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nevermindirah · 4 years ago

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Ok it's Jewish Booker o'clock, I can no longer stop myself, let's do this!

Why Jewish Booker? Dude was born in Marseilles in 1770, which happens to be a FASCINATING time and place in Jewish history, and it adds ridiculous layers to his character (without excusing a damn thing). Alternately just because I think he’s neat :)

Jewish Booker headcanons that make me happy:

not to be all "real Jews do X" but Jews fuck with candles hard. Book of Nile thrives on old/modern analog/digital giggles. Booker lighting Shabbat candles, lighting yarzeit (memorial) candles for his wife and sons (sob), lighting a menorah, lighting candles just because he's feeling emotional even though it's not chag (a holiday) or a yarzeit and Nile thinks he's trying to be sexy but he's really just in his feelings. just like. so many candles.

maybe Booker was the person who punched Richard Spencer at Trump's inauguration, just bringing back that time somebody punched a famous neonazi in the street and said neonazi has all but stopped appearing in public after a few rounds of public punching

were the Old Guard in Charlottesville in 2017? how many times has Booker the Blond Jew infiltrated North American white nationalist / Klan type activities and then stolen their weapons and/or killed them? likewise there's plenty of horrifying white nationalist shit happening across Europe this century, how many Pim Fortuyn types has he been involved in taking down? (I Am Of Course Not Endorsing Violence TM ;) ;) )

SINGING. Mattias Schoenaerts sings in Away From the Madding Crowd but it's church shit, sigh, anyway he has a nice voice. a lot of Jewish prayer is sung/chanted (depending on when/where you are and the gender rules of the community you're in) and there’s been a lot of innovation to Jewish singing in Booker’s lifetime, and I just want Nile to overhear him singing to himself on Friday afternoons

Nile Freeman was four years old when The Prince of Egypt came out, she grew up on that shit, she would want to introduce her new family to that shit. Please join me in picturing Booker, Nicky, Joe, and Andy all shouting "that's not how it happened!!" throughout this beautiful nightmare of a movie with lovely animation and songs but where white people voice most of the Egyptian and Jewish characters, because Booker Nicky and Joe's religious texts all frame the Exodus story a little differently and Andy was probably there when it happened (except for how it didn't actually happen it's an important story but it's just a story pls just let me giggle about Andy being super old)

Read below the cut for sad Jewish Booker headcanons, French Jewish history (mostly sad), context on antisemitism (enraging/sad), and all the way to the very end for a himbo joke.

Jewish Booker headcanons, I made myself sad edition:

he is a forger. who was alive. in 1939. visas. VISAS. V I S A S. how many of us did he save? how many more could he have saved if he didn't sleep that night? how heavily does that weigh?

how do we think he BECAME a forger? most likely he was doing what he needed to do to support his family, which gets extra poignant if he was also trying to help his people, forging documents as well as money even during his mortal life

Booker raised Catholic by crypto-Jews adds ANOTHER layer to the forgery thing, no shit he'd get good at falsifying paperwork and coming up with plausible cover stories

do we know how Booker made it back home after his first death in 1812? his route between the Russian Empire and Provence in 1812 would've been a patchwork of laws about Jews, in case starvation and frostbite weren't enough for him to have to deal with, he's blond and could maybe get away with pretending not to be Jewish if he had to, alternately maybe synagogues and yeshivot took him in on his way home

the structural and sometimes-interpersonal dynamics of antisemitism cause many individual Jews to experience feelings of teetering on the fence between a valued member of a not-exclusively-Jewish community and a scapegoat/outcast/problem. HOLY SHIT BOOKER. "what do you know of all these years alone" is the most Jewish loneliness-in-a-crowd shit I've ever heard. fear that we're not wanted, or only wanted so long as we're useful — that's something that basically all people struggle with under capitalism, but it's especially poignant for many Jews because of the particular way antisemitism operates. (NOTE this can tip from a legit Jewish Booker reading to woobification of the sad white man who couldn't possibly be held responsible for his own actions because he's so sad, which, NOPE. it's very understandable for him to feel left out and misunderstood and not as wanted, as the youngest and not part of an immortal couple and maybe Jewish, but NONE OF THIS excuses his betrayal.)

Crusaders murdered a lot of Jews on their way to the ~holy land~. how many of Booker's people did Nicky kill on his way to kill Joe's people? has Booker ever actually talked to either of them about it?

I read this really beautiful fic about Joe needing to circumcise himself after getting run over by a cart (ouch) — this is a hell of a thing for Joe and Booker to have in common

just generally Jewish Booker adds more layers to him and Joe so clearly being such close friends, ugh that look Joe gives him when they're leaving the bar at the end of the movie, and I very much do not mean this in a gross Arab-Israeli-conflict way because Joe is Amazigh not Arab and Booker is Jewish not Israeli (and also a lot of Jews are Arabs) (but most importantly there's no ~eternal conflict~ between Muslims and Jews) (more about OP Is Not A Zionist below)

like, the UK and France (and to a certain extent Italy) carved up the former Ottoman Empire after WWI; among other things, the UK took Palestine, and they could've worked on eradicating European antisemitism so Jews wouldn't have to leave but instead they used their control of Palestine to encourage Zionist emigration of Jews out of Europe, and France took what is now Iraq, which has some pretty direct implications for US military involvement in that country in Nile's lifetime; France colonized Tunisia in the late 19th century and still held it during the Vichy era which means Tunisian Jews were subject to Nazi anti-Jewish laws which is just layers upon layers of colonial racist Islamophobic and antisemitic nightmares for Joe and Booker to live through

to be crystal clear before anybody gets ooh Muslim-Jewish conflict up in here, antisemitism is an invention of European Christians that they imported to the places they colonized, the European colonial powers encouraged Zionism because it was easier for them to encourage Jews to leave Europe and set us up as middle agents between the colonial powers and the ~scary brown people~, the Ottoman Empire and other Muslim governments historically have had a second-class citizenship category for non-Muslims that rankles my American first amendment freedom of religion sensibility but was very much not targeting Jews specifically, and these two men who've lived for a long-ass time through many varieties of geopolitical awfulness (and alongside a certain unwashed Crusader who has since learned his lesson) would have Things To Say about how our current mainstream discourses frame these things

getting off my soapbox and back to this action movie I'm trying to talk about, the ANGST of Booker's exile, which is simultaneously a very valid decision for Andy Joe and Nicky to make, an extremely long time for Nile who is only 26 years old to be separated from the one person on the planet in a position to really understand the crisis she's going through, and holy shit expelling a Jew from your group when he's already been expelled from mortality and his family and being expelled from places and continually having to start over somewhere new is THE curse of surviving through antisemitism, OUCH MY FEELINGS

Some French Jewish history:

France, like basically all of Europe, periodically expelled its Jews, but Provence (where Marseilles is) wasn't legally part of France during the expulsions up through 1398 so Provence had a continuous active Jewish community; about 3,000 Iberian Jewish refugees ended up in Provence after the expulsions from Spain and Portugal in the 1490s

the 1498 expulsion of French Jews DID apply to Provence but many "converted" to Christianity and reestablished a Jewish community when enforcement of the expulsion chilled out (which was in the government's interest because they were really into taxing Jews at higher rates, so much so that they taxed "new Christians" at higher rates once they realized expelling Jews meant they wouldn't be around to overtax, ffs) — by the mid-18th century Provence had notable communities of Jews and crypto-Jews (forced converts and their descendants who still kept some Jewish practices in secret)

Booker would've been 21 when revolutionary France granted equal legal rights to Jews in 1791 — his mortal life and first century of immortality happens to line up almost perfectly with the timeline of legal emancipation of Jews across Europe

the American and French Revolutions happened pretty much concurrently and took different approaches to religious freedom that make Book of Nile with Jewish Booker and canon Christian Nile extra interesting — French emancipation, at least from my American sensibility, is about secularism and religion not "interfering" (hence French Islamophobic shittiness about banning hijabs), whereas American religious freedom is more of "the government can't stop me from trying to evangelize / religiously harass people at my school/workplace/etc" — to be clear I think both countries' approaches to religious "freedom" are hegemonic as shit and have devastating flaws, but they're different models that emerged at the same time in Booker's youth and Christianity is clearly a source of emotional support for Nile and there's so much to explore here

Napoleon tried to ~liberate~ the Jews of places he conquered for his dumbass French Empire, but liberation from ghettos came with strings attached (like banning us from some of the only jobs we'd been legally allowed to have for centuries, and liberating us for the stated purpose of getting us to assimilate and stop being Jews) and many places that were briefly part of the French Empire reinstated their antisemitic laws after Napoleon was gone, can you imagine being a French Jew forced to fight and die in Russian winter for that jackass and then have to trudge back through a dozen countries whose antisemitism was all riled up by French interference?

Some facts about antisemitism:

antisemitism operates differently than many other oppressions, it doesn't economically oppress the target group in the same way as antiblackness or misogyny or ableism etc — the purpose of antisemitism is to create a scapegoat to blame when European peasants are mad at the king / the church / the people actually in charge, and structural antisemitism encourages a system where some Jews become visibly successful so that those individuals and our whole community are easier to make into scapegoats

one of the historical roots of antisemitism is stuff in the Christian Bible about moneylending as sinful — Jews in medieval Europe were often barred from owning land and Christians barred from moneylending, so some Jews found work in finance and some of us became very visibly successful for working with money — a few individual Jews running a particular bank or finding success as jewelry dealers turns into "Jews control global financial systems" scapegoating — a more recent example of this is the participation of nonblack Jews in white flight and the role of Jewish landlords doing the visible dirty work of non-Jewish institutions in American antiblack housing discrimination, Nile grew up on the South Side of Chicago and would have seen some shit along these lines and might repeat hurtful ideas out of a lack of knowledge, here's Ta Nahesi Coates on some of these dynamics

Booker canonically being a forger (specifically of coins in the comics?) needs a little extra care to avoid antisemitic tropes about Jews and money, I will happily answer good-faith asks about this if you want to check on something for a fic/etc

antisemitism in the United States where I live in October 2020 isn't institutional in the sense of targeting Jews for police violence or anything like that. it IS systemic, however, for example in all the antisemitic conspiracy theories the Trump administration and several other Republicans peddle (ie QAnon), and in how the Trump administration points to support for Israel as if that means support for Jews (it doesn't, it's evangelical Christians who push the US government to support the Israeli government because they think Jews need to be in the ~holy land~ for Jesus to come back that's literally why the United States funds Israel at the level it does). antisemitism also gets weaponized to encourage white Jews (those of us of European descent, who in the United States are definitely white because the foundation of US racism is slavery and antiblackness as well as anti-indigenous genocide, maybe European Jews aren't included in whiteness everywhere but we definitely are where I live) to side with white supremacy instead of building solidarity with other marginalized people (ie a lot of mainstream Jewish groups shit on the Movement for Black Lives because of its solidarity with Palestinians)

the Nation of Islam has a major presence in Chicago and its leader Louis Farrakhan who lives in Chicago has long spread a variety of antisemitic as well as homophobic bullshit but there are genuine good reasons many Black people find meaning/support in the Nation of Islam and Nile would've grown up with that mess in the air around her, this is a good take from a Black Jew about the nuance of all that

the way the Old Guard comics draw Yusuf al Kaysani is HOLY SHIT ANTISEMITISM BATMAN I hate it please summarize the comics for me because I DO NOT WANT to look at that unnecessarily caricatured nose why the fuck did they do that human noses are beautiful there is absolutely no need to draw Joe like a Nazi would

Jews for Racial and Economic Justice is a local NYC group that recently developed a fantastic resource for understanding and fighting antisemitism (pdf) 11/10 strongly recommend

Zionism disclaimer: A lot of Jews feel strongly that we need a Jewish-majority country in order to be safe from antisemitism. I strongly disagree with this idea on its merits (Jews disagree about who is a Jew and making Jewish status a government/immigration matter means some of us are going to get left out; also non-Jews aren't fundamentally dangerous and separatism isn't going to end antisemitism) but I have a lot of empathy for the very valid fear that leads a lot of my people to Zionism. Whether I want a Jewish-majority country or not, what Israel has done and continues to do to Palestinians is a deal breaker. Emotions run very high on this subject — I spend a lot of my not-Tumblr life talking to other Jews about Zionism and I'd rather not have this Jewish Booker headcanons post become yet another place where fellow Jews yell at me in bad faith. Block me if you need to, you're not going to change my mind. Call me self-hating if you want, I know I love us.

Racism in fandom disclaimer: I feel weird about increasing the volume of meta about Booker in this fandom. Nile Freeman is the main character and deserves lots of attention and adoration from the fandom — and she deserves emotional support from as many friends and orgasms from as many partners as she wants. I think Jewish Booker makes her friendship and potential romantic relationship with him even more interesting, hence this post. Ship what you ship, but be aware of the racist impact of focusing your fandom activity on, for example, shipping two white men while ignoring awesome characters of color especially the canon man of color one of those white dudes has already been with for a millennium. Please and thanks don't use my post for shenanigans like sidelining Joe so you can ship Booker with Nicky.

Oh and a non-disclaimer fun fact, Matthias Schoenaerts was born in Antwerp which apparently has one of the largest Jewish communities still remaining in Europe?? ~Jewish Booker headcanons intensify~

In conclusion: Jewish Booker! Just because it's fun! It exponentially increases the angst of his mortal lifetime and it puts his first century of immortality smack in the middle of the most intense changes to Jewish life since the fall of the Second Temple (aforementioned emancipation, also founding of Reform Judaism, the Haskalah, Zionism, and then of course the Holocaust). It makes his relationships with Nile, Joe, and Nicky more interesting and potentially angstier and with more intense commonalities and tenderness about their differences. It's very common for Jews to not believe in God (this confuses the shit out of a lot of Christians) and this would probably have further endeared him to Andy.

One more thing: Booker as golem. (A golem is basically an earthenware robot of Jewish folklore.) He's tall and blond and the most Steve Rogers-looking of all of them and from the Himbeaux region of France. THE trope of Book of Nile is he will do WHATEVER Nile wants or needs him to do. I was today years old when I learned that Modern Hebrew speakers use golem figuratively to mean "mindless lunk" and I'm choosing to squint and read that as "hot kind and dumb as rocks" because it amuses me.

#sebastien le livre #tog meta #jewish booker #book of nile #i couldn't stop myself #antisemitism #genocide cw #antiblackness #european imperialism #us imperialism #antizionism #hi i'm an antizionist jew no i don't really wanna talk about it #except i just did #jewish things #jewish history #tog #mine

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maggotmouth · 3 years ago

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hillo sexthy legends !! i’m nora and i’ll be writing margo colby n probs sm1 else bcos lets be real, i lack self-control. u can find her pinterest here n some info abt her sexy self below the cut. plot with me on discord ( hot girl midsommar#8664 ) or in my ims !! x o x

* CAMILA MORRONE, CIS WOMAN + SHE / HER | you know MARGO COLBY, right? they’re TWENTY-THREE, and they’ve lived in irving for, like, ELEVEN YEARS? well, their spotify wrapped says they listened to SCRAWNY BY WALLOWS like, a million times this year, which makes sense ‘cause they’ve got that whole BLEACH WHITE SNEAKERS POUNDING ON A GYMNASIUM FLOOR, USING THE SAME BLUNT SCISSORS TO HACK THE SLEEVES OFF AN EXES T-SHIRT THAT YOU USE TO CUT YOUR 3AM FRINGE, A WALNUT-SHAPED ACHE IN THE PIT OF YOUR STOMACH FOR THE PERSON YOU COULD HAVE BEEN thing going on. i just checked and their birthday is AUGUST 8TH, so they’re a LEO, which is unsurprising, all things considered. ( nora, 25, gmt, she/her )

CLICK ANYWHERE ON THIS SENTENCE FOR SEXII GOOGLE DOC!!

bullet point summary of margo.

— born margaret but NOBODY calls her that. its colby, coach or margo, and go to the privileged few. margo grew up in the creek commune n then dropped out of school cos of a teenage pregnancy so she was a bit of a cautionary tale back in’t’day (said tht in my yorkshire accent). she now works for summer camps coaching pee wee soccer and pee wee cheer, as well as helping out her beekeeper dad on his honey farm, which is jst north of abernathy creek, and working at scuba on the off seasons.

— its just her and her dad, and has been for as long as she can recall !! everything she knows about her mum could fit on the back of the weathered passport photo she keeps in her wallet of a stranger who shares her face - her name’s melody, or at least tht was name she used when working as a dancer, she’s from argentina and dropped mag’s dad as soon as someone w more money came along.

— margo’s father is a beekeeper with his own organic honey company. margo and her dad moved to irving in the early 00s, the summer between grade school and middle school, because her dad had heard about the communal living in abernathy creek and wanted to lend his skills there and live off the fatta the land in a very lenny from of mice and men kinda way.

— for a few years of middle school margo was bullied for living with the ‘freaks from the creek’, but when they realised how chill her dad was with underage drinking, margo ‘keg-bringer’ colby soon gained popularity among the more renegade students. every so often, the high school parties would happen at her end of town, occasionally with members of the commune even offering the high schoolers a spiritual experience they’d never forget (often in the form of mushrooms) which meant people tried to stay on her good side. to get an invite to a margo colby party handed you a free pass to make up the most ridiculous shit about the commune you liked and nobody else could say anything, because they’d never been to the creek.

— at school, margo had a lot of ‘behvioural issues’ bcos of undiagnosed adhd, she found it difficult to sit still for hours n write down huge chunks of information n her restlessness was seen as laziness. she was encouraged to do sports, as were most of the kids who weren’t that academically inclined, but she turned out to be pretty hot shit at sprinting, because she grew up surrounded by bee houses and he who runs slowest gets stung, baybeyy!! so yea, in school sports became her LIFE. she was gonna get a sports scholarship to college but ended up dropping out of school in senior year n becoming one of those kids who could have had it all but lost it.

— she had sex with sutter at a house party when she wasnt really ready because it felt like the right thing to do at the time and everybody else was doing it. she’d attended health class, she’d seen the corny videos. she knew about all the statistics, but she also knew that it had never happened to anyone she knew and the pull out method was basically safer than the morning after pill and way less expensive.

— a teenage pregnancy knocked her out of the runnings for prom queen and meant she had to leave school early. she didn’t go to college when her friends did, instead she spent the time interviewing potential foster candidates and eating her weight in lindt chocolate while marathoning love island in her room.

— she had a son, who she passed off to someone else a couple of towns away. it was a closed adoption which seemed like the best idea at the time, but she now wishes she had access to his life.

— after peaking in high school and jumping between jobs for a few years, she got a more permanent role at scuba which she loves with all of her heart and soul, but unfortunately a bar job doesn’t pay the rent.

— she works at summer camps coaching junior soccer and netball on the side. she’s extremely competitive and takes it very personally if her team lose. the kids all call her, coach colby n write her longwinded letters about how they’ll never forget this summer camp before they go back to their suburban picket fence houses n she keeps all the letters in a drawer n takes them out to read when she’s feelin depressed.

— enjoys surfing and worked for a number of years on resorts like mila kunis’ job in forgetting sarah marshall. she went on to work 18-hour days as a stewardess on luxury yachts which is a part of her backstory i added after watching season one of below deck because i guess i really am that fucking impressionable. met most of her surf friends doing tht but said she’d never in her life do it again bcos it was mostly just picking up after rich white ppl for shit pay. she came back to irving n thats when she started doing the summer camp jobs so she could move out of the creek n get her own apartment.

— she never actually finished senior year so she’s currently going to night school at the community college to get through her exams and is trying to save to go to college or open university. she wants to major in criminology. she’s super ambitious but also super adhd so she fluctuates between thinking she can achieve anything to just feeling like a failure n thinkin whats the point

— used to shoplift to feel joy and as an act of resistance to her hippy commune routes, but now sees herself as a reformed, bin-diving freegan (sims 4 eco living can i get a hell yaaaa). also she thinks it’s totally wrong to steal when you have enough money and clearly don’t need to steal to survive, ppl risk imprisonment for basic necessities, so for her to do it for a brief thrill and some new shades felt a bit derogatory

— was raised jewish. became a vegetarian as a child because it seemed, at the time, easier than having to explain which foods she was and wasn’t allowed to eat together, so she just cut out meat entirely. still a vegetarian now and dabbles in veganism, although its become less about not eating certain meats in the milk of their mother and more about her global impact / carbon footprint

— nurses little animals to health in her garden. has a hedgehog name OJ short for orange juice not the other one filthy pig. her and her dad have always been huge animal rights activists and existed on a vegetarian diet. the only one in their house who isn’t vegetarian is their cat, auggie. (short 4 augustus gloop)

— has a lot of stupid ass stick and poke tattoos. there was a phase during her years as a barmaid where she wanted to train as a tattoo artist n would mostly practice on herself or any friends who would let her

— she doesn’t form many long lasting friendships cos she tends to be super excited when she makes a new friend and just see them all the time but then it wears off and she can ghost a bit. she’ll always coming pinging back but she’s not the most predictable or loyal friend, sometimes she’ll sleep in your house every night for a week and then you won’t even get a text from her for a month. her best friends are elderly neighbours and houseless people she meets when volunteering at the foodbank. she thinks they’re more authentic than most of the ‘fake posers’ she meets down the vela pier

— calls herself a butch lesbian but still has sex with men when she wants validation. sexually attracted to some men, especially effeminate men, but only romantically attracted to women. very possessive of the gals in her life.

— stopped giving a shit about getting older or adhering to anyone elses bullshit standards, realised it was all fake p much as soon as she dropped out of school and one by one her friends just stopped texting her

— lives in one of the lofts in port apartments. it’s open plan with rugs and lava lamps everywhere. she has a palette bed. its all very ‘sustainable chic’. like, oh wow, a pallet bed that im supposed to think you made from scratch but i KNOW you got it off ebay because you thought it looked trendy

— constantly says shes poor but still buys clothes from urban outfitters. sus.

— frequently found at fannies flirting with the cute bisexual bartender with a choppy black bob.

general vibe / personality

vibrant, vulgar, self-absorbed, tenacious, veers bewteen apathetic and dogmatic, temperamental, flighty, unreliable, magnetic, charismatic, passive aggressive, likes to play devil’s advocate, takes the moral high ground. estp and a leo

likes: 70s music, john wayne movies, black mirror, philosophy, cowboy chic culture, dc comics, the smell of locker rooms,, deep red lipstick, lacrosse sticks, smoking weed from a bong, dogs, karaoke, pet rats, kate moss, late-night strolls, hawaaiian shirts worn open over a bralette, skinned knees, thai food, picking the apples at the very top of the trees, zip-lining, cigarettes, the idea of pegging but not the practical application of it, decorative lamps, LGBTQ+ pin badges, worn-out furniture, twangy electric guitars.

dislikes: girls who call other girls ‘pick me’ girls, woody allen movies, mental mathematics, wealthy children, quentin tarantino, ironing, institutionalised misogyny, the imaginary future, french literature, ‘dump him’ feminism, wes anderson films, spoken word poetry nights, college-educated bar staff who act like they’re better than you, indie softbois, the general mentality of cheerleading squads.

aesthetics

orange peel, the smell of bleach, skeleton drawings in the margins of a journal, thumb holes poked through the cuffs of your sleeves, bleach white sneakers pounding on a gymnasium floor, setting dumpsters on fire for the hell of it. a hit flask of vodka decorated with hello kitty stickers, split knuckles, alien conspiracy theories and sci-fi paperbacks, doc martens with fraying laces, a child in an oversize bee keepers suit, scabbed knees, not eating your greens, smiling with a mouthful of blood, and piercing your own ears with a safety pin when your dad wouldn’t take you, a tennis racket you punched through in a fit of temper, feet pounding the earth until your soles bleed crimson, sleeping in a cherry lip balm and scrunchies to keep the wild locks from your eyes.

hoo boy this is getting LONG AS FUCK but here are my wanted plots

wanted plots

ok margo’s been in irving since she was like 10. she’s quite a vivacious person?? she dresses completely instinctively without any sense of cohesion so she stands out. a guy once told her she was wearing the ugliest outfit he’d ever seen and he thought that was so cool and brave of her. but anyway where was i going.. she grew up in the abernathy creek so stuck out like a sore thumb,,,, maybe ppl who were super interested in the creek or maybe poked fun at her bcos of it idk.....

b4 she dropped out, margo used 2 b in with the cool kids at school bcos her dad would buy them booze and rarely ask for the money. maybe a fun plot cld b with some of the ‘it girls’ she used to hang around with b4 she got pregnant n dropped out and they all went off to college n stopped texting her.

frinds !! unlikely friends !! toxic friends !! some1 she feels like she knew before irving ???

since margo literally can’t differentiate between romantic and platonic love, she’s got off with so many of her mates, so i want awkward friendships where they nearly dated, or exes that have now just turned into weird friendships. fwbs. enemies with benefits. all the angst. all the slow burn mutual pining we hate each other narratives

locals who play sports. margo wld be all over community soccer n take it way too seriously. maybe ppl she plays hockey with. girls who she’s like, weirdly intimate with but its not a thing cos the other girls straight !!! what do u mean !! aha just fun !

she works part time at scuba. i want a mate that just goes and sits in there talking to her until her manager gets angry.

she's also a surf instructor and occasionally works as a lifeguard!! gal has like 7 jobs ik but regular swimmers hmu

ppl she coaches at the gym !! she wants to be a personal trainer

i reckon she might have recently started meditating to try and calm down her mind cos its always bustling with thoughts, n i think she’s p interested in buddhism so if anyone’s a buddhist hmu

someone she’s trying to make a zine with on female empowerment and women in film and art, etc. just a very feminist zine.

TLDR: angry sports gay, former high school track prodigy turned drop out, who likes feminist literature, wearing leather jackets over slip dresses, and smudged red lipstick.

this was so long !!! im sorry !! if you’ve read this far have a biscuit, love x

#aaaaaaa #we back boys #irvingintro #hmu for plots bayybeyyy

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cptsdstudyblr · 4 years ago

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Cults & Religious Abuse PART 2: So you’re in a cult?

If you don’t want to see this series, you can block #cptsdstudyblrreligion

tw// cults, religion, religious abuse, religious trauma, mentions of other types of abuse

PART 1: Q & A

In this post I will be speaking somewhat specifically about my experiences that led to religious trauma, so please be cautious when reading this post. The tips and resources are at the bottom and are bullet points, so feel free to skip to there if you aren’t comfy with the post itself.

Maybe you were raised in a religion, maybe you or your family joined a religion later in your life, or maybe you’ve gotten involved in a cult in some other way. But one day you wake up and you realize that you need to get out. But how? In this I’ll be sharing the basics of my experiences in a cult-like fundamentalist religion, how I got out, and some resources I think are helpful for people in similar situations.

Before I get into the details, I want to make one thing clear: I am not a woman. I am non-binary. However, I was raised a woman and that was a huge part of the way these experiences affected me, so I will be including that perspective in this post.

I also want to make it clear that I am not against religion in general or against people practicing religion. This post is not intended to attack religion as a concept, but to shed light on specific extremely harmful religious practices.

My family’s relationship with religion is on the complicated side, but I’ll briefly explain it for context. Both of my parents were raised fairly generically Catholic. My grandparents on my dad’s side are now loosely Catholic, but don’t explicitly practice religion. My grandmother on my mom’s side has since converted to protestant Christianity at my mom’s suggestion. My dad has been either apathetic or even hostile towards religion for as long as I can remember and rarely attended church with me and my mom, but my mom has always been religious. These are the primary influences in my life, as I’m not close enough to any other family members for their religious beliefs to have had significant impact on me.

My mom is where it gets complicated. Although she was raised Catholic, she explored protestant Christianity starting a few years before my birth and quickly converted. For most of my actual childhood my mom was a pretty average protestant Christian. We moved a lot, so we attended churches in a variety of denominations, including several more charismatic and prosperity-gospel based megachurches, but when I was around 9 years old, my mom fell down a rabbit hole of Messianic Christianity through one of these churches, which I believe is where it all started to fall apart. Just to clarify, although this group of beliefs is technically referred to as Messianic Judaism, I refer to my experience with it as Messianic Christianity as I am in no way Jewish (and thus feel uncomfortable calling my religious experiences Judaism) and the messianic movement is harmful to actual Jewish people.

This move into Messianic Christianity pushed my mom to start rereading and reinterpreting the Bible and she consequently decided that she was not enamored with the teachings of the church we attended at the time. I strongly believe that her understanding of that study was also heavily influenced by the domestic violence and instability going on in our home at the time, as she was unable to connect to the overwhelmingly positive messages that our church preached. So, she moved us to another church. This was a church we had attended some in the past while trying to find a home church after a move, but hadn’t really stuck with, so it wasn’t an entirely new church. Because of this, I generally say that I attended this church from the age of 9 although we did not attend this church consistently until I was around 11. This church was a nondenominational Bible church closely associated with Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, CA, which is pastored by John MacArthur. I’d encourage you to take a look at the basic teachings of John MacArthur and of this church in some depth as they are already quite problematic. The linked article is really just one example of the kind of teachings that are prevalent here, and I’d encourage you to follow this rabbit hole as far as it takes you because it’s fascinating.

The church that we moved to was extremely fundamentalist. Unfortunately, I’m not comfortable linking the actual church for fear of doxxing myself, but the teachings of this church are pretty much exactly in line with those Grace Community Church and the other organizations I will mention soon. This church also unofficially followed the teachings of the Institute for Basic Life Principles (IBLP). When I say unofficially, I mean that my church was not publically associated with IBLP, but they were definitely associated with IBLP in reality. And again, I’d really encourage you to browse through their website to get a feel for their teachings. However, as a basic summary, if you’re familiar with the Duggar family from the TLC reality show 19 Kids and Counting, they are members of IBLP and everything they teach was taught fairly similarly at my church. I won’t go into the details of what the teachings were, but they were about as fundamentalist Christian as you could come up with. Sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, abuse, etc. but turned up to 11/10. And it was a very closed circle. So how did I get out and end up where I am now - a bi-romantic asexual non-binary university student studying STEM at an incredibly liberal university?

It wasn’t easy. But I did get somewhat lucky. Unlike 90% of the kids at my church, I was not homeschooled after 8th grade. Instead, I went to a private Christian school - this was definitely still harmful and contributed to my trauma but it did give me opportunities to be exposed to people and ideas outside my fundamentalist Christian bubble. It also encouraged me to attend university, as it was expected of all graduates from that school. My dad wasn’t religious, and he and my mom divorced right before I graduated from high school. Additionally, my mom did encourage me to continue my education despite the teachings at our church. I’m not sure why she encouraged this, but she did. So I got lucky that things in my life pointed me in a direction of further education. And I got further lucky that the main school in my state is the school it is. It’s a school that is incredibly left-leaning and secular, and ultimately it pushed me extremely far outside my comfort zone.

I am extremely grateful for the opportunities that made it easier for me to get out of this situation, but I did still have to work for it. Here are my suggestions for surviving a cult-like environment and for eventually getting out:

Do everything you can to expose yourself to other ideas and beliefs. I assume that if you recognize you’re in this type of situation and want to escape, you already know that you disagree with the beliefs that are being forced on you at some level. But it’s important to further educate yourself where possible and figure out your beliefs. Figuring out what you believe and being committed to it is key in being able to stick to leaving your environment. If you know you disagree, but you can’t articulate why you disagree or what you believe and you aren’t committed to your beliefs, you will be very easy to convince that you are wrong and you will be very easy to manipulate.

If you’re on tumblr reading this, you probably have access to the internet, so use that to your advantage. Research things, read articles, and involve yourself in discussions. If you struggle with internet access, you can read books, magazines, and newspapers at your local library and potentially even join clubs through your library or school. Not everything you learn has to be political or about religion. Reading and learning will broaden your horizons, give you concrete interests outside religion, encourage you to learn about things that make you uncomfortable, etc.

If you are involved in a religion that has a text, read it critically and read nonreligious analyses of it. You don’t necessarily have to agree with these analyses, but thinking critically about the text you’ve been raised to take as complete fact will help you realize what you actually believe.

Find others who agree with you. In high school, I had a couple of friends at church who were “rebels” too, and we’re still friends to this day. We moved on together, and it really helped me be able to get out because I wasn’t doing it alone.

If you have to physically leave to get away, make sure you have enough money and have a backup plan. If you leave and are forced to come back for any reason, leaving again will be infinitely harder. If you leave, make sure it can be for good. It doesn’t necessarily have to be permanent, but if you come back it has to be on your own terms and not out of necessity.

Don’t get yourself kicked out and be safe no matter what.

Some resources I think are helpful:

Find an LGBT Center (US only) - LGBT centers are incredibly helpful for issues that go beyond being LGBT+, and if you’re eligible to use them they can be a great resource

The Trevor Project - LGBT+ resources and crisis lines

Tumblr post describing what to do if you’re homeless - It’s from Tumblr, so take it with a grain of salt, but it seems like pretty solid advice.

How to leave a cult - Very basic guide, but has some good advice.

Quiz to help you figure out your political beliefs (US based, but has some other countries as well) - I’d suggest taking this a few times as you develop your beliefs, and I’d also suggest clicking “more questions” as many times as possible in every category to ensure that you cover a broad range of topics.

How Ideology Colors Morality - about how morality frames US politics

Ethics - a good place to start when looking at different ways of analyzing ethics. My high school ethics class is a huge component in why I questioned my own beliefs. Ethics is an eye-opening topic.

List of all the religions - exploring different religions and belief systems helped open my mind to new ideas and ways of thinking about the world

If you want me to help you research something or find resources for a specific situation, feel free to message me or send me an ask and I’m happy to help (you can also ask me other questions, my asks and DMs are always open!)

And as always, if I made a mistake or linked a bad resource, please feel free to let me know so that I can correct the issue ASAP. I always try to do my research thoroughly, but things can slip by since I am but a human. Thank you!

#cptsdstudyblrreligion #cptsd #ptsd #trauma #religious trauma #religious abuse #religion #christianity #fundamentalism #ex fundamentalist #cult #ex cult #fundie #ex fundie #ex christian #christian

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dafukdidiwatch · 4 years ago

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I’m actually pissed that this is a decent movie.

Overview: Arctic Researchers/Scientists stumble on Nazis who live in the center of the earth who have survived by replacing their dying tissue for living ones in a bid for immortality.

And in order for me to talk about this film, I have to talk about this:

Fucking Sky Sharks.

I hate that movie.

I hate it So Much.

I bought it from a Walmart for $10 so what a waste of movie.

The first like, 10 minutes was the movie dragging on showing everyone in the plane in the worst way possible. An old swedish man watching shitty CGI sci-fi porn. A weird gang turn priest man which I for sure might have been the main character but had the weirdest backstory that goes no where and does nothing. Some drunk guy wanting to flirt with a stewardess and the joke is that she wasn’t a super model 20 something. So after going On and ON THEN the sharks come in to show how epic they are.

And they also suck ass. I couldn’t give a shit about the CGI this is a movie about nazi sky sharks I walked in not expecting quality.

Oh yeah, Nazi’s. Forgot to mention the Nazis. Because, you know, they made the sharks. And are also zombies who rose again to take over the world. And our first look is a female blond haired officer killing people in the longest and dullest way possible. Like, there is only so many ways you can decapicate a bunch of people with wires.

After that, move into the “plot” with random ass girl #1 and random ass girl #2 where girl #1 is also in the Antarctic (shocker) and finds a boat, goes in by herself without help/backup, finds out the zombies are not only in there, but also shark tanks because this is where they were raising the sharks.

So to recap: In the COLD NEGATIVE FROSTBITING SNOW COVERED DREADNAUGHT the nazis are not only alive and NOT freezing, but the great white sharks are also alive and NOT freezing. You can say bs science, I say bs movie.

Oh and you know what the sharks feed on?

Misogyny.

God this movie hates women so much. First, multiple porn shots/sexual harassment jokes on just the plane alone (again, first 10 minutes). Then the “sexy” female zombie commander because that’s what was in the Nazi Military: Women. Not saying shit about history or anything, just saying that I know a fetish when I see one. And the Random Ass Girl #1? The reason why she was at the boat in the first place is because she was on a solo rescue mission to help some researchers who found the boat. A Guy and A Girl. The Guy was like, killed normally or shot or something I couldn’t give a shit about. The Girl was stripped naked, hung upside-down by her foot, bare naked ass shown to us, as she is fed to the shark tank.

Yeah, real women friendly.

It also doesn’t help that when Random Ass Girl #1 gets stabbed with, I guess zombie venom for ReAsOnS, she has a shower scene where it shows her being affected and poisoned under her skin....but also how Hot she is by having it shot on her boobs, check, body stretching and curling to show ALL of her body. While under a show that’s in the middle of the fucking room like it’s Hannibal Lector’s bathroom.

And you that that would be the reason I hate this movie but it isn’t dammit. The movie was dull as hell. I’m only talking about the Misogyny for so long because it was the only thing that was actually worth mentioning. I didn’t give a shit about anything else!

The acting is bad and just monotone across the board. Apparently RAG#1 and #2 are like, rich spies from a super rich family corporation which took me a full as 20 minutes to realize. And they have no idea how the fuck to plot a movie! Finding out the sky sharks were because of Dear Old Granddad, results in THREE! SEPERATE! FLASHBACKS! EACH MORE BORING THAN THE LAST!!! I have no idea how you made working with NAZIS dull as shit but this movie found a way. Instead of having the history set in the beginning of nazis doing shit as a teaser to explain later, he just tells his fucking life story of how making Sky Sharks would save the Third Reich. And I Couldn’t Give A Shit.

It got so dull and bored that I literally fast forward through the entire movie to find interesting parts. Spoiler: there was none. Not even with more sharks like eating the world could it entertain me. I just fast forwarded to the very end, and only watched 30 minutes of a 90 minute movie. God I hate Sky Sharks.

So WHY am I bringing it up? Well, it really did set expectations and a bar for Nazis at the Center of the Earth. They both have rediculous titles that you can’t take seriously or expect “great things” from. They both deal with nazis, zombie-ish nazis, genetic research, scientists in the Arctic, and Nazi’s hiding in the Arctic. That is a lot, and I just watched Sky Sharks like 2 weeks before so this was very recent and absolutely in my head.

Which is WHY this movie was a very pleasant surprise.

We start with seeing Nazis doing action pact Nazi shit escaping for science! It even has that Wilhelm scream, but the movie has plot and vision. It didn’t make the nazis seem any more than being just army soldierd and has decent action and sets expectation for the rest of the movie.

And that’s like the big difference between this and Sky Sharks: The Treatment of the Nazis. The nazis here were treated, in my view, as powerful and dangerous. They are meticulous, uncaring, cold and distant. The head Nazi is actually Dr. Mengele, he is in this movie, and he is just so apathetic to everyone.

All the Nazi’s faces were covered in mask so you couldn’t see their faces, making them inhuman. And the first Nazi face we do see is Dr. Mengele as he just, slowly cuts the face off of a person. Methodically. Meticulously. He doesn’t even talk, doesn’t react as the person begs. Just does it. And was going to do it to the girl as well but because she kept talking science, he allowed her to live.

But it was close.

In the beginning it feels like two different movies because it cuts from two researchers who got kidnapped by Nazis surviving their own horror movie trying to escape, and the rest of the researchers being in a Survival Rescue Movie trying to find them. I honestly wanted to see more of the Nazi part because that was the more engaging section. It was filmed, framed, shot as a tense horror movie, where you don’t know if she will live or die.

I also want to approve of the lack of misogyny. Like, first, the Nazis are equal treatment terrible to everyone. They shot one of the researchers who wandered in because he was Jewish. (”I’m non-practicing” lol love that line). Second, the scenes that they did were filmed in a way to highlight the horror but not the sexiness of it. The guy and girl strapped to the table, they are both naked. We don’t see the whole naked body, just enough to establish it while censoring the rest. You see Dr. Mengele looking over them, but there isn’t sign of lust. He is viewing them both as just experiments (which also adds to the horror aspect but I digress). One of the girls ends up being thrown to the Nazi Officers to be raped and killed, but we don’t see that. She doesn’t have a shirt, but it isn’t films as a “sexy” moment, the camera doesn’t move or linger on her body. It is just a straight shot, where she tries to cover herself up. When they close in on her, crawling towards her, the camera focuses more on their approach than on her while at a distance. This is scary, but it isn’t sexualized. Which I approve and is a WAY PLUS from Sky Sharks.

This movie has an odd budget too. There is a lot of CGI. And it isn’t good. Not at all. It works to show things happening like CGI tanks...CGI snow/ice. CGI Robots and lasers. They don’t hide it at all. But then, they also have amazing makeup budget because the “ripping face scene” was amazing physical effects it looked so real. The Nazis are obviously frankenstein stitched up monsters, but they are well done in makeup and design. Like all the close up shit is amazing to look at.

Overall: It was an Alright Movie. Yes, there is plot. There is tension. There is fear trying to survive with the nazi. Bad CGI, and a bit campy at the end, but nothing to detract from the actual movie. It was a fun movie.

#dafukblog #Dafuking Films #week 41 movie #sky sharks #nazis at the center of the earth

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sparklyjojos · 4 years ago

Photo

THE SAIMON FAMILY CASE recaps [12/13]

In which we confront Gensui, make even more puns, and learn the beautiful boy’s secret. [tw: ED mention]

On September 19th, the first anniversary of Tamako’s death, everyone mobilizes to make sure not a single person will die this time. The entire giant family gathers in the auditorium of the stage next to their house, where they will spend the entire day guarded by several of Nihon Tantei’s Club office workers and detectives, young members of Fujita-gumi providing additional security.

The only family members to stay behind in Sanasou are the two surviving Tamakos, old man Gensui, as well as Tousen Natsuko and Tsukumo Karan who will provide them care. In order to guard these five, Ajiro, Kirigirisu, a few of their detectives and Fujita-gumi members will stay in the house.

The stakes are even higher than usual; if they fail to prevent yet another murder, Ajiro will quit the Club. A few of the Club's detectives, like Arito Tarou, only agreed to come here and help so they can witness his failure in person.

Ajiro asked Soga Tensui to meet him and Kirigirisu by the aviary at noon “for the final discussion about the Case”, so both detectives head there early. Ajiro chose the time and place on purpose; he knows from the dove caretaker Ranma that the big box with Onikaru-sama opens every year on September 19th between noon and 1 PM—apparently there's something about it that Ajiro wants to see.

As they wait for noon watching the doves, Ajiro points out more interesting (and wacky) coincidences. Prince Shoutoku lived in the Asuka period, Asuka being spelled with kanji for “flying birds” (飛鳥). The temple Houryuu-ji is located in the town Ikaruga (斑鳩), the name of which includes the kanji for “dove” (鳩).

When noon arrives, the detectives hear a loud coo, coo seemingly coming from within the box, and its double door opens to reveal Onikaru-sama.

No matter how long Kirigirisu stares at the figure, it doesn’t look like a dove. It’s more similar to a gray sparrow, its spread wings and tail darker, its distinctive beak gold. It's perched on a triple-pillared torii… and actually, the bird itself also has three legs.

Ajiro explains that the bird is a Japanese grosbeak, known as Ikaru or Ikaruga—the same name as the town Ikaruga that has just been mentioned. It’s likely that instead of Onikaru-sama, the figure was once called "the honorable lord grosbeak", On-Ikaru-sama (on being a honorific).

The triple-pillared torii is reminiscent of the shrine Kaiko no Yashiro, which is located near Kouryuu-ji, a temple founded by Prince Shoutoku’s close ally Hata no Kawakatsu. A fringe theory claims that the Hata clan was Jewish believing in Nestorian Christianity, and that Kaiko no Yashiro viewed from above resembles the Star of David. Perhaps that’s one more “proof” strengthening Soga Tensui’s belief in the connection between Shoutoku and Jesus.

As the detectives are lost in conversation, suddenly they hear another loud coo coo, but not from the box—it comes from right behind them.

The master of vocal mimicry Soga Tensui is standing behind them, a smile on his face.

“Souji, Kirigirisu… it looks like you have finally discovered our secret.” The man is speaking to them out loud, so he must be Gensui.

“Gensui… are you Jesus?” Ajiro asks without beating around the bush.

Gensui spreads his arms wide, creating the shape of a cross with his body—

“YES, I AM!”

[And what a horrible pun it is, since イエス is both “yes” and “Jesus”. Jesus I Am.]

“So… so you really are convinced you’re Prince Shoutoku and Jesus?” Kirigirisu takes a step back. “I can’t believe it…”

Gensui’s expression turns stern for just a second before that calming smile returns to his face. Kirigirisu realizes where else he saw a smile of this kind. It’s the “archaic smile”, often seen on Buddha statues. No doubt this too is a part of the man's delusion...

“It's not that I’m convinced,” Gensui says. “I really am both Shoutoku Taishi and Jesus Christ.”

“But that’s… are you claiming that you’re immortal?”

“No. Unlike Hikami Sensai, I'm not immortal.”

Hikami Sensai—the Mountain God that Hyousen once mentioned.

“I can think of only one explanation that supports your claims,” Ajiro says. “Shoutoku Taishi and Jesus Christ are succession names.”

“Indeed. Just like with stage names of kabuki theater or rakugo, Shoutoku Taishi and Jesus are also heritage names. In the Asuka period the name Jesus was first introduced to Japan, and a version of it changed to Japanese became a succession name. Its official form is Umayato no Miko. If Shoutoku Taishi was the first person to have that name, I would be the ninety-eighth Umayato no Miko in turn. ...I know you would not believe us even if we had definitive proof. No matter. It is enough that I know who I really am. No one else has to believe it.”

Kirigirisu naturally thinks that the man is completely nuts, but Ajiro warns him not to get heated; they have to accept what Tensui says for now or the conversation will get nowhere. Tensui comments that other people often refuse to believe giant truths that would turn their entire understanding of history around.

“I don’t doubt what you claim,” Ajiro says carefully, “but could you tell me how the next Umayato no Miko is chosen? Can there exist two at once?”

“When an Umayato no Miko senses their death approaching, they appoint a successor who will inherit the name. Anyone at all can be appointed, even those not related by blood. In the short period between appointing the successor and the predecessor's death, there technically exist two Umayato no Miko at the same time.”

“You said earlier, I quote: you have finally discovered our secret. By our, you mean…?”

“Mine and my predecessor’s. I am the only Umayato no Miko right now.”

“Could your predecessor be… Saimon Tamako?”

Ajiro explains how he came to this outrageous conclusion. Even though Tamako was Korean, she spent a lot of time travelling through Japan, and the title could be passed to anyone no matter the blood connection.

The three rich men who married the three Tamakos—Saimon Taishin, Tsukumo Taigen, Tousen Taikun—all changed their names, so they had a shared kanji tai (太). Everyone assumed that this name change occured before the triple marriage, but what if the opposite was true? What if it was in fact Saimon Tamako who proposed that change? While we’re at it, maybe it was her who came up with names for her daughter Akiko and some other family members like Taishi and Tsushima?

Once Gensui confirms that’s the case, Ajiro explains his thoughts in details.

Let’s look at the names of Taishin (太臣) and Taikun (太君) and replace that first kanji with another similarly looking tai (大). Taishin’s name would now mean a minister (大臣), while Taikun’s name could be read as ookimi (大君), like the emperor’s title in the times of Prince Shoutoku. Quite the coincidences.

Saimon Taishi was named after Shoutoku Taishi, though spelled differently. Tsushima is an island near the Korean Peninsula. The name Akiko (明子) is somewhat similar to mentaiko (明太子), which happens to both be a popular culinary ingredient in Korea and also have Shoutoku’s name Taishi (太子) in it. Many other members of the family have the kanji for “horse” in their names, which again relates to Umayato no Miko, “the Stable Door Prince”.

The next mystery to solve hid in the words Tamako used to repeat. Kudaranai… ima wa kudaranai. What she was actually saying was Ima wa Kudara nai, “there is no Kudara now”. Kudara is the Japanese name for Baekje, one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea. Ajiro thinks Tamako might have been born in the region formerly known as Baekje.

Gensui states that while he can’t know Tamako’s thoughts, the reasoning about her Kudara line seems legitimate.

Ajiro’s next rhetorical question touches on a more practical matter: aside from the name, what else does an Umayato no Miko inherit from their predecessor? The answer is easy to guess when you look at what Tamako and Gensui had in common: magic. What’s passed down is the art of illusion.

“The current public image of Shoutoku Taishi or Jesus Christ greatly differs from reality,” Gensui says. “Historical facts passed down through the ages turn into false nonsense. I don’t intend to deny what people believe about either of the two, but from my point of view, they were above all else splendid magicians. You're free to choose whether you believe it.”

Well, it’s true that Jesus made a lot of miracles happen, and the art of illusion as we know it was first introduced to Japan in Asuka period.

“Let's accept the premise of Jesus Christ and Shoutoku Taishi being magicians,” Ajiro says. “Maybe the problem lies not with them, but with those who came afterwards. Perhaps they weren’t just plain magicians, but—magicians of murder.”

“Not the softest way of phrasing it,” Gensui comments with a somber expression.

Ajiro exposits some more.

Ajiro’s grandfather Soujin is a skilled detective who up until now has solved every case thrown his way… except for one: the Kuroyashi (“black peddler”) case, which killed hundreds of yakuza members throughout a few decades. The murderer wore a black kimono and matching black garments, held white prayer beads in his hand, and hid his face behind kokushikijou, the black Noh mask of a happy old man.

It was an open secret that Kuroyashi's true identity was Fujita Kyuuzou, who killed anyone trying to encroach on Fujita-gumi’s turf in Tsuwano. Even if Soujin knew that fact well, he had never managed to gather enough proof. Strangely enough, the two ended up becoming good friends even as a detective and a suspect constantly trying to figure each other out.

Kyuuzou was missing the tip of his thumb (for typical yakuza reasons), instead wearing a magician tool called simply a thumb tip. Soujin theorized that this could be where Kyuuzou hid the murder weapon he used to kill as Kuroyashi—poison needles. Maybe his death from a hornet sting was a fitting end for someone like him.

"I trust in my grandfather's abilities, so I also believe that Kyuuzou was Kuroyashi. However, the murderer in this Case isn't just him… The mastermind was Saimon Tamako, wasn't she? As the previous Umayato no Miko, she was a true magician of murder, a professional assassin of much greater skill than Kuroyashi. Since you claim you're not the culprit, then it must be her, right? No one other than you two—the magicians of murder—would be able to orchestrate the Saimon Family Case."

Gensui doesn't move. That archaic smile returns to his face.

"It's so unlike you to say such bizarre things, Souji. I understand why you suspect me, even though I am not the culprit. But to accuse Lady Saimon, who died a year ago…"

Gensui clearly isn't going to tell them anything as readily as he confirmed being Jesus.

"Souji, Kirigirisu, I think you have misunderstood something," he continues. "Except for the incident involving Yumeji, none of the deaths were murders. Even the police said there was no case."

"Are you seriously still claiming that?" Ajiro finally breaks and shouts in anger. "All just accidents, all on the same day of the month, twelve times in a row?!"

"You truly don't know when to give up. When I requested your help, I asked you to explain how these deaths could be murders. It seems you won't be able to fulfill my request no matter how much time passes. I have no choice but to withdraw the investigation request."

"Oh, so you’re withdrawing now? I don't care! I'm not here to investigate just because you asked me. I lost two of my people in this case. I will not back down!"

Ajiro and Tensui stand against each other, a detective against a suspect, just like Soujin and Kyuuzou before them. History repeats.

"If you still wish to investigate, I'm not stopping you," Gensui says finally. "Just let me give you a friendly warning. No matter how much you try, it's impossible to solve something that’s not a murder case like it is a murder case. Souji, it might sound weird coming from me, but do not underestimate the divine providence that can be nothing other than a miracle. No human can win a battle against the heavens. Even if the best detective alive investigated this case, they still wouldn't be able to solve it. My words aren't meant to challenge you; I'm simply telling you the truth."

"Then let me also tell you the truth. No matter how great a magician of murder you may be, I won’t let anyone die today. I used everything I had to prepare. Can you still make another incident happen? Here's a friendly warning: as soon as you try, it will be all over for you. These aren't the words of challenge, but simply the truth."

Gensui's smile doesn't waver, but his eyes fill with sadness. His expression turns to that of Buddha looking with compassion at all life.

"I didn't want to tell you this, but now I feel pity for you, Souji. You will learn for certain that I am not the culprit very soon; the Case is still going to continue even after my death. I may not be a fortune-teller, but even I can predict some things. You should know, Souji, that "prediction" is even a genre of magic. Magic always has secret methods behind it, but my own prediction is simply based on reasoning, something anyone can do with enough data. I'm going to die of illness. Illnesses are given to people by the heavens, and no human can possibly fight against their orders."

Illness? This is the first time they're hearing of this. Gensui looks perfectly healthy...

"The Case started on September 19th last year," Gensui continues, "and the incidents always take place on the 19th day of the month. If the will of heavens is connected to the number nineteen, then it stands to reason that the Case might last for nineteen months in all. My life will reach its end before the Case is finished."

Suddenly, they hear a loud coo, coo and Onikaru-sama's door closes again; it must be 1 PM. Gensui takes advantage of the others' momentary confusion and turns around to leave.

"I'm not going to run or hide," he assures them. "I'm just going to join my family in the auditorium. I… even now, I hold a favorable impression of you. I'd like to spend more time with you before my life ends… Let me give you a piece of information that might prove useful. My successor, the ninety-ninth Umayato no Miko, will be my nephew Saimon Juku. Ask him whatever you wish."

With this, Gensui leaves.

When later that day Ajiro and Kirigirisu check on everyone gathered in the auditorium of the stage, they witness Tsukumo Tsushima suddenly falling off his chair, their fellow detective Arito Tarou crumbling to the ground right afterwards. Both die shortly after being taken to the hospital. The cause of death in both cases is determined to be acute heart failure related to overworking.

Ajiro and Kirigirisu resign from Nihon Tantei Club.

“You didn’t have to quit as well, Kirigirisu,” Ajiro says, though he looks a little glad.

“Boss—no, Souji… I owe you my life. I have already decided to commit my life to helping you. I will stay by your side no matter what.”

Soon, Ajiro creates a small private detective bureau with Kirigirisu as the only coworker, Mizuki taking care of office matters. The bureau is located in Ajiro’s own house, so his son Souya is constantly running around, and Kano sometimes comes to visit.

Even though they’ve just started working on their own, Ajiro gets an astounding number of investigation requests, probably because he made a name for himself as the leader of Nihon Tantei Club. In fact, it turns out many people had only called Nihon Tantei Club in the first place because Ajiro was there, and now his private bureau ends up getting more requests than the Club.

With this new wind pushing them forward, Ajiro is sure they will solve even the Saimon Family Case.

Just like Gensui predicted, new incidents still keep coming.

Fourteenth… On October 19th, Saimon Miku dies in the bath from carbon monoxide poisoning, indirectly caused by a wild bird’s nest blocking the chimney.

Fifteenth… On November 19th, Saimon Yurine dies from shellfish poisoning—more specifically from red tide toxins—when dining with friends in Yamaguchi.

Sixteenth… On December 19th, Saimon Akiko (junior) is found starved to death in the family’s storehouse, suspended by her arms inside the giant bell. It is noted that the girl had developed anorexia some time before and was under significant stress after her mother Yurine’s death. The police doesn’t consider the incident a murder.

While investigating Akiko’s death, Ajiro and Kirigirisu learn another secret behind the magic show. Three bells are used in the show, one real and two gimmicks. The gimmicks are shown on stage, while the real one is kept backstage and struck in accordance with the performers striking the gimmicks to give the impression that the latter are real. The magician can hide inside the gimmick easily and be moved somewhere else with it, so he can magically appear even in places without a trapdoor.

When armored Soga Tensui disappears behind the projection screen, he actually pulls himself up inside the bell above him. When the other bell near the front of the scene is then lowered down, the second Soga Tensui shows up from beneath it using the trapdoor. Both bells are then lowered to the ground and covered with black cloth. At this point, the bells (and the first Soga Tensui who’s still inside) are taken off stage through the trapdoor—apparently the gimmicks can be easily taken apart so they fit through. Two frames are put up instead to give the impression of two bell-like things underneath the cloth. The frames are black, so even after the Soga Tensui who’s still on stage removes the cloth, spectators can’t really see it in front of the black curtain.

The cases still keep coming.

Seventeenth… On January 19th, Tsukumo Touji (Tsushima’s young son) dies when a hospital nurse accidentally gives him the wrong IV drip. The boy was hospitalized due to serious malnutrition, the long-term effect of stress after his father’s sudden death.

If Gensui’s prediction was true, there will be two more cases, one of them surrounding his own death.

...that’s assuming he’s telling the truth. As far as Ajiro can tell, Gensui already lied to them about Saimon Juku being his future successor. When back in September the two detectives asked the boy about whether he’s Umayato no Miko, he just looked at them with honest confusion and repeated his usual ima wa kudaranai. When Ajiro explained what that phrase actually meant and asked about Prince Shoutoku, the boy still kept staring at them completely lost, visibly not understanding what on earth is going on.

When they brought this up to Gensui, he told them that Juku was just feigning ignorance; that specifically because the boy was Umayato no Miko, he wouldn’t let anyone know his secret. This explanation just sounded like Gensui trying to confuse them further.

After repeated attempts to ask Juku about the topic and never getting any solid answer, the two detectives gave up on trying to talk to him.

Eighteenth… On February 19th, Ajiro and Kirigirisu find Gensui’s body in front of Shouryouin. He looks so thin and miserable it’s hard to believe he could be the same healthy strong man they knew. Autopsy reveals he had last-stage cancer.

On the same day, the only remaining Soga Tensui disappears. Kirigirisu instantly thinks that the two may have switched places—the classic mystery plot twist—but Ajiro cools his enthusiasm by revealing yet another secret of the two brothers.

When Tensui (that is, the older brother Ryuusui) was a young man, he lost his left hand in the Pacific War. It’s hard to notice nowadays as he always wears a prosthetic, the movements of which can be secretly controlled with his right hand. The device was designed by the late Tousen Yomi, the genius magic prop maker. Tensui and Gensui both wore white gloves at all times to hide the difference. Apparently Tensui hates to be looked at with pity, can’t stand the prospect of being seen as “that disabled magician” rather than being recognized strictly for his art, so he trained hard to make his movements look as natural as possible. That’s also why Ajiro stayed quiet about it until now.

The body they found in front of Shouryouin definitely has a real left hand, so it can’t possibly be the older brother… although Ajiro can’t completely deny the possibility that Tensui could have been lying about his disability, and actually used an illusion to make it look like he’s removing a prosthetic hand (an event that Ajiro saw with his own two eyes once). Or maybe the person he thought to be Tensui at the time was actually Gensui, and it was him who had a prosthetic… who knows which brother was actually which.

It’s all quite confusing, but Ajiro proposes they keep calling the dead brother Gensui and the one still alive Tensui, since this is what the rest of the family will think is the case… even though he personally suspects that the person they knew as Gensui is still alive.

What a weird brotherly switcharoo.

Ajiro gets lost in thought for a long time after that conversation, as if something pushed his mind onto a completely new track. After all the funeral rites are over and the house calms down, he takes Kirigirisu along to talk with Saimon Juku one more time.

Apparently Ajiro has no intention to needlessly prolong things, as he immediately asks the boy:

“Juku… are you actually Juku?”

“Boss, what are you even saying?!”

“If Gensui told us the truth, then Saimon Juku was chosen as the next Umayato no Miko. However, the boy in front of us doesn’t even know that name. I think the brother who died in the accident wasn’t Joukei, but Juku. Gensui—no, Tensui must have known about this switch. That’s why he sounded so confident when telling us we can ask the boy anything: because the child who knew all about Umayato no Miko was already dead.”

For a long moment, the boy with sunglasses is quiet. Then—

“You're right… Juku was the one who died,” Saimon Joukei says. Tears fill his eyes. “I was supposed to be the one to die that day. The man with the white demon mask came here and said he would kill everyone if I didn’t go with him… He really should have taken me, but… but Juku went to meet him instead. Before he went, Juku said… if something happens to me, please live as me from now on...”

Then Shiroyasha was the murderer in the Saimon Family Case as well…

“And after that,” Ajiro says with an expression like he just figured something out, “you suddenly became so beautiful that people faint just looking at you. I think I can explain it. The reason why babies are cute is because that cuteness is their only weapon; they can’t do anything by themselves and have to rely on adults being charmed into providing for them. Perhaps when people have no other means to protect themselves, they can somehow make themselves more beautiful in order to survive. Joukei, I think your sudden beauty is a defense mechanism. You can’t possibly allow anyone to notice that you and Juku switched places, not after he sacrificed his own life to protect you. That’s why you turned so beautiful that no one can take a closer look at you—so no one can notice the truth.”

Even Joukei himself looks surprised learning the reason behind his beauty.

Kirigirisu wonders whether this sort of supernatural transformation is actually possible in real life… well, he already knows that the boy really does make people faint, so the only choice left is to accept the improbable.

Now that the detectives are sure the boy really doesn’t know anything more about the Case or Umayato no Miko, they decide they can’t get him tangled into any more dangerous matters. They turn back to leave.

“Mr. Ajiro! Mr. Kirigirisu!” the boy shouts, making them stop. “From now on… will you protect me?”

“Of course we will,” Ajiro answers without hesitation.

[>>>NEXT PART>>>]

#sparkly reads the saimon family case #maijo and jdc stuff

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destiel-love-forever · 5 years ago

Text

Just Shut Up & Kiss Me Already

"How about combine #14 Pretend Dating and #29 “Just shut up and kiss me already.” - Adoptdon’tshoppets) ** I added some bedsharing into this because I couldn’t help myself

Castiel has to go to yet another Thanksgiving with his parents/family who think he's not living up to his potential. He begs his best friend/roommate of eight years (who just so happens to be the man he loves.... and straight) to come with him for the weekend. The catch? Castiel wants him to pretend to be in a relationship with him to get his parents off his back....

Will Castiel survive the weekend?

Will Dean be able to continue denying his not so straight feelings towards his best friend?

READ BELOW OR ON AO3 HERE: JUST SHUT UP & KISS ME ALREADY

Just Shut Up & Kiss Me Already

When Dean finishes laughing, he wipes tears from his eyes and looks at his best friend. His smile slips when he sees that Castiel isn't happy. At all. In fact, Castiel looks devastated.

"Wait, you're serious?" Dean asks in shock.

Castiel's face turns bright red. "Yes. It's just… my family is a lot to handle. And they've been on me for years to find someone. It'll be an entire weekend of them making me feel like shit. I just thought it'd be easier to bring you and pretend. But you're right. That's- that would be stupid. I shouldn't have asked, Dean. I'm - I'm sorry."

"No, no Cas, wait! I just thought you were fucking with me. We can - I mean - sure. Why not, right? It's not like we have to fuck. I don't have to pretend to like you, so it'll be easy.”

Castiel perks up, eyes going wide. "You don't have to pretend?"

"Of course not." Dean grins at him. "You're my best friend, man."

"Oh. Right. Of course. Me too - I - me too. For not having to pretend. Because of the best friend thing." Castiel has to look away from Dean, focusing instead on the plant in the corner. "We leave tomorrow then. Pack a suit."

“A suit?” Dean asks in confusion. “Isn’t it just Thanksgiving at your house?”

Castiel laughs. “No holiday is just a holiday at the Novak’s. Trust me. Bring a suit.”

"Alright."

Dean starts to laugh and Castiel looks back at him, lifting an eyebrow in question. "What?"

"Nothin'. Just picturing myself pretending to be gay. I'm gonna rock it. Don't worry, Cas. They'll never know I'm not into dick."

Feeling his face flush and his eyes burn, Castiel forces a fragile smile and nods once. "I know, Dean. You'll be perfect. You always are."

Dean doesn't notice that Castiel is talking about something much bigger than this. It doesn't matter, though. Castiel knew better than to fall in love with a straight man, but he did so anyway. This is his punishment. 72 hours pretending to be in a happy relationship with the man he loves… his straight best friend.

---------

Castiel stands in front of the house, feet seemingly glued to the sidewalk. Shifting his duffel bag over his shoulder, Dean looks between his best friend and the house, finally asking, “Is this it?”

“Yup.”

“Are we expecting one of those groups of people that come out with chairs and you get to sit on it and they carry you inside? Because I’m pretty sure that’s like a Jewish thing, and you aren’t Jewish.”

The smile Castiel gives him is full of anxiety, nowhere near what it usually is. Dean has an uncanny talent at making Castiel Novak smile or laugh in the worst of situations, but it’s not working. Shit. It’s not working. How does he help, then? Other than his humor? Dean’s sarcasm and jokes are supposed to work. They’re what he hides behind.

Clearing his throat awkwardly, Dean says in a soft - hopefully comforting - voice, “Everything will be alright, Cas. You said they’re not that bad, right?”

“Right. Just extremely judgemental, with high expectations that set you up to fail, while all skilled at the art of passive aggressiveness.” Castiel finally looks Dean in the eyes, this time his smile so sad it breaks Dean’s heart. “It will be alright. I know. Just - I’m just trying to get the energy.”

“Take your time.”

Just as Dean is saying this, the front door is opening and a woman in a pristine form-fitting white dress and black heels calls, “Whatever do you think you’re doing out here, Castiel? The neighbors probably think you’ve gone insane. Get inside! It’s freezing.”

Releasing a deep sigh, Castiel steps forward. “Happy Thanksgiving,” he mumbles to himself. He startles when Dean slips his hand in his, big blue eyes looking up at him in shock. Then he must remember that they’re in a fake relationship because he squeezes back in thanks and smiles a genuine smile. The first one since they arrived.

Alright, if humor won’t work, then Dean will do this. He’ll be the perfect boyfriend. Dean will touch Castiel constantly, in one way or another, and never leave his side.

--------

“So, Dean. You and Castiel have been friends for quite a while, right?” Mrs. Novak says with a clearly fake smile, eyes narrowed in on him.

“Yes, ma’am.” Dean smiles at Castiel, reaching beneath the table and touching his knee. Castiel doesn’t understand why he keeps doing that. Touching him. Always fucking touching him. Can’t he tell he sets Castiel’s body on fire every time his fingertips brush him? “Roommates freshman year. I think I met you when he moved into the dorm, ma’am.”

“Ah. Yes.” She smirks as she reaches for her glass of wine. “The boy with the posters.”

If Dean catches onto that being an insult, he doesn’t show it. Before he can respond to Castiel’s mom, though, Castiel’s father steps in. “What was it that you were majoring in again, Mr. Winchester? Do you work?”

Castiel wants to roll his eyes but refrains.

“Biomedical Engineering, sir,” Dean answers. “I am currently heading a team to work on artificial organ development.”

“Impressive. It’s always good when someone gets a practically degree,” Castiel’s father says casually.

“Yes,” his mother agrees. “A degree with an actual career. You’re very smart, Dean. Lucifer and Michael are both doctors. Have you spoken to them?” she asks, gesturing to the two brothers to Dean’s left.

Lucifer looks at Dean with a judgemental eye scan. “We’ll have to discuss the work you’re doing over some scotch and cigars after dessert.”

One look at Dean, and Castiel knows he wants so badly to tell Lucifer he’s more of a beer and cigarettes kind of guy, but Dean says nothing. He just gives Lucifer a curt nod and takes a drink of his wine that Castiel knows he hates, because Dean winces after every sip.

“And Anna,” his mother adds, gesturing to Castiel’s only sister. “She’s in law school. And Gabriel is pursuing a phD.”

Dean squeezes Castiel’s knee without looking at him. “Castiel is working on his second novel. Has he told you about it?”

“Mmm,” Castiel’s mother says, flicking her eyes at her son in disgust. “Yes. Well. Brave of him, after the first one.”

“The first one did well,” Dean defends.

“Yes. You’re right, Dean. For a man just starting out, I suppose it did fine.”

“Actually-” Dean starts, but Castiel jumps in before his best friend of eight years throws himself on the train tracks to defend him. “Mother, the meal was lovely.”

His mother gives him a sickly sweet smile. “Yes, well, it’s all Greta could do with all of her preparations for Thanksgiving tomorrow.”

“Castiel,” Mr. Novak says abruptly. “Have you thought anymore about how you’ll be using your trust fund?”

“I already told you, father,” Castiel nearly growls. “I’m donating it.”

“Of course. Yes. Taking care of those who are too lazy to take care of themselves.” His father scoffs. “My liberal son. Pride and joy.”

Gabriel groans from the other side of the table where Castiel has been watching him sneak bites of the dessert while everyone was too distracted being assholes with fake smiles. “Politics is where I draw the line. Can we all just stop talking about jobs and views and money? Let’s have dessert. Doesn’t it look delicious?”

Everyone, even Castiel’s parents, smiles fondly at Gabriel. The middle child who has no pressure on him for some reason Castiel’s never understood. Gabriel changed majors like outfits. Slept around. Took two extra years to graduate. Got arrested in Mexico once and needed their father to help get him back here and free of any charges. His phD? It’s in fucking philosophy.

Castiel sinks back in his chair and takes a deep breath as the dessert begins to get dished out. It’s then that he realizes that Dean still has his hand on Castiel’s leg, skimming his thumb back and forth along his jeans. Tentatively, Castiel places his hand over Dean’s. Their fingers slot together and Castiel hasn't felt so grounded, so safe, in a long time.

--------

"You can have the bed," Castiel says softly, looking completely drained. "I'll sleep on the floor."

Dean rolls his eyes as he starts to unbuckle his belt. "Don't be ridiculous. You'll sleep with me."

Castiel's eyes track Dean's every move, something he hasn't done in years. Dean knows Castiel always found him attractive, but Castiel stopped looking at Dean like he is now once he found out Dean's straight. Then they became best friends. He barely looks at Dean at all anymore, always paying attention to the world instead.

Before, it had made Dean uncomfortable. He would always turn his back. Undress quickly. Jump under the covers.

Not anymore.

Dean kind of likes it. He refuses to analyze why.

Instead, he focuses on taking his time. Stepping out of his jeans and slowly reaching behind his head to grab his shirt, Dean looks at Castiel again. Their eyes meet. Castiel's hands are paused in the middle of unbuttoning his cardigan, his smooth pale chest and stomach exposed to Dean's gaze. Dean has been dragging him to the gym to keep him from sitting at home too much. He didn't do it with the intention of making Castiel look any better, because Castiel always looks good - not like… in a gay way - but Dean finds himself appreciating the view now.

Why does he feel like this looking at Castiel? Sure, he's had these urges before. Ever since he met him even. But they were always explainable. Like when Dean walked in on Castiel watching porn and jacking off, and Dean had to force himself to leave instead of offering help - something completely justified because porn makes anyone horny, right? So of course he hesitated. Porn is distracting. Hot. Other times, the pull comes when they're drunk - clearly Dean's inhibitions are lowered and his mind isn't thinking clearly. There was the one time, when Castiel got this douchebag boyfriend and Dean found him screaming in Castiel's face one night, Dean beat the shit out of him and then looked at Castiel whose face was covered in tears and told him he deserved better - but that was just Dean being protective of his best friend. Sometimes it's really late at night, when Dean can't sleep and Castiel keeps him company - but that's because of Dean's exhaustion, that's all. Sometimes it-

Dean looks away from Castiel and hurries to pull his shirt over his head, hiding his face as the realization hits him. He feels like this too often. All the fucking time. What does that mean? Why does he want to slam Castiel against the wall and fuck him right now? Why does he want to lay him down on that bed and give him comforting kisses?

---------

If Castiel didn't know better, he'd think Dean was checking him out. Of course, after 8 years, he knows better. Dean's straight. Even if Castiel sometimes feels like Dean wants him, like when he walked in on Castiel masturbating that one time and stared in awe as he licked his lips, or when they go out to the bars or parties and they get a little too drunk and Dean gets a little too close, or when Castiel was dating Jason and Dean beat him up for yelling at Castiel and calling him names, and Dean wiped the tears from Castiel's face as he whispered softly about Castiel deserving better, or when Castiel keeps Dean company if Dean has his nightmares and they cuddle without calling it cuddling on the couch, but Castiel knows those times mean nothing. Just wishful thinking, same as right now.

Castiel climbs into the bed quickly, pulling the covers up to hide his body. He's suddenly regretting his habit of sleeping in boxers. If he tried to wear pjs, Dean would call him out, because Dean knows Castiel can't stand sleeping with clothes on. The downfall of living with the man for 8 years now. Dean knows everything. Except, hopefully, the fact that Castiel is in love with him.

Dean climbs in beside Castiel and if Castiel didn't know better - which, once again, he does - he'd think Dean was closer to him than he needed to be on the big bed. Their bare shoulders press close together and Castiel's body erupts in goosebumps.

"So, your family," Dean starts.

"Yeah."

"Gabe's cool."

Castiel laughs softly, nodding. "He is."

"I had a beer with him out on the porch while you went off with Anna. From the sound of it, you're more successful and put together than he is."

"I've never really understood it, but for some reason that doesn't matter to anyone."

"Well, it should." Dean scoffs. "And your book. How can they say that's not good? It was a bestseller, and it was brilliant. Your writing, Cas, it - it's so fucking good. And I'm not saying that out of obligation."

Feeling his face heat up, Castiel looks away from Dean and toward the wall. "I doubt any of them have read it, besides Gabe."

This makes Dean adjust in the bed. Out of curiosity, Castiel looks back at him. He shouldn't have. Dean is up on an elbow, staring down at him with those beautiful green eyes wide. "Seriously? Fuck. I hate them. Family doesn't do this. Doesn't treat you like this."

"It's okay, Dean."

"It's not!"

"Dean." Castiel gently pulls Dean until he's lying down again. They both turn on their sides so they can look at each other in the dim lamp light. "It doesn't matter. I've got my own family. People I can count on and trust. People who love me for me and cheer me on even in the worst of times. Charlie. Chuck. Balthazar. Sam." He pauses, biting his bottom lip, then whispers, "You."

This seems to make Dean feel better because his body relaxes. "Then why did we come instead of going to friendsgiving with everyone?"

"Because I want Christmas with you guys, and my family would fucking explode if I skipped both."

Dean sighs. Castiel can tell he's frustrated, but Dean also understands. He has his own set of family issues.

"We'll get through this, Cas. Together. I promise."

"Yeah," Castiel whispers, noticing that Dean just settled his hand on Castiel's hip. His thumb starts doing the stroking thing again. He wants to ask Dean why he's touching him when no one is around to see the show, but he's afraid it would make him stop. When Castiel says, "Together," as a confirmation, his voice is breathy and embarrassing.

He hopes Dean doesn’t notice.

---------

Dean wakes up from one of his constant nightmares. He slips out of the bed, not wanting to wake Castiel, and tugs on a pair of sweats. The Novak house is ridiculously huge but he eventually finds his way to the kitchen. Hopefully after a glass of water and maybe a sneak outside for some fresh air, he’ll be able to fall asleep again. It’s wishful thinking. The only way Dean ever falls back asleep after his nightmares is if Castiel talks to him. He always does this thing where he plays with Dean’s hair, speaking in this incredibly smooth voice that sends these waves of calm over Dean. He never even says anything important. Just rambles about things like plot arcs or character development or some article he read about cats.

The memories make Dean smile, but then an overwhelming surge of panic floods him like it did earlier. Something is happening between him and Castiel. Something that Dean thinks has been happening for years.

Something Dean can't keep ignoring.

Just as Dean is taking his water and heading toward the sliding door that leads to the deck out back, he catches movement to his right. He turns his head and comes face to face with Gabriel, Castiel's brother. The man looks quite somber compared to his earlier goofiness. In fact, he might even look angry.

"Can't sleep?" Gabriel grunts, giving Dean a look Dean has no idea how he earned.

"Uh. No. Never really can." Dean awkwardly rubs the back of his neck. "You?"

"I sleep just fine." Gabriel looks at the doors Dean was obviously about to open. "Mind if I join you?"

Dean wants to say yes because Gabriel looks upset and he's kind of afraid to find out why, but instead he nods and leads the way. The second the doors are closed behind them, Gabriel is stalking toward Dean.

"Listen up, Winchester. If you're playing a fucking game with him, or if you're just trying out the whole gay thing for funsies, I'll fucking destroy you. He can lie all he wants to everyone else about you two being together for months now and all that bullshit, but he talks to me all the time. I know the real story. And I think you're sick for fucking with his heart like this."

Opening and closing his mouth in shock, Dean manages to sputter out, "What? What story?"

"I know you two are faking Dean. I'm the one that gave him the fucking idea. Except he wasn't supposed to ask you, but apparentally my brother is a masochist." Before Dean can ask him to elaborate, Gabriel continues his rant. "But I saw you with him today. The looks you keep giving him. The touching even when no one is around. That stupid charming smile. He's loved you for 8 years now, and no I don't feel bad about telling you that because it's not like it was a secret, right Dean? You've known. Guys like you always know."

Dean's throat starts to close and his hands shake. This is what he came out here to think about, but he didn't plan to get it shoved down his fucking throat. He can't breathe.

Gabriel fills the open silence. He's apparentally quite good at that. "Just let the poor guy go if you don't want him, Dean. Stop this."

"I'm not doing anything," Dean finally says, his voice shaky and weak.

"Come on buddy. Don't pretend you're stupid. You're not."

"I don't-" Dean stops himself. He hangs his head and closes his eyes. "I don't know what to do. What I want. I - I'm not gay."

Gabriel scoffs. "Who the fuck cares? That's a label. Nothing more."

When Dean looks up at him, feeling a confused but desperate hope swelling in his chest, Gabriel rolls his eyes. "Do you love my brother?"

"Yes." It's not even a question.

"Do you find him attractive?"

"I - yeah."

"Not in the 'oh yeah I'll admit that man is good looking' way but in the 'holy shit he's so fucking hot and beautiful and I need to kiss him' way."

Blushing, Dean looks out at the darkness that should be the yard. Part of him wants to jump into it and let it swallow him whole. The other wants to finally step into the light and tell the fucking truth. To Gabe. To Castiel. To himself.

"Yeah," he whispers to the darkness.

"Are you in love with him?"

Dean closes his eyes. Is he? He's never been before. Always thought he was one of those people that can't. It's supposed to be all crazy butterflies, right? Adrenaline. Intoxicated feelings as you kiss and fuck. Screaming matches in fits of passion. Getting drunk off smiles. Unable to breathe without each other. A rollercoaster. Isn't that what people are always comparing it to?

When Dean thinks of Castiel, he doesn't think of chaos or instability. Dean thinks of soft rain on the roof as they lay together on the couch in the middle of the night. He thinks of safety. Peace. Warmth. Calm. When Dean thinks of Castiel, he thinks of home.

If it's up to Dean, he thinks that's what love should be like. The lighthouse in the storm.

"I have to tell him," Dean tells Gabriel.

"No," Gabriel says quietly.

It's so unexpected that Dean flinches. "What?"

"Tell him when you get home, Dean."

"Why?"

Gabriel chuckles, but it's dry. "For one? You need to think this over, because I'm serious about the killing you thing. You better fucking be sure before talking to him. And second? Do you really want to do that here? His least favorite place in the damn world? Where you can't, ya know, celebrate? Hell, can't even have a deep conversation about it?"

Dean grits his teeth. Gabriel is right.

But he's already waited 8 fucking years.

Dean's not sure he will survive another 24 hours.

-------

Castiel stabs another piece of turkey, causing Dean to jump for the third time beside him. He avoids what he knows is a concerned look from his best friend by focusing on his plate instead.

"-just saying," his mother continues, as if she can't see Castiel is clearly upset. "The least you could do is be a father. That's useful. What do you do all day? Sit around and read books? Write? Those are hobbies. At least be a stay at home father if you're so set on not having a real career."

"When I grow a womb," Castiel growls, emphasizing the last syllable with another stabbed piece of turkey. "I'll let you know, mother."

"Well, you could adopt. Or do a surrogate. You have the money, thanks to us of course." His mother turns her fake smile onto Dean. "Do you want children, Dean?"

Castiel closes his eyes as he feels Dean tense up beside him. For the first time all weekend, Castiel touches Dean first, pushing his crush aside and being a good friend by placing a hand on his thigh. He squeezes once. A silent apology. Dean's hand rests over his, holding him there.

For a moment, Castiel is back in their apartment, senior year of college. Dean wasted beyond belief, crying with his head in Castiel's lap. Admitting he can't ever be a father. Believing he has too much of John Winchester in his blood to even risk it.

"No, ma'am. I don't think it's in the cards for me," Dean says in a strangled voice.

"Why not?"

"That's personal, mother," Castiel says through gritted teeth.

His mother just shrugs. "I just want to make sure it's not a financial thing. You could always keep your trust fund, you know. Use it to make Dean happy."

"God dammit, mother!" Castiel bursts, his fork clattering to the table. He can feel his eyes burning and his throat clogging, so he hurries to choke out what he wants to say before he falls apart. "Dean's going to be happy, okay? Wanna know why? He's not with me. It's all a lie. So don't feel bad for Dean, the poor biomedical engineer who is stuck with your sorry excuse of a son, because he's not. He's free to be with some ambitious blonde bimbo for all I care!"

As he shoves away from the table and storms off, Castiel hears his father barking at him to not speak to his mother like that and come back and apologize. Castiel just scoffs. He tries to slam the door of his bedroom, planning to immediately pack his and Dean's shit so they can go, but something stops the door and the satisfying slam never comes. He turns and finds Dean quietly closing the door instead.

He looks gorgeous in his suit. Castiel has had to keep himself from telling him that all night. Now that he's drunk and clearly not thinking straight, he's worried it might pour out if he opens his mouth, so he keeps it firmly sealed.

"Thank you," Dean begins, still looking at the door. "You didn't have to do that. I could have handled it."

Castiel calculates every word, every syllable, before cautiously parting his lips. "You shouldn't have to handle it, Dean. I'm sorry for even making you do this in the first place."

"Cas-"

"Can we just go?"

"Yes. Of course." Without another word, Dean begins to pack alongside him. They move together in a comfortable silence that, under the circumstances, shouldn't be able to even exist. That's something he always loved about Dean. His willingness to just be. It's hard to find people like that. People who can settle the storm inside your soul and make it so you can breathe.

No one tries to stop them. Castiel gets a wink from Gabriel when they pass by with their bags, and he gives him a nod back. They'll see each other in a week or two, Castiel is sure. They'll probably talk on the phone tomorrow. But Castiel won't out Gabriel to his parents. Not when Castiel just raised his status in the family from the black sheep the public enemy number one.

"Where to?" Dean asks when he slides behind the wheel.

Castiel looks out the window, hoping to hide that he's crying. "Home."

--------

They don't get home until two in the morning. Dean feels dead on his feet, especially since he didn't sleep the night before, but Castiel is more important. The man is a breath away from breaking down. Dean needs to stop him.

"Bottle of wine and popcorn," Dean instructs when they drop their bags on the floor beside the front door. "I'll turn on Queer Eye."

Castiel smiles softly. "It's late, Dean. You're tired."

"Wait a minute. Mark the calendar. Castiel Novak just turned down an opportunity to watch Queer Eye!"

"I hate you." Castiel tries to glare at him but it's a pathetic attempt. He ends up dramatically sighing and rolling his eyes. "Fiiiine. One episode. Grab the big blanket from my room, too. It's cold in here."

Five minutes later, they're pressed close together in the middle of the couch - even though there's plenty of room on each side of them - covered in Castiel's huge purple fuzzy blanket, eating popcorn and drinking Moscato.

Halfway through the episode, just as Antoni is about to teach what sounds like a delicious dessert, Dean pauses it. He can't wait any longer.

Castiel looks over at him in confusion, and something on Dean's face must give him away because Castiel's body tenses. "What's wrong?"

"I need to talk to you." Dean clears his throat, unsure of where to even start. "I've been thinking about this for longer than I'd like to admit, but I don't know. Just - promise no matter what, we stay friends, okay? I just have to get it off my chest and then we can move on if that's what you want to do."

Instead of looking confused or curious like Dean expected, Castiel looks terrified. His hands tighten around the blanket until his knuckles turn white. "Dean, I'm sorry. I never-"

"No. Wait. Just let me - I need to say it, Cas. Please?"

"Yeah, okay," Castiel whispers, looking ready to cry. "Go ahead."

"I never told you this, but you were the first openly gay person I ever met. In a town like mine growing up, no one would dare come out. So, when we met and we started living together, I was - I dunno. I was curious, I guess? I dunno. It felt so wrong I guess. Not wrong just - shit, this isn't going like I want it to." Dean rakes a hand through his hair. "You were just this thing that everyone told me growing up was bad and to stay away from, but I just couldn't, and not because you were my roommate but because you were like this forbidden fruit. So the first time I - the first time I felt anything, toward you I mean, I thought it was that. Just the allure of the mystery. Fascination."

Castiel shakes his head. "I don't-"

"Let me finish. Please. Just - let me explain."

"Okay."

Dean launches to his feet and begins to pace. "Then we became best friends, and the pull I felt was stronger. But it wasn't sexual. I didn't want to fuck you. I just wanted - fuck, I don't know. I wanted you safe. Happy. I wanted to be the one you came to on the best and the worst days. I told myself it was because we were getting to be like brothers. And whenever it felt like more than that, I rationalized it away. Reasoned with myself. Convinced myself."

Hoping to gauge how this mess is going so far, Dean pauses, taking in Castiel's features. The man is flushed and slightly trembling, but his brows are raised and his eyes are wide with what is unmistakably hope.

Please let it be the right kind of hope.

"I won't go through 8 years, Cas. It would take days, if I'm being honest, because once I admitted it to myself I realized I've been lying for so fucking long. Since the beginning."

"The beginning of what? Lying about what?" Castiel asks, his voice vibrating lower than usual.

"The beginning of us. And lying to myself about it. About what was really going on. What I was feeling. What I wanted."

"Dean, I don't-"

"I'm in love with you, Cas," Dean blurts, unable to choke it down any longer. Then everything - 8 years worth of things - comes pouring out. "I love the way you say you hate my music but secretly sing along under your breath. I love your hair in the mornings, and your sleepy smile. Your stupid ugly socks. Your books all over the place, usually still open like you just got up mid sentence and never came back. I love that you get into fights with the characters you write. I love that, without fail, you end up reading the entire Harry Potter series every fall, because the pumpkins remind you of that scene in book one, and according to you you can't just read book one and then 'abandon' the characters like that. I love that you will literally throw down and fight anyone who doesn't agree that Faulkner is a brilliant writer. I love that you're always losing or breaking your glasses. What are you on now, since we met, huh? Pair 30? 31?"

"33," Castiel breathes.

"Exactly." Dean grins. "I love that. I love - I love all of it. I love you. I love-"

"Dean."

Dean's breath catches. Oh no. He's going to stop Dean. Castiel is going to tell him he doesn't feel the same way.

Gathering himself, Dean meets those familiar blue eyes and whispers, "Yeah?"

"Just shut up and kiss me already."

#destiel #destiel fanfic #pretend dating #fake relationship #roommates #best friends #thanksgiving #the novak family sucks #writer castiel #angst #mutual pining #pining #love confessions #first kiss

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fibula-rasa · 6 years ago

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The Vamps — Part Two: Theda Bara and the Star Image

Theda Bara was born in the shadow of the Egyptian pyramids–the daughter of a French actress and an Italian sculptor. Her betrothed is a skeleton.

Theodosia Goodman was born to a middle-class family in Cincinnati, Ohio. She was the daughter of a Jewish haberdasher.

In the early years of the film industry, there were no stars. Film producers knew that allowing for name recognition would empower their performers to make demands–like greater pay. So, the performers in films were routinely uncredited. Around 1910, that began to change. When The Biograph Girl, as she was known, moved to a different studio, her name was finally made known to the public: Florence Lawrence.

An aside: If this seems wild to you, think about modern television commercials. Before he jumped to a different company, how many people repeated the phrase “Can you hear me now?” without knowing the actor (Paul Marcarelli) from the Verizon commercials? Nowadays, what with google and social media, this isn’t quite as common but, still, How many people know the names of those Sonic guys (who are clearly in purgatory btw) but know their gags well? (Their names are T.J. Jagodowski and Peter Grosz.)

Once Florence Lawrence became The First Movie Star, it didn’t take long at all for the trappings of the star image’s constructed reality to develop. Movie fan press began covering the “private lives” and habits of performers. Studio employees built biographies for film performers that better matched their on-screen personas than their actual background. The performers themselves were variably complicit in the smoke and mirrors act. That’s not to suggest that everyone accepted these tales as the gospel truth. Much of the gossip press and movie fans simply had fun with it. That’s right, smarks are as old as kayfabe.

Theda Bara’s burst onto the screen in 1914 was an immediate draw. As the concept of film stars was crystalizing the film star’s image was intentionally muddled with the characters that they interpreted for the screen. In Bara’s case, Fox studios started fleshing out Bara’s Vamp pedigree. The Vamp archetype itself had taken form over the past decade [see Part 1], but Bara would give life to the paradigm. That first biography above is what was reported to the fan press by Fox’s press agents. The skeleton boyfriend was suggested by the copy to accompany a promotional photo shoot where a scantily clad Bara drapes herself beside a prone skeleton. The ties to Spiritualism are clear. Death was by no means a finality to Bara’s romance.

Bara swiftly became one of the biggest stars of film in the teens–alongside Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford–The Vamp, The Tramp, and The Sweetheart. As movie fandom grew and the Los Angeles colony of filmmakers coalesced, concerns arose about the real, unconstructed lives of the performers. For Vamp types in particular, the question of their IRL morality was important to address in order to maintain their popularity. If anyone actually believed Bara was a sex-crazed goth, that could spell trouble for her career as the public began to care about film-star morality. In a May 1918 issue of Photoplay, Bara was asked about her morality to which she responded:

‘People write me letters,’ she said smilingly; ‘and they ask me if I am as wicked as I seem on the screen. I look at my little canary and I say “Dicky, am I so wicked?” And Dicky says, “Tweet, tweet.” That may mean “yes, yes,” or “no, no,” may it not?’

Coy and quirky answers aside, Bara continued to be a popular draw for Fox. In 1917, she took on the ultimate Vamp role, Cleopatra. The film is now believed lost, but at the time, it was her biggest hit. As her contract with Fox was running down, Bara began to campaign for non-Vamp roles. After that contract expired, that’s what she tried to pursue. It didn’t really work out and she eventually opted to retire from acting in 1926.

Bara made forty films in her roughly twelve-year-long film career. Unfortunately, only a handful of her films are still extant. So, how has Bara’s image persisted so strongly more than a century after her debut when there’s so little of her work for admires to engage with? Well, there’s a lot of potential answers to that question.

For one, the character of Theda Bara, the film star, was very well-limned and much of that promotional material has survived. The photographs and accompanying promotional copy paint a vivid picture that people still respond to today. I can tell to you that, as a teen, when I was encountering Bara’s photographs in a book I was immediately dedicated to seeing her films. The heartbreak that came with discovering how few of them exist and were readily available to watch in the late 1990s was real. It’s a story that’s still repeated today.

Bara’s acting style probably contributes to her persistent popularity as well. She was part of an acting tradition that involved the repetition of specific expressions and gestures to interpret a characters’ emotions. This style translates beautifully into still photographs. It’s not a stretch to suggest that it’s easier with Bara than many other lost film stars to extrapolate what their films and performances were like.

Also, Bara herself lived on, continuing to play with her image–even parodying herself in her final film appearance in 1926.

Additionally, by chance, one of Bara’s most popular surviving films is A Fool There Was (1914), the film that officially solidified the Vamp archetype. From the material we have, film fans and scholars can use Bara handily to build narratives about the emergence of the star system and fan interaction. So, Theda Bara, The Vamp, has lived on regardless of the dearth of surviving film. Feels pretty Spiritualist in itself, eh?

Learn How to Get the Look BELOW THE JUMP

The Costume

To build yourself a Theda Bara costume, this are the key elements I would focus on:

The Makeup

Bara did her own makeup and costuming for many of her films. It was common practice at the time. So, like later-Cleo Elizabeth Taylor, Bara’s makeup is pretty consistent across her films. Authenticity be damned though, because you are making a costume for fun in 2018, not to be photographed on orthographic film in 1918. I chose maroon-red for my eyeshadow because I thought it would be more striking and, in black and white, would photograph darker than a cooler shade.

The key shape is curvy, elongated eyeshadow in a single color, well blended into a dark liner shade. Bara has pretty round eyes, so you’ll likely want to line your waterline with a lighter shade–white if you wanna be really striking, a nude lighter than your skin tone if you wanna play it low key. Your eyebrows should be straight and drawn out as long as the eye makeup.

The lip shape is small, but not a pucker-pout. Focus on the sharpness of the cupid’s bow. I chose a color in harmony with the eyeshadow, but any deep red or pink would do.

Blush and contour? Skip it. First because you need to cherish the gothy pallor. Second because it would look incongruous with this makeup style. Film stars of the era didn’t typically wear rouge because, on film, it would come off as a deep shadow. The gaunt look wasn’t very fashionable.

The Hair

You have lots of freedom here. Bara had long, thick, and curly hair but as bobs became more fashionable, she often pinned it up into a messy faux-bob. The latter is what I went with. I brushed and pinned the hair on the crown of my head forward to make an era-appropriate pouf.

Head gear is a good choice. I actually pinned a necklace into my hair but if you have any art-nouveau or ancient-Egypt inspired pieces, you’re set. It might sound a little wild, but a dead flower crown would be so on brand.

The Clothes

Scanty. The most important skin to flaunt is around your neck and collar bones. For dress/skirt length, you should go close to floor-length if possible. The fabric should ideally be drapey and/or gauzy. Now, if it’s cold where you are around Halloween, an extra-large scarf would be a good call.

Read Part One

Part Three: Pola Negri & Exoticism coming Thursday!

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lids-flutter-open · 7 years ago

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a thing i wrote for the rabbi in preparation for finishing my conversion

1. How did you get to be sitting here today - tell me your story, how you learned to love Judaism, why you aren't x-tan anymore

I grew up in Olympia, Washington. My mother was "spiritual" but not specifically religious, and took us to a Unitarian Universalist church. I think this was a good experience for me, because it connected time in church ("church") to time talking about social justice concerns, and to caring about other people in a concentrated way. The UU church fed people at a shelter and raised money for environmental causes. I think it informed my principles as a person, even though my mother stopped taking us after a while. My father, whose mother was fairly fervently Methodist, didn't like religion. As a child, I associated religion proper--the kind of Christianity that other people did, for instance--with being asked to believe in something that was impossible, and the moral logic of religion, and especially Christianity as my grandmother knew it, didn't make a lot of sense to me. I was without any kind of religion throughout high school. I often felt depressed and anxious; I was gay and trans, and even after my parents began supporting me, many of my friends faced bullying, homelessness, mental health crises, and abuse. As I learned more about war, iniquity, and imperialism, I often felt like the world as it existed was beyond help, and that too many people suffered for the world to have any order. During that time, as I participated in LGBT groups around my town, I met some friends who were Jewish and coming into what that meant to them. I had really interesting conversations around Jewish ideas of God and morality with my friend Levi, who had grown up in a very racist town in Nevada and who embraced the idea of an all-knowing God who at the same time was mysteriously and frustratingly absent and who one had to both believe in and be angry at. In college, I took a class on European Jewish literature since the 1800s and read a lot of literature (from Gluckel von Hameln to Irene Nemirovsky and Stefan Zweig and Marx and Freud) accompanied by the analysis of a very gay older professor who tried very hard to keep his analysis secular while giving us religious concepts to provide context for the significance of writers' desperation, alienation, and struggle. A central idea that stuck with me from that class was the paradox of a God who has issued laws which everyone must follow for the salvation of the world even though nobody is sure exactly how to follow them. It combined the comforting and somewhat idealistic certainty that there was a plan with the sensible conclusion that, based on the chaos and horror extant in the world today, nobody was enforcing that plan and for practical purposes humanity was on its own to solve its problems. I also was fascinated that the ideas of Marx, and the ideas of many of the people who tried to formulate socialist states from the ruins of monarchies in the early 20th century, were influenced by the Jewish messianic tradition and were part of the idea that people themselves could bring on the dawn of the ultimate, perfect era of life on Earth if we only worked together and worked hard enough. It's romantic, but I pictured Jewish socialists motorcycling across the Russian steppe (as indeed they did, when carrying news during the 1918 crisis), imagining that their work might fix what everyone else had gotten wrong. I like Judaism because it recognizes humanity's messiness and mistakes, including prophets. It notes the arguments people have had, the different views people take, the times people have seriously messed up and faced consequences for it, the times people have seriously messed up and faced no consequences. It is concerned with bodies and matter and daily practice more than with immortal souls, but also speaks about souls and love and hope. It remembers, and it watches, and it hopes for the day where the word of G-D becomes something real--something explicitly material--, and tries to work for it, but admits that there may or may not be a clear path to get there. At the same time, it motivates me to do work in the world directed outwards, toward helping people. 2. Tell me about God / spirituality / prayer. What does that all mean to you?

I like thinking of God as the connection that exists between people, and anything good, but also as something boundless, beyond good and evil, and utterly incomprehensible to human identity, morality, etc. God is in the wonder of a wave crashing down on the sand. God is the potential for good things to happen because God is the potential for anything to happen, and when someone is a human, the best potential is that humans can come together and fix something, or figure out a way to care for each other better. Prayer is also being glad to be alive, to see candles or smell smoke or feel one's arms working in the morning. I pray because I believe there's some way to tap into that sort of divine similarity I have with all other beings and all other matter and make something happen that's good. I also think there is a lot to be said for the way Jewish prayer emphasizes sensual pleasure and simple appreciation of one's material body and material existence. I think God is a way for me to understand all bodies as good, for all experiences of bodies to be divine, even if they are painful.

3. What are some meaningful Jewish rituals / practices that you do and why are they important to you?

I observe Shabbat by avoiding grocery shopping, laundry, and travel on that day, and by trying to spend time with friends. I attend services on Friday nights and some Saturday mornings at CBE. In the last year, I have also observed the Jewish holidays of Shavuot, Tisha b'Av, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Simchat Torah, Hannukah, Purim and Pesach. On Rosh Hashanah, I made food for my friends, including two new friends from my synagogue, even though my apartment is pretty small, and tried to incorporate foods traditional to the new year like apples and honey, round challah, and other foods. I observed Tisha b'Av and Yom Kippur by fasting, and throughout the month of Elul I thought a lot about the things in my life I wanted to change and about calamities I wanted to do something to prevent or to help people recover from. I read a book recommended by Rabbi Katz (This is Real and You're Completely Unprepared by Alan Lew) in order to better approach the holiday from a mindset of introspection and reconciliation with the parts of myself I wanted to leave behind. I also took a new appreciation of the themes of Elul and Yom Kippur with me as I rewatched Angels in America, which deals a lot in Jewish reconciliation, forgiveness, and death. On Hannukah I went to friends' houses in order to eat latkes and other oily foods and also engaged in conversations about the dubious victory of the Maccabees/when a revolution becomes a repressive regime. On Purim I went to party and attended services, and thought about what it means to survive something terrible and what it means to ask for revenge or to make up a story where you get revenge, and what the difference is. On Passover I was with friends in 2017 and 2018, talking about freedom, human trafficking, refugees, motherhood and reproductive freedom, and a list of other issues that seem more relevant every year. In 2018 I also learned songs, both traditional and more recent. In terms of everyday rituals: I try to give to people who ask for things. I try to care for people in my life who I value. I try to think critically and to better myself and to improve the world. I try to criticize tyrants. I try to be thankful for my body. I try to forgive people, and also to think carefully about when someone deserves forgiveness. I try to rigorously evaluate my standards for living a decent life and see if they are good enough. I try to remember history. I think about how the lessons of Torah relate to my life and what wisdom that text contains that I can apply to my life and sometimes make Spotify playlists related to books of the Torah. I try to read the weekly parsha and think about it critically. I read feminist books about Judaism and read fiction by Jewish authors. 4. What do you still want to learn / read about when you are Jewish?

I want to learn Hebrew so I can comfortably read in services in either language. I want to learn more about the history of Jewish people in the United States and around the world, because even as I learn more there is still a lot I have missed out on.

5. What Hebrew name are you thinking of having? And Why? Zev as a biblical name originates from a reference to Benjamin, who is called "a wolf that raveneth". The text refers to Benjamin-as-wolf killing prey in the morning and dividing spoils in evening. But there isn't much reference to whether Benjamin actually ever does any killing, though he gave rise to the line that included Ehud, Saul and, supposedly, Mordecai. Some consider the term "ravenous Wolf" not to refer to war at all but to refer to Temple sacrifices. Benjamin is known in rabbinic tradition as being a uniquely upstanding, sin-free person, and is also notable for being the youngest son of Rachel, and the last child of Jacob. When I was considering names for myself as a fifteen-year-old after coming out as trans, I considered Benjamin (on the advice of my therapist!) because of Rachel trying to name Benjamin Benoni after her pain and death, but failing. The name represented a triumph above origin while also presenting a puzzle because the actual etymology of the name is contested--it means son of days, son of the south, etc etc. But I didn't choose Benjamin as a name then, and I don't want to choose it now, because it's too full of a story and too precise. I like Zev because, though it's technically an allusion to this character, it also just means Wolf. I like that there are aspects of Benjamin's life I could step into, but don't want to draw parallels between myself and a biblical character every time I say my name. I like wolves, and have since I was a child, because they are both powerful and dangerous but also care for one another. Researchers studying wolves have found that in the wild they are far more communal and less aggressive toward each other than they are in captivity or under stress. I think that the protective powers of the wolf, and also the familial bonds between wolves, is something I want to emulate. I want to step into a different aspect of the name than Zev Jabotinsky, whose militancy and ferocity I think are antithetical to building an enduring, peaceful, prosperous future for humanity and other species on this planet.

#judaism #conversion #jewish conversion #text/#religion/

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ruminativerabbi · 7 years ago

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Possible/Impossible

I was struck by several different things when I read the obituary the other day of Roger Bannister, the first person recorded to have run a mile in under four minutes.

Bannister, who died in Oxford, England, at age 88 last Saturday, achieved world-wide fame for his feat even despite the fact that he wasn’t necessarily the first person to run a four-minute mile, there having been human life on earth for about 200,000 years but the stop-watch only having been invented in 1821. So that leaves about 199,802 years during which no one knows how fast anyone ran and races were won merely by running faster than the other people in the race without anyone knowing anyone’s actual time. Nonetheless, it was considered in its day—and still—a remarkable accomplishment, the doing of something that it was widely thought simply could not be done.

It wasn’t under four by much: his time was 3 minutes and 59.4 seconds. Nor did his record stand for long: the next person to run a mile in less than four minutes, an Australian runner named John Landy, replicated Bannister’s feat just a few weeks later and even managed to shave 1.4 seconds off Bannister’s time. Still, Bannister’s accomplishment was not the momentary blip in the record books it could have been: by the end of the 20th century, the International Association of Athletic Federations certified that the fastest-mile-record was broken no fewer than 32 times, culminating in the 3 minute, 43.13 second mile run in 1999 by a Moroccan runner named Hicham El Guerrouj. Of course, not every runner who runs the mile in less than four minutes breaks the standing record. And, indeed, since Bannister set his record on May 6, 1954, well over a thousand runners have been certified to have run a mile in less than four minutes.

Bannister’s subsequent story is also quite interesting. Realizing, I suppose, that there wasn’t actually any way to earn a living as a competitive runner, but also knowing himself well enough to understand that he wished to pursue a career in medicine rather than in the world of professional or amateur athletics, Bannister went on to attend medical school and from there to become a distinguished neurologist. In 2004, on the fiftieth anniversary of his accomplishment, Bannister was asked by an interviewer if he considered being the first to break the four-minute mile to have been his life’s crowning achievement. Bannister’s response, modest and thoughtful, was that he considered his four decades of medical practice as the great achievement of his life, particularly when the various new neurological procedures he personally introduced were taken into account. In a world that seems so often to value celebrity over mere accomplishment, it sounds at first like a surprising answer. But why should it be? And, indeed, when you think about it carefully, pathetic indeed would be the individual who devotes an entire life to the care of the sick and the development of innovative techniques to cure them, yet who considers all that good to be outweighed by having one single time run a mile really, really quickly.

I write about him today, though, neither specifically because of his death last week nor because of the record he broke per se, but rather because of what the whole incident says about the possibility of impossibility. Or, rather, about the whole concept of impossibility itself.

We could begin by asking where the notion that the four-minute mile was an impossibility came from. It obviously wasn’t true—well over a thousand people have replicated Bannister’s famous achievement since that blustery, damp day in May 1954 at Oxford’s Iffley Road track when he earned his place in the record books—and there obviously can’t have been any actual data to back up such a wholly arbitrary assumption about human ability. Yet it was thought—and, as far as I can see, universally—that no human being could run that fast. Everybody just knew it. Just in the same way that everybody once knew that there was no way to sail west from Europe and end up in India. Or, in a slightly different key, that America would never elect a black president. Or that it would be physically impossible for human beings to travel to the moon and return safely. Or that cars could ever self-drive.

All of those are examples of things that everybody just knew…until somebody decided not just to know it and instead to proceed as though the allegedly impossible was just something no one had figured out yet how precisely to pull off. Taking this thought to its natural conclusion, the great science-fiction author Robert A. Heinlein once wrote that, until it is done, “everything is theoretically impossible. One could write a history of science in reverse by assembling the solemn pronouncements of highest authority about what could not be done and could never happen.” That more or less sums up what I think too!

As an interesting exercise in the possibility of impossibility, I’ve assembled a list of my three favorite things that everybody just (magically, somehow) knows are impossibilities.

At the top of my list is the notion that peace between Palestinians and Israelis is simply impossible because the Palestinians, having failed to embrace partition in 1947, won’t ever give up their claim to every inch of Mandatory Palestine, which basically makes it impossible for Palestine and Israel both to exist. The Palestinian leadership is not especially flexible, that surely is true. Yet the world is filled with examples of nations that chose compromise over endless struggle, with countries (including our own, the U.K., Mexico, France, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Germany, Poland, Ukraine, Japan, and many more) that simply decided to live in peace with the neighbors rather than to hold on endlessly to land claims that there was no reasonable expectation ever to see satisfied. The Palestinians have made such a fetish about their knee-jerk rejectionism over the years that it just feels like an impossibility to imagine them behaving differently. But if the Germans can move past the sense that East Pomerania (now part of Poland) and Alsace (now part of France) should be part of Germany, then the Palestinians can move past their irredentist claims as well. (Have you forgotten what irredentism is and why it’s an important term for students of Middle Eastern politics to understand? Click here!) The world just needs to find a way to nudge them forward in a way that feels constructive rather than degrading…and then the impossible will suddenly feel entirely possible.

Moving along to the Jewish world, my second example of something everybody just knows is that it will be impossible for non-fundamentalist religion to survive in the long run, that the adherents of the liberal versions of all faiths—including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—are doomed by the very tolerance and reasonability they vaunt as primary spiritual values to lose the battle against assimilationism and, eventually, to lose their sense of purpose and of self. It surely is true that the more people are taught to view people outside their own group with suspicion and hostility (both, hallmarks of fundamentalism), the more challenging it will be for members to feel justified in leaving the group. But it is also true that the virtues promoted by non-fundamental religion—open-mindedness, rationalism, and respect for alternate points of view—can exert a siren call on the human spirit as well, as evidenced by the millions of people who, despite all the predictions of doom, actually do belong to such faith communities. The further decline of non-fundamentalist religion in the West is not inevitable. And neither is it impossible to imagine a world in which it is the fundamentalists who perennially lose their people and versions of religions that promote absolute spiritual and intellectual integrity that increase almost without having to self-promote hardly at all, let alone actually to proselytize door-to-door.

And my third example of something wide known to be impossible is an American one—the widely held belief that it is simply impossible to imagine an American political landscape that features politicians reaching across the aisle to create policies and laws that benefit the nation as a whole through the strengthening of its core values and the legislative expression of those values. The common wisdom, as everyone knows, is that that kind of willing cooperation, desirable though it may sound, is simply nothing that could ever be an actual feature of our legislators’ work in Washington, that the whole Congress is so riven by factionalism and interparty dislike and mistrust that cooperation on the level that would be necessary for our legislators actually to work together for the people and not solely against each other is simply an impossibility. And yet…why should that be the case? Our legislators are mostly lawyers (43%), but all have other ways to earn a living yet have chosen to devote some or, in some cases, all of their professional lives to service of our country. Surely at least some of them—maybe even most—could make more money elsewhere! The notion that they are all agenda-driven, that nothing matters to any of them more than pushing his or her personal set of initiatives without respect for the public weal or the nation’s best interests—that seems, at the very least, to be only how things mostly seem, not how they inevitably have to be. Also worth noting in this regard that is almost 28% of the bills passed in the House and in the Senate pass unanimously and without opposition. That points to a different reality than the one we’ve trained ourselves to expect from these people: if Congress is narrowly divided in half along party lines with a slight edge for Republicans in the Senate and a slightly larger one in the House, how can more than a quarter of bills brought to a vote be passed unanimously? Clearly, these people can work together when properly motivated! So that is not an impossibility, just something we’ve been trained to think of that way!

And that concludes my list of possible impossibilities. None of my readers would mistake me for a natural optimist, but contemplating Roger Bannister in life and death buoys me slightly by making me remember that, in the end, most things deemed impossible are merely things that no one has managed to do just yet. May he rest in peace!

#Roger Bannister #four-minute mile #possibility of impossibility

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valkyrie-echo · 7 years ago

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Project Echo, Part 3: Chapter 1 (119 Days Before the Explosion)

Part 3 Summary: Seven years after the events of “Part 2”, Avengers Tower explodes, fulfilling Bucky’s vision. All evidence points to Avengers Shadow-Ops leader Inessa Ryker, who is forced to seek out Bucky in hiding. Together they must determine who the traitor is in their ranks and if their friends are still alive- all while trying to survive deadly ambushes orchestrated by Sam Wilson and his hand-picked army.

NOTE ON THIS AND ALL FUTURE CHAPTERS: Only those chapters that contain “____ Before the Explosion” in the title take place before Avengers Tower exploded. All other chapters take place after the Tower exploded. I apologize for any confusion moving forward.

Chapter 1: 119 Days Before the Explosion

Avengers Tower.

Avengers.

Motherfucking.

Tower.

Marie just stared at it, mouth ajar like a complete idiot. Or, more accurately, like the dozens of tourists around her. For nearly a decade the Avengers protected pretty much the whole damn world from one threat or another, and Marie was actually standing outside of their main base!

She'd spent most of her life in a small farming town, the biggest building she'd ever seen was the two-story fire station. It was quite literally the middle of nowhere- 2,000 people (though if someone told her there were only 200 she'd believe them based on what she'd seen), one little school covering K-12, two churches and a Jewish temple- even fast food chains didn't bother setting up shop! Nothing ever happened to even put a strain on the ten or so police officers. Even when the Mad-God Thanos came to Earth and killed millions with the Infinity Gauntlet not a single person in the damned town got so much as a paper-cut, or even knew someone who had!

If Marie had even just heard an Avenger was within 100 miles of her town she'd have been happy. Now she was standing outside Avengers Tower itself.

With an invitation to go inside.

Maybe.

If it wasn't a joke and she wasn't a completely gullible idiot.

Marie took a deep breath and tore her eyes away from the gleaming building. She tried to slow her racing pulse as she crossed the street with a group of German tourists heading for the Avengers Store at the corner of the Tower, open to the street. The crowds were so dense it was nearly impossible to free herself from the press of people craning to see the remote Iron Man suits that "guarded" the doors of the large shop and were for tourists the New York equivalent of the guards at Buckingham Palace (as if anyone would dare so much as pickpocket in the shadow of the Tower).

Already blushing in embarrassment, Marie went to the main entrance. She was keenly aware of the large and unnecessarily buff guards glaring at her through the windows. Avengers Tower wasn't only the main base of the Avengers and home to several heroes- it was a major research facility for the world's leading technology corporation. Security was tight, and tourists were strictly forbidden from cluttering their lobby and wasting the time of Stark Industries employees.

The packet that had arrived anonymously and unsolicited two days before included a plane ticket, hotel confirmation, taxi card, a map to the Tower, and a silver security badge. Up until now everything had proven legitimate, she had to go on faith. Marie reached into her patchwork bag and fished the badge out with a shaking hand. She held it up so the guard inside the doors could see it, nervous and probably brick-red by now. Her best friend was a practical joker, and even though this was fairly far from her normal pranks of bouncy-balls in the school locker, Marie had never been the most confident person. Any chance to second-guess herself, she took it.

As soon as he saw the card the security guard's scowl melted into a kind smile. He pointed to a black box by the door and mimed the direction to insert the badge. Marie nodded dumbly and went over to it. She thought it worked like a credit card reader at a gas station- put the card in, pull it out. She tried, but nothing happened. The guard mimed again, and it took three tries for Marie to figure out what she was doing wrong- the machine was meant to keep the card. A credit to his professionalism- the guard didn't laugh.

The door slid open just long enough for her to walk through, then it closed tight behind her in an instant. Some curious tourists stared (and even snapped a photo). Marie felt even more self conscious- how many of them saw her screwing up with the machine?

"Bag please," the nice guard checked through her things carefully- he looked over each page inside the packet she carried, pulled out every card and looked in every pouch in her wallet (thank god she'd removed the girls' supplies in the hotel before coming). He even took the battery out of her cell phone to make sure nothing was behind it. While he did his search, another guard had Marie walk through a massive metal scanner that blasted her with a puff of air and spun around her for a moment. Evidently they found no issues (as if they would, Marie never even snuck a drink from her parents liquor cabinet) and her bag was returned to her. The first guard held the inner door open for her to admit her into the main lobby with a tip of his hat and a, "Have a nice visit."

The second Marie's feet hit the polished white tile of the lobby she was approached by a petite, beautiful receptionist who looked more fit to be a model. "Welcome to Avengers Tower," she quickly consulted a tablet, "Miss Richards."

Marie had spent her entire year's babysitting money on nice pants and a professional looking top from the clearance section of the department store in the next town. Her mother lent her best church shoes to complete the outfit. In all her life, these clothes were the most expensive thing she'd ever worn and all of it combined, at full price, couldn't have cost a third of what the knee-high boots this woman was wearing did.

Everything together- the outfit, bumbling with the card reader, the stares of the tourists, the enormity of where she was and what she was doing hit Marie like a ton of bricks. Her heart dropped into her stomach and suddenly she wanted nothing more than to walk out the door, get directly on the airplane, and curl up in the back of her closet, never to emerge. One day her grandchildren would ask her about this trip and her reply would be "Here, have some candy, shut up and go away before I disown you." And that was even if she ever admitted to leaving home in the first place. The sudden (and completely irrational) thought of an Avenger glancing at the video from a security camera and seeing her humiliation made it all the worse.

"Um, I- I think," she swallowed hard and coughed to clear the tremble in her voice, "I- I think I should probably just- just-" she glanced back at the door. At least she didn't have to worry about blushing- Marie had a feeling she'd gone white.

Two security guards were standing inside the lobby on either side of the reception desk chatting with a young man working the phones. One of them- a young woman barely older than Marie- looked up when she coughed and immediately judged the situation. Taking the evident distress on the kid's face as her cue, she promptly excused herself and walked over, glancing at the (confused) receptionist's tablet as she did so, "Are you Marie Richards?"

"No. I mean, um, yes. I was just- I'm just leaving," she turned towards the door quickly and tried to open it, but it appeared to be locked from inside. The nice guard shook his head and refused help.

"I got this Anaiis, thank you," the guard smiled to the receptionist who nodded politely and returned to her seat at the desk. She put a hand on Marie's slumping shoulder and lightly turned her back. "I'm sorry Miss Richards, but we can't let you leave. It's our strictest policy- no one comes in without an appointment, and no one leaves before they've had it. We had a pretty big issue several years ago with a psychic and- well, I won't get into that but if I let you leave everyone in this lobby could lose their job."

"Please-" Marie half-whispered. She felt horrible, looked terrible- why had she even come here? She knew why- it was those stupid kids. She did a good deed, somehow someone found out and a month later she gets a packet. She cursed herself for ever getting involved (not that she'd ever have made a different choice).

The guard saw her eyes beginning to water and stepped closer so they could speak softer, "Hey, it's alright." she steered Marie to a corner, "What's wrong?"

"I don't know why I'm here. I don't know what I expected. I don't belong here," she touched the fabric of her shirt- she'd been so proud of herself for picking out such a nice outfit and now she was just embarrassed. She'd loved it- but it would always be a reminder of this horrific day.

The guard eyeballed her, "We'll take the stairs the first few flights, OK? Give us time to calm those nerves?" Marie had no choice but to follow her to the stairwell- to get the humiliation over with as soon as possible.

"I don't have to see anyone but the lady in HR, right?" she was desperate for a silver lining.

"The lady in HR?" the guard was confused as they stepped up.

Marie pulled out the only thing in the packet specific to this leg of the trip- a one page letter requesting a meeting to "discuss unusual occurrences in your area". She glanced at the name printed at the bottom, "Miss Inessa Ryker?"

"Oh, yeah, well- she's not HR, actually..."

Marie's heart sank, "Security?"

"Yeah, you could say that."

She was quiet for a flight while she worked up her courage to ask what she had been dreading, "This is about Kyle... Isn't it?"

The guard kept looking ahead as she recited, "Sergeant Kyle Richards, AKA the Crocodile. Hydra interrogation specialist for five years. Killed by Bruce Banner's Hulk in Sokovia before the war with Ultron." The guard glanced back at Marie, "I read your file. He came up a few times."

"I'm nothing like him," she whispered fiercely.

"We know you're not. He's all over your medical history. Burns, broken bones, extracted fingernails, the two severed toes- trust me. No one who sees that will ever think you were in league with him. He was a textbook sociopath. With a kick."

Marie nodded and swallowed hard, "Do you know what his power was?"

The guard shook her head, "Just theories. His Hydra file was destroyed with half of Sokovia."

"Persuasion." the guard's expression darkened at that, "He could make you believe whatever he told you. That's why it took so long for him to finally be sent away. He'd have come home within a day, if Hydra hadn't recruited him. All he'd have to do was tell the police I lost those toes in an accident- they'd believe him in an instant. They wouldn't have a choice. Until he died none of us realized exactly what he was. What he'd been doing to the animals on the farm or the children at school."

"The psychic dies, their illusions sometimes go with them. No one knows why," the guard sighed. "The policy- meeting before you leave- that's because of a psychic with the same damn powers. Five and a half years ago. It ended with the Falcon trying to kill Captain America, and Tony Stark conducting illegal experiments on another Avenger."

Marie nearly missed a step, "Seriously?"

"Can I tell you a secret?" Marie nodded, "They've had their eye on you since they figured out Kyle was an inherent gifted. What files the Avengers did retrieve before the Ultron issue mentioned he had a family. That put you on a watch list."

"When you say 'They've had their eye on you', you don't mean-?" Marie's heart-rate doubled. The guard just nodded, "And they let me in the Tower still?"

"Like I said, no one believes you and Kyle have anything but parents in common. If you were a psychic, that would be a different story, but from what I've heard, you are cut from a very different cloth."

Marie was actually proud of her power, "After the first few burns from Kyle it just kind of started up. I can draw heat from any source and transfer it to another. At first it was little things- a hot drink or the air out of a hairdryer (what Kyle had tried to burn her with)- but eventually it was matches, pans from the oven, an overheated engine. Not too long before I got the packet I put out a fire on our back field!" That was the achievement she took the most joy from- and the most fear. Three kids were in the middle of that fire, and Marie had a feeling they'd seen her through the smoke.

"That's pretty awesome," the guard was impressed. Marie smiled, her nerves forgotten.

"Secret number two?" she'd wanted to say it earlier, but now was as good a time as any as they passed the third floor door. Marie nodded again, "Anaiis? She gets a bit crazy with the tourists always looking in through the windows. You shouldn't compare yourself to her. Most people who work here wear jeans and corny t-shirts. There are theme days- I kid you not I have seen our CEO herself come in dressed like it was the 1980s. You look fine. Very professional."

That helped more than the idle chatter to improve Marie's mood. Her smile grew, "Really? It's OK? Miss Ryker won't think I'm under-dressed?"

"Most people who meet Miss Ryker come in muddy or bloody. Trust me- she'd be happy if you came to the meeting in pajamas, just so long as they didn't have to clean the carpets behind you."

Marie's smile turned into a frown, "Muddy or bloody? What exactly does Miss Ryker do for Tower Security?"

"Not a thing," the guard shook her head and smiled, "Avengers security however..."

"Wait- what?" Marie stopped dead in her tracks.

"Want to take the elevator the rest of the way up? The Avengers begin on the 115th floor. It's kind of a hike." She went up the rest of the flight and swiped her badge to access the fifth floor. Marie followed, but she didn't give up the question.

"What do you mean Avengers security?"

Just inside the door was an elevator. As soon as the guard pressed the button, it opened. She ushered Marie inside and held up a hand before the girl could repeat her question. "What floor please?" a woman's voice came from the speaker above them.

"A-1."

"Of course, madam." Marie jumped as the voice changed to that of a British man, "Ah, you must be Miss Richards. Welcome to Avengers Tower."

"Is that- are you-?"

"Just Another Rather Very Intelligent System. JARVIS. I assist Master Stark and all Avengers within any of our facilities."

Marie's mouth fell open, her question was completely forgotten, "It's- it's really nice to meet you, Mister JARVIS."

"The pleasure is all mine. How are you finding New York so far?"

This was utterly unbelievable, surreal, terrifying, and amazing all rolled into one, "It's incredible. I've always wanted to come here. There are so many things to see."

There was a small ding and the doors opened, "Well, I do hope you enjoy your stay at Avengers Tower. If you would like, I can provide maps and pamphlets to any number of touring destinations in and around the city."

"Yes, please. Thank you!" she replied quickly as she followed the guard out and the doors to the elevator closed- then immediately felt stupid. He was freakin' JARVIS- he could probably hear her from anywhere in the Tower. If half the rumors were true, he could probably hear her through her own cell phone.

The guard just chuckled, then pointed at the elevator they'd exited, "That one goes to the Tower," she pointed to another directly in front of them etched with the Avengers 'A', "That's the Avengers private elevator- it goes from any of their floors to their parking garage. JARVIS operates that one by himself, it is probably the most secure elevator in the world." They were in a relatively small entryway- just the hallway the elevators were in, a door for a private stairwell, and two large mahogany doors. The floor was thickly carpeted, absorbing the sounds of their footsteps. Marie was outside of the Avengers headquarters- their home. She felt like she was trespassing on sacred ground, "You ready?"

She couldn't think of any reply but, "My legs don't work," popped out of her mouth. Her question came back to her suddenly, "What did you mean by 'Avengers security'? Who's Inessa Ryker?"

JARVIS' voice clicked back on at the question- scaring the living daylights out of Marie, "Nadya Antonia Emilia Ryker, commonly known as Inessa, Nessie, or Nessa. Avengers Codename: The Shadow."

"I was planning on breaking that to her slowly," the guard sounded slightly annoyed.

"Master Stark has misplaced a member of his team, he would like you to locate him. It is quite urgent," Marie was breaking out in a cold sweat, but JARVIS' words barely registered. It didn't sound like something the guard could even help with. Unless-

No way, not possible.

"Is it Thomas?"

There's no way.

"Yes, it is."

Holy mother of god.

"Alright, hold on. But make sure Tony knows he totally screwed me over." The guard raised her hand and a young man appeared in front of them in a burst of black mist, "Stop wandering off!" she lowered it and the man vanished the same way.

There was a pause, then JARVIS came back on, "Master Stark sends his apologies and gratitude."

The guard looked over at Marie apologetically, "Sorry... It's- in my experience it's easier to interview people if they don't know they're being interviewed."

"You're-" Marie's voice was a squeak. She clamped a shaking hand over her mouth.

"Inessa, Nessie, Nessa, like he said, I'll answer to any of those."

Marie shouldn't have taken her hand off her mouth, because when she did, "But you're human?" came out. Instantly, she was red with embarrassment.

"That's been debated," Inessa just shrugged. "The media decided a long time ago I wasn't, I just never corrected them."

"Avengers Black Ops... Why does Avengers Black Ops need to meet with me?" she was in a complete daze.

Inessa thought for a moment, then nodded to herself, "Meeting's over. Now it's a job offer."

All that came out was a squeak.

Inessa held out a hand and an envelope appeared in a small puff of mist. Marie recognized the handwriting on it, but it didn't seem possible, "After what you did with that fire your mother sent us a letter. You've kept a small enough profile we didn't know for sure what your powers were, but she laid them out for us. The fire got our attention- but your other work was what impressed us. You've lowered children's fevers, kept temperatures down in your school when the AC broke during a heatwave-"

"The kids were getting sick-"

"-and suddenly the whole school is a cool 68 degrees."

"I'm not a hero," Marie didn't know how to express what she was thinking, "I'm not enough to be anything like that."

Inessa frowned, "Not enough what?"

"Not brave enough-"

"You ran into a burning field to save 3 kids."

"Not smart enough-"

"Third in your class."

"Not... unusual enough."

"Right," Inessa nodded, "because everyone has your powers."

"Not special enough," Marie was getting frustrated, she didn't like having to explain why she was unqualified for the greatest job in the world anyone, including her, would kill to even dream of being offered.

"Do you know who I am?"

Marie nodded, "The Shadow."

She shook her head, "A kid with a German-Russian father, Russian mother, born in Kazakhstan, raised in Chicago. I grew up mostly in soup kitchens with an alcoholic uncle calling me 'little bitch' ever since I was 5. I half-lived in the public library because at least there was heat and warm water. Captain America? He was a runty guy with a voice too deep for his scrawny little body essentially squatting in his apartment after his parents died during the Great Depression. His life expectancy was what- 30? Optimistically? Hawkeye ran away from foster care and joined the circus. I could tell you 30 stories of 30 Avengers who's origins are just as 'un-special' as yours. Thor and Tony Stark are really the only ones exceptional from the beginning, or at least they pretend so. Vision? He's just an odd case across the board." Marie laughed slightly.

"None of us are anything more than people doing our best to help. We just have more tricks up our sleeves than some- and that's not even a requirement to be an Avenger. Agent 13 doesn't have any superpowers, but she's the Lieutenant of Captain America's team. My lieutenant is a weird Asian kid with a weird name who's claim to fame is that his IQ is very very high. That could be a superpower- we're really not sure if it's natural or not. Like I said, he's got a lot of weird going on." That got a bigger laugh.

Inessa smiled, "You don't have to accept the offer right now. In fact, for anyone with parents or guardians it isn't allowed. You've got to go inside, get the fear-inducing-speech about how you'll probably see horrible things or die a horrible death for one week straight, and only then are you offered the job for real."

"A week?" Marie was stunned, "I get to come visit Avengers Tower every day for a week?"

"Oh no, you don't visit. You stay here for a week. Meet the teams- Thor, Steve, and myself are in-residence here, so that's 11 Avengers. Talk to them, shadow on a few missions- pun intended- and decide if it's what you want to do."

"That sounds fair, actually..." What the hell, right? Doesn't dad always say try something before you say you can't do it? If I screw it up at least I can tell the story of how I was almost an Avenger, not how I turned down the chance at being one? She wanted to accept more than anything, she just had trouble saying it. "If you really think I'm anything near Avengers material..." Marie looked away.

"Come on. Let's get out of the hallway."

Walking into the lobby of Avengers Tower was as surreal as the rest of her visit. The layout and interior were never revealed to the general public, and Marie had always imagined something in chrome with shining white floors and a big circular meeting table surrounded by flat screen monitors with feeds from every news station in the world. In reality it was nothing short of homey.

The Lobby was a large space, mostly filled with low-back leather couches and recliners. Several low coffee tables were stacked with books, files, or forgotten coffee mugs in all shapes, sizes, and designs (Marie expected some official Avengers design, not a Hodge-podge of musical-themed mugs, ceramic animals, and very sarcastic jokes). The ceiling was two stories high and criss-crossed with beams and rafters, many of which appeared to be home to cup holders, tables, and throw pillows braced against the wall, as if people spent hours up there. Of course Marie thought, Hawkeye and his team must go up there when they visit. Most of the wall to her right was one massive window overlooking New York and a tremendous balcony. It had benches, several potted plants, two helicopter pads (one was silver for some reason), and even an outdoor kitchen area.

"Home sweet home," Inessa smiled. "Any Avenger team can come to the Tower- it's equipped to handle all of them if need be, but Steve Rogers, Thor, and myself are the permanent residents these days. If you ever need to find me just go out to the Avengers elevator or head up the stairs- my level is marked with my symbol- the wolf head. Hammer is Thor, shield is Steve."

As Marie gaped, two people came out from a side hall- an Asian boy (Marie wondered if that was who Inessa had been talking about) and a tall Amazon-esque girl. They wore gym clothes and were arguing over who won a sparring match. The guy glanced over and saw Marie and the conversation immediately stopped. He froze in place, the girl glanced over, and the boy slowly reached up to tap just in front of his ear, "Attention all Tower Avengers. Attention all Avengers," his voice was flat-automatic, "New person spotted in lobby. Fresh meat. I repeat. Fresh meat."

"Oh brother," Inessa rolled her eyes and patted Marie on the shoulder, "I'm about to lose you to a mob. Before you're hijacked-" she pointed to the boy and the girl, who was still watching, intrigued, "the guy is Amadeus Cho, my lieutenant. The girl is Noelle Martinez. Both of them are Shadow Unit, so stick by Noelle to learn the ropes, and stick by Amadeus to see what not to do." Inessa's tone was playful and she spoke loudly enough for them to hear.

Several footsteps echoed down a set of stairs on the far side of the lobby, accompanied by talking and random shouts. Six people came down at once. Inessa held up her hands to stop them, "Don't scare her away." she gave Marie a light shove towards the group and they immediately swarmed her, asking questions and introducing themselves and overall acting surprisingly like most young adults. "Cho- I need you for a second."

"I'll catch up to you later," Amadeus called to the others as they swept Marie up towards the other levels of the Tower. He came over to Inessa with his trademark grin, "What's up boss?"

Inessa waited for Noelle to head up the steps behind the mob. She pulled out her tinted contact lenses while they waited and tossed them in a nearby bin. As soon as Noelle disappeared her smile vanished. An ice cold glare replaced it (expertly emphasized by the silver eyes) and Amadeus gulped, "How many times do I have to tell you?"

"Tell me what?" he tried to smile, but Inessa didn't budge. He imagined he could hear Nadya growling- wait, was it imagination? He turned around to check.

"You're a shit liar Amadeus. I know you've been looking for him. This is the third time. You didn't even know him. No one else wants him here, so why won't you let it go?"

Amadeus sighed, "During the Civil War, while you stayed behind to keep an eye on Tony, Steve saved my life. He stopped the goons that dickhead Pythagoras sent after me and he did everything he could to try and save my family. He doesn't talk about it, but I know it bothers him what happened all those years ago. I'm not trying to bring him in. I just want to track him down for Steve and give him the option of talking it out. It's the least I could do to repay him. Besides, I don't see how it's a big deal- I've never even gotten close. The guy's off the grid."

Inessa shook her head, "Steve's the one who made the rule at his request. If he wanted to find him again, he'd ask. I'll keep your latest attempt quiet, but no more." Amadeus looked away and Inessa followed his motion so he was forced to maintain eye contact with her, "Promise me, or-"

"-or you'll throw me out of the Avengers?" it was the posted punishment- though only Amadeus was stubborn enough to test that.

"Worse. Stop looking or I quit the Avengers and you have to lead the Shadow Unit."

"Killing me would be kinder." Amadeus liked to be a member of the team- not a leader. It was a genuinely terrifying notion.

"Promise me." Inessa wouldn't let it go.

Amadeus looked away, but she waited, patient. After a few grumbles and a sigh he finally caved, "I swear on Thanos' bloated purple corpse burning in the crater of a volcano that on the threat of the pain of leadership I won't go looking for him again." he looked at Inessa, "And this time I mean it."

"Thank you." Inessa nodded towards the stairs to signal to Amadeus that he was free to go join the others. He wanted to abandon the Avengers. That was his decision. Inessa was not about to allow anyone to bring James Buchanan Barnes back into Avengers Tower.

Chapter 2: The Nomad

#marvel #avengers #my writing

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bigyack-com · 5 years ago

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Wiktoria’s Secret: The Best Bras Might be Made in Poland

A few years ago, I stumbled upon the subreddit ABraThatFits, where people share their struggle to find a bra and pass along what they have learned. While scrolling through the forum, I often came across a specific piece of advice: go Polish.The Redditors mentioned a few brands in particular, Ewa Michalak and Comexim, but there are 47 companies listed on their “Polish guide.” As it turns out, lingerie experts and enthusiasts hold a special reverence for bras made in Poland, and a growing number of boutiques in the United States carry them.Laura Henny, the owner of the Rack Shack, a boutique on Central Avenue in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn, gets calls every week about whether she stocks Ewa Michalak bras. She herself wears Ewa Michalak bras most of the time. “They’re extremely comfortable, and I just really like the shape that they give,” Ms. Henny said.Tina Omer, the owner of Aphrodite’s Closet in San Antonio, said she wears mostly Nessa, another Polish brand, and stocks Nessa and Ewa Michalak in her shop.Both proprietors praise these brands’ materials and the construction. Most Polish bras, even those made by larger manufacturers, are still designed and constructed in Poland by hand, with fabrics and laces from Italy and Spain.And unlike in the United States, where confusion and misinformation abound about bands and cups, care is taken with sizing. Many Polish designers follow the principles of “brafitting” (in Poland, one word), which begins with the idea that regardless of whether your breasts are small or large, simply measuring across and under the bust will not produce a bra that fits.

Grade Inflation

To understand Polish bras, you first need to understand brafitting. The practice originated in Britain, and it’s touted and heatedly discussed by an online community of frustrated bra shoppers, fitters and manufacturers scattered around the world.The fundamental tenet of brafitting is that the band of a bra — the number in someone’s bra size — provides most of the support, and in many cases should be smaller than what standard sizing methods spit out.There is plenty of technical terminology (my breasts are not “saggy” but “pendulous”). And, of course, community spats spring up (“Strapgate”).One basic agreement among brafitters? American bras, for the most part, don’t fit.“When I see the underwear in the U.S., even in the movies, it’s a disaster for me,” said Agnieszka Jablonska, a brafitter trained in Britain who works in sales for the Polish brand Samanta.For a long time I thought I was a 36C because that’s what they told me at Victoria’s Secret. When I entered five (!) measurements into a calculator that approximates brafitting principles, created by the Reddit folks, it said I was a 32F.Producing a wide size range is complicated and expensive, so companies producing bras for big chains avoid it. Many American brands — with notable exceptions, like Rihanna’s line Savage x Fenty — only go up to D, DD or DDD cups.But brafitters say that D cups, when properly fit, are for breasts generally perceived to be small, and that many women wearing them might prefer the fit of E, F, G, or H cups (and beyond). If someone at a chain store measures you and says you’re a DD cup, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have enormous breasts, they say — it might just be that DD is the biggest size the store has, and they want to sell it to you. The brafitting community is leery of Big Bra. The cultural notion that D cups are big is actually just a quirk of industrial production, and decisions by individual companies to increase margins wherever possible.In 2008, Julia Krysztofiak-Szopa started an online Polish discussion forum “bra community” called Balkonetka. Thousands of women posted detailed reviews and photos of their bras.A few years later, she moved from Warsaw to Palo Alto, Calif. When she looked for bras in her size, 34HH, at Macy’s and Nordstrom, she found that nearly all of them stopped at D.So Ms. Krysztofiak-Szopa started ordering her bras from Poland. For several years, she and her sister sold bras made by Comexim to American women, through a company they started called Wellfitting.“I thought, this is really weird — supposedly the largest economy in the world, with a massive consumer market, massive shopping malls, and they have no freakin’ D plus bras,” she said. “And Americans don’t have a tiny frame, at the end of the day. So I was very surprised to see there is something off about how American brands treat their consumers, trying to lock them into just four sizes, and trying to tell women that if they do not fit, there’s something off about them.”

The Hang Over

On a recent trip to Poland, I decided to see whether I could find the perfect bra, and find out for myself why the ones made there are said to be so special.I began my quest in Kazimierz, the Jewish quarter of Krakow that is now trendy, at a tiny boutique called Brafitteria. I noticed a few brafitting certifications on the wall, including some from courses by the British lingerie company Panache.British lingerie companies were the first to produce wider size ranges. In the mid-2000s, after Poland joined the European Union, bras made by these brands made it back to Poland. Local manufacturers began expanding their own size ranges about 10 years ago after pressure from online communities like Balkonekta.After trying about 10 bras under the gentle guidance of a brafitter named Ludmila, I bought a sheer Prussian blue one with sprays of pink floral embroidery on the cups, from the brand Samanta (209 zloty, about $55). It looked like it had been tattooed onto me. (A signature of Polish bras is narrow wires and deep cups that mold closely to your body.)“The Polish wire just so perfectly fits,” said Agnieszka Socha, who started the Academy of Professional Brafitting, which teaches and offers certification in the practice, in 2011. She prepped me on the basics of Polish bras before my trip. “If you just put it on the chest, it fits like somebody made it only for you. It’s not too wide — it’s just perfect.”Next: the mall. I figured I had to. At Ewa Bien, a store in Galeria Kazimierz, I tried on my favorite design of dozens of bras I tried on my trip: a beige balconette with yellow and green floral embroidery, and salmon pink piping on the cups. It reminded me of a botanical drawing, and it was on sale for 158 zloty (about $40). At another shop near the mall, the brafitter said my breasts were asymmetrical. This wouldn’t bother me, but it was never mentioned any of the other times I was measured. That shop made me tired, so I stopped at a pierogi shack before going to bed early.The next morning, I took a train to Lodz, Poland’s third-largest city, three hours north of Krakow. Ewa Michalak and Comexim are based there, and a lingerie trade show was happening that weekend. I wanted to see if I could find a perfect bra at the source.One could call Lodz and the surrounding region the lingerie capital of Poland. During the years of the Polish People’s Republic, one government-run lingerie company in the area was a major employer. In the early 1990s, that factory broke out into hundreds of independent lingerie companies.“Almost every second house did something in lingerie,” said Marzena Pudlowska, the co-owner of KrisLine, founded in 1992. KrisLine is one of few companies that managed to survive past that period — in part, Ms. Pudlowska thinks, because of its decision to respond to consumers by expanding its size range.New designers like Ewa Michalak and Comexim had the perfect ingredients to make bras with a global reputation: makers with decades of experience, access to high-quality materials and a willingness to produce bras that fit pretty much everyone.There are no fluffy couches at the Ewa Michalak factory. Once in the fitting room, you will be asked to take off everything on top, and bend over at a 90 degree angle. You’ll be measured with your bare breasts hanging toward the floor.About 100 women visit the factory every month for this experience, coming from as far as Canada and Australia. The designer has a reputation for engineering some of the best-fitting bras in the world, particularly for larger breasts.Ms. Michalak’s cousin Gosia, who works at the company, put on latex gloves and draped a tape measure on my back, measuring the circumference around my dangling nipples. I braced my hands on the wall for balance. The precision and awkwardness of this method gave me absolute confidence in it.Ms. Michalak — long blond hair with pink ombré tips, pink high heels, cat's-eye glasses — observed from the corner, offering notes to her staff in Polish. I’m not sure what she was saying, but it sounded expert.Ms. Michalak used to design lingerie at other companies, but she got bored. She started attending meet-ups of the online bra forum Lobby Biusciastych, or “Busty Lobby.” There, she asked women to try on bras she had designed herself. This is how she developed her unique sizing method. She explained to me that if someone has pendulous breasts, measuring while she is standing up doesn’t really tell you how much breast the bra must support. Neither does measuring someone who is already wearing a bra.“With bigger and therefore heavier breasts, different technical solutions are needed for bras,” she said in Polish, with her staff helping to translate. “In fact, a whole other approach to constructing bras is in order.”I had never bought a padded bra before — they never looked right — but I left with two that looked great: a tan plunge with a pearl drop in the center (about $54); and a black lace plunge with decorative straps (about $61).No one needs to be reminded that there are many more important things to be concerned with than underwear. (In Poland, as in the United States.) But many women wear bras every day, and like other banal aspects of daily life, considering them in any depth can reveal subtle injustices of the market. The market determines which bodies are normal, and by extension, who is deserving of clothes that fit.I didn’t find one perfect bra in Poland, but I left with five new ones that help me stand a bit taller. Before I discovered the brafitters I would often catch my reflection in a window while walking. I’d feel a little embarrassed about the excessive movement of my chest, and my hunched posture. But I didn’t perceive the bras as not fitting me. I just thought that my breasts had a weird, abnormal shape.Ms. Socha said that for a while, Polish bra makers looked abroad for validation, the way a woman might look to clothes to validate ideas about “normal” bodies.“Sometimes, we think, as a country, that maybe we’re not good enough,” she said, “but we are.” Read the full article

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girlwithwolftatoo · 7 years ago

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Carnage Moon

Warnings: graphic, blood

At that hour, with the promise of a thunderstorm in the air, all that was heard in the house was the clink of the little music box, resting in its accustomed place, next to a large jar of honey with scribbles on the back and a gauze handkerchief. The box had no more ornament than delicate lines of flourishing along its sides, and on the box, carved much more carefully, a name: Edith; inside, the mechanism seemed to be bathed in silver, how neat it was, and it moved without any difficulty against the pink satin lining. It was a very economical music box, without the beautiful velvet covers or the colors in the designs that were so fashionable in the wealthiest cities; there in Little Derry, that was what most wanted the five or six families who really had money.

The room was very narrow, bathed in the timid orange light of the candles; was almost a gut, rectangular in shape and the walls that had been dingy until the nanny drew on them, who knows how, almost divine countryside landscapes, claiming that it was necessary to brighten even the baby's room a little. Thus, along the two largest walls, there were trees, flower beds, a cottage in the background with its corral and well, and beyond, the sky that was growing dark, to the ceiling where he had painted, also, a endless stars and a shamelessly huge white moon, just above the cradle.

The walls were not the only thing that was arranged at the request of the babysitter; without apparent logical reason, asked the gentlemen to place, just inside the window, a string of pastel flowers, which she herself changed more or less twice a week. The riste consisted of lavenders, baby’s breath, baby roses ... anyway, all in a style so childish and at the same time feminine that the parents accepted, just to see how the desolate room turned into a place of fantasy.

The nanny had warned them shortly after placing the string, above the tarnished curtains: “The only thing I can not decorate, Mr. Landon, is Edith's cradle. That will be up to you.”

Abigail and Elderich Landon nodded, bewildered; Evangeline, as her nana was called, cradled Little Edith with a fervent, almost obsessive love, and rarely separated from the child while she was awake. They supposed it was because, as Edith had been born so weak, Evangeline, the daughter of the deceased former cook had managed to skip the doctor's and midwife's orders and fought to preserve the creature; no less, at the beginning of the autumn, so many children, aged zero to three years, had succumbed under mysterious circumstances to the length and breadth of Derry. It was said that the children appeared cold in their beds, and with the appearance of one who has been attacked by a vampire ... but who believes in vampires? And to all this, where were the bite marks, where the signs of venomous and cruel fangs sucking the life of innocence?

That time Evangeline, who had lost a nephew in early September in the same strange circumstances, whispered, “It does not suck their blood. It sucks the desire to live.” On that occasion Mr. Landon turned to her and asked, half-frightened, half curious: “Do you believe in those things, silly girl?” Evangeline, with her large dark eyes and permanently haggard, turned and said: “I believe in ghosts, vampires, werewolves, and all sorts of jungle creatures and cemeteries like you believe in the Sun and the Moon.” “What nonsense ... we can see the sun and the moon, do you want to tell me that you ...?” There was no need for words, that heavy look confirmed it, and Mrs. Landon had crossed herself, nervous; she was to give birth at that time.

Whatever it was, Edith survived, the care of the young servant was so effective that she ended up naming her her nanny, and more than a month ago; the people in the village, seeing her leave with the little girl in a stroller (well covered with a bridal gauze that served as the screen so that the sun did not burn and the wind did not cool), used to comment that it seemed that Edith was more of her daughter than of Abigail, the real mother, who since her sixth birth was more taciturn and nervous than normal. Actually, Edith was more of Evangeline than anyone would have ever suspected. It was not her daughter, of course, Evangeline was barely 16 years old, and far from what any black talk might say, the reason for her stay in the house at the death of her mother was for real kindness. Edith was hers because, although no one knew, she was feeding her. Not with goat's milk as everyone thought when she came up with the bottle still warm to the bedroom. It was with her own milk.

To the rhythm of the clink of the music box, Edith sucked quietly from Evangeline's virgin breast; the girl covered her body with a blanket, not out of modesty but out of fear, and every night she drank goat's milk so that no one suspected anything, because a legend fell upon her that was dangerous to confirm. Because both she and her mother were witches, witches, who did not like to hide in the woods and kill biting ravens like so many others throughout this dreadful country; they believed and called the benign spirits of trees, mushrooms, streams, and practiced more the art of healing than fortuitous divination. The only feature "witchcraft" they both had was to go out from time to time, especially on the equinox, to bathe in the light of the first moon of autumn, and thus renew their promise to the world.

That night in November 1769, Evangeline gently pushed away a long-slept Edith and placed her in a cradle of simple carving and white cotton everywhere, and seeing the baby dressed in the same color with her hair blond and curly, finally sprouting from the egg-head she had from birth, she felt a shiver in his heart. She reached out and barely brushed her blushing cheeks, biting her lip.

“I do not want to leave you.” She muttered, caught in sudden anguish. Maybe it was the storm that started, maybe it was that the day before the rumor was heard that everything that was killing the little ones was the plague, arrived at the town by a Jewish immigrant that now was entrenched under his house, or perhaps it was that a week ago he discovered that the well, the only well on the outskirts of the town, was exuding a foul liquid, which could not make out whether it was pink or yellowish, and smelled of corpse, abandonment ... fear ... Maybe it was all at once, but before she left, Evangeline did what she promised herself not to do since she came in contact with the little girl: spell the cradle.

The goat's milk that was left in the bowl mixed with her hair, as black as the storm night that roared outside the window, and also with Edith's nail (that morning she had cut them), and also with the dry petal of the window-string, and silently scattered that makeshift potion at the feet and head of the cradle, wishing it were enough.

When she finished, she retired to sleep, putting out all but one of the candles, which she enclosed in a rudimentary glass globe with a simulated lamp. Closed the music box, gave Edith one last look, and closed the door.

The storm grew to such a degree that the doors and windows of the house creaked with fury. In the service room another one of the girls commented that it seemed the wind was trying to break in by force, and only received nervous snarls from the rest of her companions, three in all counting Evangeline, who had an open eye hanging from the window; no, she thought after a while, at least the wind did not try to get in there with them. In another side…

The creak increased, and this time they all sat up staring at the ceiling; they seemed to hear a strange noise, one deaf but so sudden and so strong that it made them all alert. "Will the lords have risen already?" Asked Charlotte, whose main job was to cook and order Bessie, the fattest goat in the house. "And why should they?" Asked Marion, who had said that comment about the wind. "No, no ... sounds like something different, as if something had fallen. "Maybe a piece of furniture."

"I hope no one is hurt!" Said Angelique, who was crouching on her side of the bed like an anxious cat. They all knew that he hated the storms because years ago, in one of them a tree fell on his house and broke the roof in half. "I do not think it was a piece of furniture." Marion continued. "Have not you noticed?" It was a dry blow, I did not hear anything fall. If it was a safe piece of furniture we would have heard it fall ... I do not know, the clothes, the little lady's boxes ... something.”

"Shut up, Marion, you're making Angie nervous.” Charlotte grumbled. She said it like that but she was the one who was the most scared. "Yes, well ... I only say what I think.” She shrugged and looked suspiciously at Charlotte. "It's not my fault that in this house the ni ...” “Watch out!” "Pardon ... that in this house certain girls have so much smoke in the head.” There was a snort. Angelique, who was the daughter of blacks, understood the reference, and nervously brushed a hand through her hair. "Listen ..." Evangeline, who had been silent all the discussion, reached a hand to the ceiling, pointing. “What is that thing?”

They all knew that Evangeline was looking better than anyone in the dark, so they hurried to light a candle and directed it as best they could to the place she pointed. On the ceiling, made of wood and bare of any coating or paint, a dark stain of considerable size had appeared, so irregular, and its edges so fuzzy that they could not measure its exact length. "Oh, for heaven's sake, I told you that something had fallen.” Growled Marion. “Can you see? It must have been the lord's dig.” -Why do you say that?” Angelique asked.

"Does not it show?That's a damp spot. Oh, when they see tomorrow ...!” Evangeline shook her head; indeed, a trinchador of the upper part of the house kept a few bottles of liquor, but where had the natural rumble of the glass been broken? And why did not that scandal seem to have awakened Landon, who happened to sleep next to that piece of furniture? "Hey, what's this?" Charlotte, who was holding the candle, stood on the bed and drew the wick so close together that they feared to burn the ceiling; the gigantic stain was not the only one now, another one appeared, much smaller, narrow and elongated, and which accompanied its appearance with a timid creak. "Another stain? Will a bottle have been rolled?” "And look!" Angelique pointed a little further to the left of the second spot. Another had just emerged, like that, out of nowhere, and once more they heard the creak.

The terror gripped them and they continued to murmur incoherently about floating bottles of liquor, unconnected prayers they had half learned in the church, and even the possibility that the wind might have broken a window and those were birds, strange birds that parted by the storm and fell there, to die in a zigzag line along the top floor. Evangeline tried to remain calm, and tired of glimpsing the way the stains went their way ("way," she thought, "as if they were moving somewhere"), took the candle to Charlotte and got out of bed. The stains were lost little by little to a corner of the ceiling, and the last one of these, bigger and clear than the previous ones, awoke their attention.

"They've stopped." Charlotte whispered a moment later. "No, they've just gone somewhere else.” Evangeline explained. Her chest hurt so much it seemed like it was going to explode, where did those spots come from and where were they going? "Oh-hey-" Angelique, with great difficulty, had gathered the courage to rise, and pointed the trail with obvious nervousness. "Do not they look the same to ...?"

Footprints. They were footprints! They all thought it, but nobody wanted to say it out loud. “What do we do?” "There’s a thief in the house." "The sirs are upstairs!" The sirs were upstairs ... their room was on the opposite side of the footprints, next to the furniture and opposite ...

Quick as ever, Evangeline dropped the candle and ran. She heard the confused cries of her companions behind her, but she did not have time to attend to their silly thoughts; the footprints went to the left side, where the wall was bounded by the Derry field, the only chamber from which the well was pouring muddy water. She staggered up the stairs, on all fours like a guard dog excited by the presence of an enemy, and did not stop to look at the damp, filthy tracks. She rushed to Edith's room, which was still closed; opened the door and entered like an exhalation.

"Edith!" Nothing was out of place. The deaf lamp was still there, illuminating the cradle, the music box was in its usual place, tightly closed, and Edith ... She went to the bed and saw the spongy jumble of blankets and reached out a hand, breathing relieved, looking for the little baby's head to caress her and swear she was safe because she was there ... But her hand closed around the sheet, and discovered that it was empty. There was no sign of the creature. “Edith ... Edith!”

Evangeline lifted the sheets, careful not to do it too abruptly because the little girl might be there and hurt her unintentionally, but nothing. Horrified and fearing the worst, she looked down the edges of the cradle, wondering how she could spend so much time with Edith lying on the floor, surely hurt and crying ... "But you did not hear any tears, all you heard were those ... footsteps." She sat up, rubbing her hands nervously; Where was Edith, what the hell was he going to do? That ... thing ... she saw walking from below, could it be responsible?

"The sirs ..." she muttered, and turned away. She was going to wake up Mr. Landon and immediately make a departure to look for Edith. Mr. Landon was a great lover of the hunt, and the coachman who slept outside could also help. Who knows why, as she turned her body, her eyes locked on a corner of the room, the corner that always darkened as she opened the door. There, an irregular figure stood out on the floor, and when it noticed the look of Evangeline stretched a foot and closed the door, so quietly that the young woman heard a dry paf! So it was "that". She looked at him like the boy who sees the door of his closet imagining a nightmare monster sliding out of it; The bad thing is that Evangeline did not imagine it. It was real, horribly real.

It was a man, or so it seemed, dressed in a dirty clown suit Evangeline could not decide whether it was white or silver; from his head came out a messy hair and even dirtier if it was possible that the clothes, the color of the fire, and the face ... that face had nothing human, however much it resembled. It was all white and the only thing visible besides the nose and mouth painted in bright red tones were the shadowed eyes that flashed a yellow light.

"Demon". Evangeline thought. Her mother had told her that demons take very unnatural ways to intimidate lonely travelers or anyone who is unlucky enough to stumble over them. Then the creature (Evangeline had decided that "that" was not human, she knew with just that glance) opened its mouth and said cheerfully: "Hello, young lady! What a beautiful girl you are ... would you like to help me?”

Nothing he said sounded coherent, but she needed time. Time ... and a weapon. Silver knives were good for hurting nocturnal enemies, her mother told her, and she had hidden one under the table where the honey and the music box were, so she replied: “Help? Who?” "To me, of course, if it's not too much trouble ... Evangeline Harker." “How do you know…? Who are you?” She restrained herself from asking the real question, "What are you?" The creature shook its head frantically, still smiling, and Evangeline felt a faint tinkle coming from it.

"Let's not go into details now, my child. Just tell me ... will you help me out? I think ... yes, I'm afraid I've made more noise than necessary to come here ... I do not want anyone else to see me, it would be ... hehehe ... awkward.” The creature stared at Evangeline's. Its eyes were big and yellow, like two October moons, but much more hollow and horrendous; slowly, she had reached the table and rested her hand on it, feigning great embarrassment (or even so feigned). "Can you not ... go where you came in?" "I can not if I'm carrying this."

It raised its arms and showed her something that made her heart squeeze in her chest. Edith was there, still asleep, with the pretty blanket and the nice nightgown dirty in its hands (were they hands? Evangeline felt like big claws). "My God ... Edith!" "A beautiful little girl, I believe." it whispered, rocking the baby almost tenderly. Evangeline took advantage of that oversight to fumble under the table, but almost immediately stopped when she saw that the eyes of the supposed clown turned to her. "Well, Evangeline?" "No ... do not take her, p-please ..." she whispered. "... Do not take Edith, s-she's just a baby ..." "Do not take her, you say?" The creature gave a horrible laugh. "But we're not trading anything!" I said I'll take it, and I told you that you will help me out, or else...

It tightened Edith against its chest and stretched its neck. Evangeline could see from its lips that what looked like fangs appeared, all in a disorderly line and looking more than ready to bite. "Why does not anyone come? I can not do this alone, not now ... "she thought, anguished. No one else had heard the din except her and the other three servants, and now she seemed to be all alone. She dropped to his knees, feigning an almost uncontrollable cry. “Do not! P ... please ... leave Edith, I ... I'll do anything ...!”

She covered her face with both hands, so that she could look sideways beneath the table; she saw the silver glow of the knife not far from her reach, and tried to make a few false spasms to get closer. Then, as fast as she had reached the top floor, she reached for the knife and faced the creature, who was still comfortably lounging on the floor. "Leave Edith." She said, pointing at the blade and pointing it between its eyes. "You have no idea who you're getting into ..." To her dismay, it smiled with some irony.

"I do not know, you say, Evangeline? Oh, I know as well as I know your name, and the name of every soul in this town. I know as well as you what you really are ... I know that you prepare whiskey secrets to take them to Mrs. Chill to the source, to recover her sanity, I know you brush the goats with a silver comb and velvet so they do not be stolen ... I know that ...” and when it said this it ran through Evangeline from head to toe “I know you feed this precious little girl with your own breast ... I know because I've seen it, you witch!” And at that word it laughed again and kicked, as if it were an excellent joke.

“Witch!” It repeated. "Yours are a very interesting breed! But ... do you think that you would win me with those enchanted contraptions? No, Evangeline, I've been sleeping here for centuries ... hunting here for centuries and no human weapon has been able to with me ... no man's hand could have hurt me!” "How about the hand of a woman?" As she said this, Evangeline charged the clown, raising the knife and dropping it with all her might on the creature's face. She felt the warmth of blood and heard a groan, and then ... The door opened. Landon came in a rush, and Abigail uttered a cry of horror. Evangeline turned to ask for help, she was not entirely sure she'd hurt it.

But she found herself holding the knife in one hand and Edith in another, and she had her nightgown splattered with blood, blood pouring from her mouth as well. And Edith was crying, and she had blood staining her sweet face too. With a nudge, Mr. Landon pushed her to the ground and yanked Edith out of her arms, discovering the girl and looking for any sign of injury. Abigail was still crying, but now she sobbed as best she could, her voice choked with panic: "You ... crazy ... witch! We entrust you to our Edith, our little Edith!”

At the end of the corridor were other things, the cries of the children and the murmurs of the maids. Evangeline dropped her knife, bewildered by the clatter of noises and lights. "No ... no ... I do not ..." she pointed out as if she was crazy behind her back. It had been there ... that thing had been there! “Has been…” "I refused to accept the gossip of the town, but everyone knew, you know?” Continued Mrs. Landon. “You and your mother, a couple of witches ... Surely it was you who killed the other children too!”

These accusations were completely new, and Evangeline felt a shadow, a hideous shadow, fall upon the eyes of the sirs. That's why they said so many atrocities? Abigail Landon came out sobbing still. Mr. Landon only paused a little longer to look at Evangeline and sentence her: "Do not you dare move from here. Tomorrow I will accuse you to the people's court. "

He slammed the door and Evangeline heard them dragging something; she approached and trying to open it she ran into the fucking carving that had so excited the imagination of the other servants blocking the exit. She looked out, where the storm was abating, and it occurred to her that she could walk out the window and escape ... into the woods. But if she did she would be accusing more, and if they found ... "They'll throw me into the water in a chair ..." she whispered. "They'll stab me in the chest ... They'll hang me or worse, they'll throw me to the stake ... God, no, God, no!" She covered her head with her arms and lay down on the floor, in a fetal position, moaning in terror.

"Evangeline Harker, stand up." She heard a strange voice, one she had never heard, claiming it from afar. But she did not move. "Evangeline Harker, I repeat, stand up!" Missing, the young woman discovered her head. She was no longer in Edith's room, she was somewhere else, a place high and narrow, almost without light, and around her she could feel the cold and the murmur of hundreds of voices.

"Evangeline Harker, this Derry Court has been able to prove with many great proof that you are a devil-worshiper, a witch who has dedicated herself to poisoning our children.” “No, that's not true!” she exclaimed, terrified in the sweltering darkness. More murmurs rose. "And how do you explain that your breast fed Edith Landon? Has the devil given you that power? Where is your relative?” "Here's the witch's knife." Someone dropped at her feet with a tremendous roar the silver knife. "She used it to make her potions and tear our little ones apart." "I tell you it was not me!" I swear, I would never ...!”

But a same echo began to rise, more and more thunderous, more horrible. "Kill the witch, kill the witch, kill the witch ..." "Evangeline Harker, this Derry Court has ruled that, as a practitioner of sorcery, you must be executed today.”

“No! No! NO!” Evangeline, on her knees, could not help but hear that cry in which the echo had become; tried to cover her ears but that did not help. "Kill the witch! Kill the witch! Kill the witch!”

Evangeline stood up, staring into the rolling darkness, her eyes filled with tears, her fear creeping up her belly, burning her breast like a bonfire, clutching her throat like a rope. She had to flee, flee far, would not let her get caught, she would not die like that. She ran into nothing, desperate steps. “KILL THE WITCH! KILL THE WITCH!”

And then she hit something rough, cold and undulating. She raised her face and ran into it ... It was who was to blame for everything! She tried to look at the court behind her and shout, "This is the one who wanted to kill Edith Landon! This is the one who has killed the other children!” But she discovered that there was nothing, only Edith's poorly lit room, and the murmur that sentenced her. Her arms clung to her body and the floor disappeared from her feet. The creature had lifted her without any difficulty, bringing her face close to its, smiling with satisfaction.

"Kill the witch," it whispered mockingly. Evangeline felt as if hundreds of knives were stuck in her throat, and the hot liquid of her blood running through the wounds. She gasped, unable to make a sound, her cheeks covered with tears, her body shaking uncontrollably; her pupils dimmed after a few seconds, and it was all just shade, and rain, and a gurgling monster satisfied with the taste of blood in its mouth. Her eyes twitched inside her head. And then her body fell to the ground, her head almost detached from it, soaking in blood the beautiful white cradle of Edith Landon and the rain, now kind, as the only sound in the village.

#it #pennywise #fanfic #pennywise fanfiction #gore

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evilwickedme · 7 years ago

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Jews in Modern Media: A Discussion - Repost

Aight so this is a really old post I made in like? 2015? on a blog that is now private, and I recently was asked to repost it so a few notes:

A. Don’t take everything here in face value. It’s a bit more complicated than this. It’s still pretty accurate as an overview, but do your own research, if it’s a topic that interests you.

B. A lot of issues that should be explored in this post aren’t, and that includes: Jewish poc, in general the fact that Jewish people don’t fit in to the poc/white people dynamic, and the whole Jewish actors not playing outright Jewish characters and the other way around. Also, Jewish coding isn’t outright mentioned. In general, as I said, it’s a very general overview.

C. There isn’t any mention of Fantastic Beasts or Wonder Woman and I beg of you, please keep it this way.

D. I also edited it, so if you’ve seen this post before, there’s no new content, but hopefully it’s a little more coherent and accessible to gentiles.

Alright?

This all started when a friend complained to me about the representation of Jews in American media. He linked me to an Idea Channel video and said:

…every minority is getting their time in the spotlight, but Jews are still off to the side. It’s like the world is saying “The world is diverse! But Jews are still all white and assimilated” or only defined by the Holocaust (i.e. Magneto) and/or by Israel. But that’s totally untrue! If Ms. Marvel is awesome for being the first Muslim character to headline a comic (which she is), why not so with an openly Jewish Jew?

He complained to me that a lot of what’s discussed in the video hasn’t been applied to Jews yet, saying: “I want Menorah Man! (Actually I don’t, cause that would suck.) But you know what I mean!” and that all you could see were Jews who were “Very Borscht Belty or Super Charedi.”

I did know what he meant. The very idea of Menorah Man sucks because it stills pigeonholes Jews. We’re defined only by the most Christian holiday (more on that below). But that would still be infinitely better than the situation we have currently: Jews who aren’t actually allowed to be Jewish.

Let’s start with the actual portrayal of Jews in media. At the time I couldn’t remember a single non Ashkenazi Jew. I’m sure that I heard of a case but I couldn’t actually remember what it was. He was right about the two extremes, except that there’s one clear preference for one side (which would be non-Jewish Jews). Charedi are almost never main characters (I remember one movie with Jessie Eisenberg, but that’s it). The truth is, in American media, Jews aren’t supposed to be religious.

I’d actually talked about this all in a really old thread on a shared facebook group, where this same friend had asked:

How do you guys feel about the portrayal of Jewish Characters (especially religious Jews) in media? I also find it interesting that being openly Christian or Muslim in media is becoming more favorable, and those types of characters are becoming more complex, while Jews are still stuck in stereotypes, for the most part. Thoughts?

My answer:

“Oh man, you’re talking to the right girl here. I’m going to focus on television because that’s my expertise but most of these are transferable to all kinds of plot driven media. Ok. So. Here’s the thing: television as a whole doesn’t know what to DO with Jews. There’s a trope called You Have to Have Jews -the basics of which are that everything has to have Jews because there are so many Jews in Hollywood. However, most prominent Jews in Hollywood are only allowed to be Jews in so far as the comedy aspect of it - you know what I mean. The Big Bang Theory is an excellent popular example of it. Crooked nose, Brooklyn accent, overbearing, fat mothers who are all, somehow, Ashkenazi. The reason for this is actually partly our own fault - as a method of survival, Jews have taken self depreciating humor to a whole new level, which has simply caught on. You know the rule of the n word - only black people are allowed to call themselves that? In Hollywood, that separation simply never happened. That rule was never set in place, because the Jews had been making fun of themselves for so long, and then when the white people came along they thought “we can too”. And once a race becomes a joke in Hollywood, it stays a joke. And the thing is unlike with LGBTQA and Black/Asian/Latinx communities, there is simply no awareness of the problem. Antisemitism stops plenty of people from listening to the few who try to change things. I have seen very few convincing Jews on television. Mostly, Judaism is treated in the “You’ve Got To Have Jews” throwaway line sense. For example, Willow Rosenberg. Her name sounds Jewish, she mentions she’s Jewish once or twice in the second season, and she puts a rock on a grave. In seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (more, if you count the comics, and I do) that is every reference to her Jew-ness, and I just did a rewatch. Anyway, what I meant with not knowing what to DO with Jews is more complicated than that. Basically, despite the abundance of Jews in Hollywood, the antisemitism pushes any of them who are actually practicing to never admit it. This means that Jews never do anything, well, Jewish. (I can think of very few instances where Jewish customs are shown and they all link to either funerals or Hannukah, which are, apparently, the only holidays Jews celebrate, ever.) This means that Jews in television generally a. celebrate Christmas, b. adhere to some stereotype or another, and/or c. have no Jewish identity besides parentage. Most of the time they’ll have typically Jewish names (but not always!). I know for a fact that there ARE practicing Jews in Hollywood - and yet, no Jewish character is ever seen in Synagogue or wearing a Kippah. Appearances of main characters as Jews that fit in to this are: The aforementioned Willow Rosenberg from Buffy, Howard Wollowtz from the Big Bang Theory, Zoe Hart (who is said to be half Jewish and yet manages to fit in to EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THOSE CRITERIA) from Hart of Dixie, Felicity Smoak from Arrow, Annie Edison from Community, Rachel Berry from Glee. Jewish characters who appear in one episode and whose jobs are to Be Jewish are excluded from this, as are Ultra Urthodox. But I’ve only seen the first once and the second twice. As for why there are only Ashkenazi Jews, it’s because there are only Ashkenazi Jews. It’s actually very much circular.”

(Note from present me: here I could’ve easily discussed Jewish-coding, but since this is already long enough, another time.)

The wide variety of Jews that exist in Real Life aren’t portrayed on TV. And while those variety of other minorities are coming out slowly, Jews are lagging behind. Jews are allowed to be Jewish either as long as they eat pork or as long as they have no contact with other, non Jewish people.

The friend responded, saying that was the problem in the first place: there’s no middle ground. No Sephardi Jews, no Modern Orthodox. He blamed it on the “Jewish Media Conspiracy”, but I said it’s a little more complicated than that.

I then gave a little historical background. I assumed that my friend knew that Hollywood was built by Ashkenazi Jews, but I asked him if he knows why.

See, back then there were tons and tons of Ashkenazi Jews coming in from all over Europe. A lot of them were coming to Israel in waves called the Aliyot but most of the Jews leaving Europe were heading towards the INCREDIBLY RACIST US of A. So, once again finding themselves in a country where they had no place that wanted them, Jews headed towards the as of yet incredibly undeveloped Hollywood and LA and built it. They took an unfilled niche and made it their own, mostly because they couldn’t do much of anything else.

My friend compared it to money lending, which was a very, very good comparison. For those of you who don’t know what the whole money lending issue is: in old Europe Jews were pigeon-holed into money lending because Christians weren’t allowed to do it. Jews pretty much weren’t allowed to do anything else vis a vis earning a living, and eventually money-lender and Jew became synonymous. That is the source of the common stereotype of Jews being greedy: because of something they couldn’t help in the first place.

The fact that they created Hollywood, of course, is the source of both You’ve gotta have Jews and the idea that Jews Control the Media (well, at least in its American form - the idea already existed in many ways). Now, most of these Jews weren’t religious, often because they viewed religion as the thing that was killing them by the millions in Europe. This was before the Holocaust, just to be clear - what we’re talking about is a reaction to the Eastern European Pogroms and the rise of a new type of racial Antisemitism in the west, which at the time seemed to be about religion. Of course the new Antisemitism is more complicated, and so are the reasons they distanced themselves from religion, but still. So the Jews who were building the foundations of Hollywood did the two things they did best: Made good movies, and made fun of Jews. There’s a long tradition of Jews making fun of themselves, as a coping mechanism. But! Suddenly all of these vaguely Christian white men realized that OMG, Hollywood is becoming a thing. And when they took control, Jews were still being made fun of, but now, instead of being in on the joke, they were made the butt of the joke. Stereotypes, which had at first been introduced by Jews as a sort of “in joke”, were made to be and portrayed as the rule. So Hollywood continued of course, and you probably know much of the next part of the story: the civil rights movement and second wave feminism in the sixties and early seventies changing the amount of women and black people seen on TV and to a certain extent on the big screen. Again, in the late eighties/early nineties, with the beginning of third wave feminism, more (mostly white, probably all cis-het) women on TV and movies alike, slowly many more black people and slowly, other minorities such as asians and hispanics. But during this entire time, JEWS WERE STILL BEING THE BUTT OF JOKES. There has never been a time in which there weren’t Jews in popular media and THIS, THIS, is the root of the problem. Antisemitic jokes are so ingrained into popular culture that they’re literally older than sliced bread. Jews weren’t ever slowly introduced to popular culture, and so there doesn’t seem to be anything to fix.

But of course, he said, there is something to fix.

And there is.

“Me: As for specifically that video, except for the problem that he mentioned pretty much every minority but Judaism, it’s not his fault.

Friend: Because of all of what you just mentioned.

Me: Yep. I should also say that anytime any voice speaks out against antisemitism they are often shot down with the same “Jews control the media” arguments, which is why so few people speak out, which is why the same arguments can be recycled.”

#judaism #jewish #media #american media #mine #long post #if you're wondering i got permission from my friend to quote him in the original post so we're good #writing #jew tag

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omgktlouchheim · 7 years ago

Text

Diary of Katie Louchheim

Below are thoughts and feelings of mine that have been brought forth by current events. My expressions below are solely my own, I do not claim these experiences to be anyone else’s or claim to speak for everyone with similar backgrounds or feelings.

Pretty much since the election I’ve been trying to gather my thoughts together. I feel like I’m being torn in a million directions. I wake up every day praying that this is an episode of The Twilight Zone, or a really fucked up dream I’m having and not reality. But I know it’s real. I’ve always known it was real. Growing up Jewish in Arizona was a constant reminder of my otherness while being within the Jewish community was a constant reminder of how much we’re hated solely based on that otherness. The weird thing about never knowing what it’s like to go to your place of worship or day school without security and metal detectors, or that when school gets cut because there was a bomb threat at the JCC or a swastika tagged on one of the synagogues in town, is that these things are not normal. And yet, by the time I was a young child they were completely normalized.

Maybe it didn’t seem so bad because I’ve had a complicated relationship with my Jewish identity so siding with people who were suspect felt easier. Or because that insecurity balanced out with my white privilege. When people didn’t know my heritage, I definitely benefitted, and still mostly benefit, from that. That’s the lie of assimilation, though. There’s something off-white about living in America while having a Jewish background. (Obviously, for Jews of color it’s a whole other ballgame). Once that part of my identity was known I became “nice for a Jew” and “pretty for a Jew” but I most certainly was not nice or pretty enough to make me human enough to open up the minds of those bestowing compliments to me with their backhand. It would be me; alone, trying to toe the line between making a good and diplomatic impression while also denying a part of myself and any emotional reactions to people and instead, making sure to accommodate their feelings. I didn’t realize how small I was making myself in these situations. And how much responsibility I was shouldering that wasn’t my business to shoulder at all.

One time in high school, a bunch of us choir buddies were asked to sing at one of our friend’s churches. We went, sang a song about Jesus, nailed it (sry, too soon?) and then were forced to listen to this preacher sermonize about how non-Christian people are going to hell. At which point I turned and looked at my friend (an Iranian Zoroastrian) and we both just rolled our eyes because we were so used to this treatment by people toward us. Fucking jaded as fuck from this shit by 17 years old. I think the girl who asked us to go apologized after. I really don’t remember. At this point, and honestly since the dawn of time, apologies are not enough.

Being nice is not enough. There are no “both sides” to this equation. It’s not ok to tell people being brutalized that they need to identify or compromise with their abusers. It is not my job to hold your people accountable. Or hold your hand through your discomfort. White Christian folk, it’s yours. If I had been at that service today, I would have just gotten up and walked out. I don’t have the tolerance my younger self had for bullshit and no one’s fuckery is entitled to my time and space. It is not my job to constantly try to prove my worth to people who already believe I’m worthless and taking up space that belong to them. All I know, without a doubt, is that my life is more important than White Christian Feelings™. The lives of my friends and family and all the various communities we are members of: POC communities, LGBTQ+, immigrant, Indigenous, Muslim, etc. are more important than White Christian Feelings™. If YOU have feelings it is YOUR job to go to a therapist and work on them and not culturally appropriate the use of tiki torches by using them to throw a tantrum while waving Confederate and Nazi flags, ramming your cars through crowds of people, and beating the shit out of peaceful protestors.

I try to be a good person. I know that majorities of people in this country are also trying to be good people. But, I’m going to level with you white Christian folks. I don’t trust you. I also have a lot of resentment toward you. If you’re hurt by me saying that, I don’t care. It’s taken me a very long time to admit this. It’s taken an incredible amount of work to unpack and uncondition myself to the idea that I’m a bad person for feeling this way and for not seeing the “many sides.” But, you don’t deserve my trust. You’re not entitled to anything from anybody. Once again, YOUR problem. Tough titties, bro.

When I started seeing images of the gathering of angry white men with torches on Friday night, I had a feeling I wasn’t going to be able to participate in the onslaught of coverage of what was happening in Charlottesville, VA. I was right. The moment I opened Facebook and saw image after image and article after article of the Pasty Wasps Boys parade screaming anti-Semitic slurs, racist drivel, and throwing their arms up in Sieg Heil to Fuhrer Trump I found my breath catch in my throat. Those images turned into the countless hours of footage of the Nazis and their methodical tactics to exterminate our families shown to us every year to make sure we never forgot. The shots of piles of dead bodies found and photographed by the liberators morphed in my head from unknown members of the tribe to my parents and my siblings. Lifeless forms hanging from trees became my friends who dare to be themselves; worship who they wish to worship, love who they love, celebrating being black as fuck (Talia, I am living for you and your InstaStories right now and forever and always). It took me almost a full twenty-four hours and a hiatus from social media to get the panic attacks to stop.

Never again. Our communities make a point to pass down the atrocities we faced so we can make sure these things never happen again to anyone. Why don’t you learn what has happened to us? How is it that our heritage, which is intertwined with yours, weighs so heavily on only our hearts?

Do you not have hearts?

What exactly is wrong with you.

Here’s a collection of other things that have been swirling around in my brainhole:

- Have we past the point of no return for democracy in this country? I’m afraid of staying in this country until it’s too late. I’m afraid of leaving this country that I love and have so much hope for and not knowing if I’ll have more confidence in my survival instincts at the end of it or live with feeling like a coward for the rest of my life. Then again, some of my family made it here in time. Others were murdered and dumped in a grave they were forced to dig themselves.

-I was in Israel with my family in June and I remember I had a moment while sitting on the roof of the hotel we were staying at in Jerusalem with my dad. I remember feeling very quiet and comfortable. I thought of a conversation I had had with my aunt a few weeks prior when she had said that when she went to Israel for the first time 30 some years ago it amazed her that she was in a place where everyone was Jewish. Then, it clicked. I realized that despite the fact that Jerusalem and much of Israel is religiously diverse and that there is still a hugely unsettling political environment present there, that I was in a place where Judaism was accepted. It was a norm. I was in a place where I didn’t have to explain myself to anyone no matter what my actual beliefs, practices or lack thereof are. That’s when I thought, “Wow. This is what it must feel like to be a White Christian back home.”

- I love this country. Maybe, more accurately, I love the concept of this country. I’m a 6th generation American. Which means that my lineage has been here almost as long as this country has been the United States of America. Which also means my lineage has been oppressed while actively engaging in and benefitting from the oppression of others. Immigrants were able to come and build a life for themselves as a result of the genocide of hundreds of millions of First Nations people. My five-times great grandfather fought in the Civil War against the Union. He was not allowed to fight with his fellow southerners and instead was in a separate infantry specifically for Jews. Everything about this sucks. I can only guess that this relative was doing what he felt was right, as way to assimilate, get closer to the American Dream, I’ll never know. Here’s what I do know: The Confederacy lost, as they should have. State’s rights my ass. And failure is a good thing. Failure means things have the potential to be better. It gives us a chance to sit back, deal with our filth, and clean it out. Something this country still hasn’t done.

#BlackLivesMatter

#StopDAPL

#NoBanNoWall

#LoveisLoveisLove

#TransisBeautiful

#WomensRightsAreHumanRights

#ImmigrantsWeGetThe Job Done

#DisabledandCute

#Resist

#feminism #life stories #justice #resist

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