#there were also some Czechs in the comments saying 'what do you mean it's a scam? they advertise flour and sugar you get flour and sugar!'

[rabbits-of-negative-euphoria]

saw a guy online saying "You shouldn't buy trdelník when you visit Czech cities; it's not a traditional food and we don't make it at home--it's a tourist scam."

which I'm sure is all true. but what amuses me is that when people see the word "trdelník," they think "Czechia." (maybe "Slovakia") where else could you imagine finding one?

so trdelníky may be a scam, but! they're a uniquely Czech scam.

[nokingsonlyfooles]

Let's Agitate the Hell Out of This Snake!

I said to myself, "Self, you have never Tumblred effectively, and you exist only on the fringes of this culture. But you know if you engage negatively, it will will become a constant source of stress. And you know there are a lot of stressed-out people here who are being fed negative things across multiple platforms. Do not, DO NOT criticize left-leaning institutions around here until you have established some kind of cred as a well-meaning leftist yourself."

Yeah, well, but I read the news and I'm not ready to format the cites for an article about the woman we call "La Malinche." I wanted to say something on this other topic while it's still fresh in my mind.

So, first, if you're interested, here is the position from which I comment on Indigenous matters: My tribe didn't want me because my blood isn't pure enough. And if you don't wanna hear about that, that's fine. You don't hafta click.

Genealogically-speaking, no matter what ethno-cultural mix my great-grandfather had in his blood, he was in the tribe, so he counts as 100% by their standards. (I'm not gonna call them out by name. I've lost all connection with my family, I don't know who's on the Council now, and I don't know if they'd still reject me, but I'm not inclined to go back and beg. They're in Mexico and Arizona, and they have reservations and at least one casino, so there is a government-incentivized reason to split what they have as few ways as possible.)

My grandmother never bothered to get officially recognized and join the tribe. My tribe is not fond of Mexicans and her father married one, and she married one, and according to the stereotype she looks it (My tribe believes they are tall and Mexicans are short, I kid you not. My family on that side is a mix of tall and short and my dad got stonewalled trying to do genealogical research more than once because he got the short genes. Race-based caste systems are truly hilarious.) so I can relate. My aunt decided she wanted to join the tribe, and since she could point to her grandfather as 100%, she got in, adopted her kids from them, and got a seat on the Council. Her biological son was also eligible to join, although she married a Pacific Islander.

My dad, on the other had, did not bother to get recognized, and he married a Czech-German lady. When I was a young teenager, I asked my aunt what it would take for me to get in. She looked my fair-skinned ass up and down, shook her head and said, "It's too far." I only have a great-grandparent, with uncertain lineage, so I'm 12.5% or less. Maybe if my dad asked to be recognized first, I might have a chance, but my tribe isn't super fond of white people either, so that was a non-starter with my mom being who she was. My aunt smiled and said, "But you could marry in! We've got to get you a husband!"

At that age, with that level of security in my complex identity, I just laughed it off. OK, if they didn't want me, that was their right. A lot of places didn't want me. I didn't have much of the culture anyway. Although, had they been willing to accept me, I would've been willing to learn. After the attempted genocide, you'd think they'd be motivated to hand down those traditions to as many kids as possible, no matter how dislocated. The dislocation is a feature of the genocide, not my choice, nor is the genetic makeup of my parents, my height, or the colour of my skin.

Tribe used to be a matter of culture, not blood. You could take a new name and learn new traditions (sometimes against your will, but let's not get into that) and after a brief period of suspicion (or after your wounds healed up) you were in. Then European colonizers rolled up and said, "Hey, we've invented the concept of race and organized our whole society based on heritage and skin colour. You want some of that?" I have yet to stray across a tribe or Council who said, "Nah, we're gonna keep distributing our culture to whoever wants to learn." The tribe I can lay claim to by blood sure doesn't. They have so little left, they only want to share it with real Indigenous people. And they are defining "real" by the standards imposed upon them by a culture that tried to wipe them off the face of the planet.

What these colonizers have failed to do by forced marches, imprisonment and murder, they might manage to do by imposing an artificial scarcity of resources. If they can isolate each Indigenous society and coax them to hand their traditions down only to people who have been selectively bred to look how they think we ought to look, Indigenous people will never recover the rich cultural tapestry their ancestors enjoyed. Every generation, there will be fewer of them (they already lost me, so I can't say "us"), and they will grow more isolated, until they are gone.

That is the context which causes me to look at Indigenous cultures through a much more jaded lens than a lot of my peers, who only know enough to pity them.

So let's take a look at this opinion piece right here. You can read the whole thing if you want, but please forgive me for snipping a few quotes for the Tumblers. This post is gonna be long enough as it is.

Oh, dear god. "Mostly" is doing a LOT of heavy lifting in that sentence! Right away. I know this person is privileged with an a identity less complex than mine, with most of their experiences in being excluded stemming from being Indigenous, period. I am super sure he never had his aunt smile at him and say his tribe didn't want him, but he might be acceptable as breeding stock. He doesn't have to consider the intersections, and he will have to do some more learning and growing before he realizes how silly it is to call Canada mostly a world leader in fairness and equality. I've barely been here a year and I already know that ain't so.

It should be obvious that Indigenous people are being fed a disproportionate amount of shit, and they deserve their land and autonomy back. But if we're talking about unfairness and inequality, that's just a few pixels of a huge image that this Indigenous law student isn't seeing. (Yet! I'm willing to give him time, but his views right now are a matter of public record and contributing to the public understanding, or lack thereof.)

And then, ah, we have a slight issue with fairness, equality, and legal representation edging into theocracy.

Okay. I gotta say, conflating laws of man with laws of gods and our forefathers does not get you a real good system of justice. We've seen this more than once, and I'm watching my home country slide into fundamentalist rule a little more each day, so - with all due respect to cultural preservation in the face of an attempted genocide - maybe it's better to write that stuff down and allow your society to evolve. Our ancestors didn't know everything, we don't know everything, and a Law revealed to one in an ecstatic religious state does not lend itself to reason, objection, or nuance.

Let's say, just spitballing here, your Council has set up a Powwow that doesn't allow Two-Spirits or other gender-diverse people to dress and dance as they choose. How do you construct a legal argument against a Council that chooses to cite, not just tradition, but the will of God and the spirits of your ancestors? "Uh... pretty sure my ancestors didn't say AMAB means you can't wear a ribbon skirt. I mean, I think the very concept is..." "WELL, WE ARE YOUR ELDERS AND WE SAY THEY DID." "Maybe they were wrong?" "STOP DISRESPECTING OUR CULTURE AND GET OUT." "Isn't it also my culture?" "NOT IF IT INCLUDES YOU WEARING A RIBBON SKIRT!"

The conservative impulse to regress to an imaginary past is not unique to Evangelical Christians. Tribal Councils, like most governments, skew conservative. If all their decisions can be attributed to unassailable spiritual revelations, there isn't going to be much progress. And these imposed gender roles and castes will be set in stone, just like they are in the colonizers' governments.

I just don't think it's a good idea. But, heh, what do I know? I'm not even allowed to call myself "Two-Spirit," because my blood's too impure.

(I will be posting Tumblr content on days beginning with T, if you care. Probably shorter content than this, but who knows?)

[autisticbokutoenthusiast]

Reacting to VNL 2025 Anouncement

(yes im a few days late i was processing irl for a bit)

im gonna go week by week and look at the pools and what im excited for! (lowkey confused by the pools cause on the one hand some teams are in the same pool several times which is normal but also poland/italy and japan/turkiye dont match once??? neither do s. korea/thailand and thats a rematch im looking forward to? but wtv we have world champs coming up in the fall so well hopefully see those matchups then)

Week 1

GABI!!!!

POOL A:

japan, netherlands, serbia, canada, dominican republic and bulgaria

Im most looking forward to:

JPN v DOM because they are such different teams its always interesting to see how they match against eachother

CAN v NED because they were pretty evenly matched this year so i think that game will be interesting and hard fought

DOM v CAN because i also feel they are evenly matched but different teams and i think they could challenge eachother in a way that brings out the best play in eachother

JPN v CAN this was a 5 setter last vnl with canada winning so lets see what goes down next year

POOL B

italy, brazil, usa, germany, czech republic, south korea

im most looking forward to:

ITA v BRA cause we all know that will be an intense match (brazil will be coming in without some of their veterans but most of their core team is the same as far as im understanding) i mean brazil won their match this last vnl but italy is the team to beat rn and brazil will be hungry to get back on top- not to mention a lot of their big players (im thinking gabi and carol rn) are playing in the italian league

USA v BRA both of these teams are strong and will play a hell of a match i can feel it, usa will want that remtch cause they went down in 4 last time, i know this has 5-set potential (same goes for USA v ITA)

im also curious about CZE v KOR because czech team got in from the challenger cup and south korea is (i say this with love and respect) the bottom of the vnl teams (to be the worst of the top 18 teams is still an accomplishment but they just havent been winning these past years) so i think they may be evenly matched and play an interesting game

POOL C

turkiye, poland, china, thailand, belgium, france

what im most looking forward to:

TUR v POL these are just two vicious teams and its always fun seeing them rile eachother up then get riled up against the refs then the crowd then the coach then the net then the ball etc both teams will also be without their captains (wołosz and erdem retired from nat team afaik) so i wonder who will be holding them down (my bets are korneluk and örgey)

TUR v CHN something about china always gets under turkeys skin and i want to see them come up with an answer or it also li ying ying v vargas should be interesting

POL v CHN two blocking powerhouses i cant wait

THAI v CHN thailand beat china once im waiting to see them do it again

THAI v FRA/BEL i think these may be evenly matched teams and yall know i love level skill matches

THAI v TUR fun fact but i was a passive vball watcher until the 5 setter between these two teams in world champs 22. it was just such a fun match i immidiately started following all the players and really getting invested in volleyball. thailand actually won if im not mistaken (this was pre vargas) so i know that a shake up can happen

WEEK 2

YUAN XIN YUE

POOL A

brazil, turkiye, canada, dominican republic, belgium, south korea

what im most looking forward to

BRA v TUR yall..... yall know when these two teams match EVERYONE ACTS UP like the fans, the teams, the commentators it gets CRAZY but in a more serious sense their matches are very fun and brazils experience vs turkiyes youngblood is always interesting

CAN v DOM i love when these two teams meet cause you never know who will win till they do ya know just fun games to watch, last time can won 3-0 but i know las reinas have it in them

CAN v TUR hear me out yall!!! i think van ryck and gray are gonna be trouble for turkiye this year idk why but i can feel it

POOL B

italy, china, japan, thailand, czech republic, bulgaria

what im most looking forward to

ITA v CHN highly competent teams with italy being on top i want to see how china approaches them especiall looking at the li ying ying/egonu and yuan xin yue/denesi matchup. china didnt take a single set off them last vnl but i know they could

JPN v CHN china is usually seen as the top asian team but japan beat them in 4 and got silver at last vnl so i think itll be interesting to see what happens

ITA v JPN listen this was the gold medal match last year but japan is now without their ace koga but still!! i think it could be interesting

THAI v everyone yall should know by now they are lowkey my ult team but listen against italy itll be a challenge but theres something about watching thailand fight till the last point thats always interesting- then we have them against japan which both teams have similar play styles (tho i would say thailand is a bit more scrappy <3) so its fun seeing them battle it out too- then for the other teams its just not something we see a lot so ill look forward to how they play out, thailand came away with a win last time they faced bulgaria but can they do it again

POOL C

poland, usa, netherlands, serbia, germany, france

what im most looking forward to

POL v USA the block battle about to go down oooo also 6'8 stysiak v 6'8 and 6'6 retke and plummer.... coaches play them against eachother im tryna see something...

POL v GER and POL v SER just becuse the polish fans wont be at home but they're gonna turn up and boo like no tomorrow.....

USA v SER if usa really is trying to swipe guidetti then should be interesting👀

WEEK 3

SKINNER

POOL A

italy, turkiye, netherlands, serbia, belgium, czech republic

what im most looking forward to

ITA v TUR italy took it 4 sets last time, can they do it again? i think this match should be really fun

SER v TUR because if we still have santerelli and guidetti then its the teams playing their coaches from 2022 so these are coaches that know the other team well and should be interesting

POOL B

usa, china, canada, dominican republic, germany, thailand

what im most looking forward to

USA v CHN china came out the winner of the 4 set battle in 24 but it was usa's non regulars. will they be able to do the same against usa at home 👀 (also need 6'8 middles yuan and retke to meet in the middle also li ying ying nd plummer)

USA v CAN these teams have very similar play styles (to my untrained eyes) and van ryck was causing lots of trouble last vnl so this match should be interest

CHN v CAN yall remember when canada won this in vnl 2024 cause i do and i cant wait for the rematch

DOM v THAI listen yall this one of my fav matches im still not over the post game interactions between martinez and achjarpon and piyannut in 2024 i need to see it again IN PERSON like im booking a flight THIS WEEK IDGAF

POOL C

japan, poland, brazil, france, bulgaria, south korea

what im most looking forward to

JPN v POL very different but both skilled teams i want to see how they match up given polands offensive power and japans strong floor defense

POL v BRA last vnl it was only a 4 setter but i think these teams are pretty evenly matched. theres a fieriness to poland thats different from brazils athleticism. i just love watching these two meet

JPN v BRA NOW YALL KNOW THIS IS GONNA BE THE REMATCH OF ALL TIMEEEEEEE like kogas gone (miss you queen) but wada and airi came outta nowhere that match and stunned so i will be tuned the fuck in

general points

italy team to beat after winning last vnl AND olympics i wonder how the other teams will handle them and if they can be beaten, especially if they play egonu/sylla/fahr from the beginning

Im really curious about this USA team, they lost their head coach and still havent anounced whose replcing kiraly, its the first time the us has its own pro league meaning we're gonna see these players play club with their nat teammates and while i doubt itll happen in only one season i wonder if well see the us develop its own playstyle

also for usa i want to see their deep bench again. while i think it may have hurt them a bit going into finals week/olympics that they didnt have an established starting squad that worked well off of eachother i loved seeing the variety of players they brought out in weeks 1 and 2 last year

the expanded format is interesting i mean i was surprised seeing france belgium and czech republic on here since they havent been part of like the core vnl teams the past few years (excl frances inclusion cause of olympics)

arlington being home of usa vball continuing to piss me off wdym the men get to play in chicago thats one of my bucket list cities ive spent ENOUGH time in dallas ENOUGH. but i will try to be there to see wipawee play in my home country <3

i noticed a lot of players growing their hair on the chinese and japanese teams last year i wonder what if shoulder length ponytails will still be the stile or we'll go back to bobs and short cuts

its gonna be sad seeing these times without a lot of the legends that played (and some cases came back) for the 24 season but theres so much young talent i dont think well have time to miss them too badly

anyway what are yalls thoughts??!?!?!?

(i know theres like 2 ppl on this webbed site that watch vball and you probably didnt scroll all the way down but if you did what are you looking forward to seeing)

[only-johnny-deppp]

Sad Moments: One year ago, on this day (November 6), Johnny Depp announced on his social medias that he was “asked to resign” from his role as Gellert Grindelwald in the Fantastic Beasts Franchise.  😭 😭

The announcement was made few days after Johnny had lost the libel trial against the U.K.'s “The Sun” that printed a story, referring him as a "wife beater." After 16 days of trial, the judge “ruled” that 12 of the 14 alleged assaults against Ms. Heard were considered “probable” and The Sun was free of liability. During these 16 days, Ms. Heard showed how her version is inconsistent, full of lies and with dozens of “evidences” that didn’t match at all to prove her innocence; but in reality proved how guilty she is. The Judge, who has connections with Ms. Heard circle of friends, IGNORED ALL OF JOHNNY’s EVIDENCES and eyewitness, and the fact that THE REAL ABUSER, AMBER HEARD almost killed, hurt Johnny in dozens of different ways, verbally, physically and psychologically and even ignored her CONFESSION of had hit Johnny.

Unfortunately, Johnny couldn’t do nothing, but respect and agree with the Warner Bros. decision. During an interview last August 28, 2021 during the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, for the Czech magazine “Reflex” he talked about this day: “That, as you know, was definitely not my decision […] In short, with a great knowledge of our entire business, (Warner Bros.) kindly asked me to resign from the project. So I kindly said “Yes”. There was nothing that could be done…”

Some people also questioned why Johnny didn’t fight for his role, but as we also know, Johnny’s fight is to prove the truth and his innocence against Ms. Heard, The Sun, and all of those who boycotted him. Although he never publicly said and cannot comment about the case, I would be surprised if he “chose to resign” in order to not bring more trouble to J.K. Rowling (who openly defended and saw evidences of Ms. Heard lies), the other actors, and all of them involved on the upcoming “Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore” movie, which was suffering a lot of problems due the COVID-19 Pandemic, and contribute to not delay even more the release or bring bad reviews due his feature. As he also said during the interview in Czech Republic, “It would be pointless if I started jumping in front of the cameras and spit dirt on someone, because hate is sometimes necessary, but on the other hand it’s a very strong emotion. I may have had a little flame of hatred in me once, but I don’t care now. To hate means you care about something, and to me it’s just about getting the truth out to the people” Johnny Depp is fighting for himself and his family and to bring the truth. He will not involve any other people but Ms. Heard and those who are accusing him. THE FIGHT IS NOT OVER.

Meanwhile, Ms. Heard didn’t lose her role in “Aquaman” and is living her life faking his innocence. By the way, I’m sorry to say this, but this is something that I still don’t believe and kinda bothers me: I don’t know what you guys think, but even her pregnancy and “chose” to have a baby seems fake and only an opportunity to show herself as “good person”. Maybe even a way to protect herself of going to prison in case she be found guilty. Also, when she told “Four years ago, I decided I wanted to have a child” .I thought “There she goes… Four years ago she was saying she was ‘terrified’, but in the middle of her fear she decided to have a baby? Hm, this seems the perfect excuse to save herself using again more people”. I will not be surprised if she put her baby in the middle of the upcoming trial to save her somehow... And with this her HOAX, her plan to destroy Johnny’s career is still on, and even with all the evidences, Johnny is the only one being boycotted and the only one who lost dozens of opportunities. 

SO FUCKING DISGUSTING.

If you want to help Johnny, just share the truth. Post the evidences, talk about how Amber Heard is the abuser, and how the UK Court made the wrong choice after ignoring dozens of evidences.

And as Johnny as Gellert Grindelwald said during the San Diego Comic-Con in July 21, 2018:

“Magic blooms only in rare souls… It is granted to those who live for higher things. Oh, what a world we would make for all of humanity. All the humanity! We who live for freedom, for truth, the moment has come to rise up and take our rightful place in the world.”   

THANK YOU SO MUCH JOHNNY DEPP for your hard work in bringing and developing this amazing character and fantastic performance. You deserve nothing more than all the best things in the world.

JOHNNY DEPP WILL NOT BE BURIED! JUSTICE FOR JOHNNY DEPP! JUSTICE FOR GRINDELWALD!

[qweenexplosionmurder13]

'Ey, Willow? What'd you think our boys would think/do if we were getting uncomfy around an ex who was trying to get us back? 👀 Bakugo going feral? Kirishima being amazingly hot being protective? Shoto? Midoriya? Like 😫

Honestly, I've had a scenario in my head forever about one of my exes meeting Kiribaku.

So my first ex fucked me up pretty bad for a long time. We remained friends because honestly I think I just trauma bonded to him after everything we went through together on my exchange (he's Czech I'm American so there were also culture misunderstandings)

I feel like we'd meet up with him if Katsuki and Eijiro came with me to visit Czech because it's absolutely beautiful and I love visiting when I can.

Both boys would have very different reactions to this situation.

Katsuki is incredibly annoyed that I'm still even letting him in my life after the awful shit he'd say and do:

"your personality is a 6 but your body is a 10 sooo."

"I mean, if you pissed me off enough I'd probably cheat on you."

"Well, I've done "xyz" so maybe you should actually return the favor instead of being lazy" (sexual stuff always felt like an IOU)

Not to mention the body shaming, shaming me for not being sexually experienced or ready enough. All the time he pushed me away and isolated me when I needed him. Katsuki remembers holding me after watching the All Too Well short film together when I told him the fight scene was just like my relationship with my ex.

"He dropped my hand all the time, and hated when I would try to hug and kiss him in public... Like he was embarrassed of me."

To say Katsuki hates this mf would be an understatement. He's seething when we get off the plane to meet him after customs. It's not jealousy he feels when I run up and give my ex a hug, it's pure disgust.

Eijiro takes a more diplomatic approach having had his fair share of shitty friends and exes. He understands the complexity of interpersonal relationships and tries to give my ex a chance.

He's a gentleman, but he keeps an ear out for anything and I mean ANYTHING that would be hurtful coming from my ex. He doesn't like him, but he's happy to try to be polite and give me time with an old friend.

The tide shifts when we're in a pub drinking some beer together while ex and I are reminiscing on old times. Katsuki's chugging beer after beer because the sound of my ex's voice makes him wanna strangle him. Eijiro keeps a grip on Kat's waist as we chat.

"You know, I wish you'd been into this when we were together."

"What?" I'd laugh, feeling the affects of the beer.

"I mean, you told me you didn't wanna have a threesome, but here you are with these two. Maybe it would have worked out if you'd been less uptight."

I'd fall silent as I look over at Eijiro and Katsuki.

"She was 17," Katsuki finally speaks up, "Did you know what you wanted at 17?"

"Uh, yeah?" My ex would laugh, "I mean, come on, I'm sure you've asked her to get another girl involved."

"We haven't," Eijiro interjects, holding Kat by the chest before he jumps across the table, "We're happy with just the three of us and we don't see Willow's sexuality as a thing for us to use for whatever fantasy you think we have in our heads."

"You also made my sexuality into a joke," I comment side eyeing my ex.

"What are you talking about? No I didn't."

"You literally told your brother that you "turned" a lesbian. Do you know how biphobic and lesbiphobic that is?"

"Come on, you know that was funny-"

"Well she's not laughing is she?" Katsuki chimes in again, "so why don't you lay off. It's no wonder she never felt safe with you. She was young and in a whole new country just trying to get by and you treated her like some sort of sex object-"

"Unsafe? What the fuck are you talking about?"

Eijiro chimes in, patting Kat harshly on the back, "Look man, what my partner is trying to say is she was very young and the environment she was in didn't exactly feel safe for explorations like that."

My ex would lean back in his chair and look at me, "What did I do to make you feel 'unsafe' exactly?"

"Do you really wanna do this right now?" I ask, starting to get more annoyed.

"I'm just trying to understand how me, being there for you and listening to you constantly being in crisis-"

"Because I quite literally was. You only gave me affection when sex was on the table. If not you weren't interested so I forced myself to try and you just never cared."

I would start getting emotional at this point, all the feelings from that time coming back.

"You make it sound like I raped you," my ex would roll his eyes while Katsuki balls his fists, "You said yes to everything we did and I always told you know when you were drinking. What else do you expect me to say?"

"Is not that simple! And I don't except anything, I just don't wanna talk about this. I wanted a nice night but you had to bring that up."

"I was making a joke about-"

My ex and I would go back and forth fighting for a while while Eijiro and Katsuki watched. They'd never seen me so frustrated as I tried to explain something while continuing to get gaslit and manipulated, but one sentence would finally make Katsuki snap.

"You just have to play the victim don't you? You're just arguing about this because your boyfriends are here and they need to think you're a damsel in distress for them to save-"

Katsuki would lose his cool, grabbing my ex by the back of the neck to go outside. Eijiro and I would chase after him, but by the time we'd get outside, Kat tossed my ex out the door and was stomping out to scream.

"You- are the most insufferable," blasts could be heard from his palms as he descended upon the man laying on the ground, "manipulative, gaslighting little rat faced bastard I've ever fucking met!!"

"Bakubro, wait!"

"Look blasty-mc-splode, it's not my fault I got to her first. I know you're just jealous."

"JEALOUS?!" Katsuki would yell, Eijiro trying to hold him back, "Who would be jealous of an insecure, insufferable little bitch like you?"

"Katsuki that's enough," Eijiro would try to calm him down.

"No, I'm sick and tired of you thinking you can just get away with how you treated her! She trusted you! After everything she went through, all she wanted was to feel loved. To feel like someone cared and BELIEVED her. You know what happened, you saw the signs of trauma. You're literally studying to be a fucking Neuro psychologist and yet you did NOTHING but gaslight her and withhold affection unless it was the kind YOU wanted! Then you turn it around like she was the problem?!"

"Katsuki," I'd call to him from the side lines.

"It's not like you've even gotten laid since you two broke up. Who are you to say what she should have been?"

After getting that last jab in, he would finally pause for a moment when I walk up to him.

"Katsuki, it's okay," I'd whisper hand on his cheek, "let's just go."

He looks down at me, eyes softening as he'd pull me into a kiss, purposely holding me extra tight in front of my ex.

When I'd pull away and whisper to Eijiro to get the bill I'd turn to my ex.

"Thanks for calling off your attack dogs I guess-"

I'd land a punch square to his nose making him cry out.

"Insult my husbands like that ever again and you'll get a lot worse than that."

"What the-"

"Every bit of what Kat said was true. I needed a partner. Someone who listened and truly cared... Not just someone who wanted me for my body."

"That's not-"

"That's. how. I. felt... And my feelings that you hate so much are what makes me a compassionate and intuitive hero."

My ex would pause for a long time, just looking at me.

"You've changed... So much-"

"Yeah. Maybe you should have too," I'd say before hearing katsuki calling for me, "here," I'd hand him the month to pay for all the food and drinks and then some, "Now we're even."

I'd walk away feelings sad, but also finally like I'd gotten closure.

Eijiro would go back to talk to my ex for a moment to collect our things from the pub.

"I wanted to give you a chance y'know, but you really hurt her... I hope you learn something from this because otherwise you're just gonna be alone for the rest of your life."

The biggest mic drop of all.

They'd both be so loving and caring after that too. Making sure I'm okay, taking me out for ice cream and more sight seeing. It would be such a good time.

Shoto and Deku would be very similar in that Sho would HATE him and Deku would try to be nice.

But yeah, not my best writing but I think you get the picture. My boys would defend me in their own way💜🧡❤️

NSFW Reaction:

Also me when Kat is yelling at my ex:

He's getting his dick sucked when we get back to the Airbnb. Eijiro too😩

[jessequinones]

Don't Fetishise Slavery

A while ago on TikTok, someone made a video and to make sure I don't put words in their mouth, I'm going to be quoting a lot of what this person said. To avoid any kind of harassment, I won't be using their username but trust me when I say I'm not making this up. I didn't think I would have to tell people this but don't fetishise slavery.

The influencer started their videos (and there are several) about how someone negatively reviewing a book doesn't mean that others won't find enjoyment in said book. The person who reviewed a book didn't like it because the slavery aspect was poorly done, especially for a romcom. The influencer responded, "I need the title because any sci-fi romance with slavery in it, I will read the shit out of that. I know that's fucking problematic, but like...I love it; that's one of my kinks."

Now I won't mention the book in question because I don't want the book to blow up in popularity, whether the popularity is famous or infamous. It's best if this storytelling doesn't see the light of day as fetishising slavery is disgusting.

I like how the influencer stated in their own video they know this is problematic. I should also mention this influencer is also white.

After that video was made, there was backlash (obviously). Still, the influencer only addressed the backlash from one person, maybe two but claimed there were multiple. There's a good chance the influencer simply deleted those comments but kept the remarks which were in support.

In their next video, the influencer said in response to someone asking why is that your favourite trope? "Is it my favourite? No. Do I enjoy it in sci-fi when there are non-humans involved? Yes."

This is where the problems begin.

Even if slavery isn't your {influencer} number one trope, why do you enjoy it? Secondly, the fact of the matter is alien slaves, and human slaves are not different.

Most of the time, aliens are coded as people in minority communities, but their traits are brought out to eleven. Here are a few examples of the negative stereotypes in sci-fi and why it's no different from the real world.

The Krogan (Mass Effect Series) deals with a heavy topic known as the 'genophage'. The Krogan were sterilised because they were seen as 'dangerous' and had to be kept 'under control'. Sterilising woman in a marginalised community is sadly nothing new.

"More recently, forced and coerced sterilisation against marginalised women has been documented in countries in North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, including Chile, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, Hungary, India, Kenya, Mexico, Namibia, Slovakia, South Africa, Swaziland, USA, Uzbekistan, and Venezuela" Priti Patel (2017) 'Forced sterilisation of women as discrimination' https://publichealthreviews.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40985-017-0060-9

Patel forgot about Puerto Rico and how the United States were the one who did it.

Not all aliens in media are giant frog-like creatures; some are like the Jedi, which are just humans but with super powers.

"Most of last century's science fiction is notoriously tales of white, male humans—no matter how far in the future or how distant a planet it is set. Other-worldly stories of strong, white, human-like aliens rescuing a beautiful damsel in distress set an unfair standard for both males and females while ignoring non-binary people. Not to mention that other alien races were generally portrayed as a threat, or corrupt in some way, or less intelligent." Carla Ra (2021) 'Racism and Sexism in Early Sci-Fi' [https://www.authorcarlara.com/post/racism-and-sexism-in-early-sci-fi]

What does all of this have to do with the slavery trope?

"Black men and boys are imagined as dangerous, threatening, inherently criminal and superhuman — bigger, faster, stronger and less likely to feel pain. These views have roots in chattel slavery." -Tamari Kitossa The conversation (2020) https://theconversation.com/how-hollywoods-alien-and-predator-movies-reinforce-anti-black-racism-127088

Let me highlight what Kitossa said, slavery. Real-world slavery. That was about the predator alien from... 'Predator'. Just because a book is written about aliens doesn't mean it doesn't draw on real-world events. Humans write what we know. The only thing we know is our own history and culture and, therefore, can't create anything 100% brand new and original.

When creating an alien race, something will link it back to the real world; that's just how it is.

In the same video, the influencer said, "liking something in a book doesn't mean you like it in real life."

This is where the white privilege comes out and says hello.

Throughout history, the chances of you being a victim of slavery are low if you're white. I'm only alive because my Taiño ancestors were enslaved, so slavery is a touchy subject for me.

Growing up as a white person whose ancestors were never enslaved gives you {the influencer} a sort of privilege that many people don't have. Those who are a victim of slavery can't trace their ancestor's lineage that far back. Many of their history and culture got destroyed. The Taiño community, my people, are labelled as extinct because of slavery even though we're still alive! Hearing people talk about my community as if we're no longer around is really hard to deal with, even though no one hears us, no matter how loud we shout. That's what's it like when your ancestors are victims of slavery; that's a privilege some people (mainly white people) don't have to deal with because their ancestors were the ones doing the killings. You may be able to ignore that history when its a fictional alien, but we see the history and connections.

I'm going to skip over some of the other stuff the influencer said, trying to defend themselves because they go into kink talk, something I know nothing about. However, I will only bring up things I think are relevant to the discussion.

"When somebody has a kink that they do not act out in the real world, um… who are any of us to judge?"

I hope you {the influencer} don't act out slavery in the real world.

As for enjoying things in a book but not liking them in real life and trying not to judge others who have kinks only in fantasy, where is the line drawn? How would that kink form be my biggest question? What part of being a slave made you {the influencer} enjoy it to the point where it became a kink? That question gets answered later.

Another video later. "Slavery trope in literature is the same as slave play because it is consensual. The reader is consenting to the content."

Trying to stick with only books here; this is why that kind of thinking is flawed.

I will be the first to admit that I know nothing about slave play, BDSM, etc. However, I know a popular book where that kink is the main focus. Love it or hate it, Fifty Shades of Grey.

Fifty Shades of Grey is a story about a power dynamic. Both parties consent via contract. The slavery trope in fantasy is not like that because the enslaved person in the book isn't consenting. That's how consenting works; both parties need to agree to it.

The idea that the slavery trope is consensual because the reader is consenting via reading is wrong. A reader is a witness to a story; they're observing what's going on but can't do anything to stop it. When someone reads a book, if the book is written well enough, that fantasy becomes a reality as the reader gets sucked into that world. The same can be said when watching a movie. The viewer can't change the story, the story is already told, so whenever something happens to a character, it will always happen to that character. Here I give the example of the numerous, take your pick, rape scenes in the 'A Song of Ice and Fire' book series and the 'Game of Thrones' TV series.

Several actors were uncomfortable with what they were doing because of the real-world implications, and several viewers were uncomfortable watching it because of traumatic events. The only one who consented to all of this was the show's writer and the book's writer.

"Whenever discussions come up about the depictions of women in fantasy shows that take place in a fictional past or in an altered version of our past, there are many excuses that are allowed to be passed around. "Women didn't have as many rights in the past" is not an excuse for subjecting women to sexual violence, writing them using sexist tropes, or to give them a passive position." -Princess Weekes (2019) The Mary Sue [https://www.themarysue.com/perils-of-sexist-racist-medieval-fantasy-historical-reasons/]

Everything that I just said applies to sci-fi. Sci-fi isn't a genre that escapes from these tropes as it's the same but now in space. Like I said before, writers create what they know. When making slaves for an alien race, taking a look at real-world slavery is a resource one can do.

In the same video, the influencer said, "there is no victim because the characters are fictional and the reader is consenting, so there's no victimisation."

Again, that's just wrong. The victim is still the slave. Yes, everything is fictional and fake, but fake stories have real-world repercussions. You can't tell me people don't inspire to be like Indiana Jones. Because of Indiana Jones, looters of archaeological dig sites ramped up during Indy's hay day. I suggest reading this article here if you would like to know more about looters. [https://www.lastwordonnothing.com/2014/09/09/why-archeologists-hate-indiana-jones/comment-page-1/]

Fetishising slavery is a quick way to turn something in a book back into reality despite the fact that slavery is still around. Those who enjoy the slavery trope might try to recreate it in the real world and with a partner who agrees. That's fine until the 'salve' isn't acting enough like a real slave and the consenting party quickly doesn't last. I'm not saying the influencer does that; they very clearly stated they don't. However, we can't deny the effect fictional stories and characters have on the real world. Just because a story might be fake doesn't mean it can't inspire another story that isn't.

The influencer repeats themselves a few times and goes around in circles in other videos. Still, their last main argument that I want to take away from all of this was why they enjoyed it in the first place. I lost the video for the exact quote, but the influencer said they enjoy the power dynamic between an enslaved person and a slave owner. They enjoy it when someone holds all of the power but falls in love with a slave, and throughout the story, the two of them become one. That kind of love story can easily be done without having actual enslaved people in it.

Anyone who writes actual slaves, sci-fi or not and then romances them is fetishising something that's still happening today, just not talked about as much. The guardian estimated in 2019, about 40 million people were in slavery (Kate Hodal' One in 200 people is a slave. Why?' https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/feb/25/modern-slavery-trafficking-persons-one-in-200)

Writing about slavery is fine; fetishising it is not. Also, trying to find more books about that trope and buying it is not all right. The more people who buy these books, the more people will keep making them. The more these books keep getting made, the fewer people will see this as a bad thing, and they might start recreating a fantasy and turning it into reality. Don't engage in that trope; thanks for coming to my Ted Talk

[echo-three-one]

Chapter 42

THE ROAD SO FAR

This chapter was a mess. But it's my mess.

FOUR weeks of Silence

Gary "Roach" Sanderson

Veteran's Village

A peaceful Sunday meant that Roach, Alex and Soap were chilling at the house Samantha and Maxine were in. It had been 4 weeks since that Cuban incident and Francine had gone to therapy for her near death traumatic experience. If it wasn't for Soap, she would've been left out there for good.

France thought that it would be healthy to stay in a more domestic setup rather than the base so she took her time off duty to recover in the veteran's village. And ever since that day in Cuba, Soap and France's relationship was more expressive than ever.

"If we're having a barbecue tonight, we better head off to the meat shop." Alex peeked by the door, giving a heads up to the rest of the people sitting on the couch. Soap turned his head to Alex and tossed his keys as Roach stood up and came with Alex.

"Any other requests?" He looked at the group then to Maxine, who shook her head and laughed. 

"Just be back safe." She replied.

"Got it." Gary nodded and waved goodbye at them. Soap wanted to come along but France had been falling asleep on his lap for quite a while. And Maxine and Samantha noted that she hadn't had decent for days.

"Oh, Roach! Grab me a cigar maybe." He whispered, trying not to wake France up.

"Roger that." He nodded and made his way to Soap's jeep, where Alex was already waiting on him. He sat himself on shotgun and let Alex lead the way to their destination.

He turned on the radio as it played a song about driving. Roach was quick to shazam it and found out it was Automobile by KALEO.

"Now this is going to be on my playlist." Alex said as his head nodded to the music, taking him where the winds take him, far away.

"Agreed. Oh, Soap actually asked for cigarettes so we might have to stop by a convenience store on the way back." Roach informed as the song ended. 

"Okay. That's cool. Maybe add a few sodas for the girls. They probably haven't had those i  ages." He said as he turned the radio off and switched it to AUX.

"Here. Grab my phone and play that song again." Alex instructed as he drove through the streets, and Roach followed him. Playing the song again.

"Ah yes. This song is good." Alex sighed.

"Yeah. It's fire." Roach commented, making Alex raise an eyebrow.

"You know, fire… lit… slaps… Modern terminologies." Roach explained shyly as Alex chuckled.

"I'll never understand the young ones of today." Alex chuckled as he stopped by the parking lot, pulling his phone and leaving the car.

Dinner was the best part of the Sunday evening as the three couples enjoyed a hearty meal together, sharing experiences and funny stories like an extended family. Roach talked about his raccoon story once again as one topic led to another until such time that the inevitable topic was discussed.

"Speaking of fires, do you have any leads on Nero?" Samantha asked innocently as the men fell quiet, looking at each other. Wondering who would open up the topic.

"Well, uh… After his assault in New York…" Soap trailed off, his eyes went to Alex, signaling him to continue.

"Alex, it's your girl's question! Go answer it!" Soap complained as France laughed, wrapping her arms around Soap.

"He's gone silent." Alex muttered. Samantha was kinda sad she asked about it so she tried to make up by brightening up the mood.

The night continued on as the group played charades, girls vs boys. For an hour or so the soldiers forgot about their worries and acted like they're normal people living their normal lives outside work. It wouldn't hurt to pretend like that, especially when the baggage of guilt was hard to handle.

"So, Gary. I've been meaning to ask you something…" Maxine said as she assisted him in the kitchen.

"Yeah, what is it?"

"How are you… like mentally. You seem… off." She asked, Gary sighed and eased his shoulders.

"It's just… we almost lost a life back there… for nothing. Lannister hasn't said any useful information and as the days go by another assault might occur." he breathed out his worries, earning a back rub from Maxine.

"People have their limits. Lannister could break anytime. Let's just hope we're not too late." She assured him. It was a very negative statement but somehow it's actually helpful. Gary smiled and gave her a hug.

"Thanks Maxine." he said.

"Yeah. Don't ever think you're alone. I'm here for you. Actually, just last night. I had another memory restored. And it felt so important that you have to know it first. Before…" she said, her voice lowering down after every word.

"Before what?" Gary whispered jokingly. Maxine laughed and hit his chest gently.

"Nevermind that word. Back to my memory…

I…" she trailed off, looking like she was too shy and scared to finish the statement.

"You…?" Gary raised an eyebrow. Maxine took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

"I had an ex-girlfriend." She blurted and paused right after saying it, bracing at what Gary's reaction.

"I- uh.. That's okay… There's nothing wrong with that, Maxine." He said like he meant it. Maxine was too shocked about his reaction. Maybe she thought about it too much.

"Like… does that change anything?" She asked.

"Nothing at all. Oh wait! Yes! It does." Gary announced and Maxine's smile almost dropped.

"It means that if I want to have you, I'll have to step up my game. I have more competition now." He realized and Maxime sighed in relief. This man was about to get some scolding.

"You worried me, you know!" He continued gently hitting on Gary's chest, giggling away all her fears. He still accepted her. This was great.

"My point's valid!" He laughed, defending himself from her hits,.like children playing house. This may seem like a simple event, but this was the beginning of something new for the two of them.

Task Force 141 Base - Interrogation Room

Price sat in front of Gabriel, they've been silent for about an hour now as Gary and Soap stayed on the viewing area to observe the interrogation. Alex was here thirty minutes ago but he left after he got a phone call.

"What kind of twisted play is this?" Soap asked, crossing his arms and looking at Gabriel.

"The bastard won't talk. Just cut off a finger or something." He scoffed. To Gary, it would make sense, but with all the cameras and the formalities, It wasn't allowed. Especially that Gabriel's alibi was that he got their first to investigate. Which was total bullshit.

"He still has his ace on his sleeve. As long as we don't find proof of involvement, he's going to be free soon." Gary commented, making Soap grumble some Scottish curses.

"It's pretty obvious!" Soap yelled as Alex entered the interrogation room, saying something to Price as they immediately left him alone. Whatever that message was, looked way more important than Gabriel.

"We've got a lead on Nero!" Alex said as he peeked on the door, making the two stand up immediately and head to the briefing room.

"Operation Eye of the Storm." Price announced.

"In 24 hours, Nero and his newfound friends will meet on a hotel in Prague. This intel was from one of the Resistance Leaders Alex once teamed up with. They reached out for help since Nero started to secure the whole city." Price paced back and forth on the big screen.

"The plan is to eliminate Nero and his allies. As simple as that. We have the element of surprise in our hands. Soap, I want you to position yourself on the clock tower, just by the hotel. A bullet to the head should work. Alex will be watching your six. Jack will be our eyes and ears inside the convention. He'll be signaling when they'll be out on the open. Roach and I will enter the building for cleanup. We only had one shot at this so let's make it count." Price briefed and everyone else murmured their thoughts, some were already thanking for a solid lead. This was it. The final showdown. The end of the war.

PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC

Alex and Soap already left the resistance safehouse, they had to be at the clock tower tonight, using the concealment of the night and the noise of the rain for cover. The perfect opportunity to say under the radar. Meanwhile, Roach and Price stayed to defend the place as Nero's men once again ransacked the streets just to ensure his safety. The world may have announced that the war in US was over, but Nero still had some cities under his control. This minor setback was the reason he's planning for something new. And they're here to stop it.

"Alright, Roach. Your replacements here." Price said as he stood up from his spot. 

"Get ready for the big day tomorrow." He added as he nodded and left his gun for the next person to use. Tomorrow's battle is going to be tough, and even though he didn't want to admit it, Roach needed some rest.

Despite the occasional gunfire and screaming, Roach was able to sleep. He didn't mind the battle outside the building as his battle was with Nero. Once Soap shot him dead, he would also want to shoot him again, just to feel satisfied.

0639H 

Hotel Lustig

Prague, Czech Republic

Roach hid on the west wing of the hotel, while Price was on the other side. They were both clinging on to the walls as their entrance was at the small opening where Soap would shoot Nero. Roach eyed the convoy just below him.

"Convoy's up ahead. Nero should be in one of those cars." Soap muttered.

"Can't see shit through the lens. He could be anywhere." Alex added.

"Easy lads. We'll have a clear shot once they're in the balcony. Right Jack?" Price asked. Jack didn't respond, but maybe the signal inside was too weak.

"Jack? Do you copy?" Price asked.

"Da. I do copy, Captain Price. I'm just here to get my old prisoner back. I've had him in the gulag for quite a while but it seems this is our first time meeting face to face." A russian voice which everyone assumed to be Nero said in the most villainous tone possible.

"You're too predictable, Captain." he said as he clicked something, prompting an explosion on the clock tower.

"Get down! C4!" Price yelled as the two soldiers jump out, falling on to railings. Alex landed on a fruit cart by the tower while Soap landed on the car, crashing it as it alarmed.

"Roach! Go help them out!" Price ordered as Nero's men started to circle around the two while the resistance team helped them defend. 

Roach quickly pulled Soap up who was groaning in pain. Alex looked pained too but the look in their eyes says that they're still willing to end this today.

"Let's catch up with them." Alex said as a resistance member tossed them a rifle and quickly hid for cover, pushing their way into the hotel. At the corner of Roach's eye, he saw Price enter the building, loading his gun and ready to end this as well.

Next Chapter : THREE Bullets

Notification Squad my Beloved

@smokeywhalee @enderio @samatedeansbroccoli @whimsywispsblog @ricinbach @bumblingbee1

[balkanballad]

Eurovision 2021 ranking

hello, hello and welcome to my eurovision 2021 ranking. the songs are ranked with numbers but I also put them into categories (from 💐 to 🥀) and added a short comment. so, if you are interested in my personal opinion about the songs, have fun:

💐:

Switzerland: I was rooting for him last year and it’s the one returner in my top that didn’t disappoint me that much. what a start, huh? I love the song, I love the feeling it gives me when I listen to it, the clip is very pretty too. did I like his last entry better? yes, but I will say it already here at the very top of this list: I liked last year’s choices in general a lot more. nevertheless, this is a beautiful entry! and it is my personal winner this year

Australia: I loved her last song. It was there for me when I needed it. Technicolour does not touch me in that way but it is fun!! it’s catchy to me and I really like Montaigne. I adore her style and how she sings. I am excitingly looking forward to this performance :)

France: beautiful song, amazing singer, the national final performance was wonderful. however, I listened to it so much that back in March I already needed a break form it. now as I am finishing this it’s April and I can slowly listen to it again. it’s me though, it’s not her. that’s really a me problem. she’s wonderful and I love the French touch to this

Albania: a ballad from the Balkans <3 hello, of course I like it and I love that they kept it in Albanian this year. I heard similar songs before, but I like the sound of it still.and overall it’s a song that gives me familiar vibes in a cozy way with a bit of drama

Russia: interesting!! I was relived to see that Little Big didn’t return because, as I explained in my ranking for last year, I was not feeling them. absolutely nothing about them, but I love her! I think it’s catchy, it’s something different and I like the message she supports. it took me a few times to fully decide how I feel about the song, but now it’s in my top for sure 

Denmark: fun! a fun song in Danish. I really like the good mood it puts me in. I even see this in the context of the Umbrella Academy or Stranger Things or something like that when they go to Europe to party a bit. I also really enjoy the old school vibe this has to it. I miss that vibe. I’m also a bit old school

Cyprus: I absolutely do not relate to anything said in this song but it’s catchy! it is a bit fuego and a bit replay but I liked those entries as well, so yeah fire. I have not heard a single live performance by her but I am not exactly sure that vocals will be the aspect that she will try to win votes with anyway. I am amused by the fact that apparently people were offended by this song when it clearly makes no sense whatsoever. it’s simply a bop, move on and dance a bit

🌺:

(8.) Greece: fun as well! a ‘dream team’ entry for sure. I say this a bit sarcastically, but they do well a lot of the times and I am lured in by a lot of their entries myself. Kontopoulos is a big name in the esc industry, it’s a fact. the song is a bit more mature than Superg!rl, which I also listened to more often that I thought I would. It still reminds me of a theme song for a superhero show for kids and I am a bit worried that the ‘dReAM TeAm’ is a bit too outdated for Stefania because I think she could have done something cooler than both of those songs

(9.) Sweden: it took me a few times listening to this song, but I like the song now. I don’t think it’s too special and “a million voices” reminds me of Polina immediately because those are her words for me, but this is a good song too. I like how it makes me feel empowered and like everything will be okay. thank you for that, Tusse, I need that 

(10.) Israel: Eden deserved a better song. I like this song less than last year’s entry because I think it’s less interesting and I loved some instrumental parts from last year’s entry, but this is not bad either. I am rooting more for her than for the song, but I guess that’s this year’s motto for me. I also can’t say that I love the revamp because it made it sound even more generic for me  

(11.) Belgium: I saw the promo pics for them and was very confused how different the singer looks this year, but it turns out that it’s not the same woman. I like this entry a lot better. I like her voice and I really like the vibe. It sounds a bit like it could play in the background of a classic American tv show when a character is going a bit through it and pouring a drink while it’s dark outside. I have the same problem that I mentioned already while talking about the French entry, but that’s still a me problem. I just need a break

(12.) Ireland: this entry is a lot less annoying to me than the song that she had last year. I like the lyrics and whole aesthetic of this one a lot more. it’s another one that I can’t listen to too often, but I still think it’s a very good choice imo

(13.) The Netherlands: Jeangu!! I think he for example will give a wonderful vocal performance. Growth felt way more personal to me, but that’s a repeating motive this year and also a me problem because obviously this is his song and he does it well

🌻:

(14.) San Marino: I’m still confused by this feature and I can’t really say that I’m ‘living’ for it, but I already made a post about how I don’t think she needed Flo Rida. minus the feature it’s a catchy party song, but it reminds me of one song that I simply can’t remember anymore. something that I heard from the Greek music industry, maybe even Eleni, if you know which one I mean, pls let me know

(15.) Estonia: just like last year: this song doesn’t make much sense and I don’t want to, but I still catch myself listening to it frequently... I am sorry, I can’t help it, but it puts me in a eurovision mood and yes, I am blaming Kontopoulos again. I am a weak person when it comes to his melodies

(16.) Ukraine: first I had it lower in my ranking, but I like SHUM better now and I like it a lot more now than last years entry. I really like the part when it gets faster, that’s really fun and makes me want to jump! jump! jump!

(17.) Spain: it’s a lot less repetitive than the last entry, but I would be lying if I said that I listen to this very often. it’s alright, not bad at all actually, but I just wasn’t in the mood for this (yet?)

(18.) Romania: this is for me still the same type of style as Bulgaria. European Billie Eilish type. last year I ranked her higher than Bulgaria as well, but they are pretty much the same to me. I can’t comment on whether I like her song less or more this year. it’s not bad either but I simply don’t think about it much

(19.) Bulgaria: I think I like this entry better than her last one. the message is cute, the melody too and yeah, but I don’t care about it too much

🌼:

(20.) Croatia: it’s a faster pop song without a real meaning. ground-breaking. the title makes me think of Ukraine 2014. which I like better, but we’ll see, maybe the performance will have something cool too. I will say though, I would have prefered the whole song to be in Croatian, it doesn’t make it much deeper, but I like that part the most

(21.) Malta: another faster pop song. I think she will give an amazing vocal performance and it will be cool and powerful, but the message and lyrics are a bit confusing to me. I am not the lyrics police, but I am confused by them a bit

(22.) Iceland: I think I like it better than last year’s song, but it’s still not LOVE that I feel for the song. I can listen to it though

(23.) Lithuania: it’s there. I am not a fan of them and it’s not a song I love too much, but I can listen to it

(24.) North Macedonia: sigh. I liked last year’s entry a lot and Vasil seems like someone who cares a lot about the contest, but I don’t feel this ballad. I think I know what they were going for and what it’s trying to be, dramatic and meaningful, but I don’t feel it that much. it’s okay? but it doesn’t do much for me

(25.) Czech Republic: this was a surprise because I think the overall quality of his entry got a lot better, this time though I have the problem that I do not like the lyrics. they don’t make me as uncomfortable as Germany last year but they are in that area of uhm, I don’t love the feeling this gives me

(26.) UK: hm :/ I can’t say that I’m a fan. this sounds like the type of song that the boring straight men in my area put in their tinder bio as their song, but it’s every third guy that says this is his song. those Calvin Harris remix type-ish songs and I am sooo bored. I swipe left because it’s no match, I delete tinder. breath was a lot more my thing and a lot more exciting and interesting

(27.) Poland: as soon as this stops, the exact same second, I forget everything about it. I don’t remember a single word, barely the title and singer and not the melody. what is this about? I can’t tell you. it’s not exactly bad, but it is so forgettable

(28.) Moldova: oh faster pop song? wow.. so.. original. I am starting to sound like those weird people that hate ballads. I don’t feel it and I don’t relate to it, but I also don’t hate it. the video though.. no thanks.

(29.) Italy: as so often: I see a lot of Italy fans on here and I can’t relate. it’s not for me, but it’s there and I can listen to it when I can’t reach the skip button for some reason

(30.) Austria: hm. Austria and Slovenia are going there. this is the better Amen song for me, but I don’t love it. it’s better than what Ana is trying to sell even though it’s super repetitive

🥀:

(31.) Serbia: I can’t tell you if it’s worse than last year but it’s less catchy. the lyrics are still bad. actually, maybe I am the lyrics police

(32.) Finland: this not my genre and I don’t really listen to it

(33.) Slovenia: nop. not for me in any way. I already said last year that I don’t like her voice and it didn’t change but now I also don’t love the message or weird vibe of this entry. I had it even lower, but I can’t push it up more. this is as high as I can rank it

(34.) Norway: I don’t like it. I don’t like the lyrics or melody or performance that was in the nf actually. I have a hard time understanding the concept even with the explanation it makes no sense to me

(35.) Portugal: I don’t like it. a lot of the parts of the melody are really not for me and borderline annoying, but definitely boring

(36.) Georgia: it’s boring. the last entry was at least something interesting, but this one is boring, which makes me a bit sad because his voice sounds and he seems like the guy that could make something cooler. I know I am not the person that can judge rock because I don’t listen to it too much, but I feel like he could have done something cooler and ‘rock’ it more

(37.) Latvia: again: I can’t even say if it’s worse or better than last year. maybe a bit better actually but, just as last time, I can’t listen to this. it annoys me and gives me a bit of a headache. I don’t think her style and voice is for me

(38.) Germany: I wouldn’t necessarily call it hate that I feel when I have to listen to this, even though that’s a funny play with the words of this title, but I definitely feel very annoyed by this song, so I simply don’t listen to it

(39.) Azerbaijan: the song sounds just like the last one, which I had placed on the 14. place in my own 2020 ranking, however, I can’t bring myself to support someone who posts war propaganda on their socials. it’s eurovision and about the songs, I know, but this is my blog and my ranking. so it’s a no for me this time and my last place in this ranking

[chaos-monkeyy]

Fic writer tag game! sort of tagged by @frankthesnek 😁

1) How many works do you have on AO3?

190! Climbing a lot faster towards the 200 mark than I did at the 100 mark, thanks to embracing the joy of drabbles, short fics, and deciding sometimes a quick fic without endless editing is in fact plenty good enough 😂

2) What's your total AO3 word count?

673,204 words total including various collaborative or group efforts that I didn't write alone (incidentally, I missed hitting exactly 666,666 recently by TWELVE FUCKING WORDS. Just close enough to make me go nnnnooooo..!! when I noticed... but not quite enough to be worth trying to edit my fics down by 12 words exactly 🙈 (and tbh it wouldn't quite feel the same as posting something actually tailored to hit that mark on purpose in the first place)

3) How many fandoms have your written for and what are they?

Twelve! (essentially, anyway - if you could all of Star Wars as a single large fandom)

Star Wars, Stargate, The Witcher, Midsomer Murders, Assassin's Creed, The Expanse, The Dresden Files, RPF, Stormlight Archive, The Mentalist, Aquaman, and Good Omens.

it's one heckuva skewed distribution though, the vast majority of my fics are SW, followed by stargate, and the rest trail off from there.

4) What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

All Geraskier Witcher fics, that being the biggest and most current fandom and ship I've ever been actively writing for 😂 - A Tight Fit, Stolen Moments, Undignified, Keep it up, and Intoxicating.

5) Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

Yup, always! Because I love getting them and I also love when I get replies on comments I leave on other writers' fics. And I like connecting with people 😊

6) What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

Hands-down it's my "Zombie / what's in your head" MCD thranto fic. I have a small handful of others with ambiguous or bittersweet endings, but that one is the only thing I've ever written that merits the Sad Ending and Hurt No Comfort tags (and oof does it ever merit them)

7) What's the fic you've written with the happiest ending?

hmmm... most of my fics have a happy ending in the "happy ending" wink-wink nudge-nudge 😉😏 sense at the very least 😂

But I'm probably gonna go with Curious Creatures (thranto filthy fairytale AU) because it really culminates with that "lived happily ever after" vibe. As opposed to the sort of.. "happy in the present and immediate future" happy ending of my typical in-'verse fics.

8) Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you've written?

Nope, I've thought of a few but never quite gotten around to writing one (maybe someday!). I have some weird fucking AUs that I really like though 😂

9) Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Yes, but somehow very little? i.e. a whole lot less than I would expect to receive given what I write sometimes 😅 Worst hate I've gotten was actually on twitter rather than on AO3, once directed at me for an incest kink fic someone took offense to (it was mostly just funny), and once indirectly in a different fandom (seeing people making fun of a piss kink fic because they took offense to it.. existing in the character tag?).

I've had people be actively rude to or just ignore a co-author on fics I've done with friends more than once though, weirdly enough, which I actually find a lot more anger-inducing than hate directed at me is.

10) Do you write smut? If so what kind?

....all of the smut 😂 mostly slash, lots of kink, some porn with feelings and some porn with plot and some where the porn IS the plot. And a whole lot of self indulgent PWP 😏

11) Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Yep I've been really obviously ripped off before and it's a real shitty feeling

12) Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yeah! Just once I think, but it was pretty neat to be asked 😄

13) Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yup! Several times with a few different people, it was a lot of fun.

14) What's your all time favorite ship?

Don't really have one? I ship too many ships across too many fandoms to pick One Favourite For All Time 🙈 Plus, I mean... interests shift and I don't want to wind up making myself feel guilty for that if it does happen to even my favourite ships. I've seen people stubbornly holding onto a ship they don't seem to be all that interested in anymore, just because their whole fandom identity is wrapped up in it. It... really doesn't look like it'd be a fun time 😬

15) What's a WIP that you want to finish but don't think you ever will?

There's quite a few, some partially published and some still in my fic writing folders, but I hesitate to actually say "I don't think I'll ever finish This One" because sometimes I do randomly come back to shit out of the blue, or because a re-watch/-play/-read rekindles the interest in it again. Probably not likely in a lot of cases, but... squirrel-brain does what squirrel-brain wants to do 😂

16) What are your writing strengths?

Sex scenes 😎 and short fic of all flavours

17) What are your writing weaknesses?

Sometimes my overly long sentences are good, but sometimes they do just unnecessarily make the paragraph harder to read. I also have a tendency to stray to far into Over-Description territory of characters' physical states and actions.

18) What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

It can be effective and immersive, but only if it doesn't leave people confused and having to jump up or down to translation notes at the start or end. My favourite use of other languages in dialogue is to use it only for single words that are evident or explained in context, or for terms of endearment where it's not necessary to know the exact meaning of it (especially when that stuff is part of canon anyway, like the smattering of Italian used in Assassin's Creed, or Radek cursing in Czech)

If it's like full sentences, I just write the line in english in italics, along with something like "X replied in [language]" to signal it's happening.

19) What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Midsomer Murders 😊

20) What's your favorite fic you've written?

It changes, really... I guess currently it's probably Inflection Point just cause I'm still really proud of myself for actually doing it 😄

~

I also feel like I've been tagging people a lot lately, so I'll do like frank did and say Consider yourself tagged if you wish you were ;D

[nyaheum]

My yearly list of Eurovision songs after the first impression (I mean, for like, half of them. I heard snippets of some songs.). Judged on music videos, because...if I only listen to the songs on Spotify, my eyes get bored. :’)

(oh, and don’t talk to me about iceland’s placement, I know this might be unpopular)

X. Belarus

Fuck Belarus, all my homies hate Belarus. Not even going to grace them with a rating.

Norway (TIX – Fallen Angel)

...no. :( And it’s not even because Keiino didn’t win, I just wholeheartetly hate this song. And I’m kinda sorry to TIX, because he seems like a cool dude and his stage outfit is absolutely hilarious, but oh my god do I hate this song with an absolute burning passion.

Poland (RAFAL – The Ride)

eye emoji mouth emoji eye emoji – well, this is a non-qualifier if I’ve ever seen one. Can we just...skip this?

Belgium (Hooverphonic – The Wrong Place)

Nap time! This song annoys me. I cannot explain it, but it gives me a headache and my whole body is revolting against this song. I am not kidding. Objectively, I don’t even hate it, but there’s just something about it...that makes me go...hnghgng…

North Macedonia (Vasil – Here I Stand)

eye emoji mouth emoji eye emoji ver. 2 – I am not trying to sound mean, but does North Macedonia do any music that is not dramatic power ballads? I’m serious. (And I don’t like it, sorry. :((...except for the high notes, I like them. When he can hit them live.)

Estonia (Uku Suviste – The Lucky One)

This (the music video)...is soft porn. I am slightly scared of Uku. I don’t know why. But, uh...this is better than last year’s song? Still, it wouldn’t qualify under my watch, whoops.

Georgia (Tornike Kipiani – You)

He stopped yelling angrily at the microphone. :((( Nah, but this isn’t my thing. It’s great that they are doing their own thing, it’s just not really my thing...it also reminds me of a song I know, damn.

Austria (Vincent Bueno - Amen)

He looks like a german youtuber. I don’t know hich one, but he looks like one. I also canot tell if he’s 18 or 38, lol. (For some reason he also reminds me of Alex Albon, which is even weirder.)...oh, uh, the song? Idk, I don’t care for I. It’s fine.

Spain (Blas Cantó – Voy A Querdarme)

Confession: I’m probably the only person who actually doesn’t like the sound of Spanish all that much. Whoops. Apart from that though, I’m not the biggest fan of this song. Can’t really say more about that. Meh.

The Netherlands (Jeangu Macrooy – Birth Of A New Age)

Listen: I really like the tone of this voice. It’s great. I am not a fan of the song. There’s something just very off about the loud percussions (?) in the background that make me go absolutely crazy when listening to this. My sensory-overload-prone ears hate it, and I’m sorry...the part before the last chorus on the other hand I love. The whole song could have sounded like that and I would have loved it. (...and I can’t unhear “You are my broccoli – You know my broccoli!” ;-;)

Azerbaijan (Efendi – Mata Hari) Whenever I see Efendi, my brain still goes “Cleopatrrrrra!”, oof. This song sounds like a song I know. Which...is super unprecice, but I genuinely don’t know which one. I do like that they kept the weird pre-chorus thing from Cleopatra (and reference the song later on), but I must say that I liked Cleopatra more...but it’s a party song, so I think it will be fun on stage!

Romania (ROXEN - Amnesia)

I didn’t like her song last year, I don’t enjoy this all too much and I’m kinda sorry but also...I don’t want to apologize for my taste in music, lmao. I want her hair though. Give me her hair.

Denkmark (Fyr & Flamme – Ove Os Pa Hinanden)

Ring ding ding, native language bonus. This is also way more fun than I thought it would be, hah. VERY retro, but I don’t hate that? :D (this and sweden really aren’t any different in terms of how much I like them)

Portugal (The Black Mama – Love Is On My Side)

I can appreciate this. I just wish it was in Portuguese, honestly. I don’t really know if I like the English for this song. That being said, I don’t know if you can make these very specific tones (you know what I mean) in portuguese without it sounding super off, so…

Ireland (Lesley Roy – Maps)

Okay, you do you Ireland. :D

Israel (Eden Alene – Set Me Free)

This exists. :D

Cyprus (Elena Tsagrinou – El Diablo)

Cyprus came to party, and I can’t be mad at that. I just don’t know why everybody in the YouTube comments loves this SO MUCH that they are sure that it will win if it gets the jury votes. I don’t think it’s as good as Fuego or She Got Me were, but maybe I just have no taste in party music. I don’t party. (Only if you got a 2000s playlist and some iced tea.)

France (Barbara Pravi – Voilà)

FRANCE sending a BALLAD? In MY Eurovision? It’s more likely than you think. It’s good, objectively. Personally, I don’t really care for it all that much and feel like I already know it.

United Kingdom (Embers – James Newman)

A good, modern song? In my british eurovision song? What happened on the Isles over quarantine? Are you guys okay? Did you find yourself? Have you taken your last breath (breath!) and looked at your past results? I’m impressed enough to put this relatively high, wow.

Serbia (Hurricane – LOCO LOCO)

*adore delano voice* party! Oh, and native language bonus...for a party song! I’m...impressed, actually. I cannot decide wheter I prefer this or Hasta La Vista, but I think it’s this one? The flows smoother, if that means literally anything.

Bulgaria (VICTORIA – Growing Up Is Getting Old)

*shrugs* I think a lot of people will like this. And I get that. I think I even understand it...yeah. I didn’t like her song last year either. It’s just personal preference, I think. I just want to have fun during Eurovision, hah.

Finland (Blind Channel – Dark Side)

Finland: FUCK YOU!!! Germany: Fuck you. <3

That’s all I’ll say, we know how the Finnish are, this is not surprising, lmao. (And I’m one of those children that grew up on Rammstein, so I legally cannot dislike this.)

Croatia (Albina - Tick-Tock)

Tick-tock, can you hear me go tick-tock? My heart is like a clock, I'm steady like a rock-...oh wait, wrong tick-tock! Still, really enjoy this song’s chorus – I actually enjoy it so much that it makes up for the utter loss of interest I experience once it’s over, chrm.

Sweden (Tusse – Voices)

I mean...let’s be honest, it’s a generic swedish pop song. It sounds like every other Swedish entry, and I think that bothers me. I know, that sounds kind of...weird, looking at my choices higher up in the list, but...meh. I think this will easily qualify for the Final and place high, and I am totally okay with that. It’s just not...what I wanted, I guess? :D (and i’m sorry but as a german-speaker I cannot get over the name “tusse”) (oh, and tusse seems to be super cool)

Albania (Anxhela Peristeri - Karma)

Oh, we’re going to war in 130 A.D.? Fine, let me just pack my spear and- oh, Albania has already sent a singer? Ah, well, might as well give up and just vibe.

Czech Republic (Benny Cristo - omaga)

This sounds fun. Not a winner or anything, but fun. I’ll probably still be on Twitter when he’s performing, whoops.

Slovenia (Ana Sklic - Amen)

Wait, there’s TWO songs called Amen? And why do I actually kinda like this? Oh well, might as well just accept it. (Her voice though...mhmmhmhm…yes please)

Iceland (Dadi og Gagnamagnid – 10 Years)

We just vibin’. I liked Think About Things more, but I’m very much biased here...because I’ve known that song for a year now. But this is still very good, and very on brand. (And I understand like...half of the lyrics, but I am okay with that.)

Australia (Montaigne - Technicolour)

not australia flexing at all of europe that they can hold big gatherings! D: oh, but I like this way more than last years song. I feel like Montaigne can show her GREAT voice way better in this song. (Even though her outfit and the sound of the song reminds me of the UK song that had...a dude run on the stage. I can’t think of the word for it right now.)

Malta (Destiny – Je Me Casse)

Destiny’s voice is just….wow. This is very different than All My Love, but it’s fun. The topic of the lyrics kinda remind me of Toy, and I like that…..I don’t really like the music video (especially the dancers in the colorful dresses? idk), but I’ll just ignore that.

Germany (I Don’t Feel Hate - Germany)

Confession time: I actually actively enjoy this song. Everybod is shitting on it, but it’s FUN and it has a good message, and Jendrik seems like the nicest dude ever and...it doesn’t deserve all the hate it’s getting? It’s completely self-produced and just fun. Stop being mean. :(

(...also someone on youtube said “pewdiepie” and I can’t unsee that now so fuck you >:((...no, no I don’t feel hate, just rethink your life choices)

Moldova (Natalia Gordienko - SUGAR)

What in the “Eis.de ist in der Kiste” is this music video? And I thought I would absolutely hate this song, but I actually don’t mind it all that much. It’s actually fun. Oh no, I’m splipping, someone catch me, aaaaaahhhhh….(and that poor cake dude. Is this song about cannibalism? Does she want to eat him?)

San Marino (Senhit – Adrenalina)

Catch me hum the chorus of this song at least once a day...but honestly, without any malicious intent: what the actual FUCK san marino? This is so much better than Freaky, and even though I do not believe for one second that this will win, the simple outragiousness of bringing Flo Rida to Eurovision deserves attention. (Bringing someone like Flo Rida to ESC sounds more like Scandinavia/Bulgaria, doesn’t it?)

Russia (Manizha – Russian Woman)

Not gonna lie, I miss Little Big, but at least they are sending something that’s at least as weird. I love that. Russian Rap is cool as fuck anyway, so I’m fully here for this...but I’m glas this song doesn’t have a music video, this just has to be a live performance. (Oh, and another strong woman!)

Ukraine (Go_A – SHUM)

I’m SO glad Go_A are back. But, let me be completely honest: I know why they had to change the lyrics, but I still liked the first version better. BUT I feel like the new one will grow and me and it will climb one or two places, because the Instrumental just slaps SO HARD. (Makes me feel like putting on a Cybergoth outfit and start dancing at a German industrial park, lmao.)

Latvia (Samanta Tina – The Moon Is Rising)

Does this count as my guilty pleasure this year? I loved her song last year, and this sounds similar, so...I like this too. It sounds modern as fuck (well, for Europe, you know) and I can definitely...”vibe” with that. I genuinely really enjoy this, and I don’t know why. (Even though I prefer last years drop.) A lot of “strong, independent women”-songs this year, and I’m not complaining.

Switzerland (Gjon’s Tears – Tout l’Univers)

Just so we’re clear, this and Italy share the exact same spot. I just cannot compare them at all. Gjon’s voice just takes me hostage throughout this whole song and won’t let me go. And everything that isn’t english/is in the countries offical language immediately gets plus points from me. As if this song needed them anyway.

Lithuania (The Roop – Discoteque)

Aaaaaand...dance break! Good, I just love them so much, it’s not even funny anymore. And I’ve been singing this song randomly since it came out. I can’t stop. It has burned itself into my brain. Let’s dis-co-teque right at my home! *waves arms around with no sign of coordination*

(and does anyone else feel like he’s serhat, just with a different alignment? Like, they are both chaotic, but serhat is chaotic neutral and he’s either chaotic good or chaotic bad, it really depends on the way he looks at the camera)

Italy (Maneskin – Zitti E Buoni)

Italy delivers, as they do every year. Not only do I really like this song (it is very much my genre), THIS is an aesthetic I can get behind! Knowing Eurovision, I doubt it will win, but damn if it won’t be super fun! (I am so glad this won Sanremo, hah.)

[boreothegoldfinch]

chapter 5 paragraph x

Of my classes, English was the only one I looked forward to, yet I was disturbed by how many of my classmates disliked Thoreau, railed against him even, as if he (who claimed never to have learned anything of value from an old person) was an enemy and not a friend. His scorn of commerce—invigorating to me —nettled a lot of the more vocal kids in Honors English. “Yeah, right,” shouted an obnoxious boy whose hair was gelled and combed stiff like a Dragon Ball Z character—“some kind of world it would be if everybody just dropped out and moped around in the woods—” “Me, me, me,” whined a voice in the back. “It’s antisocial,” a loudmouth girl interjected eagerly over the laughter that followed this—shifting in her seat, turning back to the teacher (a limp, long-boned woman named Mrs. Spear, who always wore brown sandals and earthtone colors, and looked as if she was suffering from major depression). “Thoreau is always just sitting around on his can telling us how good he has it —” “—Because,” said the Dragon Ball Z boy—his voice rising gleefully, “if everybody dropped out, like he’s saying to do? What kind of community would we have, if it was just people like him? We wouldn’t have hospitals and stuff. We wouldn’t have roads.” “Twat,” mumbled a welcome voice—just loud enough for everybody around to hear. I turned to see who had said this: the burnout-looking boy across the aisle, slouched and drumming his desk with his fingers. When he saw me looking at him, he raised a surprisingly lively eyebrow, as if to say: can you believe these fucking idiots? “Did someone have something to say back there?” said Mrs. Spear. “Like Thoreau gave a toss about roads,” said the burnout boy. His accent took me by surprise: foreign, I couldn’t place it. “Thoreau was the first environmentalist,” said Mrs. Spear. “He was also the first vegetarian,” said a girl in back. “Figures,” said someone else. “Mr. Crunchy-chewy.” “You’re all totally missing my point,” the Dragon Ball Z boy said excitedly. “Somebody has to build roads and not just sit in the woods looking at ants and mosquitoes all day. It’s called civilization.” My neighbor let out a sharp, contemptuous bark of a laugh. He was pale and thin, not very clean, with lank dark hair falling in his eyes and the unwholesome wanness of a runaway, callused hands and black-circled nails chewed to the nub—not like the shiny-haired, ski-tanned skate rats from my school on the Upper West Side, punks whose dads were CEOs and Park Avenue surgeons, but a kid who might conceivably be sitting on a sidewalk somewhere with a stray dog on a rope. “Well, to address some of these questions? I’d like for everybody to turn back to page fifteen,” Mrs. Spear said. “Where Thoreau is talking about his experiment in living.” “Experiment how?” said Dragon Ball Z. “Why is living in the woods like he does any different from a caveman?” The dark-haired boy scowled and sank deeper in his seat. He reminded me of the homeless-looking kids who stood around passing cigarettes back and forth on St. Mark’s Place, comparing scars, begging for change—same torn-up clothes and scrawny white arms; same black leather bracelets tangled at the wrists. Their multi-layered complexity was a sign I couldn’t read, though the general import was clear enough: different tribe, forget about it, I’m way too cool for you, don’t even try to talk to me. Such was my mistaken first impression of the only friend I made when I was in Vegas, and—as it turned out—one of the great friends of my life. His name was Boris. Somehow we found ourselves standing together in the crowd that was waiting for the bus after school that day.

“Hah. Harry Potter,” he said, as he looked me over. “Fuck you,” I said listlessly. It was not the first time, in Vegas, I’d heard the Harry Potter comment. My New York clothes—khakis, white oxford shirts, the tortoiseshell glasses which I unfortunately needed to see—made me look like a freak at a school where most people dressed in tank tops and flip flops. “Where’s your broomstick?” “Left it at Hogwarts,” I said. “What about you? Where's your board?” “Eh?” he said, leaning in to me and cupping his hand behind his ear with an old-mannish, deaf-looking gesture. He was half a head taller than me; along with jungle boots and bizarre old fatigues with the knees busted out, he was wearing a ratted-up black T-shirt with a snowboarding logo, Never Summer in white gothic letters. “Your shirt,” I said, with a curt nod. “Not much boarding in the desert.” “Nyah,” said Boris, pushing the stringy dark hair out of his eyes. “I don’t know how to snowboard. I just hate the sun.” We ended up together on the bus, in the seat closest to the door—clearly an unpopular place to sit, judging from the urgent way other kids muscled and pushed to the rear, but I hadn’t grown up riding a school bus and apparently neither had he, as he too seemed to think it only natural to fling himself down in the first empty seat up front. For a while we didn’t say much, but it was a long ride and eventually we got talking. It turned out that he lived in Canyon Shadows too—but farther out, the end that was getting reclaimed by the desert, where a lot of the houses weren’t finished and sand stood in the streets. “How long have you been here?” I asked him. It was the question all the kids asked each other at my new school, like we were doing jail time. “Dunno. Two months maybe?” Though he spoke English fluently enough, with a strong Australian accent, there was also a dark, slurry undercurrent of something else: a whiff of Count Dracula, or maybe it was KGB agent. “Where are you from?” “New York,” I said—and was gratified at his silent double-take, his lowered eyebrows that said: very cool. “What about you?” He pulled a face. “Well, let’s see,” he said, slumping back in his seat and counting off the countries on his fingers. “I’ve lived in Russia, Scotland which was maybe cool but I don’t remember it, Australia, Poland, New Zealand, Texas for two months, Alaska, New Guinea, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Ukraine—” “Jesus Christ.” He shrugged. “Mostly Australia, Russia, and Ukraine, though. Those three places.” “Do you speak Russian?” He made a gesture that I took to mean more or less. “Ukrainian too, and Polish. Though I’ve forgotten a lot. The other day, I tried to remember what was the word for ‘dragonfly’ and couldn’t.” “Say something.” He obliged, something spitty and guttural. “What does that mean?” He chortled. “It means ‘Fuck you up the ass.’ ” “Yeah? In Russian?” He laughed, exposing grayish and very un-American teeth. “Ukrainian.” “I thought they spoke Russian in the Ukraine.” “Well, yes. Depends what part of Ukraine. They’re not so different languages, the two. Well—” click of the tongue, eye roll—“not so very much. Numbers are different, days of the week, some vocabulary. My name is spelled different in Ukrainian but in North America it’s easier to use Russian spelling and be Boris, not B-o-r-y-s. In the West everybody knows Boris Yeltsin…” he ticked his head to one side—“Boris Becker—” “Boris Badenov—” “Eh?” he said sharply, turning as if I’d insulted him. “Bullwinkle? Boris and Natasha?” “Oh, yes. Prince Boris! War and Peace. I’m named like him. Although the surname of Prince Boris is Drubetskóy, not what you said.”

“So what’s your first language? Ukrainian?” He shrugged. “Polish maybe,” he said, falling back in his seat, slinging his dark hair to one side with a flip of his head. His eyes were hard and humorous, very black. “My mother was Polish, from Rzeszów near the Ukrainian border. Russian, Ukrainian—Ukraine as you know was satellite of USSR, so I speak both. Maybe not Russian quite so much—it’s best for swearing and cursing. With Slavic languages—Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, even Czech—if you know one, you sort of get drift in all. But for me, English is easiest now. Used to be the other way around.” “What do you think about America?” “Everyone always smiles so big! Well—most people. Maybe not so much you. I think it looks stupid.” He was, like me, an only child. His father (born in Siberia, a Ukrainian national from Novoagansk) was in mining and exploration. “Big important job—he travels the world.” Boris’s mother—his father’s second wife—was dead. “Mine too,” I said. He shrugged. “She’s been dead for donkey’s years,” he said. “She was an alkie. She was drunk one night and she fell out a window and died.” “Wow,” I said, a bit stunned by how lightly he’d tossed this off. “Yah, it sucks,” he said carelessly, looking out the window. “So what nationality are you?” I said, after a brief silence. “Eh—?” “Well, if your mother’s Polish, and your dad’s Ukrainian, and you were born in Australia, that would make you—” “Indonesian,” he said, with a sinister smile. He had dark, devilish, very expressive eyebrows that moved around a lot when he spoke. “How’s that?” “Well, my passport says Ukraine. And I have part citizenship in Poland too. But Indonesia is the place I want to get back to,” said Boris, tossing the hair out of his eyes. “Well—PNG.” “What?” “Papua, New Guinea. It’s my favorite place I’ve lived.” “New Guinea? I thought they had headhunters. “Not any more. Or not so many. This bracelet is from there,” he said, pointing to one of the many black leather strands on his wrist. “My friend Bami made it for me. He was our cook.” “What’s it like?” “Not so bad,” he said, glancing at me sideways in his brooding, self-amused way. “I had a parrot. And a pet goose. And, was learning to surf. But then, six months ago, my dad hauled me with him to this shaddy town in Alaska. Seward Peninsula, just below Arctic Circle? And then, middle of May —we flew to Fairbanks on a prop plane, and then we came here.” “Wow,” I said. “Dead boring up there,” said Boris. “Heaps of dead fish, and bad Internet connection. I should have run away—I wish I had,” he said bitterly. “And done what?” “Stayed in New Guinea. Lived on the beach. Thank God anyway we weren’t there all winter. Few years ago, we were up north in Canada, in Alberta, this one-street town off the Pouce Coupe River? Dark the whole time, October to March, and fuck-all to do except read and listen to CBC radio. Had to drive fifty klicks to do our washing. Still—” he laughed —“loads better than Ukraine. Miami Beach, compared.” “What does your dad do again?” “Drink, mainly,” said Boris sourly. “He should meet my dad, then.” Again the sudden, explosive laugh—almost like he was spitting over you. “Yes. Brilliant. And whores?” “Wouldn’t be surprised,” I said, after a small, startled pause. Though not too much my dad did shocked me, I had never quite envisioned him hanging out in the Live Girls and Gentlemen’s Club joints we sometimes passed on the highway. The bus was emptying out; we were only a few streets from my house. “Hey, this is my stop up here,” I said. “Want to come home with me and watch television?” said Boris. “Well—” “Oh, come on. No one’s there. And I’ve got S.O.S. Iceberg on DVD.”

[loquaciousquark]

Cut for talk of COVID and irresponsible failure to social distance (my own). Also, some updates on what’s been going on here for the last month or so.

part one:

Very very long story that I am truncating as much as possible. As you all know, I am an optometrist and professor. When we shut down in March, our university made a huge, painful shift to remote learning and our student clinic ceased operations altogether. Neither students nor faculty saw patients from March 15 - the the middle of May. At the end of May, faculty began seeing patients directly in an extremely reduced schedule, and at the beginning of June, we began adding in very limited numbers of students in a rolling schedule that minimized exposure to all involved.

Three weeks ago, my dear friend Jasper contacted me and said that an old friend of hers, whom I will call Carol, was in dire straits after losing her job overseas. Carol has an extremely rocky history: a terrible car accident that left her legs and feet permanently damaged which directly led to a very bad divorce, significant student loan debt (just shy of six digits I think, compounded from the accident, since she used her student loans to pay her medical bills--for anyone reading this, do not EVER EVER EVER DO THIS--student loans are never touched by bankruptcy declarations and you will owe them until you die), and something of an inability to put down roots. She is an English teacher who has taught and traveled all over the world: Prague, Bahrain, Czech Republic, Los Angeles, Rio, etc.

When I first met her about ten years ago, she had come back to Alabama from Prague because a job had fallen through. She was completely broke and living out of two suitcases and a carry-on. She lived with us for three months for free, sleeping in Jasper’s bed because we had no other room for her, and eventually got a job in Boston and moved on. She lasted--I think--about two months in Boston before quitting and taking a job in the Middle East.

On top of her student loan debt, Carol also has significant IRS debt and is in debt to several of her friends. Over the last few years, she took several ill-advised positions overseas back to back without ever consulting a lawyer on her contracts, and did not realize until recently that one of her positions classified her as an independent contractor instead of an employee, so she owed US taxes on all her income for that period of time. Her most recent job in Prague she lost in February because she filed her visa (again, without a lawyer) incorrectly, and what should have been a brief three-week stay outside of the country became a six week stay on the couch of strangers in the Czech Republic while she waited for her visa reapplication to process. However, it was denied, and then COVID hit, and she returned to Alabama with only a portion of her possessions and tons of important paperwork left behind in her Prague apartment. She then unfortunately had two emergency surgeries on her stomach for an acute, unpredictable medical issue, and while she is well healing now, it also added on another forty thousand dollars of medical debt to what she already owed.

She stayed with her mother and sister while she was recovering from the emergency surgeries, but her family is emotionally abusive and very unkind to her, and after a few weeks she left their home and went to stay with Jasper. However, Jasper is also 8 months pregnant with her fourth child, and they both knew it was a temporary thing. Jasper knows that I have a large home with several spare bedrooms, and asked if I would be willing to host Carol for a period of time while she got back on her feet. I knew what I was agreeing to when I said yes, and Carol and I settled on a period of two months. She has now been here almost three weeks.

Frankly, I do not like Carol very much. We are unbelievably different people in every way--personality, temperament, proclivity to crying in front of other people, hobbies, interests, religion, all of it. She is a very nice person, and I think she truly does mean well. But she is the most emotionally needy and energy-sapping person I have ever met, and I cannot tolerate her company in more than small chunks. It is not possible to hold a conversation with her about any subject tangentially related to her difficulties; if I try to sympathize with her loans by mentioning my own, she shuts me down by saying at least I will have the chance to ever pay them back. If I just try to listen without commentary, she’ll wrap herself up in her own stories and talk for hours without ever needing more than “mm”s and “hm”s and my undivided attention the entire time.

She will often work herself up into sobbing tears over her situation(s), and she always informs me immediately of any new development in any of her numerous trials: which are usually negative, considering the situation, and usually resulting in more tears. She has cried on me probably more than a dozen times since she moved in, and she wields “I love you” like a weapon, more to hear the validation of the response than to truly express the sentiment. She constantly asks for advice on her situation but does not listen to any of it--seems more to just want to relive each tragic detail of her life over and over again with an audience, wondering why she’s continually “screwed over in her life.” (Really, really poor financial decisions and constantly trusting her own “intuition” over getting competent legal advice before signing contracts, are I think the biggest contributors.) She has told me so many private details about her personal views, relationships with her ex-husband and mother and sister, her financial choices, and her extensive travel and job history over the last few years that I probably know her history better than my own at this point.

I think she thinks by sharing so much that she is justifying to me her need to stay with me. What is actually happening is that I am forced to help shoulder this enormous emotional load that compounds my own mental health problems I’ve been having since all this started. I have told her more than once that she does not need to justify herself to me and that my home is open to her for two months, no strings attached. I believe she is making all the steps she needs to and do not need reports on her daily activities to “pay” for her lodging or electricity or internet or whatever. This has changed the behavior a little for the better but not stopped it.

There are moments that are not bad. As I have mentioned, she does mean well and want well for most people. She likes Hamlet and loves Jasper, who is extremely important to me. But she is extremely difficult to be around in so many other ways, and the way she constantly exclaims over how we basically think alike on all things (absolutely untrue) makes me think she either will not or cannot read my reluctance to engage on any of these topics.

(An example: I was watching footage of the SpaceX launch and despite my feelings on Elon Musk, really excited about the implications for space travel. She came in, and after misunderstanding for some time that I was not watching Space Force with Steve Carell, decided that the SpaceX program was morally bankrupt, obviously borne of shady backroom government deals, and everyone involved should have used the money to solve world hunger instead. For the record, she had not heard of the shuttle launch, SpaceX, or Elon Musk at all before the seeing the footage.)

(She also until last week had not heard of Playstation, Xbox, streaming as a concept, or any game more modern than the original Mario. Trying to order a grocery delivery online was an excruciating torment for her [took her over four days to get through selecting the items, selecting allowable replacements, and actually paying] and I will not ask her to do it again. She frequently makes comments about video games being a waste of time, and when she sees children playing outside, comments on how glad she is they are not inside playing video games. She doesn’t seem to realize her comments are a direct commentary on me; I think she genuinely does not understand that those games are what I am playing most of my free time.)

Right now, everything seems to hinge on her passing some teacher recertification tests next week and the week after. She spent $150 to give herself less than a week to study from scratch for a test she described as the hardest she’d ever taken. There were several other dates later in the summer she could have chosen, and her deadline is December, but she picked the soonest option for reasons I can’t fathom. She is also in the process of trying to get a car--right now I’m driving her everywhere--and she was ready to hand over $3800 yesterday for a ten-year-old Hyundai with a check-engine light on without even thinking of getting any kind of inspection. She is far more concerned with the color and “energy” of the car than its function, and would not have even checked the headlights and blinkers if I hadn’t prompted it.

She will be here another five weeks or so. We move around each other now better than we did before, and I hope it will continue to improve. But it’s a lot like a rock grinding a groove in the streambed from the repetitive friction, and it’s not the struggle I wanted to be having right now.

part two:

As I mentioned above, Jasper is having her fourth child in a month or so. One of her friends, someone I don’t know, contacted me and said she wanted to do a drive-by “baby sprinkle,” where no one gets out of their cars. You drop off the gifts, talk to the recipient a few minutes from the car window, and move on. I told her that I work in health care and am exposed to patients, so that sounded good to me.

The shower was this morning. Carol and I got up and drove the thirty minutes to Jasper’s house. There were four other families in cars right around the corner, and the “hostess” gave us all balloons to tie on our side mirrors. She told us we would drive around the corner, drop off the gifts, and loop around. Jasper’s husband would arrange for her to be in the front yard at the right time.

Cute enough. We go around the corner with little honks and Jasper sees us and starts crying, and it’s all wonderful and emotional and a fabulous surprise and I’m genuinely excited about it. And then people start parking and getting out of their cars, and Carol and I start looking at each other. They’re full families, too--three of the other moms brought all their kids, and soon enough they’re playing with Jasper’s three boys in the front yard and coming up asking to pet Hamlet through the car window. No one was wearing masks.

And what’s worse, when they all started looking at us expectantly through the car window, we didn’t know what to do. They were handing Jasper her gifts and obviously settling in for a good long chat; the women were hugging, talking about how they are “so over this COVID stuff, please come visit soon,” and Hamlet of course recognizes his original owners in Jasper and her husband so he’s freaking out, and after a few moments, we decided to just get out of the car.

It was the first time I really felt the social pressure to participate in an event I wasn’t comfortable with. I have no issue maintaining my social distance and my mask and my handwashing at work because that is where I have the position of authority, and I have the responsibility to model it for the students and patients--but here, I was a guest at someone else’s house at someone else’s event, and I really, really felt how they might perceive me as rude. While I didn’t know the other women, my relationship with Jasper is extremely important to me, and I didn’t want to make this special event for her difficult in any way.

So we got out of the car and joined the group. I tried to keep my distance as much as possible, especially since I had Hamlet on the leash and there were a half-dozen small children around, but at least twice I looked up and there was someone right at my elbow, and we made small talk for five minutes or so before either she drifted back to the group or I moved Hamlet into the shade away from the rest.

Cars drove by and slowed down more than once to look at us. Jasper’s husband made a comment about rolling his eyes if he saw their family on Facebook that evening. The women planned play dates, all standing very close together, and Jasper opened her gifts (that part was excellent). All in all we were probably there about twenty minutes. 

I should mention that on the drive there, we passed a public park that has a very pretty waterfall right next to the road, and there were probably a dozen families out playing. There was a festival/outdoor market right outside the the park that had a sign up about social distancing, but the fifty or so people we saw shopping there were not adhering in any meaningful way. No one wore a mask.

And what annoys the bejeezus out of me is that I didn’t either. I didn’t even think about it until after we finally got back in the car to drive away. This is the first social event I’ve gone to since the first week of March, and while I wear masks for eight+ hours every day I go in to work, it didn’t occur to me even a single time to put on even my little cloth one that I keep in the car until we were driving away afterwards. I was so flummoxed by every little thing happening differently than I expected--people getting out of cars, how surprised I was by my own susceptibility to not rocking the boat, how normal everyone else made it to stand so close they could bump elbows so that Carol and I became almost excluded from the circle--that it never once crossed my mind. I know masks are more for the protection of those around you, not to keep you from catching what other people are carrying, but I could have set an example. I could have been the health professional I should have been in the moment.

I’m just so disappointed in myself. Disappointed in my own carelessness, irritated that I didn’t say anything, continually frustrated in a deep, gut-wrenching way by the whole situation that requires this in the first place. Bewildered that so many people are “back to normal” while this thing is still spreading, and in brutal honesty wishing I could be like them and just give up the fight myself. I’m not even mad at them. I WANT TO BE THEM. Why am I continually bothering to care and sanitize and mask and stay at home when no one else is? Literally no one would judge me in this state for it more than I’m already being judged (in most cases impersonally, though I felt the potential for it today in specific) for still watching the recommended guidelines.

I am really, really sick of this. I am so sick of feeling alone in this (of being alone in this, and Carol doesn’t count). Hearing other people saying “there there, you’re doing the right thing” honestly makes it even worse. I want people to stop patronizingly telling me to do things I already know are the right thing to do. I want other people as mad as I am that I can’t do the things I want to and need to do instead of being endlessly patient and noble about all the lives they’re saving by staying home. I’m top-of-my-head-blowing-off furious that so many people are shrugging and saying “well this is just the way it will be forever and alas, so it goes” and acting like those of us who did the right thing and cancelled our plans and our trips and our visits to dear friends but who are mad about having to do it are overreacting. I’m so fucking mad about it. I’ve stayed home for two months and I’ve isolated and I’ve quarantined and my hands are cracking from the constant sanitizer/washing at work and except for today I’ve done everything I’m supposed to do for this, and I don’t want to do it. And seeing people be so heroically virtuous and longsuffering on Facebook feels as alien and upsetting to me as the people who go to the beaches with a hundred of their closest friends.

That’s probably unfair in myriad ways. I’m really too angry, including at myelf, to soften it right now.

I want a vaccine and I want to be back in my classroom teaching to fifty faces instead of a screen in my living room, and I’m honestly freaking sick of waiting at home for them to figure this out. And watching everyone else move on with their lives back to the normal I would kill to have is just one more crack in the dike.

[borisbubbles]

17. CZECH REPUBLIC

Benny Christo - “Kemama”

So first off, thank you for the nice commens. 😇The past few months haven’t been the happiest time for me, so thank you for your patience as I scraped my bearings together for another post! 😁

So I will now extend that same sympathy to Benny Christo, whom I think I damn fucking underrated. Let’s jump in~

ENTRY ANALYSIS

As one may expect i INSTANTLY liked “Kemama” because you know, it’s a fun, laid-back, tropical afro-breeze, completely different from anything else we would see in NFs and the year. EXACTLY the type of song I was hoping the Czech NF would deliver (and deliver they did, see NF Corner). This level of mild like swung into strong unironic like upon realizing that the title is a contraction of “Okay Mother” 😍 and the song deals with the subject of overcoming racially-tinged discrimination and rising above the hate. That just feels very poetic and apt? “Kemama” felt like the entry that had to overcome the highest odds in order to earn the respect it so fully deserves, and still hasn’t fully reached it.

.In our Western European bubble, comprised mostly of gays and left-liberal straights, we have a very grateful and universal acceptance of many different kinds of [lizard] people that make up Eurovision casts. Yet with “Kemama” we may have reached  an unusually grimy undercurrent of coded racism. 

Of course nothing I read was outrageously rancid, than Cod for that. The worst statement I read was a double-whammy of “EWW THIS ISN’T CARIBBEANVISION” and “WHY WOULD SOMEONE FROM *KENYA* WANT TO REP CZECHIA IN EUROVISION?”, and yes they first got the continent wrong and then *also* got the country wrong in the follow-up post and then they were torn limb from limb by a pack of aformentioned left-liberals. I’m sorry but i can’t not have any other response than laughter in the face of yet another fucking MORON faceplanting themselves with words like a... racist JK Rowling if you will?

Still, while I never read something outright vile about Benny doesn’t mean I found his deniers really annoying and they were! Think “Ew Solovey is ‘Too Aggressive’ it will NEVER DO WELL IN ESC”, a statement that isn’t coded nor racist (and yet extremely false and misguided), functioned as a similar idea by the same minds. A statement borne from the same breed of narrow-minded stubbornness which has caused elitist morons to be all “there is **SOMETHING** about “Kemama” i do *NOT* like and I cannot lay my finger on it... but I **DO NOT** like it at ALL. It won’t ever qualify because everyone will think the same way I do” -- Eurovision snobs, tiptoeing around racial coda in January 2020.

 They would also insist that Benny was “arrogant” because he was seemingly impervious to their (de)constructive criticism. Like, if you were a biracial butterfly living in a slavic country who had to deal with statements such as the above on a regular basis, you WOULD block out the noise. And if you heard them often enough you will start to block them out pre-emptively. DO YOU NOT KNOW HOW COPING MECHANISMS WORK?? (oh wait you’re white-privileged. Nevermind 🙄)

 So naturally, when Benny decided that he would revamp “Okay Mother” by adding in MORE African elements it only made me love him even more lol. 😍 Was it a bull-headed, contrarian and possibly really stupid decision? Yes, yes and absolutely yes. Was it worth it? Well he managed to incite even more meltdowns in a group of people I feel nothing but contempt for, so hell yeah? Eurovision was cancelled anyway so who cares how much ‘worse’ “Kemama” actually got. 

Okay, so we’ve arrived at the revamp.

Granted, it wasn’t the best ‘vamp, I’d be a fool to deny it. The new elements threw a wrench in the melodic balance of the song. Out went tropical laid-back fun, IN went that fucking guitar oh my god this is some Hotel FM piano levels of overbearing I swear. (nb: this still didn’t stop me from ironically stanning Hotel FM’s lame asses anyway 😍). However, it made the personal backstory that I loved and savoured take a backseat to the now inferior composition. 😭

Regardless, New Kemama was fundamentally the same song, and I fundamentally liked Old Kemama, so whatevs, it made no different to me. In the eyes of many Eurovision diehards we were experiencing WORST PRESHOW SEASON EVER (after three songs... lol) and nothing clinches this brainworm more than a revamp announcement. “OH MY GOD HE WILL RUIN IT! I CAN GUARANTEE YOU I *WON’T* LIKE IT”. Self-fulfilling prophecies, ya know? It certainly didn’t help when the official channel accidentally uploaded a vid with broken soundmixing (‘OMG HORRIBLE LAST IN THE SEMI!!!!’ calm the ever-loving HELL down) and took another FULL WEEK to upload the correct vid. The damage had already been done. Typing "SEE I TOLD YOU THE REVAMP WOULD BE SHITE HA HA HA” in the Kemama comment box really just is the ESC equivalent of reponding with “Actually, *all* lives matter :smug:” to a BLM support pamphlet, isn’t it?

NF CORNER

While not my favourite NF of the bunch, I found the Czech NF to be lowkey epic. Not epic enough to remember its name but regardless Czechvision or whatever marked the end of an era because it was also the last selection spearheaded by Jan Bors :o

I think I’ve made it clear enough in the past that I’m somewhat mixed on Bors Era Czechia - Lake Malawi were a toetapping good, Ickolas was a pockmarked, skin-crawling evil and the other three inhibit a purgatory somewhere between “moderately nice” and “moderate timewaste.”

Still, I have great respect for the man who orchestrated Czech’s comeback after scoring NINE POINTS TOTAL across three years with the mindset of “So what? Why says we can’t win?” so ofc I was all into the idea of the “EIGHT INDIE ANGELS, HAND-PICKED BY BORS HIMSELF” NF that would serve as his swan song.

Naturally things went down the drain the second Bors left, with one of the eight peacing and his successor cancelling the live broadcast (does anyone remember what exactly happened? I vaguely recall one was the cause of the other but lol it’s July can’t be bothered to factscheck (Factsczeck?) anymore, bitches.

Anyway, ON TO THE GOOD STUFF, and yes, there was plenty.

We All Poop - “ All the Blood (Positive Song Actually)”

Yes, as you can imagine I ofc IMMEDIATELY fell into like when I saw that chyron and invisioned the inevitability of the Czech Rep’s Rep immediately alienating every parent just based on their name alone <3 😍 w/e WAP quickly became that “Good but not great” song you find in every NF that everyone gushes over because it’s the whitest option available. Like, yes, “All the blood” is good, but musically it’s identical to Green Day and Twenty-One Pilots and god name ANY 90s-early00′s American Punk Rock band. For me the enjoyment came from the fact that WAP were openly crazy vegan fundamentalists and the VC clip actively condemns the use ANY animal protein by replacing the cattle and game with LITERAL HUMAN BEINGS. 😍 :fusedmarcintensifies: :kasiamosage:

Pam Rabbit - “Get up”

Ohhhh YES a glorious experimental Synth-Trap song only I could love and ofc I did. God what is there even to say; the provocative darkness of the verses combined with the swirling amorphousness of the chorus gives me LIFE. LUFF THIS SHIT <3333 Ftr, this was also the fave of Slovene Juror duo / synth angels / Boris faves ZALAGASPER, further proving their pathetic naysayers that they own all things music and the haters can suck a series of-

Barbora Mochowa - “White and Black Holes“

Lol, yes even with a “Get up” existing, there was a song I liked even more. Barbora proved a very competent Lana del Gay last year, but I was a YUGE fan of this year’s... Kate Bush-Björk blend of ethereal awesome. It is so soothingly beautiful and the rare example of a song that I find completely free of flaws. Were the competition not such a hard place, I’d be pissed she didnt win (at least she won the jury vote MASSIVE KUDOS to every alum on that) but w/e this selection had opions and I’m rather robbed of a “Kemama” than I am of a BRILLIANT IRREPLICABLE AETHERBALLAD. ~Danse balance sûr les white and black holes~

Elis Mraz & Cis T - “Wanna be like”

I *VERY* strongly felt that if the Czech Republic wanted to win ESC, they should have picked Elis and even now I STILL believe she could have won. That isn’t to say I gushed over “Wanna be like” because I find it kind of annoying lol. Yes, I LOVE an annoying female voice (:Tones&Icackle:) but Elis’s reaches a Camilla Cabello sort of place for me (good lord get Senorita OFF the fucking radio) and the Scat + White Guy Rapping middle-eight. 😬. However, the second I opened up the video clip for this paragraph and was immediately BLASTED by Elis murdering a ukelele and wearing a  “schoolgirl” outfit straight from a Japanese tentacle porn movie and OH MY GOD THE AGGRESSIVE TWERKING made me reconsider that hey, this min-sized Meghan Traynor actually kinda highkey owns, yo!  Yet, I’m not at all bothered we lost her in the Czech NF because we got UNO DOS QUATRO CINCO SEIS :fatmansplit: fill up the megameme slot instead, so...

Eurovision 2020 vs Eurovision 2021

BENNY RUINED HIS SONG AND NEVER WOULD HAVE QUALIFIED. jk I’m not a moron. Sure, “Kemama” wasn’t an easy sell because you know AFROBEAT in a contest where half of the people watching are fash (ie: all of Eastern Europe, who watch out of ~Nationalistic Sentiment~ 😬), but there are Kemama live renditions out there and he owns them SO hard lol. A few soundmixing issues really would not have stopped Benny from qualifying in that RIDICULOUSLY WEAKSAUCE SEMIFINAL are you fucking kidding me. He probably would’ve bombed in the Grand Final, but I mean it’s Czech and it’s not Ickolas so ofc it would have.

And Czech renewed him for 2021 regardless of the sceptics, woohoo! I think part of it was due the Czech not wanting to re-organize an ENTIRE NF from scratch without Jan Bors, but probably also because Benny owns live when he isn’t engaged in psychological trench warfare with actual human detritus <3 and also because the Czech fucking CARE about their artists and don’t drop them like a sack of rotten potatoes wtfshitprus.

Can’t wait for the moment when he qualifies and Efendi does not, etc, etc. 

FREAKY! FRIDAY! FACTOR!

I’d say that the core around which the Ben Drama spun was pretty standard fare: niche fave beats out the concensus fave, meltdowns ensue, people convince themselves it was the WRONG decision because it wasn the result they wanted, try to disown the song and make a fool of themselves because the song slaps, sorry. Even the revamp drama felt more of less generic for me, because yawn fantards melting down over a revamp of a song they don’t even like what else is new.  

However, what I do take away that the revamp was ENTIRELY Benny’s idea which he told no one about (cue to JAN BORS having a social media meltdown like he’s Caesar at the Ides of March 💔) added MORE afrobeat just to troll his haters even more <3  God, I’d say it was bad from a musical perspective but this level of in-your-face defiance is fucking iconic and hilarious, sorry. This entire this year is so batshit bonkers that the concept of a someone potentially shooting themselves in the foot and “torpedo’ing” their qualification chances  (not rly, he would’ve Q’d anyway lol) JUST to take the moral high ground in a racially coded argument only HE took seriously may not even be the craziest concept in the year! (lol it definitely isn’t. Look at the pics I haven’t greyed out yet)

This and more yield Benny some well-earned Senheads! Yay!! 

Score: 3 Senhits out of 5.

[frostdeer]

“A tiny island of doom and gloom”

That’s p much our country right now.

If you are wondering why I might seem a bit more “well fuck everything” than usual (I know it’s been my default mindset), well, WE HAVE A SITUATION. I know the entire world has a situation, but in the words of our PM, we truly are “best in covid” these days.

Under the cut, because, boy, I wrote more than I expected to write.

CNN article here covered it kinda nicely: 

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/02/28/europe/czech-republic-coronavirus-disaster-intl/index.html

I would also like to comment on a few things from the article:

“ It has a democratically elected government. “

- Yes, we do. But the very same government is led by a PM that has been criminally investigated for the past 3 years (I think) due to some not-really-legally-gained EU funds for his private business (hello?!) and there have been demonstrations against him for the past 2+ years. He has been asked to resign many many times, not just by the public, but also by some other politicians.

“Speaking in the Parliament on Friday, Prime Minister Andrej Babiš admitted his government has made "far too many mistakes," but said it was not the time to argue about the past. “

- Yes, he has admitted. But will he resign, as he was asked multiple times before because of these bad decisions of this government? No, of course not. There’s election in autumn, and he needs all the brownie points so his party gets elected again so he can stay in power. Even if he says his actions aren’t politically motivated, but, really? Does anyone believe that? Really? #ohwell

We had 3 ministers of health in the past year. Ahem.

We also had a lot of experts who were advising the government, but at some point there were too many of them. One expert said something, second advisor said another thing, a minister of health said something a little different, then the PM said something compeltely different and then even the president said something even more completely different. And now, how the fuck are we supposed to know what should we do and whose word is the “official” one. Last summer was a mess, people thought “oh yay epidemic ended, we can go run free and go in bars!” 

End of summer was also the time when the PM said his famous line “We’re best in covid” and then it started getting downhill and continues going downhill to this moment.

In my personal opinion, one of the biggest reasons we’re in this mess is also the fact that police doesn’t really fine people who are caught breaking the restrictions. Not having a mask in the public transport? Well put it on, but don’t do it next time, okay? If the police was fining people everytime they caught someone not following the restrictions (like in some other countries), boy, would they have tons of extra funding and people might take the rules a bit more seriously. But no, an agreement is fine, right?   #ohwell_2

A lot of people here are also in the extreme antivax mindset, not just when concerning vaccines in general, but the whole “please wear a mask”. To them it’s a muzzle, preventing their freedom of speech and yadda yadda, I mean, just imagine the Typical American Karen(tm) and that’s p much those people. Not to mention they just go to their fave pubs through the backdoor, drinking, partying, as if nothing was happening. Not to mention politicians and publicly known people do that as well. In fact, our second minister of health had to resign because of the fact he was caught leaving a restaurant (mistake 1 - restaurants were not allowed to be open) after 10pm (mistake 2 - 10pm was a curfew at that time) and without a mask (mistake 3 - well duh). The fact that some of these very publicly known personas are also the ones who openly say that “covid is a hoax” (like our former president, who in a big turn of events actually got covid last week, eh), well, it doesn’t really help the situation either.

The vaccination system is absolutely not going according to plan, the registration system for the vaccines is a goddamn mess, prioritised groups are people over 80 years and medical personnel, and then it was supposed to be a turn for people with chronic diseases that compromise immunity and thus have a bigger chance to have a difficult case of covid if infected (a group into which I belong)... and it has been changed multiple times. Currently the people who are allowed to register are people over 70 years AND teachers. Because there is also a strong push for schools being reopened, I mean... * shrug * Oh, and for some reason people (mostly seniors) are refusing to be vaccinated by Astra Zeneca vaccine, which is just laying unused in the warehouses because of that. At least the teachers reportedly don’t mind, “as long as it is not Sputnik”.

Talking about Sputnik... Earlier, our president (a very pro-russian and pro-chinese person, FYI) said that he personally talked to Putin and that Putin promised to send some Sputnik vaccines to CZ. And that he (president) would demand them to be used. Our PM however opposes that even if we got the Sputnik vaccines, they won’t be used until approved by the EMA. President says, for him the approval of SÚKL (czech agency for medicine control) would be enough. And I just... You know what, I think I better stop now.

If you managed to read all the way down here, I applaud you, because I don’t even know if the entire fucking post makes sense.

To sum it up, I am frustrated by the situation because there is nothing I can do other than I am already doing. I have been following the goddamn restrictions since last year, and seeing half of the country being absolute selfish dicks by shitting on these rules just angers me to the point I am having frequent spikes of anxiety that I haven’t had for YEARS. 

I wish that you guys are doing much better, both on the personal plain and within your respective countries. This is the life now, I guess.

Stay strong, my friends.

Oh well.

[csykora]

hey i was reading your post about evgeny kusnetsov and alexander semin (the friendship necklace one) and i got into hockey somewhat recently but i've heard/read some things about sasha and i was wondering if you could give me a rundown/what your perspective is? you mentioned cultural assimilation, but also social class, ethnic identity, ability, neurodiversity, and trauma and i was really curious what exactly you were talking about??

First, that’s cool you’re getting into hockey! How’s that going? I hope you’re having fun. Second…thanks for making me reread my old writing as we come up on the New Year ;)

That was one of my very first posts, and I think it reads like it—I definitely wasn’t much of a sports writer back then, and (I don’t think) I tell stories quite the same way now.

I don’t think some of those words I used mean much, except that I was angry. So I’d like to spell out what made, makes, me angry. The first half of this is stuff I’ve said before, more organized, with jokes. The second half is not fun, but it’s also something I think NHL fans have a duty to think about. So I want to try to talk about Lokomotiv.

Sasha Semin is the star and captain of a quite good, more fun KHL team. Today he was named to the All-Star team, actually. KHL All-Stars is a magical place where the players sing acoustic covers and routinely set things on fire, so hopefully they’ll let him bring his sword.

(I love the KHL)

Before that, he was the cool big brother of a generation of Russian stars. In the early 2000s the first post-Soviet young players were coming of age and working out what post-Soviet, now-Russian style hockey was going to be. In that moment we got two spectacular players: Sasha from Siberia, and Sasha from Moscow.

The Soviet style of play was supposed to be egalitarian—players skated the opposition sick and pass-pass-passed, always giving it to a teammate instead of taking chances, until whoever happened to have it had a sure shot. The Alexanders grew up in that style, and they grew up fuck-off strong. They started feeding off all their teammates’ passes and beginning to gun down goalies with one of two shots: Alex Ovechkin had the one-timer, and Alex Semin had the best wristshot in the game.

Did you watch Vegas’ magic season? Pull some clips of Wild Bill Karlsson. Imagine if he had upper body strength but was just as light on his feet. That’s how inexplicably electric young Semin was.

His and then Ovi’s performances at World Juniors were so explosive they convinced American businesses to risk money on something new. Semin was oldest, and the Capitals kind of sucked, so they got him first. Then a few years later they still sucked, so they got Ovi too. Then the two of them got Nicklas Backstrom and matching line promise necklaces and played really good hockey together for a number of years.

(If anyone would like 3,000 more nicer words about the above subjects, @ me)

A couple things shaped what happened after that:

▪ Semin’s unique wrister, twisted to be almost as hard as a slapper, is like spending every night downing jägerbombs with a shot of carpal tunnel. He seems to have chronic wrist and hand problems from inflammation, with apparent flare-ups that sometimes got rest and sometimes didn’t. So that’s a factor—not the only, but a—in why he had periods of poor shooting.

▪ Either because he never really went to school or just because he’s wired that way, Semin seems to suck at math.

▪ Ovi’s hot stick and the Sid Incident (Sidcident?): 

In their first interview together, Ovi described him and Sid as “partners”, and Sid asked for Ovi’s shirt. But over the first few years the League swung from branding them as buddies to making money off a rivalry, and Don Cherry started a string of bitter conflicts with Ovi.

Local journalists who knew him wrote about seeing Ovi flinch in interviews. They described him starting to hesitate, pale, tired, doubling back over answers to make sure they were watertight. We now know from Tatyana Ovechina that he was spending a lot of nights on the phone back home with her, asking if he was letting everybody down.

Sasha, who’s basically that guy on twitter who found kittens in his sock drawer and adopted them all, but with little brothers, got protective. He told Russian media that he thought Sid was a good player, but not his favorite, and said that the way the League was pushing media attention could make someone a ‘star’ even if they weren’t that good. The phrase he used means “dead wood”, or boring, useless person. The grammar he used means something like “even if he were (ie, he isn’t)”.

I think this was objectively very funny. And I still hold that anyone saying the level of exposure Sid endured was good for him or anyone sounds like the stage parents on Toddlers & Tiaras.)

But people get protective of their person, and most won’t stop for a grammar lesson before deciding what they think something meant. There was a media blitz, mostly accusing Sasha of wanting the attention Sid got, which made sense, if you didn’t know Russian or two things about him—that he’s best friends with Alex Ovechkin, and that he’d only just started to practice English with local reporters after several years. If he were an egomaniac, he was bad at it.

From his reaction it seems like he hadn’t thought his comment was that wild, and wasn’t prepared for the backlash. Next time he talked to local reporters, he brought the translator back. Asked routine questions he’d been getting for a couple years, he flinched and turned to them to rehearse every word of his answer. Asked what was up with the translator, he said “I just don’t want to say the wrong thing.”

Although teammates like Mike Knuble, Jeff Schultz, Backstrom and Ovechkin kept talking about his personable, joking side, and we’d see it plenty in practice, he started insisting to reporters that he didn’t know English and that he was boring anyway, claiming “I’m just an ordinary person, just like everybody else. The only difference is I’m out there on the ice and that’s it. I’d just rather talk about hockey.”

–> Without math or English, Semin’s career depended on his agent, Mark Gandler.

Try not to depend on Mark Gandler.

As the Globe and Mail put it, “to many Canadian hockey fans, Mark Gandler is nothing less than the Prince of Darkness.”

Mark Gandler’s business was based on presenting himself as a friendly face to young Russian athletes, and pissing of NHL franchises. I’m pro-pissing off the NHL in general; my problem with Gandler is that if he was sincerely trying to get the best deal for him clients, he was bad at it..

When anyone talks about something Semin decided, they’re talking about what Gandler decided for him. Semin was honest with the media that he had no fucking clue what Gandler was asking for in negotiations. The Caps and Gandler couldn’t agree on anything, so while Ovechkin was locked down for life, Semin was only ever signed to one and two year bridge contracts, constantly up, his performance a constant subject of discussion and every wobble obvious.

Note: the following is the bit where I got angry and A. asked why the hell I was looking at photos of this and told me to go lie on the floor and do my butterfly exercises for a while.

One year Semin’s game really sucked. It didn’t help that Ovechkin was sucking too—they both got benched, Coach got fired, and still the Capitals just kind of sucked. Around the league, Russian stars were mostly fizzling. That was the 2011-2012 season. 

On September 7, 2011, the airplane carrying the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl team, coaching staff, and four youth players had overrun the runway, struck a signal tower, crashed, and caught fire moments after takeoff. Every member of the team onboard was killed.

I can’t understand, so certainly can’t explain, how that day changed the community. I’m not trying to speculate too much on anyone’s personal situation, but to point out how much more profound it was than just some other league’s trivia.

I don’t think there’s a mainstream North American parallel for the hockey community in Eastern Europe. Players are raised in a small number of hockey schools, often at that time in dormitories like the one where Semin lived in Chelyabinsk. While young North Americans are quite strictly separated by age, the Russians are growing up with older and younger kids from the same school all around them. Older teens are encouraged to mentor younger ones—Kuznetsov’s attachment to Semin is endearing, but not really so weird. Stanislav Yarushin is several years older than Sasha, and he befriended him, and then down to Kuz. In a community like that, any one person is intimately connected to the others.

From the coaches to the rookies, someone from three generations across nine nations was killed in the disaster. Each of them was connected not only to their peers, but to players older and younger than them, and to the city that raised them. Every Russian, Czech, and Slovak in the NHL lost at least one person they knew deeply.

Just that spring, Kuznetsov won gold at World Juniors with a little clique of friends. Vladimir Tarasenko, Artemi Panarin, and Dmitry Orlov are stars now, and two of the others are dead.

Kuznetsov is the one draped in the flag. #14, with the awesome hair, smiling, is Danylo Sobchenko. #12, reaching up towards the cup, is Yuri Urychev. Urychev had been injured, and supposed to stay home the day of the disaster, but he asked to be allowed to fly with them, so he could cheer for his friends.

Tarasenko himself was born in Yaroslavl, and his father played for Lokomotiv; he knew even more of the team, and if he’d taken a hometown offer instead of signing with Sibir, he would have died that day too.

The thing about a loss like this is that it keeps budding with new losses. It hadn’t been a problem with the plane, or a freak accident. Over the following month a miserable investigation revealed that the airline had fudged documents, and the pilots just didn’t know what they were doing. So as well as losing friends, the younger players lost any trust that people in authority were going to keep them safe in the future.

After the disaster, Ovechkin, Semin, and Malkin had to hold their phones waiting while Alexander Galimov (a friend from nationals) was found with burns over 80% of his body, stabilized, transported, placed in a medically-induced coma and ventilated. He finally died five days later. The day he died Tarasenko and Kuznetsov and all the others got back on their own planes and kept playing, so the NHLers just had to keeping waiting up for them, too. Now Tarasenko and Kuznetsov have little brothers on those planes. They’re better fucking planes now, because the disaster changed Russian law, but they’re still not great.

In a grim way, Semin and Ovechkin were lucky, because they had each other. At the time almost no NHL team had as many Eastern Europeans as the Caps, meaning almost all the others were alone.

Of course it just wasn’t possible for the North American public to grieve with them the way that Europe did, but how quickly it was boxed away and forgotten as a factor in players’ lives just…sucks.

You don’t just grieve somebody when you lose them; people who aren’t sure what to say will say it fades with time, but what it really does is rise and fall in waves. You grieve them when you lose them, and again when you’re as old as they were and realize how insufficient it really was, and again, when you’re older than they’ll ever be, when you’re old enough to see children their age. Like injuring your wrist, you can get back to work, but never back to exactly what you were before. 

Five years later, when Tarasenko scored his 100th goal, he dedicated it to Sobchenko and Urychev. 

Most of a decade later, Alex Ovechkin wears the Lokomotiv crest on his chest protector, over his heart.

So if we know all that, we can start to imagine why they sucked at hockey.

Actually, after a slow start to the season, Sasha sucked the least of all the Capitals. Always a stronger possession player than Ovechkin, Sasha actually recovered after the Caps brought in Dale Hunter, who ripped up the Goals First, Goals Always game plan and tried to make Ovi play defense. Sasha ended the season with the best possession metrics on the team (yes, including Nicke Backstrom). 

His goal-scoring didn’t recover, but that was because Coach Dale was basically treating him like Ovi’s security blanket, putting him on the second line with Mojo so Ovi couldn’t cuddle him until Ovi backchecked. Mojo (this is a Science fact) is not Nicke Backstrom.

The reason the Capitals traded Semin is they desperately needed to trade someone to make up for the team’s collective failures that year, he could be traded due to his shitty contracts, and he was worth trading. 

I’m not actually angry the Caps traded Semin. It made sense. I am mad the Habs did, because it was one of many decisions made by Marc Bergevin coughing up a heavily-gelled hairball on a depth chart, but hey.

Sports is hard. I don’t mean that teams should keep players who aren’t playing the way that team needs them to out of sympathy. I mean that it’s possible to say that Semin or Ovechkin sometimes play badly without saying they don’t care. It’s possible to name a practical problem without making it a moral one.

Because when we see someone not doing what we want, and we make it moral, we say, “well gosh, I can’t imagine a reason why they aren’t jazzed to do what I want right now, so there can’t be a reason, they just suck,” we’re always wrong, because we miss shit!

In 2011, the common complaint that Russian players “don’t seem to care” went from boring to breathtakingly cruel. 

It’s a collective failure of empathy, where a lot of us didn’t even know that empathy’s needed. How many NHL fans don’t know Lokomotiv existed? If we don’t even know what weight another person’s carrying, we can’t possibly judge them rightly! 

The athletes we’re watching aren’t just cartoon characters for American consumption, who always act and react in easily-readable ways. They’re people with beliefs, behaviors, and problems which might be meaningfully different from what we’re personally familiar with and really hard to sympathize with.  

But when we see someone struggling to do what we want them to, we have to wonder why, and look around to learn more about moments like this, and then offer empathy. I believe that if we have information, most people use it to be kind. So we really fucking need historical information.

I’m back on the floor and don’t have a closer, so here’s a picture of a cat with big mitts like Sasha. His name is Peppers.

[scrunchyharry]

on allowing translations of our fics: a non-native English speaker’s perspective

Here’s some 7am thoughts from my brain to your screens. This isn’t criticism, to be clear. I’m thinking out loud.

Under a cut because it’s pretty long and verging on Discourse.

I’ve been writing fics for 15 years, across four different fandoms and as many platforms. I’ve always allowed translations to be made of my fics because, I suppose que je comprends que certaines personnes ne disposent pas des capacités nécessaires pour lire des œuvres écrites en anglais.

I couldn’t comfortably read a novel in English until I was 17-18. It took me three weeks to get through Of Mice and Men in high school and when I was asked to read Dracula in my 9th grade ESL-A class, I found a French translation of it. I still can’t go to a Shakespeare play and hope to understand what’s going on. I’ve tried, numerous times. I’ve tried with Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing and Hamlet. I just do not understand them when they speak (to be fair, I have seen a handful of Molière plays and also struggled my way through the Ancien Régime French, so maybe I just have really bad hearing comprehension).

And I’m Canadian, so English is omnipresent in my life. I started learning when I was in the 4th grade, I only truly felt like I could call myself bilingual in my early twenties, after going to university in English. Je comprends donc que l’anglais n’est pas confortablement accessible à tous et à toutes.

the 1D fandom is the first where I see people being against translations, yet it is also the most "international" of the fandoms I’ve been in. I have to clarify: I never witnessed any discussions of translations in my previous fandoms, is what I mean by that. Whether for or against them, I never saw people talking about them. The 1D fandom is the first where I a) see it being talked about and b) see people against them.

It stands out as odd to me because I personally never had any objections to it, I never even gave it a second thought beyond making sure that I was properly credited and asking for a link to the final product so that I can verify that I was. I think, perhaps, it speaks to the fact that the English speaking world is so rarely confronted to works in a language inaccessible to them. The outcries around Parasite being in Korean with English subs come to mind, while the rest of the non-English world was like "this is a regular Monday for us? To have to contend with translated or subtitled works to be able to access the hegemonic culture?"

Being a non-English speaker in an Anglo-centric world means constantly readjusting what you thought you knew. I didn’t grow up watching The Lion King or reading Anne of Green Gables. I grew up watching Le Roi lion and reading Anne et la maison aux pignons verts. Translations are an integral part of my life. Hell, on days when I’m really tired, I’ll switch whatever I’m watching on Netflix to French (when it’s available, which is a topic for another discussion) so that my brain can catch a break.

When I say readjusting, I mean that you’re always reframing. “Oh, I didn’t know that Severus Rogue’s English name was Severus Snape. Let me keep that in mind throughout our entire discussion in my second language.” “Oh, right, Americans have middle school so I better remember what years that covers and speak accordingly so I don’t have to go down the longer road of explaining that, actually, my French-Canadian school system didn’t have middle school and oh, also, our high school ends in the 10th grade and...” you get my drift.

This post is getting away from me. I’ll try to reel it back in. When I was in undergrad, I took a lit class from the French department (remember my bit about giving my brain a break?) and it was about the early 20th century. After suffering through the inevitable Proust, we moved on to Milan Kundera, a Czech writer (I had to use autocorrect for that, see, for me Czech is Tchèque) who became a French citizen. I don’t have the exact quote, that notebook has been gone since 2012, but I remember that he considered translations to be entirely new works of fiction and that the translator’s touch made the book anew because of the interpretations they chose when translating. Here’s an excerpt from an abstract about this:

"Kundera showed displeasure at any translator who, however briefly, would impersonate the author and take some license in translating Kundera’s work. Further, Kundera decided that only his full authorial involvement in the process would ascertain “the same authenticity” of his translations as the original Czech works. Kundera thus becomes the omnipresent, omnipotent author, himself impersonating God controlling his own creation."

Margala, Miriam. (2011). The Unbearable Torment of Translation: Milan Kundera, Impersonation, and The Joke. TranscUlturAl: A Journal of Translation and Cultural Studies. 1. 10.21992/T9C62H.

I’m not just name dropping Milan Kundera to show that I’m Educated. I’m bringing this point up because this isn’t my personal perspective on translation, but I can understand how it can be other people’s. My stance on this is that I want my work to be as universally accessible as it can be. Once I’ve put a story out into the world, while I do retain the copyright of it, it isn’t mine anymore. Every person reading it will read a different story because of their own inner lives and what they bring to it. Similarly, translations may bring out other perspectives of it. My work is done, though, the moment I click "post" and send it out into the world. I am no longer in control of the way it will be understood. And I’m at peace with this. It is a true ego death to read comments and see people picking up on things you did not even notice yourself as the omnipotent little god of your own creation.

As I was revising this essay, memories of bygone discourse came back to my mind, from the time I was in the Les Misérables fandom. You can imagine that I got a kick out of being able to say I had read it in the original French, but beyond that, the most interesting conversations I had in those days were when comparing the various English translations of the novel to each other and to the original French. There were Opinions on who had done it best, and who got closer to the original, but then not quite as much, because “see, here this word that Hugo used can be interpreted in a different way and it changes the entire meaning of the next sentence.” 

More recently, a woman translated The Illiad or the Odyssey, I don’t quite remember, and her interpretation of certain scenes completely changed their meaning. I’m working off my memory, here, but I think I recall reading that where men had translated “prostitute”, she had translated “companion”, or something along those lines, and it showed how the translator brings their own worldview to a work, it’s inevitable.

I am not trying to compare One Direction fanfiction to The Illiad, let’s be clear. What I’m attempting to say in too many words is that fanfiction is derivative work, and so are translations. I, personally, will never be against people translating my work if I’m credited correctly. Without translations, I wouldn’t have known Disney growing up. I wouldn’t have known Anne of Green Gables, or Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potter, or Winnie the Pooh, or Alice in Wonderland, or any other work that have shaped my psyche as a child. Far from me to say that my native French culture is not rich in itself with works (I owe as much to the Comtesse de Ségur as I do to Lucy Maud Montgomery), but translations allow me to be able to take part of a global conversation, to be a part of the Internet’s collective unconscious.

At the same time, with the plague that are unauthorized reposts of our works, I understand why other people are wary of anything that involves a form of reposting. There is no easy answer to this, but I did want to share my thoughts on the matter as a non-native English speaker and, most importantly, writer. 

I’ll conclude by saying that, if anyone is wondering, I’m not writing in my native French because the mere thought of writing a sex scene in the same language I use to talk to my mother is enough to Catholic-guilt me off the face of the planet, without even breaching the topic of writing in the language that has the biggest potential reach.

so, huh, yeah. thank you for coming to my ted talk.