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clvmtines · 3 years ago

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welcome aboard, clementine martinez, student #2. we are excited to set sail with you ! has anyone told you that you look like alexa demie? according to our records, you hail from florida, usa, prefer she / her pronouns, are a cis woman, and are here to study creative writing. we also see you received a spot on the ss university because of your online lottery win — we won’t tell anyone. during your first few weeks here, other students said you were + charming, + free-spirited, but also - restive. it sounds like you spend most of your time at the billiards room. upon checking your luggage, we noticed you packed a casino chip carried around for luck from home. hopefully your roommates don’t steal it!

hi friends! i’m very excited to be here. i’m jay (est, she/her) n i used to play astrid nyland a few months ago if anyone remembers bt i had to leave for personal reasons. i’m so glad to be back now that i hve life sorted and some free time for summer break <3 read on for some details abt this new muse of mine, clementine.

01. biography !

so ! clementine was born in florida. & yes, her real name is clementine. her mom thot it was the cutest name idea ever. clementine mostly goes by clem. she comes from the town [redacted] in florida bcoz i am too lazy to look up a specific town <3 but alas ! it was swampy and humid and she lived in a trailer park.

her parents got knocked up at nineteen. clem was born nine months after a particularly wild 1999 fourth of july. her birthday is march 26th and she’s an aries.

(TW: addiction, child injury) clem’s dad was a gambling addict and petty criminal—he wld steal credit cards n whatnot. he wld gamble away diaper money n it would cause constant fighting until her dad finally left. her mom took this very hard n began drinking a bit too often, leaving clem to to make cereal for dinner n fend for herself. once clem tried to make hot dogs on the stove and spilled boiling water on herself. got a p bad burn on her arm/shoulder and still has a big scar.

the soundtrack of her childhood was cicadas buzzing and stray dogs barking. the sizzle and pop of natty light cans. turning up her ipod to max volume to drown out the sounds of her mother fighting with her new boyfriend.

throughout her upbringing, clem’s dad was always in and out of the picture. he’d blow into town when he hit it big. he’d take her on these little “adventures” like staying in a motel 6 n renting movies at block buster n ordering good pizza nt the dominos shit she ate with her mom lol. ofc he was charging it all to someone’s stolen credit card. he’d always promise to, like, take clem away. n clem was a daddy’s girl so she believed him. the last time it happened was her h.s. graduation. her mom didn’t show ( "overslept” after a bender ) but her dad did and surprised her n said everything wld be different. bt then he bailed on their plans for the next day n when she called his cell, the number was disconnected. tht was the defining “i’m done” moment. clem promised to never be disappointed by her father again.

(TW: racism) her mother has mexican ancestry and clem’s always been called her twin. but clem was raised in a predominately white area and honestly ?? it was really hard without her even realizing it. she’s still unpacking a lot of things today abt her youth that jst weren’t okay bt she thought were normal. like microaggressions, stereotypes, being fetishized by boys in high school. gross shit.

as a kid, clem was rumored to be really poor bc she wore tattered clothes n got free lunch at school. once she invited a friend to her house & the next day they told everyone it’s in a trailer park. that reputation—the “trailer park girl”—was really hard to shake. and clem got almost desperate to shake it. she was endlessly trying to set her old self on fire and emerge from the ashes like a phoenix.

eventually clem became more “popular”. in school she was, like, a straight b student. very average although super creative and quick-thinking. she always had street smarts. problem solving skills. independence. more of, like, practical intelligence as opposed to book smarts because academia bores her tbh. she was like why am i reading these overrated boring books by dead white men or learning abt polynomials when i know nothing abt how to pay a mortage or do taxes. like...she saw the american education system as bullshit and put in modest effort because she didn’t believe it deserved her sweat and tears.

however, she entered the online lottery for the seas program on a whim and got in. so she’s studying creative writing now.

02. personality !

first thing you shld know abt clem is that she’s a compulsive liar essentially—she tells various stories to make her life seem better than what it was. to one person, she’s an heiress to a real estate company and grew up wealthy. to the next she was raised by nomadic hippies. some of her lies are small fibs while others are grandiose tales. she rarely talks about her actual upbringing. she hates talking abt her family or the v real trauma of growing up in a household where both parents struggled w/ addiction; the uncertainty, the broken promises, the fact that she had to grow up so soon and deal w/ so much. it wasn’t fair, and if she thinks about it too much, she feels this anger. anger at the universe. anger at her circumstances. she doesn’t know where to put this anger. she doesn’t know how to shrink it. so she avoids it.

despite her rough upbringing, though, clem is actually really sweet and kind. she’s adventurous, fun-loving, free-spirited, and bold.

bt ! she can also be closed-off, competitive and restive.

she’s seemingly tight with everyone? like she’s jst that girl who can get along with anyone tbh.

in her spare time you can catch her tanning by the pool, hanging at the bar, playing pool ( which she learned from her dad ), and socializing. she’ll never say no to hanging out with people.

she learned a lot from her little “adventures” with her dad, who was very good at conning others and often involved her in his dumb little scams. clem is suuuper good at pulling the ‘im baby 🥺’ card to get what she wants.

she can be a little selfish, because she grew up looking out for herself.

stubborn and dogmatic as hell !!!

she doesn’t do too many relationships but when she does fall, i imagine she falls hard and fast. she refuses to be made a fool of, tho. when she gets vulnerable she flashes back to being a kid, waiting all day for her dad to show up only to have him bail on her. again. she hates that feeling. so if she, like, senses a shift in someone’s energy she’ll b like, “i’ll break up with u before u can do it to me” and the person wasn’t even tryna dump her lmao.

has a lot of sex. too much ?? sex?? mayb. but she’s v sex positive.

her personal style is v late 90s. hair clips, big scrunchies, neon, fur trim, crop and tube tops, hoop earrings, chokers, patterns, platform shoes, biodegradable glitter cuz it’s good fr the earth *winks*. clothes from o-mighty.......actually jst google o mighty, pull up the images and That is clem. she dresses like a bratz doll. she’s dedicated to the aesthetic.

03. headcanons !

her item brought from home is a hot pink poker chip from a casino. her dad gave it to her. he said it reminded him of her because of the color; he got it during one of his winning streaks and said it was lucky. she has a complicated relationship w/ her dad n doesn’t even speak to him anymore, bt she will never go anywhere without it.

she’s a smol bean—only 5′4

an astrology girl and she reads palms ! she absolutely makes astrology tik toks that people only watch because she’s hot. her flirting technique is to ask you to read your palm.

she doesn’t typically drink to get drunk. but she does love a good sugary cocktail. to her, a drink is like an accessory. a blue fishbowl by the pool, a jack and coke as she stands around a bar. usually she'll nurse the same beverage for a while. if you see her wasted it usually means she’s going thru it emotionally lol. the one thing she does do is drugs tho

pretty much listens to exclusively female artists.

a bit of an activist. environmentalism, feminism and the like, she’s v outspoken. vegan for ethical reasons (TW: drugs) bt still does cocaine. she wears shirts with ‘my pussy my choice’ bedazzled on the front.

loves to rollerblade ! back home she didn’t have a car so she’d bike or rollerblade. now she still has her blades and she’ll use them when the ship docks.

03. wanted connections !

Friends, bffs, ride or dies, friends who are like siblings to her, maybe a friend with an unrequited crush on either side ??

an ex she dumped/cheated on/otherwise self sabotaged their relationship because she was afraid of vulnerability.

an ex friend who realized she lies a lot abt herself n felt betrayed. OH ! ESP if they opened up to her on many occasions abt intimate, personal stuff. imagine the betrayal they felt when they found that everything they thought they knew abt clem is a lie.

someone who she actually opens up to. a confidant. or, maybe, like, a stranger she drunkenly spilled her soul to and now she avoids them like the plague.

a rival. clem can be competitive.

her drug dealer

someone she knows she shouldn’t hook up with and… does it anyways. like a friend’s ex or smthing. spicy <3

i welcome anything !

#seasintro #addiction tw #alcohol tw #drugs tw

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demonicputto · 4 years ago

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The Star

This is an excerpt from a much longer series, but it’s a Christmasy flashback and it stands on its own, so I thought I’d post it on tumblr for the holiday season. It’s based on Neil Gaiman’s musings on possible Christmas Special plots.

Aziraphale paced his rented room in Bethlehem, wringing his hands and sighing heavily. He was accomplishing nothing and in front of him sat a stark reminder of what he ought to be doing. Gabriel had visited all of three days ago, looking, somehow, more smugly handsome than usual.

Aziraphale had been set up in Rome at the time, trying his best to exert some positive influence and also enjoying the wine. He’d known, with some vague detail, that Very Important Things were happening in Judaea but he had not been roped into any of that. This was an honor well above his current rank. No less than Gabriel himself had been charged with annunciating the child’s birth to his mother. When Aziraphale tried to picture it, he only ended up pitying the poor woman.

But no one much cared what he thought, and so he was surprised when he found Gabriel at his front door with a list of tasks and orders to pack up for Bethlehem.

“We’ll be back when the child is born of course,” Gabriel had explained. “The whole host is getting ready, but until then there’s a few things you need to get done. There’s just the rooms for the family, some general blessings to ease their passage, some announcing to shepherds, oh, and we’re going to send up a special star as kind of a message. Got the supplies right here, so you can get on that.”

So here he was, job only partially complete, and too much left to do. The child would be born two days hence and he hadn’t even gotten the chance to stop by Jerusalem and pay his taxes yet. A knock on the door set his teeth on edge. This was the last thing he needed just now.

“I beg your pardon but I’m quite busy at the moment, if you could come back some other time, I would…” He trailed off in shock when he saw who was before him. “Crawly!”

When had he seen him last? It had been centuries certainly, but Crawly looked very much the same as he had the last time they’d met. Long red hair curling down to frame his face. He grinned, probably pleased to have caught Aziraphale off guard, and slithered his way into the room.

“Thought I sensed you, angel. What are you doing in this backwater anyway? It’s not very interesting.” He peered around the house with interest, but his slitted eyes soon found their way back to Aziraphale.

“What is this? Some kind of spy mission, I’m sure.” Aziraphale folded his arms firmly. “Come to find out about our plans concerning the holy child, I suppose.”

“There’s a holy child?”

His wily face went briefly guileless and Aziraphale cursed himself. “Did you really not know? Oh, now I’ve done it. I just can’t do anything right, these days.”

“Woah, hey, angel. This wasn’t a spy mission, honest. Just curiosity, plain and simple. I won’t go tattling, probably just create extra work for me anyway.”

Aziraphale exhaled. “Well, I suppose that’s one thing not gone belly up then.”

“What’s got you so down on yourself?”

“Management has given me more responsibility than I’ve had since… well, since the bit with the sword if you must know. I’m supposed to be making sure the birth goes smoothly, easing the journey here for his mother and making sure they’ve got a place to stay. I already made a mess of that first bit. I tried to get her and her husband a pair of magnificent steeds, but there was this whole kerfuffle and somehow it’s just one donkey now.”

Crawly sucked air in through his teeth. “I can see the problem there”

“And there’re so many people trying to get to Jerusalem to pay their taxes that the rooms in every inn keep filling up. I’ve been stopping by every inn each day and buying up the rooms that are available for the next week, but they won’t give them to me until the current inhabitants move on. Still, there should be more than enough space for the child and whatever followers arrive to rest in comfort. I’m so worried something else will go wrong.”

“What else is there?”

With a wavering hand, Aziraphale pointed to an unassuming box that sat in the middle of his unneeded bed. Crawly stepped forward, reaching out, before Aziraphale grabbed his wrist. “I’m not sure you ought to touch that. Gabriel gave them to me. It’s supplies for star making. There’s supposed to be a glorious one to announce the child’s arrival. But I’m a guardian; I was never part of any creative department. It’s going to be a disaster.”

Crawly kept staring at the box, looking for all the world like a snake in a charmer’s basket. Despite Aziraphale’s warning he touched it, movements oddly tender, and opened it to peer inside. The contents shone out, hitting the planes of his face and the ringlets of his hair in such a way that Aziraphale became suddenly aware of just how beautiful he was. Then Crawly snapped the box shut and was silent. Feeling, somehow, that it would be shameful to interrupt whatever he was thinking at the moment, Aziraphale stayed quiet as well.

Then he finally spoke, “You know, I could make it for you.”

Aziraphale spluttered, this had to be some sort of trap. “I’m in enough trouble already without you playing tricks.”

“I’m serious, angel. I… I used to do stars. It’s not exactly difficult. Could be… could be fun to give it a go again. See if I still got it. It’s not like I’m ever gonna get the chance some other way.”

Against his better judgement Aziraphale agreed. He told himself later that it was because the stress had gotten to him, but it had more to do with the look on Crawly’s face.

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The child had been born. The earth received her king. Men their songs had employed. The fields and floods, rocks, hill and plains had repeated the sounding joy. Aziraphale had heralded it all to the shepherds. His heart had been full, so briefly with pride, but now he sat, curled up beneath the sky outside Bethlehem’s walls cursing himself.

A pair of black sandals came into view and then Crawly settled down beside him. “What’s got you so down? Things must’ve gone well. It’s so holy out tonight I can hardly breathe. ‘Slike when there’s too much humidity.”

“It went well in general, I suppose, but it didn’t go well for me. Oh, Gabriel is going to be furious! I’m certain to be demoted again.” Fiddling with the hem of his robe did not provide much relief from his anxieties.

“What’s happened then?”

“I muddled up the inns! I left before they arrived, you see. I wanted to be ready for heralding with the shepherds. I neglected to tell a single innkeeper what I’d rented all the rooms for! So of course there wasn’t any place left for them to stay. The Holy Child was born in a barn, Crawly! Because of me!” Aziraphale looked at him, pleading. “Could you just leave? I don’t need anyone gloating.”

“You see me gloating? I’m not gloating. You know what your problem is, angel? You haven’t learned how to handle management, that’s what. So the kid was born in a barn, don’t tell them it was an accident. Tell them it was a plan.”

Aziraphale glared at him. “And what good would that do? That’d be even worse!”

“No, you just got to spin it. Say that, er…” He paused, brow crinkled as he thought. His eyes darted back and forth, though he was only looking at the sand two feet in front of them. Then he grinned. “Got it. Tell them it’s symbolic. Tell them that since this kid is supposed to be born for the good of the world, or whatever, that he had to come from humble beginnings. That he’ll better represent the everyday people instead of just kings or shit like that.”

Aziraphale gazed at him in wonder. He really shouldn’t be thinking about how brilliant the demon was. “You know, that could actually work!”

“See. It doesn’t always matter what you do, just how you explain it to the boss.”

“Thank you,” Aziraphale said, feeling altogether too fond of the creature beside him. “And thank you for dropping off the star yesterday. It’s a shame they didn’t end up using it.”

“What do you mean they didn’t?”

He sounded offended, and Aziraphale tried to be gentle as he pointed to the light above them. “When Gabriel came to pick it up yesterday, he told me a few other angels had made stars of their own and that the Almighty would be choosing among them.”

“Did you look inside the box before you gave it over?”

“Well no, but-”

“Then why don’t you think that one’s mine?”

Aziraphale looked up. The star that hung above them, now thousands of times the size it had first been, was the most gorgeous he had ever seen. It was like a diamond with a million sides, each casting out lights of silver and gold woven together with light. Spots of refracted color could be seen, but only when you looked at it just right. He’d assumed it had been made by a master crafter, not a demon picking up a hobby again for the first time in four million years.

“Is it yours?”

“Yeah,” Crawly said huffily. “So don’t act surprised when your boss comes around praising you for it.”

“Oh, Crawly. I’d no idea you were so talented. It’s simply breath taking!”

The demon stood abruptly and kicked at the sand. “Yeah well. I should get going anyway. The air here is too thick with holiness. I’ll be seeing you around, angel. I always do.”

Aziraphale watched him go. They’d tricked Gabriel, that was obvious, but he could not imagine that they’d fooled the Lord. She’d handled the star. She’d placed it in the heavens. Had she not been able to sense the truth of its creator? And if she had, why had she chosen it anyway?

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Link to the original fic, if you’re interested: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24166843/chapters/59699671

#good omens #good omens fanfiction #good omens fanfic #ineffable husbands #good omens christmas #christmas

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varibean · 5 years ago

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Would You, Could You, Say ‘I Do’?

here’s a fanfiction inspired by the wonderful artwork by @fluttytheflutt here! it’s wedding time! hope y’all enjoy!

In previous stages of his life, when Sam I-Am thought about his future, marriage was never part of it. He was a romantic, somewhat at least. Having never gotten to experience romance first hand he couldn’t really say for sure but he liked the idea. The notion that somewhere there was a person just for him who would vow to never leave him behind, to always stay by his side, was enticing to put it plainly. But he never thought it was an actuality. The thought had never crossed his mind that such a life could be for him.

His life was anything but consistent and marriage was the most steadfast constant of it all in addition to-as his elders always said-death and taxes. But he’d cheated death and he didn’t pay his taxes so that was already two down.

Everything was always moving; his jobs, his home, his identity. Never in his life was he one person for two long. It started to make him sick if he was. Every new persona was fun at first but in the back of his mind there was always the thought, the fear that if he stayed as one person too long he would find out a terrible truth: He didn’t like the person he had become.

So he jumped and switched from fake ID to fake ID, only staying for the fun part. Nothing more, nothing less.

And then there was Guy. His Guy. His wonderful, amazing, perfect Guy who could do so many amazing things and came up with the most incredible ideas. Suddenly, with Guy, he wasn’t scared of being the same person anymore. He didn’t have to fear who he would be because whoever he was, Guy was going to be there too.

For a while it was just a promise of words. Nothing binding or set in stone, just the knowledge that Guy would always be there for him, that he liked him just the way he was. Sam thought that would be enough. They didn’t need to take the next steps forward because why risk the unknown when life was so comfortable as it was?

Then came the night that Guy took him on a small hometown cold air balloon. And there among the clouds just barely scraping above the roofs of the houses below them, Guy got down on one knee.

The ring wasn’t terribly special; just a silver band with the tiniest emerald in the middle, the green hue sparkling in the moonlight like a cosmos seen from a far off telescope. What could Sam do but say yes?

Up there, away from the world with just the two of them, the words seemed so easy to say. Yes! Yes, yes, yes, yes! They spilled from his mouth like the crack of a perfectly runny yolk and he never thought anything in the world could taste as good as green eggs and ham but then Guy kissed him as the fog of the night drifted by him and he knew that some things just existed beyond compare or dispersion.

Everything was easier up in the air. But all things had to come back down to earth eventually.

The dressing room he stood in was lit up like a mall during the holiday season. On their own Sam and Guy couldn’t afford much but as there luck would have it the rest of the Am-I family wanted to pitch in for the youngest golden child. The bruckles poured in from Mr. and Mrs. Am-I and Guy’s brothers and no expense had been spared on setting everything up for the two. The venue, the flowers, the food; all if it five star and perfect in every way.

And of course, above all else, the dress.

The long and wide floor to ceiling mirror in the dressing room reflected the fabric back perfectly. If one were to spare it only a glance, it could be said that the dress was simple. The cut was a flower bud covered boat neck, showing off the slight dip of his collar before fading into a near sheer sleeve design. Crystals were sewn into the fabric, making his arms sparkle under the lights. The dress itself had a ribboned waist that showed off his slight form before fanning out as the rest of the dress poofed around him. It wasn’t overly fluffy, but it was well fitted and flowy. Plenty of room to move while still looking elegant.

Was he elegant?

Staring in the mirror, Sam wasn’t so sure. Elegant was never a word he thought of when he considered himself in a physical sense. Short, slender, rounded; those were words that described him. But beautiful? Radiant? Elegant? All the things he was told someone to marry should be? He wasn’t quite sure.

“Sam? It’s almost time. Do you have the veil on?” Michellee’s voice echoed in the near empty room.

For such a large and grand dressing room, there really wasn’t anyone else needed to get him into the dress. The lingering con-artist in him thought of money and how easy a wedding scam could go off. But he quickly shook his head at the thought before he ran his hands over his face.

“Yeah I’m-I mean no, I haven’t put it on yet I was just...uh-”

“Nervous?” Michellee offered with a smirk.

Sam opened his mouth to object but then realized it was useless to do so. He was trying not to lie as much, to be more honest with himself.

“Maybe, just an itty-bitty-teeny-weeny-itsy-bitsy smidgen of a smidge. Like, half a smidge. No, strike that, one twenty-seventh of a smidge.”

Michellee laughed and suddenly Sam felt a little bit better about everything.

“It’s ok Sam. I remember my wedding day. Of course, I didn’t have rich in-laws to pay for everything-”

“Hey come on, it’s not like we asked for it!”

“-But it was still the most important day of my life. Well, up until I had E.B.”

Sam chuckled and smoothed out the fabric of his dress even though it didn’t need it. As he did so, Michellee picked up the veil from its resting place and put it on his head.

“How’d you know?” Sam asked.

“Know what?”

“How’d you know that it wasn’t one big mistake? How’d you know that everything wasn’t going to fall apart?”

There was hardly a moment of silence before Michelle gently turned him around to face her, away from the mirror, away from all of his doubts reflected back at him.

“I didn’t. That’s the fun part isn’t it? Not knowing but still wanting to see. Going for it and knowing no matter where you land you’d be holding someone else’s hand. Trying something new.”

“Trying something new.” He repeated.

A smile formed on his lips and he reached for her arm to loop his around.

“Alright. Alright, here you go I-Am. Off to try something new.”

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Guy’s Mother walked Sam down the aisle and the action only caused the slightest pang of sadness within him. But he was able to shake it off, kept his eyes forward and fixed on the altar.

The venue was a small park area just beside Guy’s home, everything rented out and decorated for an informal (but still, at the older Am-I’s insistence, fairly expensive) ceremony and party.

The second he saw Guy he knew that he was ridiculous for ever having any doubts. The knox was dressed in a charming bowtie and a deep blue wreath of flowers topped of his head. He looked so much younger without the hat, without the scowl marks. Instead smile lines had taken their place as his husband to be positively beamed at him.

Sam hadn’t even realized he was at the stand until Guy reached over to take his hand.

“You look amazing, Sam.”

“Yeah, well, one of had to do a booty tooch down the catwalk.”

Sam smiled as he saw Guy’s cheeks puff up as he choked back a laugh. He wanted Guy to make that face every day and soon, that goal was going to be closer to a reality.

The officiant nodded to Guy after the happy murmurs of the crowd died down to start.

“Sam I-Am, the first days after I met you, you took my briefcase, dragged me along on the craziest job in the entire world, nearly got me killed more times than I could count, and stole my wallet three times. Those were the best days of my life and every day since then has just kept getting better. You’re a weird little adult and I can’t find any room in the refrigerator for any of the groceries because all you keep in there is ham and eggs. The amount of luck you possess is almost infuriating and you are, by far, the biggest dope I’ve ever met. But...you’re my hope man and I always know that I have you in my corner. You gave me a reason to keep on trying and, Sam, every day...every day for the rest of our lives I want to keep trying new things with you. I think your luck really did rub off on me at some point, because otherwise I can’t imagine how I ended up so yipping lucky-sorry I know I’m not supposed to curse during these things but it’s true. So, if you’ll have me, I want to spend the rest of my life with you...um, the end? It’s-It’s been a while since I’ve been to a wedding I didn’t really think of a closer.”

There was a small chuckle that passed throughout the audience at Guy’s fumble and Sam could see in his eyes that he meant every word of his vows.

“Wow. You see, I had this whole spoken word musical number that I was gonna try to pull off in a dress but that just made me forget about ninety percent of it. So I guess I’ll just say that no one has ever really wanted me to stay the same person before. No one’s ever hung around long enough to decide if I was worth it. But you did. And that was the first time I thought that maybe I didn’t have to run away from myself anymore. I still don’t know who I want to be in this world, what kind of a difference I want to make, but I know I want to do it all with you. And, this is embarrassing, I don’t really have a closer either.”

Both men turned to the officiant with a questioning look, only to have the other shrug at them.

“I always thought weddings were supposed to be way longer and more boring,” Sam started, “But I think we’re good? Can say the Big Final Words and do the kissing thing now? I wanna skip to that part.”

Sam and Guy took out their rings and slipped them onto each other’s fingers with another nod of approval from the officiant.

“You’re absolutely ridiculous. I do.” Guy said.

“I do!”

And with that, Guy lifted him up bridal style and dipped him, a small nuzzle passing between them before they finally sealed it all together with a kiss.

The small crowd of friends and family cheered for the two as their grins became so wide that it seemed like their faces would crack.

Guy sat Sam down gently and before they began to walk into the crowd, he leaned over and chuckled.

“I was really excited to see you in your wedding attire. And as always, you didn’t disappoint.”

Sam giggled before standing on the tips of his toes and whispering something into Guy’s ear.

As the cheering and talking started to commence all around them, the knox’s face turned a bright red.

“Can’t say I don’t feel the same with you Wedding Buddy!” Sam chirped before heading out to the sea of smiling faces ready to congratulate him and get the party started.

Guy stood there for a moment, his face beating red as his brothers came and slapped him on the back for a job well done.

It was going to be an interesting honeymoon.

#green eggs and ham #geah #briefcase buddies #briefcase boyfriends #zk fic #guy am i #sam i am #i hope yall like it this was fun!!!!!!

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mandysimo13 · 4 years ago

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2020 has been a helluva year

I know it’s not technically new year’s yet but since it’s on my mind, let’s do a year in review.

This year has been so fucking disorienting, in so many ways, and it’s hard to believe anything is real. Every other day there’s new outrage, new disgust, new triumphs, new joys, new fears, new ways to cope with existence.

First we list the good from this year.

My two best friends welcomed brand new daughters into the world. I was lucky enough to spend two weeks with one of them, helping her out since her in-laws are too compromised to help and her own mother is gone. I got to see my brand new niece have her first few experiences in life, hang out with dogs, and spend lots of time with my sister-from-another-mister.

I got engaged to an amazing partner who is everything I’ve wanted in a spouse. He’s sweet and funny and makes me want to be a better person and work hard towards my goals. He’s the most supportive of my new career path and while he’s not always super interested in what I’m researching, he’s always willing to listen to me info dump when I get excited. He lets me help him and kick him in the ass when he needs it, lets me hold him when he needs it, and I never feel unloved or unwanted with him. Not to mention, the sex is really good, too, lol

I’ve started working on a new career path and trying to make history my job. I’ve been doing lectures on niche history and working towards making it a legitimate job and a legitimate company. I’ve been gaining a following and legitimacy as I make networking connections and getting my foot in doors that will open up opportunities for me.

I have not lost anyone very close to me during this pandemic, even if a couple have gotten sick or injured. I did lose an uncle to covid, though he was 90 and was already in declining health. The other people who have caught it have so far managed to recover and haven’t had any obvious long lasting problems (yet *knock on wood*)

I got on anxiety and depression medication this year and it has made all the difference this year; not only with the every day stuff but with some of the pandemic craziness. I honestly don’t know how I would be doing, mentally and emotionally, without it. I am very very very grateful for my meds, despite the very few side effects I’ve had.

Now for the bad

Every day there is something new and awful to be had. Whether it’s US politics continually shitting on struggling americans or murder hornets or natural disasters or covid deniers or police brutality or fear mongers or throw a dart at this bingo card from hell year we’ve had. It’s all been fucked up and Too Much™

The isolating and social distancing, while absolutely necessary, has been exhausting and terrifying, and it’s been rough. I’m an extrovert. I thrive around people. I miss crowds. I miss walking around through stores without freaking out about distance. I miss being able to give hugs to people other than the people I live with. I miss traveling, which was my previous job, and the students I used to expose to the world. I miss being able to actually be part of the world.

I’ve been fairly lucky that my closest friends have kept small bubbles so we’ve been able to hang out from time to time but nowhere near as often as I need in order to feel balanced. I miss my historian happy hours. I miss movie theaters. I’ve been to a few restaurants since they’ve opened but it’s definitely not the same and I feel bad for everyone (including myself) caught between having to go out and make a living and staying home and staying safe because this country’s “social safety nets” are a fucking joke.

And speaking of those safety nets, I’m on unemployment. For the first time in my working life I’m cashing in those tax dollars and all I’m entitled to is $450 a month. Thank fucking god I live with family and don’t need to pay rent. Thank fuck that my dad pays for our internet and majority of our food. Because aside from a few donations for my services every month, I **just** have enough to cover my few bills. This has been my poorest fucking year and you know what the kicker is?

It was supposed to be my most profitable. This was supposed to be my busiest year for tour work since I got into the business. I missed out on so much money, so many work experiences, so many opportunities because of this fucking plague. And because our government couldn’t get their shit together. Because people fucking suck and they’re selfish and they decided their convenience was more important than safety. And those people are still fucking denying its “that big a deal” and denying the need for a vaccine. I’m so tired of hearing people say that covid is a hoax or overblown or whatever the fuck. I’m tired.

In lieu of being around people, like most of you, I’ve taken to being on social media more. More zoom calls, more video chats, more messenger chats, and more facebook groups. And what I’ve found is that living almost entirely on the internet is doing something fucking awful to us: we’re forgetting there’s real people on the other side of the screen. We’re forgetting that humans are complicated beings, both capable of goodness and shittiness and we’re focusing too much on the bad because it is often louder than the good. I’ve seen so much infighting and gatekeeping and nastiness between people who are supposedly “on the same side” in every group from political to fucking memes. Like. It’s ridiculous and tiresome and it makes me want to clunk heads together. Or leave earth for awhile.

Just. All in all, this year has been hard. There have been highlights but for the most part everything is so heavy and dark and I feel like as a society nothing is actually getting better. I don’t have a lot of hope for 2021. I am not encouraged by what I’ve seen this year and how people insist on behaving and treating each other. I fear that 2021 is going to be worse before it gets better.

But hey. At least Biden won (don’t get me started, he was not my first choice) and I get to marry the love of my life in October next year.

And, if we’re really lucky, we’ll be able to celebrate with our friends.

Here’s to 2021, hopefully you’re not a giant suck salad.

#personal #my life #2020 fucking sucked #year in review #tldr highlights and lowlights of the year

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smokeybrand · 4 years ago

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The Rising Tide Raises All Ships

I don't understand people who are so ardently against social systems. Like, it's pulling eye-teeth just to have what little we do. I can't tell you how many f*cking time some MAGA cultist attacks food stamps or welfare like it's the worst thing ever but it's like, the ones who abuse it like you say, look like you. They don't look like me. There's always bad actors in any system, but if the majority carries on the way they should, then that system should function regardless. We know it can because it's being executed in real time, all over the world. There's a reason why the happiest places on earth, have the most expansive social welfare systems. Its fine to drive capitalism, no one's telling you not to work hard, but if we expanded those processes, everyone benefits. If everyone contributes a little more to the pool, all of our boats rise with the tide. I mean, seriously, if 2020 has taught us anything, it's that the systems we have in pace right now, don't work. They are easily exploited, easily manipulated, and completely counter intuitive to living life. There is a literal f*cking plague going on and our president is forcing people back to work and kids back to class because the economy. If that don't scream broke and needs fixing, I don't what does.

Free Healthcare means no worries going to the doctor. Paper cut, baby delivery, broken bone, or f*cking cancer, there'd be no stressing over how to pay those ridiculous bills. They wouldn't be ridiculous. I think in Canada an ambulance ride is, like, $230 dollars, average, depending on circumstances. In some places, it's as low as $45 and others, as high as $385. The average here in the States is closer to $1200 f*cking dollars. For just the ambulance. That's not even beginning to address the hospital visit and hope you don't an extended stay. These mother*ckers gave me a bill for close to $50,000 for my two week stay the first time I almost died. Bro, there's no way I am ever going to pay that. The f*ck is you saying? I read an account of someone going to the emergency room in the Philippines and it cost her $15 dollars. To see the doctor. It would have been free but she's not a citizen. More than anything, universal healthcare would force Big Pharma to price their medications appropriately. There would have affordable prescriptions for everyone. When I left my job, I lot my insurance. When I checked prices on my meds, just a single prescription was $400 f*cking dollars for one month's worth. In Canada, that prescription would have been $15. The ill thing? The $400 dollar one was the cheapest I could find stateside. I take five medications for my heart. Uninsured, I'd be dropping close to $3800 a month, on sh*t I need to live. Who the f*ck has a loose $3800 when they have to pay that much in rent every month? Insulin is, like, $300 for 10 days worth here. In Canada, it's f*cking $30. Sh*t's even cheaper in Egypt. Small businesses wouldn't have to worry about employee healthcare or anything like that. If you have more than two employees, the cost you save in insurance coverage is more than enough to offset that tax increase. You'd be able to actually pay a more livable wage, while pocketing more profit at the same time. How is any of this bad? How can you spin this sh*t as a negative?

Free education means a more literate populace. We wouldn't have near as many Anti-Vaxxers and Flat Earthers. Motherf*ckers would understand the science of social distancing and mask wearing during a goddamn pandemic. I wouldn't be so f*cking mad having to dumb myself down just to interact with society. If we follow the Nordic system, you get your four years worth of education, graduate with a proper degree, and get placed into a position immediately out of college to tenure in your focus for the next four years. It's not an internship but a real job. You not only get a degree, but you immediately start earning a living in that field, while accumulating experience. Once you complete your four year employment obligation, you can continue your employment, start the process over with a new major in mind, or you're free to travel abroad with four years experience and a BA in your pocket. Not only would the populace be more literate, more people would be employed thus stimulating the economy. Those that enter into science and engineering, would have to innovate in their fields for four years, minimum, so you'd have hungry minds creating the future, just like back in the day when “America was great” or whatever. More education, means more jobs, means a stronger economy, means less crime. Again, how is this a bad thing? You wouldn't even have to do away with private college or studying whatever you want. If there wasn't a free program to take advantage of, just pay for your classes. I'm sure there'd still be grants and scholarship and financial aid available for aspiring painters or wannabe film makers, or any number of vanity degrees. F*ck it, man, if you want to go to Harvard just for the clout, you can still totally do that. F*ck, dude, you can do it after getting your free degree even. Graduate school, bro. Motherf*cker can be making six figures paying that stupid, clout chasing, tuition out of pocket because you can afford it with the job you got with that free degree. That's the beauty of the Nordic system; Everyone gets what they want.

That's just the surface of these benefits. I'm not even going to go into what universal income, maternity leave, vacation time, strong unions, and subsidized child care. I'm not even going to touch on how prisons over there are built to rehabilitate, not to humiliate and effectively enslave. For Profit prisons are the modern plantations. Look that sh*t up. I'm not even going to go into detail about the benefits collective legalization for all drugs and how crime plummeted because of it, or how they treat addiction like a mental illness and not a criminal offense, or the way they house their homeless and treat them humanely, while transitioning them into society with counseling, job placement, and social work. All of this, for, maybe, an extra hundred or two a year. That's, what? An extra $30 a month out of your check? Less than $10 a f*cking week? That one trip to Starbucks. That's two Quarter-Pounders. That's nothing. How does that math not work? How do these universal benefits, not jive with everyone? How does this sh*t not make sense to people, when you can see it working the world over? The illest thing in this whole situations is the fact that we, as the US, have absolutely more than enough to implement this system, this type of social democracy which benefits everyone, if we just rearranged our budget. Admittedly, we couldn't just implement the healthcare out the box. I mean, we could, but that would entail getting motherf*ckers who make trillions, like Amazon, Facebook, and Tesla as well as Zuckerberg, Musk, and Bezos, to pay their fair share without circumventing said responsibilities Corporate Welfare is crippling the working American and people are too dumb to even pay attention to it, distracted by buzzwords like “communism” and “immigrant.” So we do the free education thing first. That's only $4 billion a year. I checked. That's pittance compared to the defense budget.

Motherf*ckers wouldn't even need to “tax the rich” or “hold them accountable” if we just cut the defense budget. We can keep pretending that trickle down works and that Wall Street works for us and not corporate gluttons and that Reaganomics works, and whatever else the conservatives want us all to believe. Whatever, right? The US spends $650 billion on defense. That is, quite literally, $400 billion more than the next country, China. The rest of the world, minus the US and China, spends a collective $831 billion. That's an average of less than $50 billion a year, worldwide. F*ck, if you add China back into that, it's still less than $65 billion a year. Did i mention that these are yearly budgets? And these are old numbers. My guy, we can afford to drop a few billion of that defense budget. We can probably skim $50 billion and enrich a lot of people's lives but we don't even need that much. Drop $4 billion off of that gratuitous $650 tril, and you can fund free education for everyone. Following the Nordic system, that means more jobs. That means more taxes. That means a better economy and more revenue to implement the universal health care, which would further lessen the burden of employers and employees, putting even more money back into everyone's pockets, which would grow the economy even more. Happy and secure people, spend more money. The only people this system hurts, are those hurting us with the current system. Are they literally too dumb and/or selfish to let go of a little extra and uplift all of us? How do you argue that math? No one loses but the people forcing you to lose right now, in real time. F*ck, man, 2020 has exposed this entire system and there are still people who will die for a country that won't even give you enough money to be safe during a whole ass plague and I don't understand that at all.

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bountyofbeads · 5 years ago

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This is a heartbreaking investigation into how Donald Trump's DISGUSTING 🤢, VILE, DESPICABLE, APPALLING, and DEPRAVED behavior is trickling down in our society and having REAL LIFE EFFECTS(including suicide) on our children and young people. The FISH ROTS from the HEAD. Melania it looks like your 'BE BEST' campaign isn't working out so well. Perhaps you should start by taking your husband's phone away and removing him from public view. PLEASE READ 📖 and SHARE this investigation. TY 🙏🏻🙏🏼🙏🏽🙏🏾🙏🏿

HOW THE BULLY-IN-CHIEF IS TURNING AMERICA NASTIER

By Paul Waldman | Published February 13 at 4:07 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted February 14, 2020 |

Sometimes we overestimate the degree to which a president can change a country, not just altering federal policy but also transforming our national life. But President Trump, there can be little doubt, will have as profound an effect on America as nearly any president in memory. The problem is that he’s doing it in all the worst ways.

As a new report from The Post demonstrates, across the country schools are reporting increased incidents of bullying and harassment directed at minority children in the time since Trump began running for office:

Since Trump’s rise to the nation’s highest office, his inflammatory language — often condemned as racist and xenophobic — has seeped into schools across America. Many bullies now target other children differently than they used to, with kids as young as 6 mimicking the president’s insults and the cruel way he delivers them.

It’s not all kids bullying kids — some of the cases involve teachers telling minority students that Trump will deport them or saying things such as “You’re getting kicked out of my country” (and there are also cases, though much smaller in number, of pro-Trump children being bullied).

Amazing what happens when you take the most repugnant human being in America and put him in the White House.

I exaggerate — but only a bit. I’m sure there are some Americans who are more morally despicable than Trump. Serial killers, for instance. But whether you like his administration’s policies, the president of the United States is a con man, a tax cheat, an accused sexual predator and the most prolific liar in the political history of Planet Earth, among other things.

But he might have been all that and not produced this kind of bullying. In fact, it was utterly predictable, because bullying is at the core of Trump’s being — and his political persona.

When he started running for president in 2015, Trump made clear that not only was he selling an agenda of xenophobia and racism, but he also wanted people to proclaim their hatreds loudly. “I’m so tired of this politically correct crap,” he said, and he wasn’t just talking about campus speech codes. He was angry at the foundational idea behind “political correctness,” that in our daily lives we should try to treat each other with respect.

The hell with that, Trump said. Every day he offered an instruction in the liberating power of being offensive. Not only shouldn’t you let a bunch of scolds tell you what kind of language to use, you should revel in the transgressive thrill of telling other people just what you think of them.

Trump plainly believes that if they see it to their advantage, people with more power should attack, victimize and humiliate those with less power. It’s something he’s known all his life, from when he was a young man being sued with his father for housing discrimination for refusing to rent apartments to black people, to when he was cheating struggling people out of their life savings, to when he refused to pay hundreds of small businesspeople what he owed them because they didn’t have the power to fight him.

In every case the logic was the same: He had more power than them, so he did what he wanted.

This is a man who mocked a reporter for his disability and who said women who accused him of sexual assault were too ugly for him to have victimized.

A different person might ascend to the most powerful position in the world and decide not to concern themselves anymore with petty squabbles. But if anything, Trump has accelerated his feuds, increasing the frequency with which he lashes out at those who are less powerful than him. Some are public figures who may be used to that sort of thing, but others are not.

One victim after another describes the disorienting feeling of being an ordinary person and realizing that the president of the United States is going after you. Just this week, Trump decided to attack the foreperson of the jury in the trial of his friend Roger Stone.

Imagine what it’s like to be her right now. You got the notice in the mail, went to do your civic duty, and now the president is insulting you on Twitter — with the inevitable threats and harassment from his supporters to follow.

And this is critical: Trump’s amen chorus celebrates him for his own bullying and the way he encourages others to be bullies. Recall the 2017 incident in which now-Rep. Greg Gianforte (R-Mont.) body-slammed a journalist to the floor. On Fox News they cheered the assault as “Montana justice,” and host Laura Ingraham tweeted, “Did anyone get his lunch money stolen today and then run to tell the recess monitor?” Trump later appeared at a rally with Gianforte and said, “Any guy that can do a body slam, he is my type!”

That’s the ethos of the Trump era: There are no more standards of morality or appropriate behavior or even simple politeness. There is only his power, and how you have to submit to it.

When Republicans impeached Bill Clinton for lying about an affair, they responded to the argument that it had nothing to do with his official duties by saying the president is a role model, so his behavior matters. They were wrong about a lot, but they were right about that.

The difference is that back then, nobody in Clinton’s party defended him for having an affair, let alone praised him for it. Today, Trump sends the message over and over that power and status should be used to punch down, mock, degrade and humiliate those you don’t like. And his legions of lickspittles laugh and cheer.

So it’s no wonder that Trump, who has the world’s biggest megaphone, has managed to spread his particular poison throughout the country, even to children. It would have a been a surprise if it didn’t happen.

*********

TRUMP’S WORDS, BULLIED KIDS,

SCARRED SCHOOLS .... THE PRESIDENT’S RHETORIC HAS CHANGED THE WAY HUNDREDS OF CHILDREN ARE HARASSED IN AMERICAN CLASSROOMS, The Post found

By Hannah Natanson, John Woodrow Cox and Perry Stein | Published Feb. 13, 2020 | Washington Post | Posted February 14, 2020 |

Two kindergartners in Utah told a Latino boy that President Trump would send him back to Mexico, and teenagers in Maine sneered "Ban Muslims" at a classmate wearing a hijab. In Tennessee, a group of middle- schoolers linked arms, imitating the president's proposed border wall as they refused to let nonwhite students pass. In Ohio, another group of middle-schoolers surrounded a mixed-race sixth-grader and, as she confided to her mother, told the girl: "This is Trump country."

Since Trump's rise to the nation’s highest office, his inflammatory language — often condemned as racist and xenophobic — has seeped into schools across America. Many bullies now target other children differently than they used to, with kids as young as 6 mimicking the president’s insults and the cruel way he delivers them.

Trump’s words, those chanted by his followers at campaign rallies and even his last name have been wielded by students and school staff members to harass children more than 300 times since the start of 2016, a Washington Post review of 28,000 news stories found. At least three-quarters of the attacks were directed at kids who are Hispanic, black or Muslim, according to the analysis. Students have also been victimized because they support the president — more than 45 times during the same period.

Although many hateful episodes garnered coverage just after the election, The Post found that Trump-connected persecution of children has never stopped. Even without the huge total from November 2016, an average of nearly two incidents per school week have been publicly reported over the past four years. Still, because so much of the bullying never appears in the news, The Post’s figure represents a small fraction of the actual total. It also doesn’t include the thousands of slurs, swastikas and racial epithets that aren’t directly linked to Trump but that the president’s detractors argue his behavior has exacerbated.

“It’s gotten way worse since Trump got elected,” said Ashanty Bonilla, 17, a Mexican American high school junior in Idaho who faced so much ridicule from classmates last year that she transferred. “They hear it. They think it’s okay. The president says it. . . . Why can’t they?”

Asked about Trump’s effect on student behavior, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham noted that first lady Melania Trump — whose “Be Best” campaign denounces online harassment — had encouraged kids worldwide to treat one another with respect.

“She knows that bullying is a universal problem for children that will be difficult to stop in its entirety,” Grisham wrote in an email, “but Mrs. Trump will continue her work on behalf of the next generation despite the media’s appetite to blame her for actions and situations outside of her control.”

Most schools don’t track the Trump bullying phenomenon, and researchers didn’t ask about it in a federal survey of 6,100 students in 2017, the most recent year with available data. One in five of those children, ages 12 to 18, reported being bullied at school, a rate unchanged since the previous count in 2015.

However, a 2016 online survey of over 10,000 kindergarten through 12th-grade educators by the Southern Poverty Law Center found that more than 2,500 “described specific incidents of bigotry and harassment that can be directly traced to election rhetoric,” although the overwhelming majority never made the news. In 476 cases, offenders used the phrase “build the wall.” In 672, they mentioned deportation.

For Cielo Castor, who is Mexican American, the experience at Kamiakin High in Kennewick, Wash., was searing. The day after the election, a friend told Cielo, then a sophomore, that he was glad Trump won because Mexicans were stealing American jobs. A year later, when the president was mentioned during her American literature course, she said she didn't support him and a classmate who did refused to sit next to her.

“‘I don’t want to be around her,’ ” Cielo recalled him announcing as he opted for the floor instead.

Then, on “America night” at a football game in October 2018 during Cielo’s senior year, schoolmates in the student section unfurled a “Make America Great Again” flag. Led by the boy who wouldn’t sit beside Cielo, the teenagers began to chant: “Build — the — wall!”

Horrified, she confronted the instigator.

“You can’t be doing that,” Cielo told him.

He ignored her, she recalled, and the teenagers around him booed her. A cheerleading coach was the lone adult who tried to make them stop.

“I felt like I was personally attacked. And it wasn’t like they were attacking my character. They were attacking my ethnicity, and it’s not like I can do anything about that.”

— Cielo Castor

After a photo of the teenagers with the flag appeared on social media, news about what had happened infuriated many of the school’s Latinos, who made up about a quarter of the 1,700-member student body. Cielo, then 17, hoped school officials would address the tension. When they didn’t, she attended that Wednesday’s school board meeting.

“I don’t feel cared for,” she told the members, crying.

A day later, the superintendent consoled her and the principal asked how he could help, recalled Cielo, now a college freshman. Afterward, school staff members addressed every class, but Hispanic students were still so angry that they organized a walkout.

Some students heckled the protesters, waving MAGA caps at them. At the end of the day, Cielo left the school with a white friend who’d attended the protest; they passed an underclassman she didn’t know.

“Look,” the boy said, “it’s one of those f---ing Mexicans.”

She heard that school administrators — who declined to be interviewed for this article — suspended the teenager who had led the chant, but she doubts he has changed.

Reached on Instagram, the teenager refused to talk about what happened, writing in a message that he didn’t want to discuss the incident “because it is in the past and everyone has moved on from it.” At the end, he added a sign-off: “Trump 2020.”

ust as the president has repeatedly targeted Latinos, so, too, have school bullies. Of the incidents The Post tallied, half targeted Hispanics.

In one of the most extreme cases of abuse, a 13-year-old in New Jersey told a Mexican American schoolmate, who was 12, that “all Mexicans should go back behind the wall.” A day later, on June 19, 2019, the 13-year-old assaulted the boy and his mother, Beronica Ruiz, punching him and beating her unconscious, said the family’s attorney, Daniel Santiago. He wonders to what extent Trump’s repeated vilification of certain minorities played a role.

[ More than 300 Trump-inspired harassment incidents reported by news outlets from 2016-2019]

Anti-Hispanic: 45%

Anti-black: 23%

Anti-Semitic: 7%

Anti-Muslim: 8%

Anti-LGBT: 4%

Anti-Trump: 14%

[ **Note: Some incidents targeted multiple groups and, in other cases,

the ethnicity/gender/religion of the

intended target was unclear. Figures may not precisely add up because of rounding. Source: Washington Post analysis of media reports]

“When the president goes on TV and is saying things like Mexicans are rapists, Mexicans are criminals — these children don’t have the cognitive ability to say, ‘He’s just playing the role of a politician,’ ” Santiago argued. “The language that he’s using matters.”

Ruiz’s son, who is now seeing a therapist, continues to endure nightmares from an experience that may take years to overcome. But experts say that discriminatory language can, on its own, harm children, especially those of color who may already feel marginalized.

“It causes grave damage, as much physical as psychological,” said Elsa Barajas, who has counseled more than 1,000 children in her job at the Los Angeles Department of Mental Health.

As a result, she has seen Hispanic students suffer from sleeplessness, lose interest in school, and experience inexplicable stomach pain and headaches.

For Ashanty Bonilla, the damage began with the response to a single tweet she shared 10 months ago.

“Unpopular opinion,” Ashanty, then 16 and a sophomore at Lewiston High School in rural Idaho, wrote on April 9. “People who support Trump and go to Mexico for vacation really piss me off. Sorry not sorry.”

A schoolmate, who is white, took a screen shot of her tweet and posted it to Snapchat, along with a Confederate flag.

“Unpopular opinion but: people that are from Mexico and come in to America illegally or at all really piss me off,” he added in a message that spread rapidly among students.

The next morning, as Ashanty arrived at school, half a dozen boys, including the one who had written the message, stood nearby.

“You’re illegal. Go back to Mexico,” she heard one of them say. “F--- Mexicans.”

Ashanty, shaken but silent, walked past as a friend yelled at the boys to shut up.

In a 33,000-person town that is 94 percent white, Ashanty, whose father is half-black and whose mother is Mexican American, had always worked to fit in. She attended every football game and won a school spirit award as a freshman. She straightened her hair and dyed it blond, hoping to look more like her friends.

“It’s gotten way worse since Trump got elected. They hear it. They think it’s okay. The president says it. . . . Why can’t they?”

— Ashanty Bonilla

She had known those boys who’d heckled her since they were little. For her 15th birthday the year before, some had danced at her quinceañera.

A friend drove her off campus for lunch, but when they pulled back into the parking lot, Ashanty spotted people standing around her car. A rope had been tied from the back of the Honda Pilot to a pickup truck.

“Republican Trump 2020,” someone had written in the dust on her back window.

Hands trembling, Ashanty tried to untie the rope but couldn’t. She heard the laughing, sensed the cellphone cameras pointed at her. She began to weep.

Lewiston’s principal, Kevin Driskill, said he and his staff met with the boys they knew were involved, making clear that “we have zero tolerance for any kind of actions like that.” The incidents, he suspected, stemmed mostly from ignorance.

“Our lack of diversity probably comes with a lack of understanding,” Driskill said, but he added that he’s encouraged by the school district’s recent creation of a community group — following racist incidents on other campuses — meant to address those issues.

That effort came too late for Ashanty.

Some friends supported her, but others told her the boys were just joking. Don’t ruin their lives.

She seldom attended classes the last month of school. That summer, she started having migraines and panic attacks. In August, amid her spiraling despair, Ashanty swallowed 27 pills from a bottle of antidepressants. A helicopter rushed her to a hospital in Spokane, Wash., 100 miles away.

After that, she began seeing a therapist and, along with the friend who defended her, transferred to another school. Sometimes, she imagines how different life might be had she never written that tweet, but Ashanty tries not to blame herself and has learned to take more pride in her heritage. She just wishes the president understood the harm his words inflict.

Even Trump’s last name has become something of a slur to many children of color, whether they’ve heard it shouted at them in hallways or, in her case, seen it written on the back window of a car.

“It means,” she said, “you don’t belong.”

Three weeks into the 2018-19 school year, Miracle Slover's English teacher, she alleges, ordered black and Hispanic students to sit in the back of the classroom at their Fort Worth high school.

At the time, Miracle was a junior. Georgia Clark, her teacher at Amon Carter-Riverside, often brought up Trump, Miracle said. He was a good person, she told the class, because he wanted to build a wall.

“Every day was something new with immigration,” said Miracle, now 18, who has a black mother and a mixed-race father. “That Trump needs to take [immigrants] away. They do drugs, they bring drugs over here. They cause violence.”

Some students tried to film Clark, and others complained to administrators, but none of it made a difference, Miracle said. Clark, an employee of the Fort Worth system since 1998, kept talking.

Clark, who denies the teenager’s allegations, is one of more than 30 educators across the country accused of using the president’s name or rhetoric to harass students since he announced his candidacy, the Post analysis found.

In Clark’s class, Miracle stayed quiet until late spring 2019. That day, she walked in wearing her hair “puffy,” split into two high buns.

Clark, she said, told her it looked “nappy, like Marge off ‘The Simpsons.’ ” Unable to smother an angry reply, Miracle landed in the principal’s office. An administrator asked her to write a witness statement, and in it, she finally let go, scrawling her frustration across seven pages.

“I just got tired of it,” she said. “I wrote a ton.”

Still, Miracle said, school officials took no action until six weeks later, when Clark, 69, tweeted at Trump — in what she thought were private messages — requesting help deporting undocumented immigrants in Fort Worth schools. The posts went viral, drawing national condemnation. Clark was fired.

“Every day was something new with immigration. That Trump needs to take [immigrants] away. They do drugs, they bring drugs over here. They cause violence.”

— Miracle Slover, referring to Georgia Clark, her former English teacher

Not always, though, are offenders removed from the classroom.

The day after the 2016 election, Donnie Jones Jr.’s daughter was walking down a hallway at her Florida high school when, she says, a teacher warned her and two friends — all sophomores, all black — that Trump would “send you back to Africa.”

The district suspended the teacher for three days and transferred him to another school.

Just a few days later in California, a physical education teacher told a student that he would be deported under Trump. Two years ago in Maine, a substitute teacher referenced the president’s wall and promised a Lebanese American student, “You’re getting kicked out of my country.” More than a year later in Texas, a school employee flashed a coin bearing the word “ICE” at a Hispanic student. “Trump,” he said, “is working on a law where he can deport you.”

Sometimes, Jones said, he doesn’t recognize America.

“People now will say stuff that a couple of years ago they would not dare say,” Jones argued. He fears what his two youngest children, ages 11 and 9, might hear in their school hallways, especially if Trump is reelected.

Now a senior, Miracle doesn’t regret what she wrote about Clark. Although the furor that followed forced Miracle to switch schools and quit her beloved dance team, she would do it again, she said. Clark’s punishment, her public disgrace, was worth it.

About a week before Miracle’s 18th birthday, her mother checked Facebook to find a flurry of notifications. Friends were messaging to say that Clark had appealed her firing, and that the Texas education commissioner had intervened.

Reluctant to spoil the birthday, Jowona Powell waited several days to tell her daughter, who doesn’t use social media.

Citing a minor misstep in the school board’s firing process, the commissioner had ordered Carter-Riverside to pay Clark one year’s salary — or give the former teacher her job back.

[A snapshot of the harassment in 2019 ( SEE WEBSITE)]

In the three months after the president tweeted on July 14, 2019, that four minority congresswomen should "go back” to the countries they came from, more than a dozen incidents of Trump-related school bullying — including several that used his exact language — were reported in the press.

Jordyn Covington stood when she heard the jeers.

“Monkeys!” “You don’t belong here.” “Go back to where you came from!”

From atop the bleachers that day in October, Jordyn, 15, could see her Piper High School volleyball teammates on the court in tears. The sobbing varsity players were all black, all from Kansas City, Kan., like her.

Who was yelling? Jordyn wondered.

She peered at the students in the opposing section. Most of them were white.

“It was just sad,” said Jordyn, who plays for Piper’s junior varsity team. “And why? Why did it have to happen to us? We weren’t doing anything. We were simply playing volleyball.”

Go back? To where? Jordyn, her friends and Piper’s nine black players were all born in the United States. “Just like everyone else,” Jordyn said. “Just like white people.”

“It was just sad. And why? Why did it have to happen to us? We weren’t doing anything. We were simply playing volleyball.”

— Jordyn Covington

The game, played at an overwhelmingly white rural high school, came three months after Trump tweeted that four minority congresswomen should “go back” to the “totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”

It was Jordyn’s first experience with racism, she said. But it was not the first time that fans at a school sports game had used the president to target students of color.

The Post found that players, parents or fans have used his name or words in at least 48 publicly reported cases, hurling hateful slogans at students competing in elementary, middle and high school games in 26 states.

The venom has been shouted on football gridirons and soccer fields, on basketball and volleyball courts. Nearly 90 percent of incidents identified by The Post targeted players and fans of color, or teams fielded by schools with large minority populations. More than half focused on Hispanics.

In one of the earliest examples, students at a Wisconsin high school soccer game in April 2016 chanted “Trump, build a wall!” at black and Hispanic players. A few months later, students at a high school basketball game in Missouri turned their backs and hoisted a Trump/Pence campaign sign as the majority-black opposing team walked onto the court. In 2017, two high school girls in Alabama showed up at a football game pep rally with a sign reading “Put the Panic back in Hispanic” and a “Trump Make America Great Again” banner.

In late 2017, two radio hosts announcing a high school basketball game in Iowa were caught on a hot mic describing Hispanic players as “español people.” “As Trump would say,” one broadcaster suggested, “go back where they came from.”

Both announcers were fired. After the volleyball incident in Kansas, though, the fallout was more muted. The opposing school district, Baldwin City, commissioned an investigation and subsequently asserted that there was “no evidence” of racist jeers. Administrators from Piper’s school system dismissed that claim and countered with a statement supporting their students.

An hour after the game, Jordyn fought to keep her eyes dry as she boarded the team bus home. When white players insisted that everything would be okay, she slipped in ear buds and selected “my mood playlist,” a collection of somber nighttime songs. She wiped her cheeks.

Jordyn had long ago concluded that Trump didn’t want her — or “anyone who is just not white” — in the United States. But hearing other students shout it was different.

Days later, her English teacher assigned an essay asking about “what’s right and what’s wrong.” At first, Jordyn thought she might write about the challenges transgender people face. Then she had another idea.

“The students were making fun of us because we were different, like our hair and skin tone,” Jordyn wrote. “How are you gonna be mad at me and my friends for being black. . . . I love myself and so should all of you.”

She read it aloud to the class. She finished, then looked up. Everyone began to applaud.

t's not just young Trump supporters who torment classmates because of who they are or what they believe. As one boy in North Carolina has come to understand, kids who oppose the president — kids like him — can be just as vicious.

By Gavin Trump’s estimation, nearly everyone at his middle school in Chapel Hill comes from a Democratic family. So when the kids insist on calling him by his last name — even after he demands that they stop — the 13-year-old knows they want to provoke him, by trying to link the boy to the president they despise.

In fifth grade, classmates would ask if he was related to the president, knowing he wasn’t. They would insinuate that Gavin agreed with the president on immigration and other polarizing issues.

“They saw my last name as Trump, and we all hate Trump, so it was like, ‘We all hate you,’ ” he said. “I was like, ‘Why are you teasing me? I have no relationship to Trump at all. We just ended up with the same last name.’ ”

Beyond kids like Gavin, the Post analysis also identified dozens of children across the country who were bullied, or even assaulted, because of their allegiance to the president.

School staff members in at least 18 states, from Washington to West Virginia, have picked on students for wearing Trump gear or voicing support for him. Among teenagers, the confrontations have at times turned physical. A high school student in Northern California said that after she celebrated the 2016 election results on social media, a classmate accused her of hating Mexicans and attacked her, leaving the girl with a bloodied nose. Last February, a teenager at an Oklahoma high school was caught on video ripping a Trump sign out of a student’s hands and knocking a red MAGA cap off his head.

And in the nation’s capital — where only 4 percent of voters cast ballots for Trump in 2016 — an outspoken conservative teenager said she had to leave her prestigious public school because she felt threatened.

In a YouTube video, Jayne Zirkle, a high school senior, said that the trouble started when classmates at the School Without Walls discovered an online photo of her campaigning for Trump. She said students circulated the photo, harassed her online and called her a white supremacist.

A D.C. school system official said they investigated the allegations and allowed Jayne to study from home to ensure she felt safe.

“A lot of people who I thought were my best friends just all of a sudden totally turned their backs on me,” Jayne said. “People wouldn’t even look at me or talk to me.”

For Gavin, the teasing began in fourth grade, soon after Trump announced his candidacy.

After more than a year of schoolyard taunts, Gavin decided to go by his mother’s last name, Mather, when he started middle school. The teenager has been proactive, requesting that teachers call him by the new name, but it gets trickier, and more stressful, when substitutes fill in. He didn’t legally change his last name, so “Trump” still appears on the roster.

The teasing has subsided, but the switch wasn’t easy. Gavin likes his real last name and feared that changing it would hurt his father’s feelings. His dad understood, but for Gavin, the guilt remains.

“This is my name,” he said. “And I am abandoning my name.”

Maritza Avalos knows what's coming. It's 2020. The next presidential election is nine months away. She remembers what happened during the last one, when she was just 11.

“Pack your bags,” kids told her. “You get a free trip to Mexico.”

She’s now a freshman at Kamiakin High, the same Washington state school where her older sister, Cielo, confronted the teenagers who chanted “Build the wall” at a football game in late 2018. Maritza, 14, assumes the taunts that accompanied Trump’s last campaign will intensify with this one, too.

“I try not to think about it,” she said, but for educators nationwide, the ongoing threat of politically charged harassment has been impossible to ignore.

In response, schools have canceled mock elections, banned political gear, trained teachers, increased security, formed student-led mediation groups and created committees to develop anti-discrimination policies.

In California, the staff at Riverside Polytechnic High School has been preparing for this year’s presidential election since the day after the last one. On Nov. 9, 2016, counselors held a workshop in the library for students to share their feelings. Trump supporters feared they would be singled out for their beliefs, while girls who had heard the president brag about sexually assaulting women worried that boys would be emboldened to do the same to them.

“We treated it almost like a crisis,” said Yuri Nava, a counselor who has since helped expand a student club devoted to improving the school’s culture and climate.

Riverside, which is 60 percent Hispanic, also offers three courses — African American, Chicano and ethnic studies — meant to help students better understand one another, Nava said. And instead of punishing students when they use race or politics to bully, counselors first try to bring them together with their victims to talk through what happened. Often, they leave as friends.

In Gambrills, Md., Arundel High School has taken a similar approach. Even before a student was caught scribbling the n-word in his notebook in early 2017, Gina Davenport, the principal, worried about the effect of the election’s rhetoric. At the school, where about half of the 2,200 students are minorities, she heard their concerns every day.

But the racist slur, discovered the same month as Trump’s inauguration, led to a concrete response.

A “Global Community Citizenship” class, now mandatory for all freshmen in the district, pushes students to explore their differences.

A recent lesson delved into Trump’s use of Twitter.

“The focus wasn’t Donald Trump, the focus was listening: How do we convey our ideas in order for someone to listen?” Davenport said. “We teach that we can disagree with each other without walking away being enemies — which we don’t see play out in the press, or in today’s political debates.”

Since the class debuted in fall 2017, disciplinary referrals for disruption and disrespect have decreased by 25 percent each school year, Davenport said. Membership in the school’s speech and debate team has doubled.

The course has eased Davenport’s anxiety heading into the next election. She doesn’t expect an uptick in racist bullying.

“Civil conversation,” she said. “The kids know what that means now.”

Many schools haven’t made such progress, and on those campuses, students are bracing for more abuse.

Maritza’s sister, Cielo, told her to stand up for herself if classmates use Trump’s words to harass her, but Maritza is quieter than her sibling. The freshman doesn’t like confrontation.

She knows, though, that eventually someone will say something — about the wall, maybe, or about how kids who look like her don’t belong in this country — and when that day comes, the girl hopes that she’ll be strong.

______

Julie Tate contributed to this report.

______

What is your school doing to stop politically charged bullying?

A Washington Post reporter may contact you with additional questions. We will not publish your name or what you submit below without first contacting you. We offer options to securely send information to our journalists using encrypted messaging services and email. To find out how, please go to website to fill out form.

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tokyotwosome · 5 years ago

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England: ”This Earth of Majesty”

7/26/19 - ENGLAND. The mother to the modern world’s business tongue. A country within the United Kingdom within Great Britain and none of us can make any sense of what the heck the difference is. This wondrous place is an island I’d always dreamed of visiting from the first time I picked up The Chronicles of Narnia. Or Pride and Prejudice. Or Harry Potter. The list goes on. From its rich history, its captivating architecture, and the many famous humans that have walked these streets, England is not a country to be missed.

We arrived in London on a Friday evening. The summer in the U.K. is much like Seattle; the sun is fickle and the rain needy. Seeing the countless parks throughout the city, not to mention the luscious greenery throughout the countryside, it’s no wonder it rains so much here. On Saturday morning, we met up with a friend to do a proper tour of the city. For the day, we purchased a “London Pass” which gets you into over 75 attractions as well as access to the Hop on Hop Off bus. We swiftly made our way to the top of the double decker, not caring that the open-roof was a bit damp and paying notice to the “mind your head” signs up the stairs. As we embarked through the city, a man with a microphone prompted us to grab headphones and listen to his countless facts about London.

Did you know that there are actually two Londons? Greater London refers to the American definition of “London”. This is where the Queen hails and is generally what we think of when referring to London. There is also “The City of London”, a square mile within Greater London that can be easily identified by its dragon statues which guard its borders. The City of London is separately governed, collects separate taxes, enforces separate laws, has their own separate flag, and even elects their own Lord Mayor. Queen Elizabeth isn’t even allowed to enter the City of London without permission from the Lord Mayor. It’s all very scratch-head worthy.

There’s a laundry list of sites to see in London. There’s Big Ben (currently under construction), Westminster Abbey (filled with famous and infamous corpses), Buckingham Palace, the Tower of London, Tower Bridge (much cooler than London Bridge), the Churchill War Rooms, Shakespeare’s Globe, and loads more. One would need to devote an entire week to site seeing just to manage it all in. Needless to say, we didn’t get to see everything, but we managed to get some good ones under our belt.

Our first stop was at the Tower of London, just a hop, skip, and a jump away from Tower Bridge on the north bank of the River Thames (pronounced “Tems”). The Tower of London is less of a tower and more of a series of towers that feel more like medieval grounds from something out of a storybook. Within each tower holds its own treasures and stories. There was original armor, crown jewels, the bloody tower (where two princes were believed to have been killed by their uncle so that he could have the crown for himself), prison cells (where names and images have been carved into walls)...and so much more. You could spend all day at this site alone, but we hurried on off to lunch after building up an appetite..must have been all the murder stories that did it. Speaking of murder - walking across the Tower Bridge, we found the street where many Jack the Ripper scenes were filmed. They even offer evening tours of all his murder spots (a big no thank you from me).

The food in England is a journey in and of itself. If you ask for pie, don’t expect something sweet. A traditional English-style breakfast consists of toast (seemingly the most important food group), beans, mushrooms and/or tomatoes, an over-easy egg, a hash brown, bacon (which is actually more ham-like), and sausage (tastes more like fake meat to me). We can’t tell you how many times we ate the same English-style breakfast, but it really was quite hearty. Brunch will sometimes include all-you-can-drink. And let’s not forget Sunday roast! Tea was also a staple for most, if not all, of our breakfasts - I like mine with two sugars and milk. In terms of stereotype foods, we didn’t see a crumpet in sight.

While London is a must-see when in England, it’s certainly not the highlight of the country. We rented a car and made our way north, with our final destination being Scotland. We’d arranged to have overnight stays in aribnb’s along the way, taking recommendations from our very own Rick Steves. The street signs were comical, seeing ones like “mind the gap” and “queues likely”. Getting used to the different terminology is a journey of its own. First stop was Stow-on-the-Wold; a quaint little market town with sandy-colored buildings, friendly town folk, and shops around every corner. We still aren’t sure what a Stow or a Wold is, but while we passed through, it was clear why it was a place outsiders wanted to visit. After spending a few days in the city, it was refreshing to be in a small town. We managed to only go down the wrong side of the street towards oncoming traffic once, so that’s a bonus!

Shortly following our pit-stop to Stow-on-the-Wold, we found our airbnb in a place known as Derbyshire, arriving promptly at 3:00 PM. A woman answered the door and greeted us by saying, “you’re positively punctual”. She sounded like Mary Poppins and I could’ve swore she was about to break out in song next and a bird would likely land delicately on her finger. That was when I really realized we weren’t in Kansas anymore. She took us upstairs to our room in her large, historical cottage. The backyard view reminded me of something out of a Jane Austen novel. I could imagine Mr. Darcy coming to our door by horseback. We had dinner at a local gastropub, just up the street. The server told us about a place to visit the following day, which we promptly agreed we’d do.

The next morning on our way out of town, we stopped by the recommendation from our server; a nature walk toward an abandoned water mill. During our walk, Rob stopped and asked that I take a picture of him in the grass. At the time, I had no idea why. Turns out he was envisioning a scenic view out of Gladiator and just HAD to reenact it. Making our way down a long drive, we saw a flock of pheasants that we thought were chickens. When we finally did make it to the water mill, we took in the beautiful views and imagined what sorts of things must have taken place throughout history here; a common thought through such a historical place. When we thought there wasn’t a living soul in site, a couple of women on horseback road passed. Such a slow, easy going lifestyle here.

Our next destination was what is known as the lake district; more specifically, a town called Keswick (pronounced Ke-sick). Keswick was by far our favorite stopping point. It had a German feel with British flavor. Lots of nature, lots of shops, and lots of kind people. This is a popular spot to visit in the summertime for Brits throughout the country. While rain was to be expected, we lucked out for the day we spent there and enjoyed a pleasant nature hike.

The day following our trip to Keswick, the weather took a turn for the worse. We were so fortunate to have such a beautiful day for our one day spent there. After our time in the lake district, our next stop was Scotland. Truly, Scotland is deserving of its own blog, so stay tuned for that next! Instead, I’m going to fast forward to when we trained back to London.

We’ve gone full circle and made it back to the city. Our train arrived at Kings Cross Station - so naturally we visited platform 9 3/4. After taking our obligatory Harry Potter photo, we decided to try to squeeze in any last minute sightseeing we may have missed. That’s how we ended up at the Churchill War Rooms. The underground tour is the original housing spot for Churchill and his men during WWII. They have kept the rooms in mostly the same condition with a full audio tour to really envision what it must have been like during the war. Trying to imagine being trapped down there while bombs continued to go off upstairs was a very humbling experience. For me, having been to the war museums in both Pearl Harbor and Okinawa, seeing the war through the British lens was a new perspective. On one of the original maps in the discussion room, you could even see a drawing of Hitler someone had done. A really remarkable site and I would highly recommend to anyone who visits London. Speaking of sights in London, did you know that all museums are free in the UK? That led us to the Natural History Museum! Among other things.

On 8/3/19, our 5-year wedding anniversary, we decided to treat ourselves to high tea. We had reservations at a delightful little spot in the city. The theme was Peter Rabbit and ohhhh was it good! We had mini-sandwiches, biscuits, jams, and treats to the max. Everything you see was edible, including the flower pots. I don’t think I stopped smiling once. When we had finished, we were stuffed beyond belief. Then the server comes over with a HAPPY ANNIVERSARY dessert. We couldn’t NOT eat it...so we stuffed our little bunny bellies. Another successful wedding anniversary outside of the states - once an accident, now a tradition. <3

If you’re considering a trip to the UK, I’d say go Nike and just do it! Some of our expectations were met and others were shattered, but that’s the joy of travelling. A place is never how you think it’s going to be, but seeking the different is what is exciting. Stay tuned for the next blog where we’ll share our adventures in Scotland - my new crush. Thanks for sticking it out and reading along!

#united kingdom #uk #travel #tea #explore #england

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lastbluetardis · 6 years ago

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Sweet fucking Jesus, my sister is a trainwreck.

So let’s hop on back to Winter 2017-18 when my sister starts emo posting on Facebook about being upset/pissed/betrayed etc etc etc which, when I asked her about it, she had told me that her boyfriend had made out with another girl, and had fallen in love with this girl. Okay, so I figure she’s breaking up with him, moving out, and potentially moving back in with out mom with her three-year-old daughter.

Alas, when I ask my sister, she says she’s giving her boyfriend another chance. I warned her that once a cheater, always a cheater, but she disregards my advice, saying that she doesn’t want her daughter to be raised in a broken home. Which like... a father who constant cheats and pisses away any money he comes across is considered “unbroken”??? But whatevs.

Let’s hop forward to April 2018 and my sister admits to my mom that she’s pregnant (due at the end of September 2018). I guess all that makeup sex went unprotected? Though later she admits that she was trying to get pregnant again. My sister says that her boyfriend was totally on board with this and wanted another kid, but my sister is a pathological liar, so who the fuck knows. My guess is that she got pregnant again in the hopes that would force her boyfriend to stay/be faithful.

Let’s hop forward again to July-ish, when my sister again starts emo posting on Facebook, and I assume her relationship has tanked once more. But nothing really comes of it so I assume she forgave her boyfriend and they’re continuing to live in unhappy sin together.

Now let’s hop again to Labor Day 2018 (which is like... September 3rd. Keep in mind she’s due with Baby #2 on September 23rd), and she tells my mom that she needs to move back home because her boyfriend wants to live with “the love of his life” (girlfriend 2.0, as my mom and I call her). So my sister is nine months preggo and moving back into my mom’s basement with her four-year-old daughter.

Now, I don’t particularly mind my sister moving back when she needs help. That’s fine and all. But I take issue with the fact that she just assumes my mom will bail her out of her messes, and the fact that my sister had expressed no gratitude whatsoever about moving back home again with a four-year-old and an eventual newborn. It’s like my sister expects the aid.

All right, so the whole point of my sister moving home again was to help her get back on her feet. She worked at a job that pays $11.50 an hour, so after taxes and crap, she’s only bringing home about $400-450 every week. So that’s roughly $2000 per month. There’s no fuckin way she can afford rent and daycare and all the other expenses that comes with existing. So anyhoo, she moved home to save up her money and find a better-paying job so that she could eventually make it on her own (assuming her ex-boyfriend pays child support).

Let’s hop forward to December 2018. My sister at this point found a slightly better paying job, so that’s good, but it starts at 6am and the daycare doesn’t open until 6:30. So my mom’s on daycare drop-off duty. Which, whatever. I wouldn’t have done that in my mom’s shoes, but I’m not in my mom’s shoes.

Anyhoo, my sister eventually starts visiting her ex-boyfriend’s mom’s house all the time. Which I think it a little weird, but my sister has a decent relationship with her ex-bf’s mom, so fine, whatever. But eventually it was getting to be ridiculous. The mom lives a good 45 minutes away, so my sister is pissing away all this money on gas, and keeping her kids out until 9-ish at night, when my mother has to be the one to get them up the next morning for daycare. My four-year-old niece fucking haaaaaates waking up in the mornings. Hates it. And she’s got enough behavioral issues anyway, so while she should be past the temper-tantrum stage, she’s not.

Anyhoo, my mom goes to drop the kids off at daycare one morning and one of the aids mentions to my mom that my sister’s supposedly-ex-boyfriend has been with her when she’s been picking up the kids lately. Which is fuckin weird.

So my mom confronts my sister about whether she is back together with her boyfriend (and I should mention that a stipulation of my sister moving home again was that if she ever got back together with her boyfriend, she had to find another place to live. She and her boyfriend had lived with us for a year back when my sister had her first kid and it did not go well. Her boyfriend is a lazy, manipulative ass, and this on-again off-again relationship they’d had since Winter 2017-18 is not healthy for my sister at all).

My sister says yeah, they’re back together. She even paid the January rent on the apartment that ex-bf and girlfriend 2.0 are living in! (I think it’s so fuckin weird that my sister wants to get back with her boyfriend even while his new girlfriend is living at the apartment...)

So my mom says that my sister needs to be moved out by January 12th. This conversation happened shortly after Christmas. Well, a day or so before New Year’s Eve, my sister tells my mom that she and her boyfriend are not getting back together after all.

In my opinion, my sister should be forced to move out. She got back together with her boyfriend, even if it was only for like a week. But my mom has the biggest fucking heart in the world, and for some reason has this guilt complex that she wasn’t as good of a mom to my sister as she was to me. Which I don’t know where that came from, but my sister loves to rub it in my mom’s face that my mom did more stuff with me than with my sister.

So my mom lets my sister stay.

Fast-forward to today. My sister is evidently back with her boyfriend. Again. My mom is so upset and adamant that my sister has to move out this time. I’ll believe that when I see it.

So yeah. That has been my life for the past four months. And I’ve left out about half of the story because this post is already so fucking long and my hands are cramping.

I’m just so angry and upset. At my sister for manipulating and using my mom like this. At my mom for bending over backwards to try and help my sister. I’m just furious at everything and everyone, and I hate my sister so much. I hate her for not only fucking up my mom’s life but for fucking up her kids’ lives. My sister is a very lousy and lazy parent, and so is her boyfriend. My four-year-old niece has behavioral issues in part because my sister and her bf refuse to discipline her. And my four-year-old niece isn’t toilet trained yet. That’s fucking ridiculous. She turns five in April! And she can’t piss in a toilet! And my niece has really bad eczema that needs to be treated by a child dermatologist but my sister is too lazy to make appointments for her child. My mother made an appointment for my niece and took her back in December, where she was given a prescription. Well guess what. It’s the middle of January and my sister still hasn’t picked up that fucking prescription.

I’m so exhausted from this whole fucking ordeal and I want to scream at my sister until I’m blue in the face. But it won’t fucking help. Any time my mom or I try to talk to her, all we get are blank stares and shrugged shoulders. My sister needs serious fucking counselling. Though I probably do too. I’ve been considering calling the university’s counselling center and getting myself an appointment to see if it will help me deal with this anger I feel all the time.

Good God this has been exhausting to even write about, and I left out so many details. How on Earth did me and my sister even come from the same sperm and egg pool? This is fucking insane and I feel so bad for my poor mom for putting up with all this shit.

#.#..#...#....#.....#long post #personal rambling under the cut #my family is a fucking mess #don't reblog pls #shit ash says #tbd #i'm mostly just writing this to get my frustration out in words

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whatthefuckisasweep · 3 years ago

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I posted 924 times in 2021

34 posts created (4%)

890 posts reblogged (96%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 26.2 posts.

I added 625 tags in 2021

#assassins creed - 133 posts

#ac - 116 posts

#connor kenway - 71 posts

#ratonhnhaké:ton - 61 posts

#rvb - 51 posts

#ac3 - 51 posts

#aciii - 40 posts

#jacob frye - 35 posts

#haytham kenway - 34 posts

#gifset - 33 posts

Longest Tag: 117 characters

#i just saw a yt comment saying connor doesnt have the mental strength as ezio or altair and i just lost it internally

My Top Posts in 2021

Im just thinking about the growth and meaning thats shown through the statement of “because no one else will”. Ratonhnhakè:ton could have said “for my people”, he could have said “to find you”. but no. because no one else will. it is not only for his people, not for his own personal gain, but because Lee is trying to take control and it takes a dedicated mad man to stop him. he sees it now. even after all of the Revolution, after how he was treated by the side he was supposedly on, he believes in the notion of freedom above all, as cruel as it is to him. he believes a free choice to do good is the only good that is worth it. bc. no one else has that faith anymore. So it is his duty, his obligation, to keep it alive.

it is so insane. so so insane to believe that above what happened to his family, above his very own life, above his own status as an assassin (connor tells Aveline when she asks if he ever doubts the brotherhood: “i trust my hand”) , Ratonhnhakè:ton still chose the notion of humanity’s freedom. just. that statement, “because no one else will”, kind of says, “if its mad to believe in people’s free will so that they can choose to be good instead of forced, then so be it. yes, i am mad, i am that one in a million who believe that, yes. and, in fact, I am going to choose good on purpose, i am choosing to believe it, even if no one else on planet fucking earth is left to be kind anymore. why??? because i fucking am.” its the type of dedicated stubborn that is the complete opposite of cynical, bitter, and selfish.

i cant imagine reading connor as “angry”, “whiny”, or “driven by revenge”, i have no idea where people pull that from.

104 notes • Posted 2021-09-16 06:19:38 GMT

new assassin intimidation method just dropped ft. kenways

124 notes • Posted 2021-08-16 18:57:40 GMT

hey, everyone. i dont want to ask much but im in a huge bind. i am not the type to talk about myself or my life but. right now i need as much help as i can get.

I am moving into an apartment soon, and my school covered all my costs until this year. due to my PARENTS tax information they only JUST NOW REVIEWED, they are deeming my financial need to be 0. This is untrue. my father is old, 70+, and he does not work. my mother works a minimum wage job. my brother is in highschool. me and my brother dont have cars, so we cannot commute to work. the reason why we were denied is because our taxes were high last year due to my mother giving into gambling for a while (but she is much better now). this did not earn us much profits, as you can imagine. with COVID and family matters we placed our finances elsewhere, not expecting this. but now… we 100% cannot pay for our tuition + apartment with FIVE roommates - as a dean’s list who just received admission into my major, I cannot pay to get in.

So, I am getting a loan. But the loan can only reach a certain amount for my year. But. I had a scholarship that covered a lot. I thought I was guaranteed that scholarship as long as I had good grades, but I guess I was wrong. It was canceled too, just today, and I do not know why. My parents have horrible credit due to their own past mistakes too, and it is affecting me and their ability to get a loan themselves. We didnt expect this, so I already signed the lease to my apartment. Everything is so last minute that we have decided to sell our house of 19 years that I grew up in, but it will take a while and tuition, rent, food stuff, and moving in is all urgent soon. I am so shellshocked about how quick this happened and how little time I have to fix it, and how slow the contact with any help has been that it’s just been a week of feeling like i have no good luck left. just one thing after another coming down.

If we can just earn the scholarship money back - $4,000 - then we should be good for now. We will need this before October 15. Please, if you can, share this and boost it. If you want anything, commission or a fic, just hit me up and I will do my best to fulfill what you ask and give you something for your work. My comms sheets are attached too, below the cut.

My paypal is janana7676

My venmo is janana76

Literally anything helps, even a dollar or a reblog

Thank you.

155 notes • Posted 2021-09-11 10:01:46 GMT

i cant get over the fact that connor destroys his own dad’s nuts in hand to hand combat. it is so FUCKING funny to me that he punched his snooty british father in the ding dong and then haytham proceeds to monologue abt how connor cant match him as if that didnt happen. what the fuck. its such a serious scene but. god why is that comedy gold.

161 notes • Posted 2021-08-03 10:00:46 GMT

having played almost all main ac games (from AC1-Syndicate), I gotta say Ratonhnhakè:ton remains my favorite Assassin. While I find every protagonist really compelling and often moving, I think Connor’s story and lesson he takes away applies so beautifully to life + game says a lot about history.

That no matter how bitter, tasteless, disgusting, disgruntling, and horrid the world is you can still change it and rebuild it. that losing naiveté doesnt mean you have to lose your hope or your kindness. you can lose everything but you can still be kind, see that there is good in the world, and believe in it, hope in it, nurture it into change. that your history and heritage can and should follow you wherever you go and be respected. That you dont have to forgive people that wronged you to be a good person - it is part of life to choose who we leave behind and who we trust. our trauma is our own, and we dont need to forgive anyone for our pain. we make our own families with love and care, but we fight our battles with our most powerful weapons and convictions we can. We must be ruthless to injustice, but so caring and warm to those we love. and, in the end, we must rely on ourselves to do what is right, because no one else will. that is what Connor learned, and it really connects with me.

And I feel like people dont really talk about Ratonhnhakè:ton as a legend in the AC universe as much as they should compared to Ezio and Altair. Like. He didnt have shit. No uncle, no assassin training, no friends, no money, no family, no love interest, no bureau or hideout — He had to fight to get Achilles to even ACCEPT him, and even then he rebuilt the Homestead from a shithole to a community with his own labor, lost his whole tribe, learned all the moves without Achilles’ physical help, single handedly destroyed the Templars in the Americas starting with NOTHING but being bossed around by leaders looking to take advantage of him, killed his own dad, trained recruits, got married, had kids, and lived a long healthy fucking life. He even trained his own daughter to be an Assassin and succeeded. At any moment he could have said, “yknow what. fuck this world and everyone in it. humans are shitty and life sucks”. But no. all of this he built on his own because he believed in humanity and change and just… did it without a complaint or even a brag. Because he decided “yknow what. people are still worth fighting for” AFTER ALL THEY PUT HIM THROUGH. And that’s why Connor has to be my favorite Assassin.

Also the sass he has is unmatched. No offense but his glare is the funniest shit. He doesnt even need words and it cuts like a knife LMAO

215 notes • Posted 2021-09-10 10:01:29 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

#my 2021 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

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anyu-blue · 6 years ago

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Personal

Mobile keep scrolling. Read more vv

Bug infestation fyi.

I'm starting to get really worried...

Living here has turned into an absolute nightmare... It's nice to see the sun and to be on the top floor and have that sort of freedom and all.. but the bedbugs... I can overlook the slightly unpleasant neighbors. The thin walls. The crumbling roof (my ceiling is starting to get really bad). The leaks and places other bugs like to get in. I'm sure our neighbors do the same... But these bugs.

I didn't actually realize how tenacious and TINY they are. A female can only lay one egg a day, but in the buggy would.. that's a lot. And there only needs to be one male and explosions are imminent. Can even be from an egg she just laid, they don't have problems with inbreeding. And while a female can only mate once a day.. a male can mate with all females in his area.

So even one... One tiny, itty bitty bug that's oh so hard to see, let alone feel... Could spell disaster for an entire complex. Because those big ones I've been squashing.. yeah.. they're actually really old comparatively.. and all the new ones that have and will hatch.. smaller than a pin head. I'm only lucky enough to know that thanks to the massively gruesome display in my room rn... There are dozens.. dozens of tiny tiny, so small you wouldn't see them unless you were looking, corpses or possibly carapaces on my pad. With all the powder I've put in there they've dehydrated and ended up stopping where they were looking for food... I hope. I hope they aren't carapaces. They don't look to have moved either way.. I keep checking.. I have pictures.. but millimeters are a lot bigger to them than they are to me.... But I also keep finding more. I thought I'd just missed them initially, but I put something clean down in there a week or two ago and moved it a few days ago only to discover about 6 Tiny little dots on top of it... And a much larger, live buggy under it.

The diatomaceous earth works to a degree and I'm so grateful... But it's obviously not full proof.

....

We need to move. Because Tevie and I can't afford this place on our own...

I mean I MAY have about $200 extra by the end of the month to go towards a deposit on a new place... If our mother doesn't drop the ball on us and refuse to pay rent like she threatened... Which she can't technically legally do because she has so much of her stuff here... But may try anyway and I'm still really angry about...

But even then.. even if I DO have the extra... I can't think of a single place that will take us... Because of the risk. I don't WANT to infest a new place... I'm going insane enough as it is knowing THIS wasn't our fault....

I'm riddled with bites. RIDDLED. And I keep finding more. We even keep powdering... Tevie keeps vacuuming... I keep washing (hot water hot dryer) And the number doesn't go down. It's actually gone up. I didn't realize how bad the back of my arms were until I caught myself in the mirror today.

My legs. My feet. My back, belly, neck, shoulders, FINGERS (those ones suck). These are the ones I just happen to spot.. because they're red and puffy, but only for a maximum of 2 days before they disappear on me... And they've started itching... Due to the sheer number I may be developing the allergy.. or it's probably psychological which also isn't fun.

Who would WANT to take us in?

Even if we find someone.. which I am seriously starting to doubt... We have to get rid of so much... Tevie is distraught... Because she doesn't want to lose her bed.. or the body pillows I saved up to give her as gifts to help her sleep a few years ago... Every time I try to talk about moving she tells me to stop. To shut up... Because if we manage it.. it's going to be so hard. We're losing so much.. and we don't even HAVE that much...

I'm also worried that if we move someplace and some how manage to avoid transporting.... we're not going to be looked kindly on for sleeping/eating/spending so much time on the floor.. the couch where I'm sleeping now, the chair that goes with it, all the beds... All the pads... At least half our pillows. Blankets (especially comforters).. many clothes and our few storage thingys ( specificly ones with too small crevices).. any large/unwashable stuffed animals we still have... It all has to go. There's no way we can guarantee they'll be bug free... I'm honestly terrified I'm going to have to give up my Scooby too... My comfort blanket..

What will a landlord or property manager think when they come to check on us or if we need something repaired?

Most of the furniture we are using isn't ours anyway.. it's our mom's. Lucky me.. we've completely fallen out. There goes the kitchen stuff. Washer. Dryer.

I mean it FEELS bad enough... But for some reason people really judge hard too. We wouldn't be able to to have anyone over because of all we'll lose, and poor Tevie is even more upset because of that too. We will be lucky to have my TV and our games/stations maybe... But not right away because they will need full proof decontamination.. heavy cleaning and freezing if it won't kill them (ie any electronics).. if we can borrow a freezer or have one available to us.

I have already given Tevie my promise that no matter what, she doesn't have to sleep on the floor.. that she can have my hammock since it has made my old injury act up (mostly because I suck at sleeping correctly so I hurt myself unintentionally. Another reason I really miss having a bed.) But it makes her feel worse knowing she'll be taking it from me after I fought so hard for it (it's an old guilt thing having to deal with how she was kept in place specificly). But it's something we can clean and take with us with little danger.. I hope.

I just... UGH what do I do?

If we had.. gods.. idk.. if we had a $1000 gift even... We could manage to start over... to break our lease and throw 95% of stuff out... It would be no less painful, but we could get some cheap dressers or something brand new for storage.. air mattresses or cheap frames and pads for places to sleep.. a large freezer to salvage some clothes and blankets and anything that will survive a deep freeze, plus a place for food storage all in one.. or just a small, cheap new wardrobe if nothing else. Like $50-$75 each... Money for the cost of moving ourselves.. and a deposit, first month's rent.. just a start... Until we could start to save something. Anything.. to get whatever else we may need then want.

But then even a gift of $1000 would also devaste us rn..

Due to the reporting laws, After taxes, it would push us over the minimum income for a family of 2 per month and I'd lose my health insurance (means no meds). We could be turned away from housing due to having too much in the bank... Why are poor people not allowed to have savings anymore? Why is so much demanded up front when the reason people are going into programs is because they DON'T have it??

We could NOT report it.. and then potentially get fined for fraud...

Ugh... A lot of this is worst case scenario stuff... And I could have some things wrong here... But it's what's on my mind... And the very real possibility of living out of a car here in the near future.. if I'm even allowed to keep it. If I'm not... I lose my job, which everyone already knows... My dad will take Tevie and me in in a heartbeat.. but I can't risk infesting his or anyone he gets to help's house. He and our friends can't afford it any more than we can. None of them can.. there's already 7 of my family members living in that 3 bedroom house for Pete's sake... I'd sooner opt to throw ALL my stuff away, even the clothes on my back...

I can't tell what it's going to be yet. How far it all will go.. I just know it's going to be so incredibly difficult no matter what.

...

Slightly unrelated rant here..

Meanwhile my mom doesn't have to worry about a (crumbling) roof over her head because her bf's parents own his place from what I understand. While they may struggle like us to put food on the table here and there, she never has to fear homelessness. She has a bed, a dresser, plenty of furniture, space to be herself, support.. even a bf who wants to give her MORE of all of the above.

... She's also allowed up here with access to everything anytime (I've asked for a heads up of when she does want to be here only so I can be out of her way, but that's too disrespectful of me because she pays her portion of the rent, so she's never here)... And so is never high and dry or fearful... And so feels like it wouldn't be a terrible move to just drop this place and us altogether. To take what she wants and/or needs and leave without fear.

Tevie and I are on the brink of losing everything... And she just doesn't care. I'm still angry about that too. About her lies in caring about us.. because she clearly doesn't. She doesn't HAVE to go through this with us and has chosen not to. And I don't think there's anything I CAN do about that either. I wouldn't want to go through this either.. I mean I REALLY don't want to be going through it right now.. but I, for one, have refused to abandon my sister. My job. My pet. And my hobbies (for now).. which means keeping my clothes (work has dress code).. mandatory decent night's rests.. fighting the infestation/dealing with bites... Working on moving/losing stuff all by myself... It's exhausting.. and I'm terrified.. but I can't just run away from it... (Especially cuz I got no monies to do so).. I'm mad because she CAN.. perhaps, actually, jealous is a better word than mad... because I understand. As twisted and backwards as her logic is in a lot of places.. self preservation is pretty smart technically.. and dropping all of this does mean less stress for her which is important to life...

*sigh*... I think I will need to ask for help soon... I'm the thinker.. and I am struggling to think my way through this.

I'm struggling to find a way to remain or even BECOME independent like I want to be... ESPECIALLY Because of these bugs... If we could just move.. if there were no bed bugs. If the only obstacle was getting a place we could afford and moving Into that place.. we could do it... But losing near everything in order to do it... To have to rebuild so much.... (Beds.. heck FURNITURE is expensive)... I don't think we can do that.. not alone.

Not that, hey, a table is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY.. nor are chairs (posture can be worked on and upheld without those)... Nor are many pillows and blankets. One should do a person each... In Montana Winters it can get difficult.. but it's easily possible to sleep in sweaters and layers and stuff... Keep your head propped up carefully and it may be possible to avoid getting colds and back aches from sleeping on the floor too. And cats.. well they do need perches.. that bit IS important.. but they will gladly curl up next to you and in clothes to keep warm

Maybe I am overthinking... Maybe it's a GOOD thing to get rid of pretty much everything... I mean.. we don't NEED all of it... It's just nice.. don't need a dresser or books or a lot of clothes or a bed, really... We're human. We're animals... We're the only ones who have 'need' of these comforts and convieniences I'm so sad to lose... A nest is nice, but shelter is more important.. as is food.

Maybe... Maybe I can track down a 1 bedroom place we can afford instead of looking for a 2 bedroom and getting pegged with double the ridiculous prices... I mean.. without having living room stuff... The living room is just a room, right? It's technically my bedroom right now even... any kept TVs and electronics don't need to be off the floor if they're not plugged in...

... why am I freaking out exactly?

Well I certainly don't want to track in any bedbugs to a new place... That is valid... But the rest of it.. the rest of it does seem rather silly. I don't need to keep nearly as much as I want to. ... I suppose my biggest challenge now may be is working with Tevie to see this and be okay with it too...

Yay 3am second-wind ^^

#personal #random #ignore me #life in general #negative #bedbugs #bed bugs #no like being all itchy #but what ca ya do?#so tired...#but ive beem stressing a lot lately #and cut myself off from talking about it so i dont upset Tevie #but knowing my dad is always here for me.. it has been helping so much #realizing id be okay without anything i couldn't carry if i had to move in #with him... has helped me realize im probably being silly about my stuff #no one wants our porcelain dolls.. so i moght just throw all mine away tomorrow #as a start... it would be safer anyway because their boxes coild have buggies #in there or an egg stuck to them we can't see.#I'm certainly not putting those boxes into a freezer #they're too cumbersome #my grandmother is going to be PISSED.. but maybe she'll understand #our circumstances... or at least my mental state #maybe...

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miavortice · 7 years ago

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QWE: The Man She Left Behind - 6

Title: The Man She Left Behind

Summary: Eight years earlier, Ursa divorced and left a man she thought could not love her or their children and returned to the arms of her first love. Unfortunately, things did not work and Ursa decided to leave Ikem. When the jilted man comes back for her while she is staying with her friends, Ozai - the man she left eight years ago - reappears.

“I want to see them! Put them on the screen!” A throaty, rough voice filled the room as Lu Ten set up his phone beneath a large flat screen. He was fiddling with the touch screen, trying to get it connected.

“How’s that?” he asked. Behind him, Azula was sitting on the couch with Katara. On the floor before them were Zuko and Sokka. “Can you see them now?”

A laugh came from the speakers. “Not with you standing in front of the camera, my boy.”

“Sorry, Dad.” Lu Ten had a lopsided smile on his face as he stepped away. On the flat screen, they saw a man with hair more gray than black and a neat beard. He was seated in what looked like an office building, wearing a suit. A rotund old man, but he looked happy and kind, just like his son. “Can you see them now?”

“Ah! Yes, I can.” Iroh laughed once more. “Hello, everyone. I’m sorry I couldn’t join you tonight.”

“You’re in the Fire Nation, Uncle Iroh,” Sokka said. “It’s okay.”

Katara raised her arm, as if to answer a question in class. “Uncle Iroh, thank you for letting us stay at your family’s villa in Ember Island. This year, we’re going to bring Azula and Zuko. Is that okay?”

“Of course it is, Katara,” Iroh said. “I would be very happy to have my niece and nephew visit.”

“Un...Uncle Iroh,” Zuko said, blushing. “I sorry I don’t remember you much, but I hope we can meet you soon.”

“Yes, Uncle!” Azula said. “I left here when I was just a baby, so I don’t remember either.”

“I hope to meet you two in person soon, as well,” Iroh said, his voice softening. “But looking at you two...ah... Zuko, you look just like your father when he was your age and Azula...I can already tell you have that Souzin fire in you.”

Both children seemed to sit up straighter with pride.

Out of view from the camera, outside, on a wooden deck with the other parents, Ursa sighed at the scene. Part of her wanted to go in and greet Iroh, too, but a larger part of her was ashamed to show her face to him. Iroh was such a good man and treated her like his own sister. She didn’t want to face his disapproval for keeping her children away for so long.

In addition, she divorced his precious younger brother and, if Lu Ten’s words were true, broke Ozai’s heart - which she still doubted.

“And you’ll be joining us then, right?” Kya seemed to prod at Ozai from where she leaned against the wooden railing.

Ozai didn’t budge. “I can’t.”

“You always say that.” Hakoda sounded tired of excuses. “Come on, Ozai. This will be the first year Azula and Zuko will go since Zuko was born. You have to be there.”

“Besides, we always feel bad going. It’s your family’s place,” Kya said. Ozai gave her a dull look.

“My brother sent me photos of you all having a BBQ on the beach last year, having the time of your lives. How badly can you feel?”

“Okay, somewhat guilty,” Kya said.

“It just gets really good waves on your family’s beach...,” Hakoda added. “Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is that this year, you’ll all be joining us.”

“Wait, not me, right?” Ursa said, lowering the her glass of white wine and placing it on the patio table. She looked from her friends to her ex-husband with uncertainty.

“You’ll be there, too,” Kya said so confident that Ursa wondered if she already agreed to it and simply forgot.

She shook her head. “Kya, I can’t. I’m still looking for a place and then I have to move things in, not to mention start looking for a job. My prenup will provide just the basics and I won’t get it until after the divorce is settled.”

Kya wrinkled her nose and Hakoda rubbed his chin; a sign that they were both mulling over her valid point.

“Don’t you think you should go with the children. Won’t they feel uncomfortable with you present?” Ozai asked.

Ursa lowered her eyes. She doubted they would. “I’m afraid they may be used to it. I was away more often that I would’ve liked.”

“All the more reason for you to go, don’t you think?” Hakoda asked. “It’ll be good quality time with their mother.” He gave a pointed look at Ozai. “And father.”

“Hakoda-”

“It’s just for a few days and it’s a few weeks away,” Kya said. “At least think it over. Seriously. Ozai.” She gave him a slight glare and he rolled his eyes. She turned to Ursa with a more pleasant expectant look.

“I’ll give it a look, but in the off chance that I get a job-”

“If,” Kya stressed. “Until then, we’ll count you as going.”

Ursa sighed and conceded. “So stubborn.”

“I’m a determined woman,” Kya said, agreeing as she walked towards the open doors. “Iroh! Good news!”

“Kya!” Ursa ran after her, leaving the two men alone on the deck overlooking a freshly cleaned and filled swimming pool illuminated in the dark.

Ozai scowled and turned his irritation to Hakoda seated on a hammock chair. “I told you when you met her that she was trouble.”

Hakoda grinned and lifted his half empty scotch glass. “And what an amazing ride it’s been, my friend. You should get back on.”

Ozai grumbled and snatched the glass from Hakoda’s hand as he stomped back into his house. He paid no mind to his brother’s enlarged head on his flat screen on his way to the kitchen, but couldn’t ignore the humbled joy of Iroh’s voice.

“But Ursa, you must come,” Iroh said with clear insistence. “It would be a good change of scenery for you. I’m sure you’ve been so busy with getting re-settled.”

“Iroh, I’m still so busy. I mean, there are a few drama department positions I’ve applied to for the fall and not to mention looking for a new apartment.”

“Wait, wait.” Lu Ten stood up straight from where he was leaning against the wall. “Didn’t Uncle tell you that you can stay at my townhouse a few blocks from here. It’s not too far from Yang Chen Academy and it’s mostly furnished.”

Ozai looked up from the kitchen island where he was rinsing dishes. Ursa looked cornered and he almost felt satisfied. It would be difficult to reject such an offer now that it was out in the open.

“We can stay with cousin Lu Ten?” Zuko looked excited at the prospect.

“Well, at my place, yeah. I’m usually at my girlfriend’s.”

“You have a girlfriend!?” Zuko looked so impressed, Ozai was almost envious of the attention his nephew was getting.

Lu Ten’s face reddened and his eyes darted away. “Yeah...she’s from the southern Earth Kingdom and is finishing up her studies to be a wildlife veterinarian.”

Sokka was looking up at him with awe. “Is she pretty?”

“Sokka....” Kya frowned.

“Sorry...I mean, does she have a good personality?”

Katara sighed and shook her head at her brother. “See, this is why Suki doesn’t like you.”

He gave her a glare as Lu Ten laughed. “Very pretty and with an even better personality. We get along great, so the town house is yours.”

“That’s very kind of you, Lu Ten, but we still haven’t even discussed the rent-”

“Rent?” A confused look filled his face. “Auntie, I can’t charge you rent.”

“You’ll have to pay for utilities on your own, but no rent is needed,” Ozai said as he wiped his hands on a dish towel. “Besides, the town house has been paid off for years. It’s just property tax that’s due.”

Ursa took a step back and shook her head. “No, I won’t accept any such charity-”

“No one is saying anything of charity,” Iroh said, drawing everyone’s attention back to him. “Zuko and Azula will live there. They are my precious nephew and niece and you are their mother.”

“Didn’t I make it clear?” Ozai asked. “I take care of my own.”

The cornered look on her face fell as she paled and tore her eyes away. She wrung her hands together as a feeling of guilt swept through her. After vanishing from this family’s life, they would still offer her a home? How could she accept it?

Ursa could see the awaiting looks on Azula and Zuko, the concerned expression Lu Ten’s face, and Ozai’s look of calm expectation all fixed on her.

Everyone wanted her to say yes to taking over Lu Ten’s town house. Even Kya and Hakoda, who joined his wife at the doorway behind her, seemed to be waiting for her agreement.

But she bring herself to couldn’t agree.

She felt her eyes dampen. She didn’t deserve their kindness.

“Give her time to think about it.” Kya broke the silence and Ursa snapped her head back to her friend. A serious look was in Kya’s blue eyes as she met Ursa’s. “It’s close to the school, but there is still a work commute to take into consideration. It may be better to wait until she finds a job before committing.”

It was an excuse.

Ursa never thought about her commute; only that her children remained close to their friends and now, Ozai. However, it was a valid concern and while it didn’t matter to her, she was grateful to Kya for saving her once again. Kya gave her a slight nod of her head, a subtle que to agree.

“I’d like to be able to spend as little time in traffic as possible,” Ursa said, turning back to Lu Ten. She offered him a weak smile. “Not to mention get home at a reasonable time.”

“Well, at least come take a look,” Lu Ten said. “Check out the area and see where it stands. When you get a position, you can decide if the location works for you.”

That was the best she was going to get. At the very least, it bought her some time.

“That is a good idea, my boy,” Iroh said. “But in the meantime, Ursa, where will you and the children stay?”

“They can stay with us as long as they need to, Iroh,” Hakoda said as he put an arm around Kya, who nodded in agreement.

“But they can’t stay with you forever,” Ozai said.

“I don’t mind if they stay forever,” Katara said. “I like having them around.” Azula looked pleased by this and Zuko nodded.

“Yes, Kat, but you can’t be greedy,” Ozai told her, his voice a bit softer as he addressed the little girl. “I’d like to spend time with them, too.”

“Then we should move in with Dad as soon as possible!” Azula announced, as if it were the answer to all their problems. Her eyes were lit up as she stood up on the couch.

Her words were a blow to Ursa. “Azula, we can’t-”

“It’s perfect.” Azula continued on, her brows furrowing as they did when she was planning something. “If we move here, we’ll see Dad without him having to come to your house. And since he works a lot, we won’t miss him when he comes home because we’ll be here.”

Ursa ran her hand down her face.

“And we’ll be close by!” Now Zuko was voicing his approval and Ursa felt another blow. “We can walk home from school.”

Her children finally had their father in reach. She knew why they wanted to stay at his house, but she couldn’t. She could barely get through an afternoon with Ozai, how could she live with him day after day?

“And we can move in soon. Uncle Iroh, did you know we’re going to go furniture shopping for our bedrooms this weekend?” Azula said, looking up at the screen. “Zu-zu and I already picked our rooms.”

“We helped!” Katara added.

“Well, that’s wonderful to hear!” Iroh laughed, smiling with eyes filled with mirth.

“When can we move in?” Azula looked over the couch, to her father still in the kitchen. She looked so excited.

Ursa looked to Ozai, unsure of what he would say. To her surprise, he looked just as unsure. He lifted his eyes and met hers, as if asking what he should say.

And of all the things he had said and done that evening, his uncertainty was what overwhelmed her. Even then, after leaving him for another man and taking their children away, he would not make a decision on them without her approval.

“Ursa!” She heard Kya’s voice behind her as she ran down the hall.

“I forgot something at the house!” she said, shouting as she ran to the front door. She fumbled with the locks, ignoring Kya yelling for her as she ran out of the house on unsteady feet.

“Ursa!” A chill shot through her as she looked over her shoulder from the driveway. That wasn’t Kya’s voice. “Ursa, hold on!”

Every fiber of her being told her to do the opposite. She looked straight ahead and continued her attempted run in wedges to Hakoda and Kya’s house as Ozai ran after her. She could hear him catching up. Longer legs and an athletic body closed the gap between them in a matter of moments.

“Ursa!” She was nowhere near the other house when his hand grabbed her wrist. “Wait a moment! What is wrong with you, suddenly running out of the house?”

She glared at his hand rather than meet his face, knowing it would show unfamiliar concern instead of a stoic expression she associated with him.

“Nothing, I just remembered I forgot something at the house,” she said as she pulled back, trying to free her wrist.

“And so you’re running there now?”

“It’s my phone!”

“What are you talking about? It’s in your back pocket-”

“You know what I’m talking about!” She lifted her head and watched him jerk his back. His hand released her wrist and she stumbled backwards. She rubbed her wrist as she looked away once more.

“I’m sorry to have pushed you.” Ursa looked up once more. “I know being around me bothers you; I was unaware of how much. The children are of course welcomed at the house any time, but if you feel that uncomfortable-”

“How could I not feel uncomfortable?” Her voice was low and filled with unexpected anger. “Hospitality from Kya and Hakoda is one thing, but from you...from you and your family? After what I’ve done?” She shook her head. “How can you be so welcoming to me after I left you?”

Ursa almost missed the look of pain on his face at the reminder. Ozai took a deep breath, as if to collect himself before he answered.

“I take care of my own, and Azula and Zuko are my own.”

She pursed her lips. “And since I’m there mother, I just happen to be extended that care?”

Ozai said nothing as he seemed to study her. His eyes narrowed into an irritated glare. “Do you have a problem with that?”

“I’m not your wife any more. There’s no reason for you to be so...so....” She grit her teeth and her hands clenched. “To be so kind! I hardly know you. Since we got here, you’ve been kind and attentive. You’ve done nothing but show that if you were in their lives, you would’ve been a great father.”

“We don’t know that,” Ozai said. “When they were in my life, I was hardly around. I was a terrible one.”

Her eyes began to water. “You would’ve been a better one than Ikem.”

The words slipped from her mouth before she could stop them and Ozai’s face became unreadable.

“This is my chance to be their father,” he said, his voice almost unheard. “Agni knows Kya and Hakoda are drilling that into my head. I want to be their father. I want my daughter to call me to ask for souvenirs when I’m on business. I want to have water gun fights with my son. But I’m not going to ask you to come back to me and pretend we’re one happy family when you don’t want to be with me. If you’re worried that I’m going to make you live a life you don’t want, let me put your mind at ease. I don’t want to. I’m not going to, and I won’t use ‘trying to be a good father’ to make you.”

For a moment, Ursa felt the pit of her stomach drop. Was she disappointed? Was she angry at him?

Ursa lifted her hand and wiped her eyes. “I just don’t understand how you and your brother and Lu Ten can be so welcoming to me. I left you. I took our children away from you. You should hate me. Iroh and Lu Ten should, too.”

Ozai took another deep breath and gave her a small shake of her head. “Have you ever stopped to consider that perhaps we are so welcoming because we don’t want you all to leave again?”

Ursa stiffened, her hand stopped wiping her eye. “What?”

“It might not have changed anything, but perhaps if I had been more attentive and not so focused on work and my father’s approval....” He trailed off and his lips tightened into a line. “Mistakes were made on both our parts and I’d like to get over them so I can be the father they deserve. Iroh and Lu Ten were saddened and disappointed when we divorced, but they harbor no ill will. You saw how happy they were to see the children.”

“I wouldn’t deprive Zuko and Azula of there father now, or their uncle and cousin, so you don’t have to worry about us disappearing again,” she told him. “You don’t need to give me a place to live and take me on vacation just so you won’t lose them.”

Ozai’s eyes narrowed. “Is that what you think? If you are adamant on refusing any assistance, fine, but don’t assume I’m only offering help because I’m afraid you’re going to leave with them again. They’re my children and it’s my duty to care for them.”

Ursa inhaled a sharp breath, her wide gold eyes staring stunned at Ozai. “Your duty?” She almost choked. “Is that all?”

“Of course not-”

“Why can’t you just say you love them?”

“Why can’t you just accept that I do.”

She drew her head back. A voice in her mind answered: because she wanted to hear him say it. She just wanted to hear it...that maybe hearing him say he loved someone would confirm that he wasn’t an emotionless, single-minded man who valued work over family.

“Fine,” she said. “I would like you to remain in their lives; they can’t go back to how it was before. But I want to be clear: I can take care of myself and our children without your help if I had to.”

The stern look on his face never faltered. “I never said you couldn’t.”

“Well...you’re making it appear like I can’t.” His lips were still tight, but she could see a small flicker of surprise in his eyes.

He swallowed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t realize our pushing made you feel as if that were the case, especially in front of the children. That was not our intention.”

Ursa forced herself to keep her eyes on his and not to waiver. “I won’t stop you from being a father and supporting them, but you don’t need to provide for me, too. That’s all, Ozai.”

Ozai nodded. “I’ll speak to Lu Ten about the town house. However, the trip to the villa...please seriously consider it. I’m sure Azula and Zuko want you to go and besides, when was the last time you went home?”

Ember Island hadn’t been her home for years. Her eyes crinkled up. She couldn’t remember. Did she ever go back with Ikem? It was their home island and yet they never went back. Her father died shortly after she and Ozai were married and her mother moved to Republic City to be try to be closer to them before she died.

Ikem left the cremation early to shoot a film in the desert and her uncle flew her mother’s ashes back to the island. She hadn’t visited.

Ursa closed her eyes. “We didn’t go when I was with Ikem,” she said. Her voice was oddly flat and she was cold, as if she were empty.

Ozai cocked his head. “What about when Rina died?” He always referred to her parents by their first name, as they insisted. “Didn’t you take her back?”

“No, the cremation was in Republic City,” Ursa said. “Uncle Ran brought her ashes back.”

“I see.” His voice was strained. “I thought that since she was placed with your father, you had arranged it.”

“I did, but Uncle Ran brought her.” She paused for a moment and stared at him. “How did you know their ashes are together?”

“Someone mentioned it,” he said, nonchalant. Ozai looked over his shoulder, back towards his house. “What should I tell them?”

Ursa followed his gaze and saw the curtains in the front window move and the door close. “Azula will be crushed when I tell her we’re not moving in.”

“You’re not moving in,” Ozai said. “They will be, even if they’ll only stay here every so often.”

“Fair enough.” She took a deep breath and released it slowly. She reached into her back pocket and found her phone. She turned on the camera and used it to check her eyes. “My eyes are red.”

“Just a little.”

“Let me stay out here a bit longer...until it clears.”

Ozai nodded. He took a step to return to the house, only to stop and look back at her with a quizzical expression.

“By the way, what did you want to talk to me about?” “What?”

“Earlier, you said you wanted to talk to me. Was it about the town house?” he asked, once more sounding as if it were business.

Ursa furrowed her brows, trying to remember. At once, her face began to heat up. Lu Ten’s voice echoed on her ears: ‘he loved you’. She looked away, embarrassed, and shook her head.

“It was nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

He looked a bit sceptical, but nodded. “All right.” He began to walk back to his house. He made it three steps before she opened her mouth.

“Wait, Ozai.” He looked over his shoulder and she cursed her curiosity. “This is a ridiculous question, or rather thought, but earlier, when we arrived...Lu Ten mentioned that you were devastated when I left. I think he got the wrong idea. I know you were angry, but I don’t think you were devastated.”

Ozai looked as if he were ready to lecture his nephew. He turned to face her once more. “If you must know, Lu Ten doesn’t have the wrong idea. I was indeed devastated when you and the children left.”

Of course - because she took the children. Seeing how he was around them now, it made sense. Ursa nodded. “I see.”

Ozai gave her a nod and turned back to the house. “No man wants to see the three people he loved most leave.”

She stood outside for a few moments longer, trying to dissect his words, but not coming up with any satisfying answer. Ozai said the ‘L’ word. The last time she heard him say it, it was during their wedding vows and she was sure he only said it because he thought he was supposed to.

Days passed since she returned to Ozai’s house that night, assuring her children that she didn’t forget something as she thought. Kya and Hakoda didn’t pry, but sooner or later, Ursa knew she’d crack and tell Kya.

After all she told Kya everything. Everyone told Kya everything. She probably knew things that people didn’t know about themselves, so that afternoon, a day before they were supposed to leave for Ember Island, Ursa recounted Ozai’s words and received and an unimpressed:

“I told you.”

“That’s not what he meant.”

“How else could he mean it?”

“I don’t know, Kya, but I’m sure he didn’t mean it that way!” Ursa scowled as she folded laundry into three separate piles for her, Zuko, and Azula on her bed. Kya was pulling out the children’s suitcases from the top of the closet in the spare bedroom Ursa was in.

“Is it that hard to believe that he loves you?” Kya asked as she put Sokka’s blue spinner next to Katara’s, which bared some sea creature print.

“As a friend, no. I think after how long we have known each other, he had some affection for me, if only nostalgic.”

Kya snorted. “Some affection...please....”

“He probably cared for me, but it wasn’t like he was in love with me.”

“I can’t believe we’re middle aged women who are mothers and we’re actually discussing whether or not a guy likes you,” Kya said with a roll of her eyes.

“Fine, let’s change the subject. I’m more than happy to.”

“Okay, then. When do you start the drama department gig at the Ba Sing Se University Extension?”

“My first official day is in exactly a month and a half.”

“Then why aren’t you coming with us to Ember Island if you’ll be back a good three weeks before it starts?” Kya gave her an expectant look and Ursa sat up straight on the bed.

“I still have to go to some faculty meetings and talk to the other staff members. They’re in and out in the coming weeks, so I need to stay here to be able to catch all of them.”

Kya didn’t look convinced. “Uh-huh.”

“The department head wants me to be as caught up as possible.”

“I thought you’re working with first year students.”

“I am, but there is a rigorous curriculum they need to follow and I need to know the ins and outs of it before we start. I can’t go in there blind. I’ll look like an idiot and none of the kids will respect me. If they don’t, that’s it. Authority gone. No one will listen. They won’t get the education they deserve,” Ursa said.

“And you can’t do any of this at the villa?”

“I won’t get anything done. You know I’ll focused on the kids.”

“Hakoda, Iroh, Lu Ten, and I will all be there to watch them, so you’ll have time to go over coursework,” Kya said.

“With how awkward it will be staying at my ex-husband’s family’s beach villa? Every red column and tile will scream the Sozin name.”

“Is that so bad?”

“Yes, because I divorced from it.”

Kya sighed. “Your children are still legally Sozin.”

“I never got the chance to change it to Hiraa,” Ursa said,squirming in her seat on the bed. “Anyway, they won’t miss me. I’ll call in the evenings, Sokka and Katara are there for them to play with, and besides, Ozai will be there and I’m sure they’ll be clamouring for his attention.”

“Yes, but he’ll only be there the last week and a half.”

Ursa snapped her head up. “What? I thought he was going with you.”

Kya shook her head. “They just won a bid they put in with a Western Nomad Territory transportation firm and Ozai has to go over the final details with their executive committee. Their sales team just closed it last night.”

Ursa’s face fell. “Azula and Zuko will be so disappointed.”

Kya glanced out the window, where screaming could be heard from the pool as another water gun assault was in the midst of taking place. “Ozai is said he would break it to them himself when he comes for dinner this evening.”

“He did?”

“Yeah...I mean, Hakoda told him to, but he said he would.” Kya looked back at Ursa. “There is still a chance for you to come if you tag along with him.”

“Not going to happen,” Ursa said. “Besides, he’ll be in in the Nomad Territories.”

“No, he won’t. Their executive committee is coming here so they can tour the data center.”

For a moment, Ursa panicked at the thought that she’d be alone with Ozai, but logic quickly quelled it. “Still, it’s not like I’ll see him. We’ll both be working. I doubt he’ll drop by if you and the kids aren’t here.”

Kya sighed, resigned. “I suppose you’re right. Anyway, did you make an appointment with Lu Ten to see his town house yet?”

“No, I didn’t get his info. I was hoping you could call him?”

“So, you’re actually interested?”

“I just want to give it a chance. He already thinks badly of me, I don’t want to make it worse.” “Ursa, he wouldn’t be offering his home if he thought badly of you.”

“I would think badly of me.”

“Okay, you have to stop. No one here hates you,” Kya said, about to drag the luggage out of the room to have the children pack them under her supervision. “Just accept some help from old friends.”

Ursa watched her friend walk out of the room, two bags in tow, and let out a heavy sigh as Kya closed the door behind her. “Easy for you to say...you didn’t take your kids away from their father.”

She fell back on the bed and released a heavy breath. She still had to pack Azula and Zuko’s things for their trip, though Azula already had a packing list ready. She had Ozai look over it for his approval and “in case she forgot anything”.

Ursa knew that they wouldn’t want for anything at the villa. Snorkel gear? Done. Life vests? Check. One word and Iroh would have a boat ready to set sail for his niece and nephew. Lu Ten would arrive later along with his girlfriend, but he’d probably spoil the children, too.

A small knock sounded at the door and she remained laying on the bed, staring at the ceiling.

“Come in.”

“Ursa, I apologize for bothering you.” She shot up in bed at the sound of that deep, solemn voice that seemed to haunt her as of late. Her wide eyes stared at the door as it opened enough for a person to peek through. “May I have a moment of your time?”

Her first thought was there was no where for her to hide, but she quickly shook it out of her head. She was a grown woman, such a thought was unbefitting. Yet, her eyes still darted around the room or a place to dive into and avoid coming face to face with her ex-husband.

“Ursa?” He called out again and she tensed, still seated on the side of the bed. How long was she panicking?

“Sorry, yes, can I help you, Ozai?” Good. Her voice wasn’t shaking. She could do this.

The door creaked open a bit further and part of her died a little.

He was still dressed in his business suit. It was three pieces that time, most likely to deal with the the Western Nomad Territory transportation firm Kya mentioned. Of course he wouldn’t wear it to impress her.

“It doesn’t,” she muttered under her breath, despite knowing it was a weak lie. She always thought men looked good in suits and Ozai in black with a slight hint of blood red and gold in his tie and pocket square was no exception.

“What?”

“Nothing. Did you need something?” She forced herself to look attentive and ignore the blush on her face.

“Yes, actually you can. Did Kya tell you that I won’t be able to go with them on Friday?” he asked. She nodded.

“Congrats on landing the transport firm, but it looks like you’ll be stuck here for a while.”

Ozai shifted uncomfortably as he gave a small nod. “It’s a win for the company, but inconvenient. I haven’t told the children I’ll be arriving later.”

“They’re going to be very disappointed.”

“I know,” he said, frowning at the reminder. He met her eyes with firm ones. “I was hoping you’d help lessen the blow.”

She cocked her head to the side. “How so?”

“I’d like you to go to Ember Island.”

Ursa was already shaking her head. She stood up and dusted off her pale gray cotton jogging pants. “I’m sorry, but I have meetings and trainings to go during that time.”

“Surely you must have some time to spare.”

“I don’t. And even if I did, I wouldn’t have time to get ready and arrange a flight.”

“Don’t worry about the flight.”

She almost wanted to scoff. She shook her head and crossed her arms over her chest. She was almost insulted. Didn’t they just discuss this? “You don’t have to pay for my flight, Ozai.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Pay? I offered no such thing.”

Ursa had to check herself to make sure she didn’t jerk back in surprise. Her proud stance faltered a bit. “Then what are you saying?”

Ozai remained standing tall at the doorway. “I’m saying you’ll fly there on the Sozin jet.”

“That’s even worse!” Ursa couldn’t hold it back, her face reddening with embarrassment. “I can’t accept the jet coming just to pick me up!”

“Who said it’s picking you up?” The corner of Ozai’s lip curled upwards and her irritation flared. Was he amused at her frustration? “Iroh is sending it to pick me up,” he said in a matter-of-fact voice. “You’ll just happen to be there with me when it does.”

Notes: So you thought I was dead, huh? You’re only partially correct. I’m sorry for taking so long; I know this is just an exercise and I’m not under any promises to complete it, but I still kind of really do. Anyway, since it has been over a year, I’m going to try to make it up with a borderline-smutty chapter, I guess? Or maybe just have them hang out. IDK. Anyway, thank you for reading!

#ursai #urzai #ursa #ozai #au #atla fanfic #fanfiction #atla #fanfic #miavwrites #qwe #miavortice

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violetsystems · 4 years ago

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#personal

It’s been getting hard to keep track of all the misfortune lately on a microscopic level. This isn’t to say there’s some miniature secret world plotting against me or something. Maybe it is really the muons at work. Maybe it’s just people being collectively disrespectful. If anything is for sure, people out here in America act in groups more often than not. In Chicago, it’s easier to paint the picture because of a little known characteristic of my city called “corruption.” You are made to think you are the problem. That you aren’t following the rules. These rules aren’t things you can actually follow like tax law or anything. If anything my taxes this year extended my time to wait all of this out. But I’ve been waiting all this out for over two decades essentially. I was reminded of this yesterday shopping downtown when I wandered past my ex girlfriend. I haven’t spoken to this person for years. Never would speak to this person. I’ve run into my car in the neighborhood when I’m on the wrong side of it. The car I gave up to walk away and never look back over a decade ago. I’ve been suggested her as a connection on LinkedIn more than once. Sometimes through an email at 4:20 in the morning from the service. For whatever reason the Earth’s magnetic poles lead sharks like me around the city with no plan, I sure run into a lot of people. This is while spending about 11 months completely alone aside from run ins with goods and services. I occasionally nod to my neighbors. The landlord installed a new lock on the front gate which is left unlocked most of the time. I had a package stolen again a couple of weeks ago. We didn’t talk about it. It just seems coincidental that now we have a lock. It’s not the first time I’ve had my packages disappear. It’s not the first time for anything in this city. And again it’s not the first time I’ve seen my ex in passing scowling back at me. She wasn’t wearing a mask. Thankfully I was. I’ve given up trying to explain this to anybody but the internet. And even in that, this site is theoretically dead to most people in mainstream society much like me. Gaslighting is tied to a myriad of behaviors that people use to exert control. Think of all the shitty men out there who neg women to groom, shape and mold them into liking them. Think of this done in collective way. Like a mob. Or a commune. Whatever you call it, it’s not something you can actively fight against yourself. Sure I have this online outlet. But most of us get at this point that I’m not looking to connect with mainstream society after being exiled from it like it was a cult. Typical cult behavior is to alienate and isolate the victim. Kind of like the army. You break down someone’s resolve to the point where they have no choice to give up and accept the way. That this is your home. This is your path. This is your destiny. That this is all you are worth. That you are being unreasonable thinking there’s anything wrong. That you should just give up and assimilate to the group. Except in my case, there’s no option or way forward. If my self confidence were lower or my bank account far less liquid I’d be on the ropes by now. And yet things just keep getting worse when it comes to what this city projects at me. It’s completely full of shit and not even remotely concerned in hiding it. I could never prove any of this behavior towards me is organized. So I don’t. I don’t waste my time other than writing it out on the internet to show I’m not crazy. But the city is against me at every step outside my locked gate. Inside my rent is paid and I have a silent agreement at best. At least I can be trusted to keep a secret.

Trust is something that can’t be recovered with mere words. I’ve known for awhile I’ve been held to a completely different standard. It’s hard to quantify. As much as I’d like to think this is a dead site, I know those very same people stalk every word I say. It’s a fucked up situation that just keeps getting deeper into a hole no one can crawl out of. I’ve spent my time being vague and cautious. I’ve focused more on my fiscal health through this which is better than it has ever been. Sans identity theft ever few weeks. This is a reality that I live that has gone way beyond a line of normalcy. I’m supposed to just sit here mothballed, exiled and benched. I’m supposed to sit here and take it while people watch on some scary collective level. I’m not too paranoid about anything. Honestly I’m the least paranoid I’ve ever been. I’m just simply bored with the inefficiency of it all. You really want to sit here and tell me that it’s my fault. That it’s about me “getting out there” and getting “out of my comfort zone” when I spent years travelling by myself to Asia, New York and as far as New Zealand. These are journeys I’ve written about at the level of a fifth grade writing teacher. And still nobody can bother to accept that I’ve been around the block more than once. It’s as if I don’t matter unless I reach out to someone. Which I have for years on this platform. I’m comfortable with that. To be this invisible after all the shit I talk is a mindfuck. I wonder why I even talk shit at all anymore. I wonder why I don’t just wall myself up in my apartment and never see the light of day. I wonder a lot of things. I wonder how deep this pain will get over time. I wonder why people think this is completely normal to put a person through what I’ve been through. What does this prove exactly? To me it proves that I am worth it. And self confidence in this situation is the biggest mother fucker there is. Because everyone would rather resort to chipping away at your defenses than getting to know who you really are. I’d be more bothered if I cared about it. But we are in the middle of a crisis. I have been quarantined and isolated from everything alone. I have been followed, gossiped about, threatened, and intimidated most every day of the week for over a year. I don’t really care. I have reached a limit in which I constantly feel like telling the world to fuck off. I have spent years rattling away paragraphs that are harvested by some future algorithm to mine for some tortured sitcom version of Tenet. What the fuck is really going on here? I couldn’t ever tell you. None of how this has played out for me makes any bit of sense. I have nowhere to go. I have nothing to do. I have skills that are invisible. I have a professional network that pretends I’m not alive. I get winks and secret stares like I’m not in on some joke. That I’m outside whatever privileged simulation the rest of this city enjoys. I’ve given up trying to explain it. I never want to explain it. I never want to look back at all these sorry ass glances. I live in a city that plays by its own lawless rules and expects you to bow down and kiss it’s scrubby ass feet. While walking back to the train the other day I took the long way under the metra tracks. There’s a ton of homeless people living in tents. I walked past and an arm stuck out from one with a needle in the other hand. This tattooed motherfucker literally just shot up in front of me. Like it was some sick expression of freedom. This country is fucked up. This city is even worse. And people think like I’m living some charmed, bargain basement life. Like it’s cool to be poor. Like it’s divine to suffer and struggle so that the rest of these people can pretend it never happened. This is real life in Chicago. Home of the free and land of the gaslighted.

I don’t know what to say or do anymore. I know this is some sort of epilogue. That it really doesn’t matter. I’m going to spend an entire summer alone again. Just to prove a point. Then come September I’m going to have to make the decision to leave. There are no answers. No opportunities. Nobody who wants to see this all happen to me and point a finger back at society. I’m not tortured enough. I’m not part of some community other than a dead website people make fun of. I don’t have a fucking future here. I get scammed. I get conned. I get catfished looking for jobs. I get sidelined. I get benched. I get picked over. And I get it. If we really look at the way the entertainment industry and the media work everyone pays attention to two week cycles. In the last two weeks, people have copied every single idea and claimed it their own. Just like the two weeks before that. People make it all about them and forget what inspired them. And people move on to the next thing to consume. They have no focus. They churn around trying to be like everyone else and become more the same. I’ve been a musician. I’ve been a rapper. I’ve been host. I’ve been a commentator. I’ve been a writer. I’ve been a lot of things. And I’m still completely invisible except even more so. It’s like a joke to some people. They get off on cucking me in front of my face. Like they’re so much better at expressing their freedom than me. These people are toxic and inefficient as fuck. You can’t express freedom in one breath at the expense of somebody else’s. You cannot do that in an organized mob like fashion on the internet. If you do, the DOJ will find you. And you will need a fucking lawyer. And this is what I tell myself when I get really mad. That I will have the last laugh. That I will be able to wait it out. That things will have changed after July 4th when the city reopens. We can all laugh and dance the pain away. We can all conveniently ignore the shady bullshit that I experienced up front and center. This is a dangerous reality. That after July it will be a year since I was let go. A year of being invisible taking care of my own shit. A year of me telling you I told you so only to be gossiped behind my back like I’m crazy. I’m ok with walking away from all this shit and starting over. I already did that. It’s a fucking insult I live every day people thinking they know everything about me and never even asking my fucking name. And yet I don’t really care. It’s not worth my fucking time to care anymore. I don’t exactly know the way forward. I’m trapped in a situation that would make normal people’s eyes bleed. I write here out of frustration knowing full well it’s not something I control. I can’t do anything about this. So I figure out ways to pass the time like I’m in some sort of jail. Does it matter? On a small level yes. I do understand that there are people out there that care about me equally as much. This is why I stay down here. A joke. Anonymous proof that everyone is pretty much full of shit when they talk about me behind my back. And yet it gets worse. Who did I piss off? I don’t mind that I did. I’m kind of proud actually. Because if I pissed you off being me it means I got under your skin. It means ultimately I’m better than you can ever be. And you’ll tear your own skin off trying to live in the shadow of mine. Nobody can ever be me. Nobody can ever copy my shit and be authentic. This is what we need to focus on. Authenticity. For all the shit people talk about me, I don’t need to say a word. You can make fun of me in front of your coworkers or friends at the bar. Somebody will always be in the shadows listening to your bullshit. And your bullshit is so obvious these days. I have no choice but to wait it out and watch you eat the shit you’ve been shoveling for decades. How I’m going to do that should be obvious by now. Nothing has changed. Everything else is a secret. <3 Tim

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edwad · 7 years ago

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“labor is the source of all wealth.”

to start with, the pretty obvious nod being attempted here is toward marx’s theory of value and the related notion of surplus value, but to quote marx himself from one of the first lines of the critique of the gotha programme, “labor is not the source of all wealth.”

the reasoning he gives is that wealth is conceived of as being material wealth, that is, use-values. marx goes on to say “Nature is just as much the source of use values (and it is surely of such that material wealth consists!) as labor, which itself is only the manifestation of a force of nature, human labor power.” in c1.1.2 he says something similar:

“Use-values like coats, linen, etc., in short, the physical bodies of commodities, are combinations of two elements, the material provided by nature, and labour... When man engages in production, he can only proceed as nature does herself, i.e. he can only change the form of the materials. Furthermore, even in his work he is constantly helped by natural forces. Labour is therefore not the only source of material wealth, i.e. of the use-values it produces. As William Petty says, labour is the father of material wealth, the earth is its mother.” (p133-4, penguin edition)

but even more can be said than that. outside the realm of purely concrete articles and into the realm of value, that abstract quantitative form of wealth, there are commodities which are bought and sold without any value bound up in them. at the end of c1.1.1, marx gives the following examples: “Air, virgin soil, natural meadows, unplanted forests, etc.” clearly people can still own these, which shows that they are materially wealthy despite the fact that these commodified products of nature are untouched by human labor, but more importantly they can be priced without any reference to their labor costs or a marxian value theory in general. this means that money can be made off of the sale of such commodities without any physical intervention. this might be a purely fictitious transaction and considered peripheral to the “real economy” of industrial production (often contrasted with the “FIRE” sectors: finance, insurance, real estate), but it happens nonetheless and people can be made wealthier (in both senses) because of it.

“to make a profit, a capitalist must sell a product for more than what it cost to pay the laborers that produced the product.”

this is true, but it doesnt mean much, in terms of the difference between the two amounts, yes the price of a day’s worth of products has to be more than a day’s worth of wages in order to afford to reproduce the commodity the next day, but labor is not the only cost. the capitalist also often has to pay rent to the landlord, taxes to the state, and for all sorts of other things which do not necessarily figure into the value of the commodity but do factor into its price. much of this can still be understood in terms of the distribution of surplus value, but often without reference to the living labor which is directly producing commodities for this capitalist today.

there is also a whole world of “unproductive labor” which, to use the terminology of the physiocrats, would be considered “sterile” in that they are, as far as price-formation is concerned, only a cost, but as far as profiteering goes, a necessary one.

the above sentence is crude and almost suggests that the only cost to production is wages, which is cartoonish and obviously untrue. this is the sort of stuff that makes people assume we know nothing about economics, and if this is what we’re putting out into the public eye, we’re only making ourselves look bad.

“the laborers do not get paid the full value of their labor.”

this, again, is trying to emulate the rhetoric of exploitation in the marxian sense, but it completely misses the point. one of marx’s most important contributions in his critique is his assertion that workers dont sell labor, but rather their labor-power (their capacity to do labor, rather than its actual concrete output). a burger flipper gets paid the same wage for each hour of work, whether the restaurant is busy or not. the number of burgers put together have no effect on the hourly rate. it is clear from this that laborers do not get paid the full value of their output (sometimes they would actually make less if this were the case!), but marx’s critical point is that this doesnt come about through some sort of bizarre imbalance in the wage-form, where workers are structurally underselling their commodity, labor-power. in fact, exploitation can occur without any infringement of the laws of commodity exchange. the wage can be perfectly equal to the value of labor-power, and therefore workers could receive the full value for their commodity in its sale, whose use-value is to create more value for its buyer. marx makes this crystal clear in c1.7.2:

“The use-value of labour-power, in other words labour, belongs just as little to its seller as the use-value of oil after it has been sold belongs to the dealer who sold it. The owner of the money has paid the value of a day’s labour-power; he therefore has the use of it for a day, a day’s labour belongs to him. On the one hand the daily sustenance of labour-power costs only half a day’s labour, while on the other hand the very same labour-power can remain effective, can work, during a whole day, and consequently the value which its use during one day creates is double what the capitalist pays for that use; this circumstance is a piece of good luck for the buyer, but by no means an injustice towards the seller.” (p301, my emphasis)

what this amounts to isnt really a marxian view (and if it were to be restated in marxian terms it would be hardly revolutionary, considering “exploitation” for marx isnt really a moral concept in and of itself) but rather a ricardian socialist view, which generally suggests workers get full remuneration even of value-added, where laborers WOULD get paid the full value of their labor, but this isnt what marx wanted and it isnt what anybody working in the marxian tradition should want. the political future we ought to have in mind isnt simply a fairer system of distribution (inseparable from the mode of production anyway) but rather the destruction of capitalism and the value-structure itself. to quote marx again,

Instead of the conservative motto: “A fair day's wage for a fair day's work!” they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword: “Abolition of the wages system!"

it ought to be clear that the concern for the full value of our labor has some truth to it but is misplaced and often practically misleading.

“profit is unpaid labor.”

as I already noted above, the system is much more complex than the crude labor-capital dynamic which this sort of logic rests on, and you can definitely talk about the ways in which modern profiteering has changed to include things like financialization, monopoly pricing, and the commodification of products nature, all of which will have some effect on profits outside of the realm of labor-time, but theres even more to say about the indirect link between surplus labor and profit-making.

its important to recognize that a worker who spends 10 hours producing knick-knacks, and whose daily wage is paid from the first 6 hours, has expended 4 hours of surplus labor over the 6 hours of necessary labor in order to reproduce themselves. the source of profit is generally located in this gap, and this is what marx termed “exploitation”. however, the very existence of the gap doesnt automatically mean that this surplus labor is converted into surplus value which is sold for an equivalent profit, or even a profit at all. its more than possible that, although the laborer was paid for the value of 6 hours rather than the full 10, the capitalist is unable to sell the knick-knacks at all and force a profit. much of the labor, at least in the terms set out here, would be considered unpaid, but there would be no profit in sight.

conclusion

what all this means is that there is a certain level of crudeness in anti-capitalist propagandizing which actually muddies the water more than it clears it. theres something to be said about avoiding jargon and over-complicating things, but oftentimes theres also plenty of danger in over-simplifying things, effectively obscuring all complexities and actually doing more damage than not. the outcome often makes us look dishonest or seriously ignorant, and therefore undeserving of serious consideration. i dont think we need to say all of this in a single image with bold font, but we ought to at least attempt to make our views sound somewhat realistic. otherwise, we’ll always be losing to the much more effective propaganda machines which have been set against us from the very beginning.

#communism

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