off tasks with practiced efficiency, like another one of her hyperintensive drills, wherein he would sooner keel over heaving than drop the ball. The wedding planner was effectively ornamental once they really got into it.

And they really got into it.

Tashi was one of those little girls who stuffed a stream of toilet paper in her ponytail and pictured the vinyl flooring of her home’s warmly lit passage as a ceremonial aisle on the Amalfi Coast at sunset. Here comes the bride, aluminium foil wedding band, ramshackle wildflower bouquet picked from the backyard, et cetera.

Most times, she’d have you play groom.

But you don’t internalise that too much. Because she had you play a lot of things. And sometimes she’d have their senile Mastiff Mutt, Franklin, play groom, too. Really, the most important part was her having you at all.

And, apparently, as a little boy, Art used to page obsessively back and forth through the decrepit scrapbook of his grandparents’ Peoria union, the pictures frayed and hued dandelion. So it’s great that they found each other, and so many dreams were coming true, and everything was fine. Everything was better.

You’d been happy she was happy, really, you had. You hate big endeavours in your name. If she’d married you, you’d have made her elope to Puerto Rico.

And now she was all sprawled three-ring binders, pen behind each ear, Game Face On. And Art was there, talking place settings in full sincerity, so yeah. It’s fine. Better, even.

She let him intercalate all the mawkish, ubercorny bullshit—the Fleetwood Mac, the garter toss, the pictures of his grandmother at the centrepiece of every table. Because they were a team and it was his wedding as much as hers. And you’d told her, too. You’d told her that she’s going to have a mawkish, ubercorny bullshit wedding to a mawkish, ubercorny bullshit guy. But she’d waved you off with a dismissively sentimental smile. I just want to marry him, she’d told you, which had felt like a million and one serrated spurns all over.

A getaway car, really? you’d deadpanned. Then, leaning closer to her phonescreen, eyes narrowing at their shared twodozenpage Pinterest board, incredulous and disgusted, Are the cans really necessary?

Apparently so.

You were standing at the foreshore, toes all grainy, shoes in hand, pistachiorose and Patrick Zweig on your tongue, your ass still seadamp. Art and Tashi pulled up in front of you, cans rattling, like a justmarried Lyft order.

When you climbed into the backseat, they were in the middle of sharing in dulcet laughter over something or the other. Something that did not concern you. Which was fine, and better, and the flower arrangements were spectacular. And, anyway, you’re busy trying not to get sand on this vintage carpet.

“Shouldn’t you two be honeymooning?”

Art looked back at you, his arm outstretched, wrist resting on the bend of the wheel. He gave you this smile you couldn’t discern, which most of his smiles were, and are. He blew a raspberry from his rubicund mouth and tsked.

“What, without you?” he scoffed, wry but playful, and you realised that, though he teased, and wanted you to know as much, his goodnature was sincere.

And your fingers twitched to wrap his seatbelt—because he was wearing the seatbelt—around his rosy throat five or six or seven times and tug hard.

Tashi threw her head back and laughed into the humidity of the night, of their wedding night.

Tashi squirmed in the leather passengerseat of the ivorycoloured 1960 Ford Thunderbird convertible.

You were leaning over in between them from the back, straddling the armrest. And she watched Art turn his head and kiss you. His hand looked huge on the messy, delicate bone of your jaw. It felt cool and clammy, you remember. Tashi sucked in a breath. You two broke apart after a moment, laughing, your palm coming down on his forearm like he’d just made a joke.

“That,” you said, making a puerile face as he absently brushed a thumb over your cheek, “Was too far.”

Your eyes were still shining with tears.

Art nodded, grinning, slipping his hand from your face and running it through his sweaty shoresand hair. “Anything for you, baby, but maybe not that.”

Tashi was flushed and florid and tamping her thighs tighter together and she wanted you both to put your hands on her.

Her arm slunk across the centre console to press her palm into his chest. And she ran her nails along the tender skin of your inner arm. And Art looked back at you like he was asking for permission, which was the first time in a long time he’d done that. And probably the last time since. And you don’t know why you nodded, but you did.

He gave you another strange, cursory kiss on the corner of your mouth, then leaned across the centre console and nipped at Tashi’s earlobe. The whetted burst of pain sent a visible shiver through her bones. She bit her lip and sighed.

“Mrs Donaldson,” he’d murmured, all husky and low. His white buttonup was all sweatrumpled and unfurled. He looked handsome and disheveled like a fallen angel or those illustrations on the covers of erotic paperbacks.

You swallowed, overwhelmed by it all.

You pressed the seam of your lips to the skin where her neck met her shoulder and her lithe fingers encircled your wrist and guided it between her legs.

You and Art are friends—good friends, by now—but sometimes you feel more like business partners. Cofounders of Keeping Tashi Duncan Happy and Okay Inc.

So, when he cannot stomach all the vomit—so, so much fucking vomit—for all his earnest, anguished, tearful trying, he calls you. Because he and his hairtrigger loins can’t help her right now.

And you don’t tease, or berate, or say it should’ve been you.

And he doesn’t protest, or control freak, or remind you it wasn’t you, it was him.

He dips out to stock up on crackers and barley sugar sweets, and you stay with Tashi and stand sentry on emesis duty.

You hadn’t known that any one thing was capable of maiming her this way. Tashi Duncan, your impenetrable infanta. Fast to get up, faster, still, to dry her tears. But this baby is wringing her bone dry. She’s feeble, swollen, and practically debilitated.

You feel her spine shift as she shakes and heaves into the toilet. You hate her like this. At mercy to her bones.

You can’t help the archaic scorn. None of this, none of any of it, would’ve happened, had it been you. But it wasn’t.

You cradle Tashi’s feverish head in the bend of your knee. You thread your knuckles through her sweaty curls. You rub your fingers into her collar, tracing her bones where they have been swallowed by her plummy sallow skin. In college, you used to give each other lymphatic drainage massages.

You’re on Virginia Key Beach with T and her brothers, at the edge of the ocean. You’re, like, fourteen. Tevin’s mouth is a comically fluorescent shade of blue as he topes down a Slurpee. Tre hops over waves. Tre keeps saying the sharks will get you, they’ll smell it, blood in the water, blood in the water and Tevin keeps holding the Slurpee so high that the ultramarine of it obstructs the sun. And Tashi is yelling I’m not even on my fucking period! even though she is red and wet between her thighs, and give it to me, Tev, it’s mine, you took mine! as she reaches and reaches and reaches, unable to grasp what she wants.

There are some women unmoved by such trivialities as their own blood. Eightinch stilettos, eight months in. People will assume Tashi Duncan, pulchritude and powerhouse, to be one of these women.

But you’ll know better.

She’s so good at the tennis, ultimately, because she listens to her blood. She lets it move her. Lets it give her power. She is a mesmerising glass carafe of red.

But when it spills, it pours. When she breaks, she shatters.

Art Donaldson’s child writhes inside her, swills her blood. And you watch.

Patrick takes you home from the hospital. You were planning on sinking into the void of your couch while forking miserably into a whole tray of lasagna by yourself, but you feel bad. You feel guilty and lonely. So you invite him in.

You thunk your stoneware roaster on the granite of your peninsular countertop. He’s sat on a barstool and you’re standing across from him, and he wastes no time tucking in. You nudge at the broiled cheese with your fork.

You’re crying, which he doesn’t mind, but it’s a little distracting while he’s trying to eat, is all. He peers up at you, circumspect, as he chews.

You roll your eyes at him. “Please don’t make me cry alone,” you tell him.

He chews, swallows, licks some pasta from his gums. He rests the fork against the edge of the tray and dusts his hands off.

“I don’t cry,” he says, shrugging like it’s out of his hands. The corner of his mouth quirks up as you fix him with a sullen glare.

“I’ve seen you cry,” you say pointedly, dropping your own silverware.

He shrugs again. “Yeah,” he says, “One time. That was the only time I’ve ever cried. Ever.”

He has this way of saying things like he absolutely means them. This hamfisted sincerity, serrated deadpan. And, when you’re emotional like this, all husked and raw, it’s unfortunately an extremely effective way to make you laugh. His eyes gleam with victory as you duck your head and giggle wetly.

“You feel special?” he smirks.

You roll your eyes again, tears still trickling pools into the tender shadowed skin beneath your eyes. “I feel especially depressed,” you reply thickly.

He flits his eyes back and forth between the both of yours a few times. You’re reminded of the abject tedious torture of sitting through one of Art’s tennis games. “Are you really? Or are you just moping?” he asks you.

You reach into your pocket and pull out your little Effexor prescription vial, rattling it twice, and tossing it his way. It’s a sloppy underhand, but he catches it easily.

“Huh,” he muses, turning it between his fingertips. “That’s why you look so different? I thought you were just putting on sympathy weight.”

Your lips wobble, and your eyes burn and blur again, your throat swelling shut like fucking anaphylactic excoriation, and you catch your face with your hands and cry.

“Don’t be mean right now,” you blubber.

Patrick blinks, sobering with a smart, the humour seeping off his face and replacing itself with an almost comically disturbed frown.

“Okay, okay,” he says, his voice light with a culpable urgency reserved for a triggered, irate straitjacket patient. He reaches over the lasagna, the savoury brume warming his forearms, and he takes your wrists and peels your fingers from your eyes. “Hey, I’m sorry.”

You hiccup breathlessly. Your tears slithering down your cheeks in rills.

“I’m sorry,” says Patrick. He presses his thumbs into your pulsepoints, like he can quash your distress through your radial arteries. “You look hot, okay? Really, you do.”

For his part, he seems genuinely contrite, and utterly concerned, and he probably means it. He is rarely insincere, even when his tongue is in his cheek. But your sulky inner voice says he’s bargaining. How about I quit being an ass and you stop with the ugly crying and I can finish this pasta and hotfoot it out of here? But this is your house. And your pasta. And you think you should get to mourn his exgirlfriend’s womb, if you so choose.

You sob harder, shoulders quavering. His brows raise in quiet alarm when you wrest your arms from his fingers.

You snuffle and swallow. “Please stop,” you moan sadly.

Somewhere between the cake cutting—which walked that revolting, quintessentially Art and Tashi line between sweet and sexy; she daubed some frosting on his nose, he licked it off her finger—and your purloining of a slice or two for your and Patrick’s beachside bitchsesh, the speakers are thumping with ‘I Wanna Be Your Lover’.

Everyone is wasted.

You don’t even mean to, but one of Art’s cousins, who is clearly eking out his fraternity days that have long since started mouldering, keeps ordering you shots from the open bar. And you keep downing them, one after the other. He’s wearing a practically lurid red polo that really errs on the ‘optional’ side of Black Tie Optional, but he has a really charming smile, the light glistering off the white of his teeth as you dance.

And—fuck it—he’s hot. And he’s looking at you like he wants to kiss you in the middle of this dance floor, grinding against you like you’re teenagers at a CYO dance.

The lights are scintillating technicolour and the music is so loud you can feel it in your rib cage and it doesn’t take long for the room to start spinning like the world’s trippiest ferris wheel.

Cody—or Connor, maybe—goes to the bathroom to piss, and you track down the newlyweds on the other side of the room. Tashi’s beautiful eyes, already aglow, light up even more when she sees you.

“Hi, baby!” She kind of has to yell over the music. God, it’s been a while since you’ve seen her let loose like this. Either of them, really. They’re having a great fucking time. The Happy Couple. It makes you feel sick. “You good?”

“I’m fucked up,” you smile blearily, because all of a sudden the room’s spinning has increased in velocity.

You fight the urge to grab for her hand for some fleeting sense of stability. Because, if you do, you’ll tackle her to the ground and kiss her until someone hauls you off.

And her husband’s right there.

“Me too,” says said husband. He is flushed in the face, grinning elatedly, his eyes drunkenly disfocused, Tashi’s glossy, nudepink lip-print on his cheek.

Tashi, as ever, seems appreciably more put-together than Art looks and you feel. All silken and nitid. Art’s holding her with the desperate adoration of someone who knows, in the far far end of his bevvied mind, what you’re thinking right now. You narrow your eyes at him. Then,

“Do you wanna dance?” you ask on a whim.

“Sure,” Art shrugs, a sloppy smile curving on his lips. And by now Tashi’s turned to exchange polite smalltalk with some or other extended family member, so he impishly adds, “Let me ask the missus.”

He and Tashi have a short conversation that you can’t quite hear, and then she’s pulling you in by the wrist to whisper in your ear,

“Don’t let him drink anymore, okay?”

She pecks a kiss onto your cheek before you have time to question this rule, but you know her well enough to know she’s also surreptitiously telling you to slow down. You spitefully nab another shot on your and Art’s way to the dance floor.

Art’s a good dancer. You would certainly not have pegged him as one, if asked. But when he’s twisting and moving his feet and putting his hands on your waist in a halfway facetious impression of a slow dance, you realise it’s true.

“Congratulations, by the way,” you shout when you get close enough to his ear. “Happy for you.”

He winces at your volume, raising his fingers to his ear and laughing and looking at you and shaking his head. “No you’re not.”

Patrick watches you sob for a few more moments before smacking his hand against the counter.

“Let’s make one,” he says, declaratively.

You snivel and sweep some tears away, looking up at him. “What?”

“Let’s make one,” he repeats, more urgently now, “If we make one right now, it’ll show up before the end of the year, and we can still weaponise it. Come on.”

He’s sliding off the stool and reaching across the counter to grab your hand and tow you out of the kitchen.

“Patrick,” you whine in demurral, stumbling after him.

But he pulls you along even harder, making a decisive path toward the hallway. “Come on!” he insists, “I’m serious.”

“You’re broke.”

Which is true. He’s been snipped off from the trust fund, which you’d thought was purely the stuff of Murdochian nightmares. But he whipped out his Chase Mobile app and showed you the negative balance to prove it. He’d rather bum it out than suit up and schmooze. So he’s not spoiled for funds right now, nor is he spoiled for wins, and you aren’t equipped with great confidence in a potential future as his baby mama.

“They’re pissed, they’re not cruel,” he tells you, effectively shoving you into your room and kicking off his shoes. “I’ll be back on the payroll with a kid on the docket, I promise. My mom would love it, actually. My sister just had a hysterectomy, this’ll be like a family miracle. You’ll have the child support of a Kardashian.”

He grabs your head and kisses you sloppily—he tastes like tomatoes—clumsily walking you back into the bed.

You think he’s too old to be fingering you the way he is. Rubbing your clit all clumsy, like a faulty button on an old remote. You’re a little sticky, but not enough for what he plans to do here. He sighs and leans back.

“This isn’t working,” he says, all pensive, sitting back on his heels. It’s a little difficult, though, to take him seriously, when his cock is on the front end of halfmast and still rising.

When Tashi first started seeing him, you remember her barrelling into your room all stiff and saucereyed and clamorous. As though a particularly warhankering pigeon had just been elected president, or an alien society had been discovered in the thick of the Amazon. But no. She held your shoulders and shook them wildly and yelled, I’m telling you, it’s fucking huge!

She made a point to you that she’d never be caught dead gushing about his dick to his face. She said it was important to humble him.

So you want to maintain that tradition.

And, anyway, it’s a big dick, not the cure to cancer. You don’t even know what he needs it all for. It’s probably all he has left. You can’t imagine it even gets him very far.

People have frontiers. Parameters. Limits. To their patience, to their bodies. Patrick used to kill the sprinting drills, back in school. He likes going end to end, reaching those limits. But once you start pissing someone off and/or ramming into their cervix, everything else is probably a nonstarter.

You sit up, drawing your knees to your chest. “Uh, yeah. It isn’t.”

“Well, is there something I can do? Should I act like her? Will that get you going?” He asks, but he doesn’t wait for your answer. He huffs and crosses his arms and imitates Tashi’s angry moue.

And his dick is still hard, harder now, so you splutter into laughter. You laugh really, really hard. Then he guides your legs back open and swipes his fingers between them again.

And he grins and says, “Bingo.”

You got really into Pilates for about a month or two mid last year. You’re starting to think you should have kept at it. Your knees are hooked over his shoulders, the undersides of your thighs pressed to his chest. Your hips ache, but it feels, regrettably, really fucking great otherwise.

It’s eminently uncomfortable, sure. For your part, it hasn’t really occurred to you to let a man fuck you raw. Your lingering childishness still recoils a bit at the very idea. And it feels strange, that gauche drag of skin on skin. You’d need to be really wet for this to be working, and that hilarious necessity makes you wetter in response, and then he’s slipping in and out and fucking you raw and he doesn’t even seem to be trying too hard.

He’s a little relieved. You’re letting this happen and taking it like a champ and your pussy’s deep enough to give him room to work.

So he does. Because he knows how. He knows how to work things from here.

He’s had more sex than you’ve attended pilates classes.

The thought of you, splayed and tensile across a reformer, gets him pretty hot. Very hot, actually, and he can tell because the surface of his skin is bloomed pink, and your fingers blench away from his shoulders like he’s caught aflame.

He knows by now how tremendously warm he runs in these moments. He usually asks about a girl’s AC before things get going.

Should he say that aloud, or will it piss you off?

You probably see your appending to the convoluted list of unfortunate holes to sheathe the great penis of Patrick Zweig as a little beneath you.

This is his chance to remind you that Tashi Duncan doesn’t go back on her word for just any heavy pair of balls.

He angles your hips to get deeper, experimenting with ways to evoke a reaction. He’s working you like you’re paying him.

You’re trying really hard not to say anything too nice about his dick. But he’s plunging hard and fast into you, rolling his hips with all the dexterity of fucking Magic Mike, and—well—you wouldn’t be able to, even if you wanted.

The words you’re saying are not in the dictionary. You’re sweating, panting, tugging a little mercilessly at his hair. Patrick bends your legs and hoists your pelvis. He can’t keep a trainer right now, but some adrenalinefueled strength is allowing him to support your body like it’s nothing. He wasn’t bluffing about you looking hot. He’s groping you all over with the ferocious depravity of a necrophile.

There’s some real blasphemous perversion slipping off his tongue. Ersatz porno shit that should be giving you early onset morning sickness, but he’s going all Daniel Day Lewis with it, and you’re kind of buying it.

Fucking come-slut… fuckin’— fuck… gonna breed you… gonna put a baby in you.

You’re audibly wet. The air around you grows practically mephitic. You’re losing your fucking mind. If this shit falls flat, and he can’t get you pregnant tonight, and you dump and block him and never want to speak to him again, he at least hopes you remember this for a long time.

And—you know what—fuck it if that wasn’t memorable enough, he thinks, feeling his cock twitch as he slooshes molten litres into you. Because he’s pulling out, flipping you over, and hiking up your hips. Maybe this’ll be.

He fucks you, he comes in you. A lot. He needs a second to replenish.

You steal to the kitchen. Your inner thighs are chafed and viscid. You cover the lasagna dish and cache it away, and take a second to scoff at some vapidly controversial Twitter thread. You yelp when you feel his arms around you again, lifting you off the tile and carrying you back to the bedroom.

Patrick’s never really thought too hard about his come. It’s an ancillary deluge. A mess to clean most often. Maybe he’s considered meliorating his diet when someone’s gleaned a taste and gagged.

But right now it’s serving a purpose. And he is, among other things, relieved for that, too. He’s not gonna sit around and mourn this while it happens and ask you if you’d really have his child. He’d rather look you in your beautiful, milky pussy than a gift horse in the mouth.

He refuses to waste a drop of himself. He makes sure to coat your insides with it.

He lies sheathed inside you for many minutes after he comes, gripping your hips harshly to him, groaning like this were the real orgasm.

Afterwards, he holds your knees to his chest and lifts your ass and presses his palm to your cunt as if sealing an entrance, making sure nothing escapes. He’s trying to give his guys a fighting chance.

You were, at first—as in, after two or three rounds—a little amused by this stupid, elaborate routine. Something out of an old maid’s pastel mommy blog. You were amused, and frankly weirded out, by what seemed like a laughable lack of dignity on his part.

Now—now you’re feeling aroused by it. Because being aroused disrupts the dumb ritual and kind of annoys him.

When he is holding your knees up and your cunt twitches, he rolls his eyes.

“You already got off,” he chuckles, shaking his head. He sounds a bit spent, too. He’s usually flaked out by now, in his actual customary postcome routine. “Just stay still for a second.”

The fact that he doesn’t want you to come makes you almost desperately want to. He holds his palm over your cunt but he offers no friction.

The simple touch is enough, though. You can find your own internal rhythm.

Your head falls back against the pillow.

“Oh fuck.”

And maybe you’re being particularly loud and lewd in this moment, while he’s trying to be serious, and get something done. Because you’re still doing this longcon in calling his bluff. You don’t think he knows what he wants.

You don’t want to believe that you two are really so bitter as to start a life out of spleen.

You still don’t know if he knows whether or not he actually likes you.

“What the fuck?” he laughs, “I said don’t.” He squeezes your cunt like he wants to tear flesh from bone, trying to render you still again.

But it only makes you moan louder.

“Oh, fuck, that’s so good,” you mewl indecently, smirking a bit, because you’re joking, but you also sort of mean it, “It feels so good having your come inside me, I can already feel your little fuckass kid crawling around in there. He’ll grow up loving bagels, I just know it.”

These taunts are supposed to disgust him or hurt his feelings or simply turn him off, and Patrick does sort of look like wants to throttle you. Because he’s tired and a little grumpy and he knows you’re not letting him stay the night. But a part of him has always found you funny. So he just ends up getting hard again. Your crude, glib moaning brings him to such a pitch of want that he yanks you into his lap and fucks you roughly, gripping your jaw.

And you grin as he brings your head close. You feel it’s some kind of victory.

Even though you’re just prolonging this dumb, bitter, unfulfilling farce. Making sure there’s more of him inside you.

You two should not be parents.

By the eighth or ninth round, he starts getting conversational.

“I was one of those babies that never shut up,” he tells you, fucking up into you in cowgirl. He grunts and makes a thoughtful face. “Colic? Is that what it’s called? Yeah, I think I was a colicky baby.”

You make a face down at him. “I thought you said you’ve never cried,” you pant, rocking your hips back and forth.

He rolls his eyes again.

“Yeah, obviously I was lying. I cry all the fucking time.”

You consider this, your hips stilling, your palms resting against his hairy hotplate chest.

“Over what?” you ask, “Tashi?”

He blinks, scowling a bit, like he thinks you’re making fun. Then his grips your hips and starts to move you on his dick again. He doesn’t answer. Your pussy feels warm and raw.

Geez, how long have you two been at this?

He asks, absently, about baby names.

“I thought every girl had, like, a whole fucking list of them,” he says, pushing his semen back into your used cunt with his long fingers.

You don’t entertain that presumptuous conversation, but you don’t underestimate his commitment, either.

He’s back the next day, and the next, like clocking into a shift. He brings supplies. Sliced pineapple, fresh honey, ground cinnamon, cough syrup, two boxes of ClearBlue.

“I read acupuncture helps too,” he says.

“Absolutely not,” you say, but you let him feed you baby aspirin while you ride him in reverse on your couch watching Selling Sunset.

He feigns disinterest, but keeps tilting to look past your shoulder whenever the arguments start riling up.

“Ugh, Nicole’s a bitch,” he mutters.

Then he grunts and comes inside you, grasping your hips to sink you down and hold you still.

Her name, for the better or worse part of the first and second trimesters, was actually Stella.

Art’s grandma used to love that Philip Sidney poem, and Pam’s favourite film is Streetcar. It’s just that Tashi got sick of the name, and all other things, at a stage. So it didn’t stick.

They were oscillating between Lily and Rooney towards the end, and only made the final call when they saw her.

But, for a while there, she was Stella.

Stella’s craving peanuts, Stella’s the size of a rutabaga, Stella’s a kicker. And, boy, was she.

She’d ram her foetal feet into Tashi’s ribs over and over like she was on a treadmill. Which Tashi was starting to think of as karmic consequence for all the times she’d have Art doing cardio until he fainted.

You crouch down between her knees, resting your head against the amorphous motion of her distended stomach.

“Hey hey, Stella girl,” you whisper, “You wanna stop giving your mom a hard time?”

Tashi chokes out a wounded laugh from above you.

“That’s how Art talks to her.”

“Ugh, don’t ruin it,” you frown, moving to stand up.

But she sticks her leg out to halt you, grabbing your hand and tugging you back down, shifting her hips and spreading her thighs further apart.

You never could resist her sweet face when it was all crumpled up in asking. Because she got all soft and wet, like a flower caught in a gale.

She looks even softer now, over the horizon of her bloated body.

You gently tug her cotton shorts down and put your mouth on her and Stella stills.

“One more,” you say anxiously, eyebrows knitted in concern as Patrick sighs and unboxes a another pregnancy test—the fifth one—and you quaff down another glass of water to get your bladder teeming, because no way.

No way, right?

You’ve been taking him raw at all angles, and swigging shots of cough syrup, and weaning off the antidepressants, but no way.

“I don’t know what you thought was gonna happen,” he calls from beyond the bathroom door as you’re pissing on stick number six.

It’s just that you don’t feel anything.

You think you should be feeling more.

You think of Tashi, writhing and groaning like a bullet victim, miserably clutching her turgid body. You think of newborn Lily, her cottonsoft, tiny eye peeling open and seeing you. Deep steeped coffee, gleaming in the sterile light. Tashi’s eye. Tashi’s hair. Tashi’s baby. That tender absorption, that vivid creation.

If this kid is taking nothing from you, it’s gonna come out all Patrick. And—just—you don’t have the bandwidth to contend with such a prospect right now.

He drives you to the clinic every time. Every single time. One night, you rouse sharply from a morbid dream punctuated by the squall of wailing children. You call him. It’s 2 AM. He answers, and comes over, and drives you to the clinic, and tries not to nod off as you’re filling out the medical paperwork for the dozenth time. He also tries not to express any overt reaction to you changing your mind again.

Is it a kindness, to tease a man with the brutal decimation of his unborn progeny? No, of course not. His mum’s already preemptively enrolled the thing into a fancy German daycare.

But you hate that he’s given you an ultimatum and put it inside you. That’s the worst place, in relation to you, for an ultimatum to be.

If you tell Tashi, either he’s in, or you’re out. And those aren’t really odds you’re keen on rolling.

There are all sorts of ways to be a shitty friend. You opt for evasive gambits via claims of hectic work schedules and immovable errands. Any retching you do is that of guilt. You’re loathe to lie to her, to house this wretched zygote, to stay away. But she used to be able to tell when you’d changed your shampoo. She’d sniff him on you, in you, in a second. She’d just know. And she shouldn’t. She can’t. And if you could just unearth this presentient betrayal and toss it in a petri dish, she doesn’t have to.

You don’t know what matters more.

He drives you to the clinic. Teary teenaged girls, redcapped pickets out front. The receptionist knows you two by name by now.

Patrick slumps beside you. He’s still slogging through the first chapter of Last Child in the Woods. He’s pretty sure he’s never sat and read an actual, physical book to completion before in his life. But he’s too easily abstracted for Audible. So he’s working on it.

You’re groaning frustratedly and thunking the clipboard repeatedly against your skull. He absently slips a hand over your forehead, shielding the next few collisions before you huff and drop the board and turn to face him. He looks at you askance.

“You can change your mind,” he shrugs. Again, he generously omits.

You scoff at him, incredulous and a little irked. “I’m not gonna change my mind,” you grumble.

He shrugs again. “Okay.”

He knows what it’s like to have a mother in sackcloth and ashes. To be less of a son than a sentient thing of regret with little arms and legs. To not know what to do with that, or yourself. He wouldn’t do that to a kid.

You watch him thumb through Richard Louv for a few more moments.

Then, “You’re probably sick of me, aren’t you?”

He smiles a bit before schooling it stoic, slowly lowering the book and fixing you with this wry but incongruously tender look. “Of course I am,” he tells you.

“Get mad at me, then.”

He smiles again.

He knows what that’s like, too. Dad mad at mom. Stilted five course dinner. Dad telling him and Saskia what a goddamn headache mom is on the drive to school. Of course he’s sick of you, he’s always sick of you. But he likes you. And his head feels fine.

He turns back to the book, shrugging.

“Can’t,” he says simply.

You feel for baby Lily. She’ll never be able to get away with anything.

It’s Art who sniffs it on you, in you.

Tashi’s asleep upstairs when, after a fortnight and a bit, you rally up the guts to come over. Art opens the door and looks surprised for mere moments, and there is perhaps a flicker of concern, but then he smiles. And there’s only very mild ire there. The rest is fatigue and goodnature.

“Hello, stranger,” he smirks, turning to filch a set of keys from the marble catchall in the foyer. He is wheeling Lily out in the thirteenhundred dollar stroller he had lost six nights of sleep picking out. “You coming?”

So now you’re on a walk.

Lily lays on her soft belly in the stroller. The walls around her are a breathable mesh, and she fights to hoist her head and gawp at passing trees. This is, apparently, the only way she’ll do tummy time.

“And the only time she gets any sleep,” Art adds, jutting a finger over his shoulder in the general direction of their home down the street.

Lily’s wearing a ruffly lavender romper. Her skin is a healthy shade of linen and her hair is dark. Her fists have tiny moony fingernails that—when you comment how, Her nails are long. Like, sharp—Art explains how he keeps trying to cut them with a pair of tiny silver scissors. But they make Tashi nervous, their sharpness and its proximity to Lily’s fleshy hands.

“She said she wants her to get a grip on the world,” Art chuckles.

You snort, and you have to skip a bit to keep up with his brisk strides. “Oh, that’s definitely what she said,” you confirm.

Lily tosses and turns a bit in the strollerbed. She gurgles an impressive spit bubble, by Art’s standards. Most things she does are probably impressive to him, quite frankly. He tells you how, the other morning, she had thrown up breakfast onto his shoulder with such verve and accuracy that they’re already talking tennis lessons.

“Oh God,” you grimace. Not at the story, but at the memory of his nauseous pallor in the throes of Tashi’s own gravid sickness. “How’s that been for you?”

Art flashes a selfdeprecating simper. “I’m managing.”

When she casts her little coral taglet security blanket curbside, Lily scrunches up her face, grasping, gearing up for the Big Scream. Art sighs and says, “No, please?” as he stops to pick it up and give it back to her, and his arm, when he sticks it in, blooms with little ruddy strings as she claws at him.

He looks more than a little surprised she isn’t crying.

Apparently, in that meantime, you had jutted your fingers into the cot and offered her a pinky as a peace offering. Versailles-style, like you’ll be punished later.

But he seems content with how she’s chewing you and figures you guys can stop here, for a bit, beneath these treemottled springtime sunbeams. In the garden of the home in front of which you’re standing, huge orange bougainvillea loll their petaltongues in the breeze.

“I just…” Art flounders for his words, then scoffs a not unkind, but vaguely embittered, sort of laugh, shutting his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose. “Why him?”

You groan. “Don’t ask.”

“How is he?”

“He’s—” you waver, then shake your head, before finishing, “Ugh.”

“Patrick’s ‘ugh’? Patrick? Wow. Should we call all the outlets? I mean, that’s never happened before. Patrick. Ugh. You’re blowing my mind.”

You snort, and Lily laughs, and Art informs you that that is a very hard reaction to glean. And he rubs his temples, because all the wails sort of tremor at that same migrainous pitch. No matter if they’re amused or rabidly apoplectic. But you can enjoy it, the laughter.

“Can you just tell her for me?” you frown helplessly up at him.

That flicker in his tired eyes that wants to agree is purely paternal, but he sighs and shakes his head. “You know I can’t.”

He’s genuinely sympathetic.

“She’ll forgive you,” he tells you. You roll your eyes and hang your head, kicking piteously at the wheel of the stroller. He intercepts your foot with his, lightly shoving it away before bending to search for your gaze. “Hey,” he says, “She really will.”

You huff. “She’s never had to.”

You instinctively press your fingers into your womb, through your shirt. You feel the strange sensation of something starting to swell beneath the flesh.

“You’ll be a good mom,” says Art.

It’s a small relief, for you, to feel your face screw into its shut-the-fuck-up-Art expression. It’s something you know how to feel, a well trodden path. Maybe, once they drop you like a bad habit, he’ll still send you those furtive pictures he likes to take of Tashi sleeping. And you and Patrick can dualmasturbate to them, pretending your swollen belly isn’t in the way.

What you like about them, all three of them, is that they have all always loved you so simply. Tashi is severe, and Patrick is flippant, and Art is occasionally insincere. But they each care about you, to varying degrees, in their own ways. And they do so without reservation, even when you’ve been an ass.

You think that’s how you’re supposed to love your child.

You should probably figure out how he does it in the next five to ten seconds.

You ask, “What makes you say that?”

And his eyes flick down to where Lily is still gumming your knuckle like a dog with a bone, then back up to you, and he gives you one of those smiles. Your face screws. Shut the fuck up Art. Then, he tells you, “You love harder than you give yourself credit for.”

Lily gags around your pinky.

[cobbbvanth]

okay my one (1) wish for the finale is that the characters get a moment to reflect on how their family has changed since we saw them at the beginning of the show. I'd love for them to watch parts of the documentary (like we got to see in the office) but really ANY recognition of how their relationships have developed in that time would suffice. colin seeing a clip of laszlo with him as a baby. the vampires seeing the way guillermo has protected them without their knowledge over the years. the editors finally including that nandor caring about guillermo montage he was waiting for at the beginning of last season. I fear they like to use the documentary format as gag but don't care for its narrative purpose and paul simms hates seeing any forward development but come on man it's YOUR LAST CHANCE

[averagecygnet-blog]

emma is the villain of tgwdlm

I need to talk about this oh my god

because it's told from the hive's perspective. paul is the protagonist because he is the one who resists them but must ultimately come to accept that they're right. emma is the one who must be beaten through force.

the difference between the hero and the villain is that the hero must change, while the villain cannot. (I'm not speaking in universals here, just generalizations of how the narrative structures work that tgwdlm uses in parody.) the hero and the villain both hold a belief that represents the thematic evil; by the end of the story, the hero must undergo apotheosis, which is to say, ultimate unity with the thematic good. once this is achieved, he can defeat the villain, who represents the thematic evil completely and is incapable of change.

to the hive, "good" is unquestioning conformity to the group's ideals, specifically, singing and dancing in sync with everybody else. "evil" is refusing to sing and dance along when, clearly, you want to.

paul is the perfect protagonist because he resists song and dance, but largely because it makes him uncomfortable. getting out of your comfort zone is necessary for change! it's a good thing to let yourself go through something uncomfortable in order to come out the other side better and stronger for it. (that much is true; however, sometimes discomfort is a legitimate sign that you should stay away from something.) paul has never really tried singing or dancing, and deep down, is afraid that if he tried it, he might like it. exactly the sort of person who can be converted and used as a shining example of the hive's righteousness.

emma must be the villain because her refusal to fall in line is a choice. she can sing, she can dance, she was in brigadoon in high school and she fuckin killed it, she is even taught a whole ass song with choreography by the hive on their first morning in hatchetfield (emma's comment about how they have to sing "all the time, apparently!" and zoey's implied presence at the theater when the meteor hit - because she was with sam, and sam was there - strongly suggests that nora and zoey were zombified all morning and she had no idea). it's stated by hidgens and suggested by nora and zoey that getting a human to sing/dance along with them is supposed to be a sort of mesmerizing tactic that the hive uses to start synchronizing a person to the hive mind, but emma refuses. she sings and she dances, just like they want, but she chooses to actively hate it the whole time, on principle. she can't be convinced; they have to swarm her, surround her on all sides. let it out is meant to win paul to their side; inevitable is just to gloat.

in the bar scene in hidgens' bunker, emma says that she must be the villain to paul's hero because she was in the musical that got him to hate musicals. on the one hand, she had it backwards; she's the villain because according to the hive, the all-encompassing narrative power, he's not supposed to hate musicals. on the other hand, she's kind of right: paul is the protagonist because he is the guy who didn't like musicals, while emma is the villain because she has the capacity to like musicals as well as experience in them, but has chosen to reject them.

who is the hero and who is the villain all depends on who is telling the story. and the hive is telling this story. don't forget that.

[alexiscreationbox]

one of the “turning point-scenes” is this scene, where Paul rides Shai-Hulud for the first time: it’s his test. you win and become a rider or you die.

see how the entire narrative changes? from a group of Fremen, Fedaykins, who came to watch and support Paul, they turn into followers one by one. we see this via gaze of Chani, and her emotions are shock, disbelief, confusion, even. to watch friends, warriors, kneeling before Paul.

in this scene also changes the view at Stilgar. before this his scenes with “as written” were comedic, sounding with humor and detachment. everyone realized it was his beliefs due to his origins from the South. now? his words are filled with devotion, absolute faith in Mahdi, in Lisan al Gaib.

now this is where everything went wrong.

[easays]

To Ragh; or, On Fatness

Hi! Below is an actual play mini-essay. These are written as part of a personal writing practice of thinking critically about actual play. I hope you find this reading engaging and know that all I write reflects my own interpretations rather than as an official representation/canonization of these shows. Keep reading for my interpretation of Ragh Barkrock's fatness as part of queer representation in Dimension20.

Ragh Barkrock may be one of the most beloved NPCs in Dimension20. It would be easy for Ragh, a bloodrush player good enough to potentially play professionally, to be presented as hypermasculine. In fact, the freshmen year art for Ragh, when he was antagonist rather than beloved ally, showed him in a muscular, inverted Dorito shaped body typical of a jock.

He's, obviously, built, and his cut jaw and cheekbones only bolster that image. As Ragh comes to terms with being gay at the end of Fantasy High, his countenance changes. When we see him again, the new art reflects a chubbier, happier Ragh.

The show aligning weight gain with acceptance and happiness already works against prevailing stereotypes that use weight loss as a quick metaphor for improving yourself and being the "real you." Moreover, connecting Ragh's acceptance of his sexuality with what seems like a larger comfort in his own body is a strong indictment of hypermasculine gay culture. As Gabriel Arana writes, gay men "must reconcile their sense of masculinity with their failure to conform to its heterosexuality." Not doing so has negative mental health outcomes, as Arana points out, and contributes to a culture that devalues fat queer people (see the popular "no fats, no femmes, no Asians" that often is touted in masculine gay subculture).

All of this, I think, is why Ragh's art for Junior Year was particularly impactful for me as a fat queer person. If being a gay man (or half-Orc, in Ragh's case) means having to situate your life in relationship to failing compulsory masculinity, then it seems there is an inherent queer aspect to embracing, celebrating, and showcasing a beloved NPC in an explicitly fat and happy body.

FHJY Ragh art by @caitmayart

Ragh is still strong and he is still fat. His body radiates a commitment to the power of fat bodies to exist in spaces they are often violently unwelcome in, such as gyms. Existing in gyms and sports spaces as fat people means dealing the "impossible standard that rejects nearly all of us" and upholds a diet culture rooted in impossible, Eurocentric and colonial body standards. In TTRPGS or actual plays, there is a unique opportunity to think about how bodies might exist in worlds different from ours, to imagine bodyminds as otherwise. However, as queer critics like Paul Preciado have noted, sci-fi and fantasy representations of cyborgs and other transformative bodies often lean into "fixing" disabled people or moving gender nonconforming bodies more easily towards technologies upholding a normative standard rather than questioning the standard all together.

Spyre is a world that deals with similar issues to ours, even without direct one-to-one correlations, so it, too, is a place where the narrative and artistic choices should be examined in how it helps us interpolate the world the audience resides in. From the Applebees cultish adherence to a deity-based nationalism to the various representations of parental neglect and abuse and every side story in-between, Dimension20's flagship show does not shy away from difficult realities even when recasting them through fantasy. Ragh, as a half-orc gay son of a disabled single mother, then, I see the arc his fat body goes through as meaningful and intertwined with his self-acceptance and queerness. He moves away from the toxic masculinity engineered into his blood rush team to instead pursue coalition comraderie with his friends to the point that he and his mother end up joining a communal living situation with those friends and their parents. Ragh's body expands as his family does, as his ties to community do, and to me, the gift of his fatness is the invitation to expansion that it holds out to us as viewers.

[dysfunctionalupsidedown]

An Analysis Of "STurn": My Turn

Hello, everyone! This is my first real post/analysis of anything Stranger Things related, so please keep that in mind while reading. I'm sure there are quite a few analyses about this playlist already (I'm definitely late to the party,) but I still wanted to add my two cents.

Feel free to let me know if any information I've provided is incorrect. My main source is Genius.com, which isn't at all the most reliable; even still, it'll help to give a clearer picture of each track's meaning and how the general public (which includes Finn) interprets them. I'm attempting to go by what I think Finn's intentions were.

Also, don't forget that this analysis was done under the assumption that the "STurn" playlist is a somewhat play-by-play outline of how specifically Mike Wheeler's S5 arcs might happen. The playlist could be entirely unrelated to ST5. It could be related to all the characters and arcs in ST5. It could be out of order, or based on vibes -- We really have no way of knowing until the full season comes out.

Finally, I tried my best to keep the analysis somewhat objective and reasonable, and I hope I've at least partly succeeded. This is all in good fun, in the end. Now that I've finished housekeeping, please enjoy my thoughts and feel free to chime in with your ideas in the comments! I'm always open to changing my perspective.

1. Ballad of the Texas King

Let's begin! This song starts with the lyrics, "No one saw / Nothing at all, no law was there to fight / All dressed down / Walkin' out in the California night". I believe this is a more surface-level vibe-setting song, considering where Mike ended in S4. It may also imply that the start of S5 begins where S4 left off. A lot of car imagery is also present throughout, which was a big part of Mike's S4 journey.

There are ideas of being separated as well, with lyrics like "My heart won't beat / 'Til we meet again together". This may allude to Mike's feelings towards the end of S4, having been separated from Hawkins/his family.

2. What You're Doing - Remastered 2009

Genius.com claims this song was written about Paul McCartney's then-rocky relationship at the time. The lyrics make this very clear, so there's really no alternate angle from which I can read. Let me know in the comments if you interpreted it differently.

In specific, the lyrics "You got me running / And there's no fun in it / Why should it be so much to ask of you / What you're doing to me?", "Please stop your lying / You got me crying, girl", and "I've been waiting here for you / Wondering what you're gonna do / And should you need a love that's true / It's me" really intrigue me. This could refer to Mike's relationship.

The song suggests that the partner may be withdrawing in multiple ways, with the singer grieving over it and attempting to prove their love. El may be starting to distance herself, and Mike could be struggling with it. At the end of S4, El was understandably focused on her failure, to the point where she hadn't really spoken to Mike in the days following it.

I don't think it would be surprising if everything was too much and she ends up pushing herself away from him. I wouldn't say it's implying a break-up, but maybe distancing issues.

3. After The Earthquake

Again, it's pretty surface-level in the beginning. There was a devastating earthquake in-universe, which supports the theory that "STurn" connects to ST5 in some way. The song tells a story, though, and I recommend looking up it's inspiration.

Despite the choice seeming surface-level at first, After The Earthquake may be implying more for Mike in ST5. Genius.com's contributors interpret the song's narrative as, "[Molly Rankin applying the] concept of post-catastrophe clarity to a couple that got into a major disagreement before one of them falls into a coma from a car crash... In a metaphorical sense, [the song] could describe a more mild situation in which Rankin must put their conflict on hold because something more important turns up." I don't think it's too far-fetched to say that Finn picked up on this. The idea of a disagreeing couple and coma is also prevalent in ST, but like I said in the beginning, I'm going to try to connect these songs to Mike Wheeler specifically.

Although this may be me reading too deeply into it, the metaphorical meaning of the track pairs pretty well with the implications of What You're Doing. It also fits in well narratively, considering that more important things are happening aside from the drama -- the earthquake being one of them. Mike could be putting all of his current issues (internal-conflict-related, relationship, or otherwise) on hold for the moment. He continues to struggle with suppressing his problems later on in the playlist, as well.

4. Promises I've Made

This song is about mourning a lost or ex-lover. The opening lyrics, "Ever since you have gone, the days don't seem so bright / And I wish I could forget you but I can't / Ever since you have gone, I haven't felt quite right / And I promised I'd forget all that you meant" address this quite directly.

At this point, it's possible that Mike has either been broken up with or the pair have gone their separate ways for some reason. It wouldn't be too crazy to say something like that will occur and he'll grieve it, keeping in mind that one of Mike's main fears is losing El. I just don't know why they'd continue to make it the subject of conflict in S5 (unless it hasn't been fully resolved yet.)

Physical distance between the two also makes sense when considering that Mike is, supposedly, teaming up with other characters next season. Personally, I'm leaning slightly more towards a break-up because of what the previous songs have set up, but, ultimately, it's up to interpretation. It's possible they've just been physically distanced while in a bad spot.

5. Angst In My Pants

This song is about a person attempting to be someone they're not, suppressing who they really are, and it ultimately leading to dissatisfaction. The lyrics, "You can dress nautical / Learn to tie knots / Take lots of Dramamine / Out on your yacht" describe a faux lifestyle one lives that only serves to hurt them in the end: The idea of putting on a self-harming persona. This could be what Mike is going through in S5, and his teased wardrobe change from S4 supports this.

The lyrics, "I hope it doesn't show / It'll go away / It's just a passing phase / It'll go away" and, "I hope it doesn't show / It'll go 'way / Give it a hundred years / It won't go 'way" are particularly fascinating and can have multiple interpretations.

For one, it could be Mike trying to hide his real personality following Eddie's death and the collective panic by acting out a more "normal" and "idealized" life -- painfully repressing his true self in the process. This is supported by the lyrics I first discussed. Hiding and embracing differences is a theme in Stranger Things, and I wouldn't be surprised if this is where they take Mike in S5.

Another interpretation involves the previous lyrics, as well as, "But when you think you made it disappear / It comes again, 'Hello, I'm here'". This sounds more like someone trying and failing to suppress a thought. Coupled with "It's just a passing phase", it appears to be a feeling or belief instead of someone's true personality, although I do believe that's a big part of it, too.

Whatever it may be, Mike is definitely struggling with something at this point. He's pushing it down, hiding it, and hoping "..it doesn't show" and that "It'll go away".

6. The Better Side - Audiotree Live Version

Half way through! This one gave me more of a challenge because there aren't any written lyrics to analyze. From what I can gather, the track is about a person yearning for someone who is a better fit(?) The lyrics that best support this interpretation are, "You're on the better side / You're always the better one for me" and "Don't make me do the falling when I'm drinking of you". Again, if you have any alternate interpretations, please let me know. I'd like to take all ideas into account.

The final lyrics are interesting, "And you're all that I need / I'm not gonna miss you anymore". This can be read as the narrator longing to accept a person into their life and bring them closer. I'm especially interested in the final line because it implies there was something to miss, as if an emotional rift or gap was there.

Mike has come to a realization about something, as shown in Angst In My Pants, and it might partly be about a new thought he's trying to push down, "It'll go away". It's possible the "thought" is about newly developing feelings he isn't ready to accept(?) I don't want to say for certain, though. Nonetheless, it seems like he recognizes this person's importance and "better fit" for him, despite trying to repress it. A fairly surface-level read, but it's the only conclusion I'm able to come to.

Alternatively, it might be about El. The distance apart could be what gets him to solidify how he feels about her. However, Angst In My Pants and multiple songs establishing a separation precede The Better Side. The track is about a better option, as well. Those facts alone make me think of this interpretation as unlikely, so it's not one I personally hold.

7. Don't Ask Me to Explain

Don't Ask Me to Explain is about two people who are afraid to confess their true feelings to one another, so instead they hide them; with one of the two seemingly more uncertain. It's also, from what I've researched, supposedly about two people of the same gender. There's a possibility that this is irrelevant to the track's purpose in the playlist, but I kept it in mind considering the other songs and my personal interpretation. It's also important to note that these "true feelings" could be about a multitude of things.

The lyrics, "How will I ever know you enough to love you / If you're hiding who you are?", "How am I supposed to let it show / When I don't even know?", and, "Besides, I don't want to be the one who's coming out first / I'd really like to but I'm just too shy" support this reading.

I interpreted the last line, "It's so easy to laugh to myself / And pretend that I could love you but I can't" in two different ways. Either it's the narrator doubting their feelings for someone else, or it's the narrator recognizing that they can't let themselves embrace their love for someone, for one reason or another.

As for Mike, his progression makes the most sense to me in the following interpretation. There are multiple and, again, please let me know your ideas in the comments. I narrowed it down to just the one so I don't start nit-picking.

Mike went from a realization, "It's just a passing phase / It'll go away" (Angst In My Pants) to a sort of acceptance, "You're always the better one for me" (The Better Side) to struggling to admit it out loud, "How am I supposed to let it show / When I don't even know?"

An LGBTQ+ or "new love interest" interpretation is what I'm able to gather from this. It could describe Mike falling for 'someone' and not knowing how to be open about it due to fear and doubt; with the other person feeling the same way. It may be a surface-level reading, and I'm sure there are several other ways to interpret the track, but that's what I've been able to conclude thus far.

8. What Do You Want Me To Do?

This one might be the most difficult for me to figure out, but I'm going to try.

The song and the lyrics, "You walked out, took your chance / You turned your back on our romance / You said you found somebody new / You said the change'd do you good" and "You never even gave me a thought / You figured that would be all right / I nevеr had a chance to persuade you / You nеver let me put up a fight" remind me a lot of What You're Doing.

One way to look at it is that it might have the same purpose as What You're Doing -- adding a sort of angsty frustration vibe. I don't know if it would be used to set up a "come crawling back" moment because I don't think that would make sense (especially in Stranger Things), but it's a random possibility I'm throwing out there.

Alternatively, the 'person' that Mike has feelings for could have rejected him for someone else(?) Again, I don't think this would make much narrative sense in Stranger Things, but we don't know what the next season's going to look like.

I'm personally reading it as the former because there are other songs in the playlist used to set the tone. Keeping What You're Doing and Promises I've Made in mind, an additional break-up song is on theme. There's still the possibility of another conflict, though. If anyone else has different thoughts on what the song could be implying, I'd appreciate the input.

9. Substitute - Live

This track is about an idealized version of someone being put in place of their true self. The narrator describes a scenario in which their partner sees a version of them, "I'm a substitute for another guy / I look pretty tall but my heels are high / The simple things you see are all complicated / I look bloody young, but I'm just back-dated, yeah", that is unrealistic and put on, as seen in the lyrics "Substitute your lies for fact / I see right through your plastic mac / I look all white, but my dad was black / My fine-looking suit is really made out of sack" The couple also seem to be having issues with this, or in general, that they're not addressing, "It's a genuine problem, you won't try / To work it out at all, just pass it by, pass it by"

The concept of a guise applies well to Mike, as referenced in Angst In My Pants. A recurring theme of hiding oneself really makes me think Mike is going to completely abandon his interests for a different lifestyle. I believe Finn has also mentioned that Mike wants to be as "normal" as possible, so I can't wait to see where they take that idea. It could also be him realizing how he's been acting, and admitting that this "romanticized" version isn't true to him. I have hope that Mike will eventually learn to embrace his differences and what he enjoys.

While this part is a bit nit-picky, I feel it's fun to mention that the song was inspired by a lyric in The Tracks of My Tears by Smokey Robinson; the lyric being, "Although she may be cute / She's just a substitute". The line following this (which is also referenced in Substitute's Genius.com entry) is, "Because you're the permanent one". Funnily enough, these lyrics also fit into the narrative the playlist is laying out. They remind me a lot of what The Better Side represents.

Out of context, the lines from The Tracks of My Tears may imply that someone is either using another person as a substitute for an ex, or that someone is realizing they've been using their previous partner as a substitute for someone better. Both routes have the potential to happen in ST5. Although, I don't know if the idea of a literal substitute fits with what The Who was going for. The Tracks of My Tears is also not on "STurn", so take this part as a fun fact with a grain of salt on the side.

At the end of the day, we don't know Finn's motivation for adding Substitute, so this is what we'll have to go off of for now. I feel as though the former interpretation, a less literal "substitute," holds the most merit considering the theme of personas.

10. The Rebel Kind

Like The Better Side, I couldn't find any lyrics, so I'm doing it by ear. Though, I'm happy to say that this song is about a desire to embrace differences and rebellion. "We'll be free to run with the rebel kind" and "It's not easy, but I don't mind / I just want to run with the rebel kind" establish that. The track appears to tie into Mike's insecurity struggles throughout the playlist.

The lyric "They call us the rebel kind" hints to the panic brewing at the end of S4. Mike might start to embrace and stand behind his true self at whatever point this is in the season. The line following, "But they don't understand / The things a man must do to prove that he's a man", can be taken in different ways depending on how the lyrics are read.

It could be the narrator's struggle to keep up with societal norms before finally giving in to their truth instead of trying to conform, read as "they call us rebels but don't get how hard it is to for us to keep up." On the other hand, it could be the narrator commenting on how society doesn't understand people like them, and, by embracing their true self, it proves more about who they are than conforming ever would; read as, "you think we're the rebellious ones, but you don't understand that we're more self-secure and strong than you'll ever be."

I can see both of these interpretations working for Mike and his connection to the Party. The progression of insecurity in Angst In My Pants and potential realization of this guise in Substitute is wrapped up by Mike's self-acceptance here. I really hope this is how it plays out in S5.

11. Block Rockin' Beats

There's not much to analyze because this track has one repeated line of lyrics, but it's definitely here to set a tone. The song may have a similar vibe-setting purpose as What Do You Want Me To Do? and Ballad of the Texas King. That's just my theory, though. (A ST5 theoryyy!)

Perhaps this is a climax of sorts where the cast fight the "big bad." The music's tone is intense and sort of aggressive. It's definitely a fun addition to the playlist, whatever the song's purpose in it may be.

12. Just What I Needed

Finally, we have Just What I Needed. I read this song in two different ways.

The first way I interpreted it was as a love song about the narrator not caring about who this person is, and realizing they need them in spite of it all. The lyrics, "It's not the perfume that you wear / It's not the ribbons in your hair / And I don't mind you comin' here / And wastin' all my time", "Cause when you're standin' oh so near / I kinda lose my mind, yeah", and "I needed someone to bleed / Yeah, yeah, so bleed me" support this.

The second possible reading is that the narrator realizes they were/are in a codependent relationship and they still love the person. The lyrics, "I guess you're just what I needed / I needed someone to feed / I guess you're just what I needed / I needed someone to bleed" and "I don't mind you hangin' out / And talkin' in your sleep / It doesn't matter where you've been / As long as it was deep, yeah", could be read as more of a "you're what I needed at the time, but I still love you and want you in my life." With this reading, it's unclear whether or not the love is romantic or platonic. Maybe I'm looking too far into it, but this is what some Genius.com contributors brought up, and it would feel wrong to not include this understanding of the song.

I'm just assuming, since The Rebel Kind seemed to tie up Mike's self-security problem, that this track is supposed to imply a resolution with his romantic issues. Under that impression, there are a few ways we can look at it.

It could be an acceptance for who he has feelings for. He went from mourning a loss in Promises I've Made, noticing something and hoping it goes away in Angst In My Pants, potentially coming to terms with the fact that this person is his "better" choice in The Better Side, wanting to admit a truth but feeling doubtful in Don't Ask Me to Explain, comprehending that he's able to embrace his authentic self in The Rebel Kind, to now admitting, possibly out loud, that this person was "just what [he] needed". That could be far-fetched, but it's just what I picked up on throughout the playlist.

However, it may also pertain to his self-identity struggle that's hinted at throughout (can you tell that I love this part of Mike?) while also tying into his romance issues. He went through a difficult separation with someone in What You're Doing and Promises I've Made, put on a persona and suppressed his true self in Angst In My Pants, realized he couldn't keep it going and needed to address it in Substitute, embraced himself in The Rebel Kind, and now recognizes that the relationship may have been codependent and holding him back from fully dropping the facade: "I guess you're just what I needed" -- in the moment. I don't know if that's too in-depth of a read, but it's a possibility.

While not relevant to the playlist in it's context, it's fun to bring up the fact that Just What I Needed was apparently also the final track listed on the 'official' "Will's Castle Byers Classics" playlist created by Spotify. It's not available anymore, so I can't really say it as a fact. Although, recreations of the playlist have been made long before "STurn" was a thing, and the song was added as the last track as far back as 2018. I suppose that's proof enough that it was at least on the playlist.

Finn listing it as the final track may be a reference to "Will's Castle Byers Classics", but it's also likely that there's no association. That's why I gave the song an equal amount of analysis instead of writing it off as a reference. As to how canon those playlists are, I don't think it particularly matters. It's true that Finn could've seen Just What I Needed in the Will playlist and put it on "STurn", thinking of it as a fun easter egg. There could or could not be implications for that and I'd be remiss to ignore it. I don't know if this rings true for any of the other songs on "STurn" as well -- if they're connected to any other character playlists. Feel free to let me know if they are!

TL;DR

This was really hefty post, and I apologize for that, so here's a summary/recap of what I think S5 may have in store for Mike Wheeler.

Summary:

The season likely starts off at the end of S4, with us seeing Mike react to everything that's happened in Hawkins and reuniting with his family. Tension or unresolved conflicts may be arising in his relationship(s) as well, but he puts it aside to focus on the more important tasks at hand. Either his relationship is put aside with this, or there's an eventual separation that occurs, and he mourns it. After, he tries to maintain normalcy and puts on a guise to appease others. During this time, he may start to have a realization about something that he attempts to repress. He eventually comes to terms with it, though, recognizing that there's someone (maybe something?) better for him. He wants to admit to these true feelings, but he'll struggle with hiding, doubting, and fearing them; thinking he can't allow himself to fully love this person or, at least, admit to whatever feelings or "truth" he possesses. Mike will most likely continue to struggle with mixed feelings and hiding his true personality after this, eventually admitting to not being fully authentic. He'll then accept his true self for what it is. This will lead into a climax, where the main conflict of the show will be resolved. Finally, he'll accept and admit his true feelings, realizing that all he needed to do in the end was be entirely honest with (and about) himself.

In Conclusion

I really want this to be where they take Mike in ST5. It would be such a satisfying thing to watch, especially with how he's acted the past two seasons. I think he deserves to have a self-love/acceptance arc because the show has made it clear he's insecure and inauthentic.

Thank you so much for reading, and I hope you enjoyed! Please let me know your thoughts and interpretations in the comments, as well as if there's anything you think I should add/fix. I'd love to hear what others have to say about "STurn" and it's connections to ST :)!

[rapha-reads]

IWTV rewatch

(now that I've read the books and know the entire canon, let's see how it changes things or don't)

Season 1 episode 1 [In Throes of Increasing Wonder...] - part 1/2

- oh man, Daniel looks so old and tired and resigned at the very beginning. Comparing him with the Danny boy of season 2 who's so fired up and sassy... He's an adrenaline junkie.

- [Daniel] "I told my editor I was meeting with the most dangerous man in the world. Gave him two choices: Bezos. Putin." - moment of silence for 2022. It was shit but we didn't realise that it could get even worse.

- [Louis] "You've grown old, Daniel" - oi, manners, Louis! Where are your manners.

- [Louis] "I wasn't sure you'd remember me" - funny. Because none of you remembers shit actually. Memory as the core theme of the whole ride. Memory and subjective narrative. From the very first line.

- Oh maaaaaan, Armand lurking in the background from the very first scene. Armand babe, I've grown to be fond of your psychopathic tendencies, but this is seriously creepy, dude.

Also. Also. The way he's keeping such a tight leash on Louis. The surveillance. The eyes recording.

- [Daniel] "'That's the sun out there. Where's your coffin?' [Louis] 'You're standing in it'" - first of all, departure from canon lore, the sun doesn't make vampires slip into the death sleep automatically. They can resist it no matter their age. Secondly, morbid, Louis dear. Very morbid.

- Oooh, Armand letting the sun come in and staying sitting right next to the beam. Taking roleplay to the extreme. And Louis showing off his self-destructive tendencies. Amazing how we're having all the elements (most of the elements) already.

- [Louis] "Truth and reconciliation" - 123 dead, 84 injuries, a whole city levelled up. Nobody's ready. Let's get into it.

- Oooh, Armand coming into play. "No third party" - why, afraid you'll slip even easier? And then full on roleplay, Louis giving orders, and the blast of patronising aimed at "the boy". Brilliant writing. So very subtle when you don't know where to look, so in your face and crucial when you're in the know. Delightful.

- Interview date: June 14th 2022. Start of Louis' story: 1910, fall. Canon change. De Pointe du Lac's lineage: Creole. Canon change. Although I feel like the collapsing of timeline takes away some of the weight of the unholy family's life (not even 40 years versus 70 years in the books), I greatly like the change of personal history. So much richer.

- Can we take a moment to appreciate, nay, worship, Jacob Anderson's vocal skills? The change from his unaccented Dubai English to the Creole New Orleans English drawling... I am in absolute awe.

- [Louis] "Go on home, else I bleed you like a cochon, bruv"

Oh hello Lestat. Welcome to the narrative.

Paul needs to retreat to some monastery. 'Get thee to a nunnery'.

- [Priest] "I haven't seen you in confession in a while, Louis" and then that little scoff - oh, hello there, religious trauma. How much are you going to poison the narrative? Entirely? Well, carry on then.

- [Louis] "My business and my raised religion were at odds, and the, uh... ha, latencies within me, well, I beat those back with a lie I told myself about myself - that I was a red-blooded son of the South, seeking ass before absolution." - first of all, the fuck does that mean, Lou. Secondly, can someone get him to therapy.

- Delightful social commentary on segregated Southern states at the beginning of the 20th century, but I'm being told in my earpiece that a certain blond demigod (or monster, depending on the perspective) is about to make his entrance, so let's drop the sociology for now.

- [Lestat] "Seul l'impossible peut faire l'impossible" (only the impossible can do the impossible) - okay Lestat, ominous and nonsensical, lovin' it. A+ for the French accent, Sam, by the way.

- Never mind, Lestat's continuing the social commentary for me, thanks boo. "I mean that as a compliment, a man of your race to have privileges here". Ouch. Great first introduction there.

- [Lestat] "You're the man who made me buy a townhouse in the Quarter" - wooow there, wow! Slow your rolls, Ariel, you haven't even met the guy properly! Maybe take him on a date before making commitments like that?

- [Louis] "I know sometimes, men of my race, we all look alike to you people, but I ain't been selling you no townhouse" - *wheeze* yeah that's my boy.

- [Lestat] "I disembarked for the music, but then, there was the food" - yeah, I think they're called people?

- [Louis] "I wanted to take the end of my cane and slit his throat with it." - CAN I GET A WARNING before y'all gonna foreshadow like that?? Damn. Can't escape fate, or something like that, I guess.

- Hello and welcome to 'oh no I am more turned on than I have ever been in my whole life' : [Louis] "I couldn't move. My body was seized with weakness. His gaze tied a string around my lungs, and I found myself immobilized." Or maybe it's survival instinct telling homeboy "danger! Dangeeeeeer!".

- Lestat playing Mind games on Louis while he can still.

- Excuse me, the exchange between Lestat, Miss Lily and Louis is fucking hilarious, I'm wheezing: [Lestat] "Only it turns out the saint is not a city but a handsome man with a most agreeable disposition." - agreeable what, the only phrases y'all have been exchanging are a commentary on racism, and then you went on to start fucking with his mind. Lestat, stop being impulsive or draw 25. [Miss Lily] "You're his destiny, Louis." - you know, talk about destiny outloud too often, the universe hears and plays a trick.

- [Louis] "Emasculation and admiration in equal measure. I wanted to murder the man, and I wanted to be the man." - and you wanted the man. Don't forget the third part of the rhyme.

- Lestat already using the Fire Gift. Canon change. Well, in book canon he's still under 30 human age when he meets Louis and Fire Gift only develops later in vampiric age. But here he's already a bit more than a century old. Logical change.

- [Lestat] "We both wanted the last bouquet of lillies" - *wheeze* You fucker.

- That poker scene is another social commentary with thinly veiled - or like actually not even that veiled - racism. Oh, and Lestat's here to continue the criticism. And play mind games. Though, hey, freezing time. Another vampiric power that usually appears late. Absolutely adore that Louis just rolls with the fuckery and switches his cards. 'Dude's stopping time in front of me and talking in my head? Whatever, cards await nothing'. Love a guy who's decided that everything goes and he ain't gonna press too much for the answers. Now if only he'd press a little bit more, but hey, no story if he does.

- [Louis] "Let the tale seduce you. Just as I was seduced." - you know what, as someone who just read 12 or 13 books in the span of three weeks because they couldn't stop, I'm right here with Louis. Let yourself be hypnotised. You'll lose sleep and attention span and the ability to care about anything else but these whiny blood suckers, but hey, totally worth it. If you survive till the end.

- [Louis] "Money would arrive, wired from France" - another departure from book canon, where Lestat lives off of Louis. Then again, book!Lestat is barely 30, mustn't have had time to set his network of attorneys, while show!Lestat already has a century of existence. Which brings me to a point that I haven't raised before, but what was Lestat doing between leaving Paris at the time of the Révolution (if memory serves) and arriving in New Orleans in 1910? Having tea with Marius? Sleeping beneath the sand? That's a full ass century Rolin Jones and Cie have to explain, here.

- Louis' conversation with his sister. [Louis] "'He ain't white, he French' [Grace] 'Oh, that a different kind of white? French white?'" - listen sis, as a half white French half brown Moroccan, yeah, trust me, white French's pernicious. [Louis] "Paul crawled into my bed last night" - who wanna bet Paul's talking to our book canon friends the spirits? And these ain't good spirits either. Ah, but Louis loves his family. Ready for the grief? No? Me either.

- [Lestat] "My mother, she gave me every advantage in life" - Gabriiiiiiellllllle. Cannot wait to see her in s3.

- Someone needs to shut Paul up. "the birds asked me to ask you" - okay Paul. Sure.

Wait, "Monsieur Freniere", ain't that the other plantation guy Louis wants to protect and becomes obsessed with his sister, Babette? Or am I already mixing up my canon.

- Oh hello, Lestat's backstory in the monastery, plus Sam Reid showing off for the first time his acting. Or should I say, his possession. An award for Sam. All the awards for Sam.

- [Louis] "Don't everybody need to know what I do" - preach, bro.

- [Louis] "Nothing but broken souls around me, and the ones that ain't broken, greedy" - ah, then, which one are you, Louis chéri ? Broken ? Greedy? Both? Only one for the moment, both as the years go on? And Lestat? Greedy, yes? But isn't he also so deeply broken?

- [Lestat] "The Earth's a Savage Garden" - begging Rolin Jones to give us Lestat soliloquising about the Savage Garden please and thank you.

- [Lestat] "'Shall we have a nightcap?' [Louis] 'Probably had enough for the night.'" - and yet you're helplessly following him, drawn in like a magnet, like an impossible to resist planetary orbit. Also look at that little gay panic. Awards for Jacob please.

- Ah, the gift. That's how Lestat will ensnare you. Gifts and gifts and precious things and then a child. Run, Louis, run.

- Oh, Nicki mention! [Lestat] "a boy of infinite beauty and sensitivity" - yeah he kinda was insane too, but that's your point of view I guess.

- [Lestat] "What kind of a man wastes this beautiful waist with words?" - first of all, damn, nice alliteration here. Secondly, a gay man, Les, you know that, we know that, Lily knows that.

- The erotic tension of this scene is off the charts, blimey. And Louis keeps repressing. He's about to blow off. In every meaning of the term. Yep, there it is. Excuse me while I go look. Respectfully. Also. Hands. They have something for each other's hands. And the first bite. And levitating. And that's just episode 1 and we're only halfway through episode 1. Nobody does it like this show, I swear.

part 2 | episode 2 | episode 3 | episode 4 | episode 5 | episode 6 | episode 7

Season 2 rewatch (coming soon)